Kit Fang

I plug the charger in and the iPad recognises it (the charging icon appears) for about 20 seconds. After this, the icon disappears and it stops charging. I've tried restarting and resetting - does anyone have any ideas? This is totally out of the blue, as it's been charging fine until last night.

I've been making cakes, pastries, muffins and the like for years, using recipes from the Internet, cookbooks by Nigella and Delia, and even cookery text books (my nan was a chef) but not a single thing I have ever made has (as far as I can remember) risen in the oven. I'm fed up of serving flat cakes and stumpy muffins, but have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I follow recipes exactly and use a reasonably new fan oven, if that makes any difference?

I'm applying for a job abroad and have been asked to email over some information. I've tried sending this twice now through my Yahoo! account, and both times have received a failure message stating "Connected to 202.214.254.211 but sender was rejected.

Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 Access denied" What does this mean, and is there any way I can get around it? I was only give 24 hours to provide the information otherwise I'm kicked out of the running for the job, so really need to get this email sent in the next few hours!

Thank you

I'm helping my gran research her family tree, and she's got an ancestor who was sent to Tasmania from the UK for 7 years hard labour in April 1827. We know he was definitely on the ship when it left, but we've not found any trace of him arriving, so to try and narrow down the dates a bit more I wondered if anyone knew how long it would typically take for these convict ships to leave the UK (I assume from Southampton) and arrive in Tasmania at this time?

I've been thinking about moving to New Zealand as a teacher - it's a country I've always wanted to move to eventually, and hopefully I'll soon have the qualifications to do it. As you'd expect everything you hear from the immigration service and the like is positive, and New Zealand has a reputation as being a nice place, but I'd heard a few stories now from British migrants who say there's a lot of racism - even some being told by companies that they'd 'never employ a pom' or getting abuse from the parents of the children they teach. What's the real New Zealand like, for people who move out there? I don't really want to spend all that effort moving abroad, if it's really as awful as some of these people say.

I spend a fair amount of time skiing in the Alps, and a few times have seen this 'UFO cloud' (as my nephew describes it) hovering over Mt. Blanc - it just seems to form out of a clear sky, and then drift away again.

I've never seen anything like it, this doughnut shape, anywhere else, and wondered if there was any particular name for it, or if anyone knows what causes it (the height of the mountain, for example)?

Thanks.

http://postimage.org/image/lzng81xzj/

It seems a little strange that the vote in each state takes place at a different time, meaning it takes months for the outcome to be clear. It also seems rather undemocratic. Someone who does badly in one state can't really make a come-back, as they've already been cast as the loser, where if all the votes were held at the same time, the outcome could be quite different. Why not just have the vote on one day, across the country?

The people I know who work for high-street banks say they believe it will lead to less and more expensive lending (if you take away the part of the business that makes money, what exactly are they supposed to lend with?) and whilst the most extreme are considering only taking on customers that are 'worth it' (i.e. rich) in future, all reckon the cost of simply having a basic current or savings account will go up.

What do you think about the proposal to separate the 'risky' and 'high street' parts of the banks? Are you willing to pay more for safer banking?

I've been asked by my employer to detail what vehicles I'm allowed to drive, and I've checked out the direct-gov website but it wasn't too clear. Under the categories bit of the licence it says B, B1, and fkp - I know what the first two mean, but what does the fkp mean? Thanks.

I know that (despite what is shown on TV) gavels are not used by judges in criminal courts in the UK, but I also remember many years ago someone telling me that some courts do use them (in civil cases, or something like that). Is this true, and if so, which courts/cases are they used in?

Today survivors and the families of victims of Derek Bird complained that victims had to wait too long for ambulance crews and doctors to reach them, due to the police not allowing them through to get to some victims. Should ambulance crews be allowed, or even encouraged, to put their lives at risk in order to get to patients as soon as possible in cases such as this (where a gun man was still on the loose in the area), or were the police right to enforce the perimeter when it came to emergency medical help?

OK, so I finished working for a company about three months ago now, and they reckon they sent out a P45 some time in January. About three weeks ago I called up and asked them to send me another copy, as I hadn't received it, which they said they would do. I still haven't received the P45, and now when I call up the woman in personnel is getting all angry and saying they've already sent a copy twice, and am I sure I haven't go it etc. and they don't really want to send another copy. I really need it, as I'm applying to get back the tax I paid (as I hadn't yet reached my limit for nontaxable income, and so shouldn't have been paying tax on those earnings - I've agreed this with the taxman, but can't get hold of the money until I send them my P45), but I wondered if there was another route to go down that didn't mean dealing with really irritating, unhelpful pencil pushers down the end of the phone?

The American government, among others, has openly supported a transfer of power in Egypt, but no one is calling for fair and open elections on the grounds that if democracy was allowed, the Muslim Brotherhood would gain power. All informed observers and specialists say that this group does not have enough support to gain power - indeed they would barely manage to gain a few seats in any parliament. Are western governments believing the scaremoungering by anti-Islamists, are they Ill-informed, or is there another reason for not supprting democracy, being covered up with this pandering to the uneducated's fears of extremism? I just can't understand why these countries are happy to support democracy (through force in some cases) in some countries, yet support continuing autocracy in others.

They're not zero emissions, because the production of electricity produces huge amounts of pollution, and you have to spend up to ten hours charging it to drive the same distance you could on less than one tank of petrol. Surely it would be a much better idea to spend all this time and money building more efficient and less polluting petrol cars, or researching alternative energies? Or am I missing the point?

After all, even the poorest in society are richer than they ever have been, and we've actually got a pretty good outlook for the future, economically. He's right about low interest rates being good for both individuals and the economy generally, and if you're unemployed today, you get much more support and help finding work than you would have done even a few years ago. And despite the recession, we could be doing a lot worse.

So there's been a huge knee-jerk reaction to this comment by Lord Young, with all the newspapers being outraged on our behalf, but doesn't he makes a good point?

I don't suppose anyone could translate the text in this picture - or even just tell me what it says in Latin, as I can't make out what some of the letters are supposed to be, so I haven't even been able to look them up in a dictionary/online translator. Thanks.

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetai...

Ok, so when I was at school ten years ago we were being told how hydrogen power was going to revolutionise energy production. It would be a solution both to global warming, and our increasing reliance on places like Russia and the Middle East for fossil fuels. I studied A level chemistry, and the way it was explained to us made it sound like we would be powering our homes with hydrogen in a few years, but nothing close to that has happened - indeed, the media haven't mentioned it for a long while, going on about wind power and nuclear instead. Why is this? Are there problems with hydrogen power that we just haven't solved yet, like safely creating energy in a controlled environment, or storage, or is it more a matter of a lack of will/funding from energy companies?

This week there are another round of peace talks on the Israel-Palestine problem. Yet when you consider that both sides have everything to gain from violence (essentially control of more land) with no real sanctions to prevent or discourage it, and a lot to lose from peace, does anyone (especially Obama) expect there to be any long-term peace agreement? If not, why are they bothering to hold/support them?

I've just started renting a new property, and have been sent a letter by the water company asking for my bank details so I can pay the 'rateable value of your property' for the water supply. I have no idea how much this is, so don't know whether I need to top up the amount in my account to pay it, or anything. Is there any way I can find out how much I will need to pay for my property? The water company has been no help what so ever.