Richard Dawkins -- famed evolutionary biologist, bestselling atheist, and delightful interviewee -- has launched a new campaign in Britain to get atheists to "come out." All over central London, the tube, and on the sides of buses will be the following slogan:

There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"

Don't you feel better already?

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In a hush-hush deal, the British government just sold its last shares in the country's nuclear weapons plant to a U.S. company. California-based Jacobs Engineering Group paid an undisclosed amount for the government's one-third stake in the only plant in the UK that manufactures nuclear weapons, including Trident warheads. Lockheed Martin owns another third of the plant, and a British business services company the remaining third.

The sale wasn't announced to Parliament, leaving some MPs to speculate that the government sold the plant at below market rates to get some much-needed funds for the Treasury. Critically, it means that all production, design, and decommissioning of nuclear weapons in the UK is privately owned, with U.S. companies having a majority stake.

Photo: Getty Images

Thanks to the credit crunch, the British parliament has put on hold a plan to build an airport for the tiny Atlantic island of St. Helena. Twelve hundred miles off the coast of Africa and best known as the place where Napoleon once languished in exile, the British colony is still the home of about 6,500 people. Ships haven't had much reason to stop there since the Suez Canal was built and St. Helena depends on two visits per year from an ageing mail ship for any contact with the outside world.

Needless to say, they were pretty excited about the airport:

The project, which was scheduled for 2012, galvanised islanders to plan for a future with tourism as their main income. Industry experts trained hospitality personnel; tenders were taken to build upmarket boutique accommodation. Plans were hatched to lure back hundreds of young islanders who had left St Helena in search of opportunity.

“All our plans for the future were based on the airport project,” Eric Benjamin, one of the councillors, told The Times by telephone. “We are devastated.”

With Downing Street nearly two weeks away by ship, it's a bit hard to hold a rally.

Map: Wikipedia

"Our British friends are now cutting their value-added tax. We have no idea how much of that stores will pass on to customers. Are you really going to buy a DVD player because it now costs £39.10 instead of £39.90? All this will do is raise Britain’s debt to a level that will take a whole generation to work off.

"The same people who would never touch deficit spending are now tossing around billions. The switch from decades of supply-side politics all the way to a crass Keynesianism is breathtaking."

Steinbrück may be forced to hold his nose when German bankers, ministers, and economists meet next week to discuss their own stimulus measures. Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be moving closer to the British position.

Indian television station NDTV reported earlier that, according to the chief minister of Mumbai, at least two of the militants arrested are British citizens.

"[I]t is too early to say whether or not any of them are British," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Sky News in response to the story.

It's an interesting potential wrinkle, but the usual caveats apply. Many of the reports coming out of the Indian press have proven unfounded or contradictory.

UPDATE: BBC News reports that there is "no evidence" as of yet that any of the attackers were British.

... perhaps stories like this explain the rumors?

Actor Joey Jeetun, 31, from London, told how he survived the terrorist assault on the Leopold cafe, next to the Taj Mahal hotel, because he was covered in other victims' blood and the gunmen thought he was dead.

Mr Jeetun said: "I just curled myself in the smallest ball I could and closed my eyes. After about five minutes it stopped and I opened my eyes. There were dead people next to me who had been shot in the head."

Mr Jeetun has an Asian appearance and once played the role of July 7 suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer in a Channel 5 documentary 7/7: Attack on London.

After police arrived at the cafe an officer pointed a gun at his head and he was detained as a possible terrorist suspect.

He said: "I was held in a police cell for 13 hours with a group of Arab looking men. They thought I was a suspect even though I said I was a British tourist."

Does anyone really wonder why sperm donors might prefer anonymity? It's not like donating an old car -- the desire for privacy is quite understandable. So, it's not surprising that Britain, which abandoned sperm-donor confidentiality laws in 2005, is now facing a sperm-donor deficit. 

The numbers don't lie. Immediately after anonymity disappeared, the number of women who received donor sperm went from 2,727 in 2005 to 2,107 in 2006. It's estimated that 500 donors are needed to match the 4,000 women who undergo donor insemination in Britain each year. Reports show only 307 donors registered in 2006, not nearly enough.

Some fertility experts, like doctors Mark Hamilton and Allan Pacey, from the British Fertility Society are looking to work around the shortage.

They've suggested raising the limit on the number of families who can use the same sperm donor -- currently only 10 babies are allowed to result from each donor, a measure they feel lacks real scientific backing. They've also suggested a sperm-sharing program (an arrangement where men whose partners need in vitro fertilization become donors), but rejected a proposal to allow older donors to donate because of health concerns, like gene mutation.

Dr. Pacey says the countries with enough sperm to go around, especially the United States and Spain, are those "that pay donors or allow anonymity." While he also said that Britain is importing sperm from Scandinavia, he suspects that with such long waiting lines for sperm donors, Brits will simply have to shop elsewhere.

