Ricky Gervais explains how he's given up God despite the fact it's disappointed his mum, whose ambition was to prevent him getting killed in a bar -room fight…

A US company which monitors internet traffic predicts that the millionth new English word will be coined imminently. Global Language Monitor searches for new words and once a word has been used 25,000 times, it recognises it. Jeremy Paxman on last night's Newsnight, on the other hand, called this "a racket dreamed up by some bloke in Texas." You decide…

… include a steam engine, Stevenson's rocket, penicillin and the DNA. A bit steampunk – but only a bit.

According to The Register (which we have to remember at this point is not The Onion) a Royal Navy warship may have come within seconds of opening fire on Unidentified Flying Objects above Merseyside. Reports have it that the UFOs – speculated to have been visiting spacecraft from beyond the solar system – were tracked on naval weapons radars. Okaaaay…

The Guardian asks: does the election of two BNP MEPs and the success of the far right elsewhere in Europe mean we are facing the threat of fascism? Or is this just a protest vote that will quickly fade? Leading historians give their verdicts