The list includes two well known American gay opponents – Rev. Fred Phelps and talk-radio host Michael Savage.

Phelps is the founder of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist, it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepherd, the gay college student who was beaten to death in Wyoming. The killing, Phelps’ protest, and the reaction of townsfolk led to the play “The Laramie Project.”

Church members routinely demonstrate at the funerals of people with AIDS and most recently at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

In February, Phelps announced that his followers would demonstrate a production of the play “The Laramie Project” at a British college. The British government said at the time that he would not be allowed into the country.

The government ban announced Tuesday bans Phelps permanently.

Savage was placed on the list not only for his anti-gay remarks but also for calling the Muslim holy book, the Quran, a “book of hate” and for saying autism in most cases is “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.” Savage also said greedy doctors and drug companies were creating a “national panic” by overdiagnosing autism.

In 2003, Savage launched into a homophobic tirade against a caller to his MSNBC cable TV show in which called the man “a sodomite” and told him: “Get AIDS and die, you pig.” 

The network immediately fired Savage.

Savage issued what he called an apology saying he had been set up by a left-wing conspiracy.

The British government list also includes Stephen Donald Black, an American white supremacist, Hamas parliament member Yunis Al-Astal and Egyptian cleric Safwat el-Higazi.

Duffy, who once said “no self-respecting poet” should have to write verses about the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest son, will be expected to produce poems for royal weddings, funerals and other state occasions.

A witty and popular writer whose work is widely taught in British schools, Duffy is also the first openly gay laureate.

Duffy, 53, said she had thought “long and hard” before accepting the high-profile job, which has a 10-year term. She said she’d given the final decision to her 13-year-old daughter.

“She said, ‘Yes mummy, there’s never been a woman,’” Duffy said.The laureate is officially appointed by the queen on the advice of the government. Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Duffy “a truly brilliant modern poet who has stretched our imaginations by putting the whole range of human experiences into lines that capture the emotions perfectly.”

Duffy has published more than 30 books – plays and children’s stories as well as poems that mix accessible modern language with traditional forms such as the sonnet. Her work often displays a sly, feminist take on history and contains a strong vein of social commentary.

Her collections include “The World’s Wife,” verses that adopt the voices of female historical figures and of the wives of famous men. It includes the poem “Mrs. Darwin”:”7 April 1852/Went to the Zoo/I said to him – Something about that chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.”

Last year, when the issue of youth knife crime was in the news, an exam board removed Duffy’s poem “Education for Leisure” from an anthology for high school students. Poets and many teachers condemned the removal of the poem, which is written from the point of view of a disturbed individual and begins “Today I am going to kill something. Anything/ I have had enough of being ignored.”

Britain’s first official poet laureate was John Dryden, appointed in 1668, although the tradition is centuries older than that. Until 1999, laureates were appointed for life.

Duffy succeeds Andrew Motion, who was widely praised for expanding the laureate’s role to become a national champion for poetry. His eight official poems were less well-received, however. His rap-style poem marking Prince William’s 21st birthday in 2003 – which opened “Better stand back/Here’s an age attack” – met with derision.

Duffy said she would take the royal aspect of the job seriously, but would not feel compelled to write a poem for every occasion.”If I felt, in the event of a royal wedding, inspired to write about people coming together in marriage or civil partnership, I would just be grateful to have an idea for the poem,” she told the BBC. “And if I didn’t, I’d ignore it.”

Duffy said she would give the annual salary of just over 5,700 pounds ($8,500) to the Poetry Society to fund a prize for the best collection published every year. The laureate traditionally also receives a “butt of sack” – about 600 bottles’ worth of sherry, donated by the Sherry Institute of Spain.

“Andrew hasn’t had his yet so I’ve asked for mine up front,” Duffy said

House of Lords member Peter Archer’s report called the scandal a “horrific human tragedy” but did not name any specific medical workers or pharmaceutical companies as being responsible for the deaths of around 2,000 hemophiliacs since the 1970s.

Archer’s commission did say that U.S. companies that provided unsafe blood plasma products bore a heavy responsibility for infecting roughly 5,700 hemophiliacs with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, or hepatitis C.

“It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that commercial interests took precedence over public health concerns,” said Archer, who conducted an independent inquiry with the help of legal and medical professionals.

The report recommended more compensation for victims, and giving them free prescription drugs, doctors’ visits, counseling, physical therapy and home nursing. But it did not suggest any criminal charges be brought.

“We have not gone out of our way to apportion blame, it is a bit late and perhaps a bit pointless to say who is to blame when it is too late to do much about it,” Archer said.

Surviving victims were left bitterly disappointed with the two-year inquiry.

Robert Mackie, a Scottish man who contracted AIDS and hepatitis C after receiving contaminated blood products, rejected Archer’s claim that doctors were “well intentioned.”

He accuses medical staff of conducting blood tests without patients’ knowledge or consent and of withholding from him details of his own condition. Britain’s National Health Service has previously declined to comment on the Mackie’s case.

“(They) endangered my wife’s life for three years by not informing me I had AIDS,” Mackie said. “That’s not acceptable by any standards.”

Archer admitted the British government and health services had been slow to react to the grave danger posed by hepatitis C and HIV contamination of blood products collected from high risk donors such as prison inmates.

Hemophilia is an inherited disorder that prevents blood from clotting properly. It is usually controlled with blood plasma products that promote clotting – but in the 1970s and 1980s those products themselves were often contaminated because of improper screening

Tainted blood scandals have been investigated throughout the world – in France, Canada, Japan and elsewhere – leading to some convictions of government health officials and many compensation packages for infected hemophiliacs.