Photo: iStockphoto.com

It makes sense that the British government would want to smooth over relations with Russia by sending a cabinet minister to visit Moscow, the first such visit in over a year. But couldn't the Brits have sent someone -- anyone -- other than Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who is currently at the center of a scandal over his relationship with a Russian oligarch?

Mandelson's friendly overtures to the Kremlin have been entirely overshadowed by questions from the British press. At issue is whether favors from metals magnate Oleg Deripaska played a role in Mandelson's decision to reduce aluminum tariffs while he was EU trade commissioner, a decision that greatly benefited Russia's richest man. Months after the change, Deripaska entertained Mandelson and other VIPs on his yacht in the Mediterranean.

Mandelson angrily brushed aside a question about the scandal during a press conference Wednesday, telling the reporter, "You have wasted your question." Mandelson has been cleared by the British government of any wrongdoing, but during a BBC interview, also yesterday, he noticeably failed to deny that he and Deripaska had discussed lowering the tariffs prior to the decision being made.

The tabloids have been having a field day with the $9,000-a-night hotel suite where Lord Mandelson is staying during his Moscow visit, a questionable PR move during an economic crisis. The Daily Mail proclaimed the room, "Fit for an Oligarch." It also can't help Mandelson that Deripaska is back in the headlines for the $4.5 billion bailout he received from the Russian government this week.

The Brits might want a do-over on this one.

Photo: Alexey SAZONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

There are two stories today about Western politicans soliciting donations from Russian citizens. One is just funny, the other, a potentially bigger deal.

The BBC reports that Russia's U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin has been receiving mailers from McCain's campaign asking for help to "stop the Democrats from seizing control of Washington and implementing their radically liberal policy for our nation."

It's obviously just a mistake so there's no foul here, but Russia's U.N. mission seems to be relishing the opportunity to embarrass Mr. "We are all Georgians." As McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said, "it sounds like they're having a little fun at our expense."

If the British media seems to be overselling the Churkin story, it's probably an attempt to tie it to a British scandal with potentially far more serious implications. In a letter to the Times of London today, hedge fund manager Nathaniel Rothschild accused shadow chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne (above) of soliciting a donation to the Conservative Party from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska while all three were vacationing on the Greek Island of Corfu over the Summer.

Rothschild suggests that Osborne asked for £50,000 on board Deripaska's private yacht and discussed with a Tory fund raiser how the Russian citizen's donation could be channeled through one of the British companies he owns. Osborne has denied soliciting the donation, though he admits spending time on the yacht. The Osborne allegations are actually just the latest twist in a scandal that until now focused on European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, a Labour Party member, who also availed himself of Deripaska's hospitality at the same gathering.

Memo to politicians everywhere: Even if you're not doing anything explicitly illegal, avoid spending time on yachts with wealthy foreign nationals. It never looks good.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Former British Telecom employee John Tasker stands in an old canteen in a secret air raid tunnel on Oct. 17, 2008 in London. The once-secret tunnels were built 100 feet under central London in 1940 as fully equipped air raid shelters and could accommodate 8,000 people. They have since been used by MI6 and the Public Records Office to hold 400 tons of secret documents. Current owner British Telecom (BT) once housed the London trunk exchange of the secure trans-Atlantic hotline between the presidents of the United States and the Soviet Union. BT is now seeking a buyer for the tunnels.

Read more about the tunnels here.

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

A worker walks past a pile of damaged bricks to be crushed at the world-famous Accrington Nori brick factory in England on Oct. 16, 2008. The brickyard is to close in two weeks with about 80 jobs to be lost. A spokesman for parent company Hanson attributed the closure to the housing slump, saying the firm's output has fallen 40 percent in the past six months. If the market eventually improves, the factory might one day reopen.

Famous for being superstrong, Nori bricks ("Nori" is "iron" spelled backward) were used to construct the foundation of New York's Empire State Building.

One interesting consequence of the U.K.'s massive bank bailouts is that the British government is now the largest stakeholder in Scotland's two largest banks. Scottish nationalists are none too pleased about this, and their opponents are relishing the opportunity to rub it in their faces:

They now look pretty silly," Brian Wilson, a Scot and former Labor Party member of Parliament, said of independence campaigners. "In the long term, when a mature judgment has to be made about independence, this episode will be remembered."

Independence from the United Kingdom is the driving force behind the political party currently in power in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, or SNP. Polls show that perhaps 25 to 30 percent of Scots support the idea.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a native Scot but an outspoken advocate of keeping Scotland in the U.K. fold, seemed to go out of his way Tuesday to tweak advocates of independence, especially the SNP [...]

"We were able to act decisively with 37 billion pounds; that would not have been possible for a Scottish administration," said Brown, whose own political fortunes have been boosted by his handling of the crisis.

The fact that the SNP's Web site offered up now-bankrupt Iceland as a model of prosperity is also a bit embarassing.

(Hat tip: Marginal Revolution)

Here's google.co.uk's logo for the day, in honor of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II:

The AP reports that the queen visited Google's British headquarters today, where she uploaded a video to the royal family's YouTube channel. It seems the British monarch is even more tech savvy than John McCain.

