Six years almost to the day since she was disqualified as Miss Hungary for having posed naked, beauty queen Antonia Balint was re-awarded her crown yesterday after winning a court case against the organisers. In the competition to avoid unemployment their relative chances were down to 43 per cent. And analysing figures from the 1991 census, the ONS concludes more than 200,000 households would have to move home if the distribution of housing was to be equal, with ethnic groups less likely to own their own homes and more likely to have the worst living conditions.
Ethnicity in the 1991 Census: Volume Four from the Stationery Office pounds 29.95 and The Tables Are Bare, report available from the MSF, 50 SouthwarkStreet, London, SE1 1UN; pounds 5.. Among the second generation, the relative chances of black Caribbean men in competition for places in the two topmost social classes were only 75 per cent of British-born whites of the same age and qualifications. According to the Office for National Statistics, there is little evidence that less discrimination is suffered by second-generation groups than their parents. Minority groups are continuing to pay an “ethnic penalty”, enduring worse employment and housing prospects than their white counterparts. “Our report shows a patchwork of NHS services with almost a complete lack of co-ordination between family planning clinics and GPs, particularly in the inner-city areas where the need is greatest,” said Dr Bobbie Jacobson, director of Public Health for East London and the City Health Authority.
Contraception and Abortion in London: Are we meeting the need?, from Health of Londoners Project, East London & The City Health Authority, Tredegar House, 97-99 Bow Road, London E3 2AN; pounds 15..

The Health of Londoners Project says that of the 400 women who become pregnant every day in London, only half intend to – but high levels of late abortions, and the fact that in some places fewer than half of abortions are funded by the NHS, suggests that there is difficulty obtaining access to the service. Each day, 170 women in London have an abortion, and a further 330 take the “morning-after” pill. However, Mitchell Pfenning and Larry Ford, at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts used Einstein’s general theory of relativity to work out that the total amount of negative energy needed to sustain such a warp would have to be about 10 billion times the energy locked up in all the visible mass of the universe. Abortion rates in London are twice the national average, according to the first comprehensive report into abortion and contraceptive services.

Professor Ford told New Scientist magazine: “I don’t think it’s very likely anyone will find a way to do this.”. Although the laws of physics do not allow an object to travel faster than light, he suggested that the same effect could be produced by “shrinking” space in front of the craft, and “expanding” that behind to make the destination closer and the departure point further away, propelling the spaceship faster than light. Not so much Warp Factor Nine, as Warp Factor None.
The hopes of Trekkies were raised three years ago when Miguel Alcubierre, then at the University of Wales in Cardiff, suggested that a faster-than- light starship might be possible. Why? Because they have calculated that to work, it would require more energy than is contained in the universe. It turns out that Star Trek’s Mr Scott was right when he would tell Captain Kirk: “Warp Factor Nine? But Captain, the engines canna take it!” The reason being that physicists have, yet again, quashed hopes of building a spaceship that could travel faster than light.