But until now, there had been no detailed probe in Britain. Britain’s government has consistently refused to conduct an inquiry, saying it is unnecessary.

The review team took evidence from more than 60 witnesses, including many victims and their families, and studied more than 20,000 documents. But it received no official help or evidence from the government and the political impact of its findings are likely to be blunted by time.

Mackie and others who have survived more than two decades because of advanced anti-AIDS drugs said the Archer report was undermined because it does not have government backing, meaning its recommendations might not be followed.

Hemophiliacs have also been alarmed by the discovery last week of the human form of mad cow disease in a deceased hemophiliac, raising fears that their community faces still more threats from contaminated blood.

Nicholas Sainsbury, 44, who also contracted HIV and hepatitis C from blood products, said more money must be paid to victims.

“The main finding is our lives were ruined and we were never compensated,” he said.

Stephen English says he was forced to quit his job at an awning manufacturer because the company refused to stop workers from calling him a faggot and other gay slurs.

English filed a complaint with the Employment Appeal Tribunal alleging the harassment began when fellow workers discovered he had been educated at a boarding school and that he lived in largely gay Brighton.

The complaint said that final straw came when the company’s in-house employee magazine said he had attended Brighton’s Gay Pride parade wearing “skin-tight Lycra cycling shorts”.

The Tribunal refused to hear the case because English is not gay and is married.

English appealed to the Court of Appeal.

In a 2-1 landmark ruling the court said that a person can  be “harassed” by homophobic remarks even though he is not gay, is not thought to be gay by his fellow workers and he accepts they do not believe him to be gay.

Writing the majority opinion Lord Justice Sedley said it did not matter whether English was gay or not.

“[The] calculated insult to his dignity” and the consequently intolerable working environment were sufficient to bring his case within the regulations.” Sedley wrote.

“The incessant mockery created a degrading and hostile working environment, and it did so on grounds of sexual orientation,” the judge said.

The ruling said that he had a case, and ordered the Tribunal to hear it.

The publication was causing problems for several party members, including a police officer who was being investigated.

The British National party doesn’t allow non-whites as members and wants foreigners to go home. It confirmed its membership list was leaked and published on the Internet – 12,000 names that included teachers, police officers and children.

The list has since been taken down but some of those named are reported to have been threatened. BNP leader Nick Griffin said the party has about 10,000 members and the published list was nearly a year out of date.

It’s not illegal to be a member of the BNP, but some professions  including police and prison officers are prevented from joining under race relations legislation.

The party believes indigenous Britons – essentially whites – should be given priority for schools and housing. It has also urged the government to give financial incentives for immigrants to return home, has previously denied the Holocaust and has criticized blacks and gays.

The membership list includes at least two people who say they are either a police or prison officer, as well as teachers, soldiers and religious leaders. Home addresses and telephone numbers of members and their children also were published.

Police in Liverpool said they are investigating an officer after his name appeared on the list. Also, self-described BNP members told BBC radio they had received threatening phone calls and abusive emails.

Griffin, who was filmed two years ago by an undercover journalist calling Islam a “wicked, vicious faith,” said he thought the leak came from a disgruntled former employee who wanted the party to move even farther to the right.

The leak came despite a High Court injunction this year prohibiting five people from publishing a list of party members.

“It was entirely wrongly used without authority by a very small group of previous party members who were expelled late last year who then passed it on, to who we simply don’t know,” Griffin said.

He sought to find a silver lining in the situation, however.

“The fact that we have teachers and doctors and women that knit, it’s a fantastic event politically for us,” Griffin said.

“It’s going to show people that we’re not a bunch of skinhead morons, which is the left-wing media-created image.”

The BNP was founded in the 1980s as an offshoot of the New National Front, a nationalist party with fascist views on immigration and race relations. Although it holds no parliamentary seats, the BNP now has about 50 of England’s 22,000 local council seats.

In 2006, Simone Clark, then a principal dancer with the English National Ballet, was named as a member of the BNP. Demonstrators protested against her performances and demanded she be fired but the company said it wouldn’t comment on one of its members’ political views. Clark resigned from the ballet earlier this year.

In a letter to the editor of Pulse – a journal for general practitioners – Dr Muhammad Siddiq, the head of the Islamic Medical Association, said that gay patients deserve neither help nor pity but they do need “the stick of the law to put them on the right path.”

“There is punishment and a fine if you throw rubbish or filth in the streets. The gays are worse than the ordinary careless citizen,” the letter said. It also claimed that gays “are causing the spread of disease with their irresponsible behavior. They are the root of many sexually transmitted diseases.”

In addition, the letter said that a depressed transsexual awaiting gender reassignment was “twisted.”

After a complaint was filed with the medical board, Siddiq denied writing the letter, claiming that it was written by his son as a joke and he signed it not knowing the son would send it to the publication.

But the Pulse editor testified before a board hearing that the publication checked with Siddiq prior to publishing the letter and he did not deny writing it. Colleagues also say that he told them he had written the letter.

The chair of the board hearing the complaint, Dr. Andrew Popat, called the Siddiq’s actions inappropriate and not in the best interests of his patients.

Popat said that the letter was “liable to undermine public confidence in the medical profession and liable to bring the profession into disrepute”, adding that “the panel continues to have concerns regarding Dr Siddiq’s insight into his actions.”

Siddiq refused to attend the hearing, claiming the board was biased against him.