Ten Things You Need to Know Today: Saturday 30 Oct 2010

Our popular news catch-up service is posted Monday to Friday at 8.0 am. You can rely on it to keep you up to date through the working day with the main news talking points. BRITISH AIRWAYS BACK IN THE BLACKBritish Airways is not only back in the black - it has confounded predictions and reported a six-months profit of £158m ahead of its merger with the Spanish carrier, Iberia. Analysts had forecast only £75m, because of the cabin crew walkouts and the Icelandic ash cloud debacle. BA chief executive Willie Walsh is to run the merged company - International Consolidated Airlines Group - from January, earning him a 12 per cent pay rise to £825,000 a year. BA reports first profit for two years TAKE THAT TICKET STAMPEDE CRASHES WEBSITES The demand for tickets to Take That's first concert tour in 16 years was so great at 9.0 am today that websites including Ticketmaster and Ticketline crashed. A spokesman for the band (above), once again featuring Robbie Williams, urged fans to keep trying. Police advised frustrated fans not to be tempted by unofficial ticket agencies. CAMERON CLAIMS EU BUDGET SUCCESSDavid Cameron claims his trip to Brussels "succeeded spectacularly" after he persuaded 12 other EU leaders to back his demand that the organisation's budget rise be limited to 2.9 per cent, not the six per cent rise threatened. Labour says it is no great achievement - because what the PM really wanted was a budget freeze. NASA DISOWNS '100 YEAR STARSHIP' Nasa has disowned the '100 Year Starship' mission weeks after it was announced by Pete Worden, head of the Ames Nasa research lab, as reported by The First Post. "This is not a Nasa program, there's no money for it," a Nasa spokesman told Nature yesterday. But US government defence agency Darpa, which is contributing $1m to the project, has confirmed a year-long study into "enabling long-distance manned space flight a century from now" exists. 100 Year Starship: Nasa's plan to colonise the galaxy TWO FACE JAIL OVER ANNA NICOLE SMITH'S DEATH Two people face jail after a Los Angeles court found them guilty of helping supply the prescription drugs that killed Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith in 2007. Howard K Stern, her former boyfriend and lawyer, helped doctors provide the painkillers which caused her to choke to death in her own vomit. Khristine Eroshevich, her former psychiatrist, accepted thousands of dollars to prescribe drugs to the glamour model under under a false name. Anna Nicole Smith's life in pictures BP 'KNEW CEMENT WAS FAULTY'The companies involved in drilling the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico were aware that the cement they used to seal the well before it blew out was unstable. That is the conclusion of a US presidential panel investigating the reasons behind the April 20 explosion and ensuing oil leak. Both BP and the US company Halliburton had received test results on the cement showing it to be unstable - but neither acted on the data. 'SOUND OF MUCUS' CAST REUNITEJulie Andrews, Christopher Plummer and the rest of the cast of the 1965 film The Sound of Music reunited for the first time yesterday, when they appeared together on Oprah. Plummer admitted that he had been dubious about playing Captain von Trapp - "The part was not exactly Hamlet" - and throughout filming was worried about the movie becoming mawkish and sentimental. He nicknamed it "The Sound of Mucus". CHARLIE SHEEN'S WINE BILL - ANOTHER SHOCKER Charlie Sheen, the highest-paid actor on US television, reportedly got through two bottles of Chateau Latour 1959 during dinner at the Upper East Side restaurant Daniel, before returning to the Plaza Hotel where he trashed his suite. It's the latest revelation to come out of Sheen's famous night on the tiles last Monday with porn star Capri Anderson, who was found by police locked in his hotel bathroom. According to the TMZ website, the two bottles cost him $5,900 each. AIRLINES ATTACK RISE IN TAKE-OFF TAXESPassengers flying abroad from Britain's commercial airports face a 50 per cent rise in Air Passenger Duty from next week - and the airlines claim it will have a disastrous effect. A family of four will pay an extra £60 to fly economy to the US, or £100 to the Caribbean. Those leaving by private jet are not affected. COSTLY END TO BRITISH SUMMER TIMEAs clocks go back one hour this Saturday night, a Cambridge academic, Elizabeth Garnsey, has calculated that reverting from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time will result in 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide being created unnecessarily. This is because it will now get light in the mornings before many people are up and dark in the evenings while most people are still active, requiring more lighting and heating.

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