Wikipedia

Voting is currently under way on the English Channel island of Jersey on a referendum to switch from Greenwich Mean Time to Europe Central Time. Jersey is closer to France than Britain and some residents feel closer ties to their continental neighbor:

We have historical connections with France. Our streets have French names. The prayers in our parliament are in French,'' he told the BBC. "A continental lifestyle is desirable - we'd have the opportunity to spend longer out in the evenings. It's something that Jersey could market and promote for tourists as well as enjoy for itself."

The business community is largely against the switch, since it would make it more difficult to do business with the U.K., Jersey's largest commercial partner. In my opinion, it won't really matter that much as long as everyone can keep track of what time it is. As Hugo Chávez learned last year, this is harder than you'd think.

As the global economy implodes, two items have been selling well in Britain:

iStockPhoto.com

1. Safes. Stocks are crashing; banks are failing. "Home may increasingly be where the cash is," CNN reports. One British safe salesman says sales of safes have been up as much as 45 percent in the past two to three months.

2. Luxury chocolate. Selfridges, a British department-store chain, says its sales of premium chocolate are "breaking all records." Sales of the ultimate comfort food have increased 20 percent in the past four weeks. This week Selfridges launched "Credit Crunch," a treat of Valrhona chocolate coated over honeycomb.

I love this story about a wealthy Abu Dhabi investor who wanted to buy the Manchester United soccer club, butwas disappointed by the price he was offered:

The investor, an Abu Dhabi royal who had earned billions last year, was not interested in a bargain -- he was looking for a huge deal to make an impressive splash internationally. A multibillion-dollar price tag, easily within his group's means, would cause far more jaws to drop than anything in the millions.

"When he thought it was $4 billion, he was really excited," said Bhoyrul, who declined to name the individual. "When he found out it was $400 million, he was disappointed."

FILE; BILAL QABALAN/AFP/Getty Images

Britain's outspoken ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has gotten himself into some hot water over comments made in a meeting with France's Amb. François Fitou. A memo about the meeting from Fitou to President Nicolas Sarkozy has been leaked to the press:

According to Mr Fitou, Sir Sherard told him on September 2 that the Nato-led military operation was making things worse. "The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them ... They are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis, which will probably be dramatic," the Ambassador was quoted as saying.

Britain had no alternative to supporting the United States in Afghanistan, "but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one," he was quoted as saying. "In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan ... The American strategy is doomed to fail."

Cowper-Coles went on to state that an "acceptable dictator" was probably the best that the world could hope for in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Office denies that the memo is accurate, though Sir Sherard does have something of a reputation for going off his talking points. For a while, he was also maintaining one of the Internet's best diplo-blogs. I interviewed Cowper-Coles about the blog for FP's Seven Questions a year ago. The ambassador sounded quite a bit more optimistic about the coalition's progress and the Karzai government during that conversation.

If Cowper-Coles did make the comments, I certainly understand why his bosses in the FO might be ticked off. But as others have noted, his tendency to say things that others might not want to hear is both refreshing and needed when Western politicians have pretended for far too long that it was possible to just muddle through in Afghanistan.

Yves "Fusion Man" Rossy's personal jetpack flight over the English Channel was just about the only good thing that happened in the world today:

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

 

ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

Rossy, a pilot who normally flies an Airbus airliner, crossed the 22 miles between Calais and Dover at speeds of up to 120 mph in 13 minutes, his spokesman said.

When the white cliffs of Dover came into view, he opened a blue and yellow parachute and drifted down in light winds to land in a British field where he was mobbed by well-wishers.

"Everything was perfect," he said afterwards. "I showed that it is possible to fly a little bit like a bird."

If there was one place you thought you could turn to get away from the "greed" of Wall Street, it might be your Church.

Unless, of course, you attend the Church of England.

The Financial Times today reports that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York condemned short selling and other trading practices, only to have it pointed out that their own investments were involved in those practices.

Further proof of what the Church has been teaching all along: we are all sinners.

John Stewart grilled former British Prime Minister Tony Blair last night on the Daily Show. Blair often looked uncomfortable as the host pressed him on the Iraq war and his relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush, but overall he held his ground.

Here's part one:

And here's part two:

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images

I somehow missed this story about how Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov allegedly swore a blue streak in a recent phone conversation with David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, on the subject of South Ossetia.

According to the Telegraph, Lavrov berated his boyish British counterpart, asking at one point, "Who are you to f------ lecture me?" The Daily Mail has it as "Who the f--- are you to lecture me?" and quotes a Whitehall source saying, "It was effing this and effing that. It was not what you would call diplomatic language. It was rather shocking."

The Russian foreign minister vehemently denied the report and said he was quoting a European diplomat referring to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, according to Kommersant:

'F------ lunatic' were the words that Lavrov quoted in an attempt to convince his British counterpart that it had been Saakashvili that had started the war for South Ossetia.

Lavrov promised that a transcript of the conversation would be posted on the ministry's Web site, but it has yet to materialize.