Earthquake in England of magnitude 5.2

When you live in England the last thing your expect to experience is an earthquake which is actually perceivable. Being this land one of the oldest in the world, as proved by the low altitude of its mountains, it comes as a surprise to find out that a quake of magnitude 5.2 of the Richter scale actually hit last night at about one o'clock.
I was working at my laptop, enjoying the preparation of my new lecture for tomorrow, when I saw the table (quite a fragile one I have to admit) shaking, and I felt all the building swinging as well. I live on the the 4th floor, so some resilience is expected from these buildings, but to actually feel like shaking all together with walls, chairs, table, and even the leaves of my plants (!) was quite an experience.
However, not convinced, I opened the window to check whether the wind outside was still strong. The news on the radio that evening was that the wind of these days at 70 mph had damaged a few houses roof, so I stupidly thought that the wind could have been so strong as to shake the whole building... Obviously not! The wind outside was calm. So I realised that that must have been an earthquake. Oh well, then I thought, better to get on with my lecture... after all England is one of the most secure countries in the world for quakes!

Australia's apologies to the Aborigines

The news that Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said 'sorry' three times to the Aborigines for the Stolen Generation is extremely good and makes me so happy.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080213/tpl-uk-australia-politics-aborigines-39349ed_9.html

But what is even more astonishing is that he also announced new plans to give aborigines constitutional recognition as the original owners of Australia.
For a country that at the moment doesn't have any parliamentary representative among the aborigines (who account for 2% of the population) this is a remarkable step.
The new left government in Australia is already sure to go down to history.