Nazi sympathiser sentenced to read Dickens

A Nazi sympathizer who downloaded bomb-making instructions from the internet has been sentenced to read classic novels including Pride and Prejudice and A Tale of Two Cities. Judge Timothy Spencer QC told Ben John, 21, he could stay out of prison as long as he avoided white-supremacy literature and read books and plays by Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. The judge told the defendant that at the next hearing, “you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it”.

Hardest place to buy a house named

Newmarket in Suffolk has been named the hardest place in Britain to buy a house. The market town has the most extreme imbalance between supply and demand in England, according to property website Rightmove. All of the top 10 areas with the largest gaps between supply and demand were in the South East and East of England. They included Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire and Witney in Oxfordshire.

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Geomagnetic storm could hit planet today

A geomagnetic storm could hit Earth today, according to the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center in the US. The authority said a major disturbance of the planet’s magnetosphere is expected following a large expulsion of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona last month. The event could impact electrical grids and transformers, interfere with satellites and disrupt radio communications.