Taylor war crimes trial extended

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor in court on 8 February 2011 Charles Taylor is accused of selling “blood diamonds” from Sierra Leone

It is not clear whether the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, will return to court in The Hague as his war crimes trial draws to a close.

Mr Taylor and his defence lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, staged a boycott of the court earlier this week after a disagreement with the judges.

The ex-leader faces 11 counts – including murder, rape, and the conscription of child soldiers during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s.

He denies all the charges.

The end of this marathon trial has been marked by bad tempered exchanges between the judges and Charles Taylor’s defence team.

His lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, walked out of court in protest on Tuesday, and later Mr Taylor also mounted a boycott.

They are upset at the court’s refusal to accept a 500 page written summary of the trial that was submitted late.

But the judges have ordered Mr Griffiths to return to the courtroom, and to apologise for his behaviour.

Mr Griffiths has told the BBC he will appear on Friday, but he would not say what Charles Taylor intends to do.

By now, the court should have heard the closing arguments from the defence.

The absence of Mr Taylor and his lawyer have made this impossible.

This is supposed to be the close of the trial, with the judges expected to deliver a verdict later in the year.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Top Gear to cut Mexico comments

Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James MayThe BBC apologised for the episode, shown on BBC Two on 30 January
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An episode of Top Gear in which its presenters mocked Mexicans will be cut before the show is broadcast in the US.

Last week the BBC apologised for the show, in which Richard Hammond alleged they were “feckless [and] flatulent” and Jeremy Clarkson poked fun at the Mexican ambassador to London.

Eduardo Medina Mora later complained to the corporation about the comments.

A BBC spokeswoman said shows like Top Gear were “routinely edited for international transmission”.

Top Gear is shown in the US on the BBC America channel. The episode in question will be broadcast next week, without the “news” section in which the comments were made.

The section in question sees the trio of presenters discuss new cars and indulge in light-hearted banter.

In last Sunday’s Observer, comedian Steve Coogan said the show’s broadcast on 30 January suggested the BBC had a “tolerance of casual racism”.

In a letter to Mr Medina Mora, the corporation said it was sorry if it had offended some people, adding that jokes based on national stereotypes were part of Britain’s indigenous humour.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Drunk A&E patients ‘should pay’

Accident and Emergency genericThe patient group said drunk people should also be charged for using ambulances
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Drunk people should pay for the treatment they receive at accident and emergency units, a patient’s group has said.

The Scotland Patients Association said nurses and doctors were often abused by those who had overindulged in alcohol, particularly at weekends.

They said the time had now come for such people to pay for services.

Margaret Watt, chair of the group, said she would be raising the issue with Scotland’s health secretary.

Ms Watt said: “Anyone who has been abusing alcohol and can’t stand on their feet and is admitted to hospital at the weekend should pay towards their treatment.

“Staff are used and abused by these people.”

Ms Watt said drunk people should be charged for using ambulances and for the time of staff who treated them.

She said that the money generated from such a scheme should then be invested in increasing NHS staff numbers.

Ms Watt said she would be raising the idea with Nicola Sturgeon at a meeting on 10 March.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Brick attack sentence ‘lenient’

Samantha SadlerSamantha Sadler was a part-time model before the attack

The mother of a teenager scarred for life when a brick was thrown at a car has criticised the sentence given to her attacker.

Athlete Samantha Sadler, 17, of Widnes, Cheshire, was heading home from training when the brick was thrown.

Runcorn magistrates fined the 14-year-old £200 and gave him a 12-month referral order after he admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm.

Samantha’s mother said the sentence was “insulting”.

Clare Fraser said her daughter was left with a fractured skull, broken nose and fractured eye socket after the incident last June and had to have tests on her brain after the attack.

She said: “He should have at least been given a custodial sentence.

“It would have sent a message out that you’re not allowed to do these type of things.”

Samantha Sadler after the attckThe 17-year-old was left with a fractured skull, broken nose and fractured eye socket

The youth was initially charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent but his defence team argued there was no intent in the offence.

The Crown Prosecution Service reviewed the evidence and ruled a guilty plea to the lesser charge was acceptable.

Samantha, a promising athlete who worked as a part-time model before the attack, said she is now well enough to train but suffers from occasional double vision.

She said: “I was petrified at what could happen because I couldn’t see anything so I thought that I might be blind for the rest of my life.

“I was saying I’d never be able to run again, to compete or train, never be able to do modelling. It was so scary as well.

“It’s made me more determined to be more successful in athletics. I really want to do it for myself now to prove that nothing can hold me back.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Size matters

Beyonce, Nicki Minaj and Jennifer LopezSome stars are celebrated for their bigger behinds
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Surgeons are warning of the risks of DIY buttock enhancement after a 20-year-old woman died in the US from silicone injections. Why do so many women now want to be big-bottomed girls?

For some people, bigger is better.

But tragically, for Claudia Aderotimi, it was the desire for a more shapely behind which ended in her death.

The student, who lived in North London, had travelled to Philadelphia for silicone injections, but died after suffering chest pains and breathing trouble following the procedure.

Police investigating her death believe she made contact with a supplier over the internet, exchanging text messages and phone calls before flying over.

Even though the injection of liquid silicone for cosmetic purposes is banned in the US, there is a burgeoning black market in the substance.

Jeans close-up (file image)More women are getting buttock enhancement treatments for a fuller figure

For many, the risks of the banned injections are worth taking, for the reward of a shapelier bottom.

Several internet chatrooms discuss the injections freely.

“I wanna have one of them big ghetto booties that turn heads and make em drool. Just kidding, I just want enough to fill out my jeans,” writes one poster.

“I have received butt injections before. I get it done every six months… it is the first thing that men go crazy,” writes another, who says she is a dancer.

Claudia was a budding actress and model, who once wrote of how she “dreamt of taking the world by storm”.

Some people in the business say the pressure to look like stars who sport larger bottoms, such as Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj, Buffy Carruth and Beyonce Knowles, is encouraging young women to turn to cosmetic procedures.

“Many people don’t have a licence to practise, they’re injecting in hotels, spas and apartments – all non-sterile environments”

Dr Constantino Mendieta Plastic surgeon

As a singer and actor who stars in music videos, Tassie Jackson says the urge to conform is powerful.

“I personally haven’t one done and I wouldn’t. But, in today’s society and the world that we live in, a lot of women feel the competition and the need to enhance their features,” she says.

“There are pressures to look like our favourite icons and role models.”

Some artists will look for women with “more curves” when choosing dancers for a music video, she adds.

References to so-called “booty”, a slang term for bottom, are commonplace in hip hop and rap music.

Beyonce Knowles’ former band Destiny’s Child even brought the word “Bootylicious” to mainstream consciousness. The term, which now even appears in the Oxford English Dictionary, is an amalgam of “booty” and the word “delicious”.

But it’s not just young people immersed in hip-hop culture who yearn for a bigger bottom.

The number of buttock enhancements across all ages has risen in recent years, with the most desired waist-to-hip ratio standing at around 0.7 – an hourglass figure.

There were more than 5,000 buttock lift and implant procedures (which are legal) carried out in the US in 2009, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

It is difficult to know how many illegal treatments are taking place – but the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says the number of cases leading to serious injury or death is on the rise.

Dr Constantino Mendieta, a plastic surgeon who specialises in buttock implants, dates the trend back to Jennifer Lopez’s rise to stardom in the 1990s.

Women wearing bustlesVictorian women wore “bustles” to enhance their rears

“She showed how nice it can look when you’ve got the right curves,” says Dr Mendieta.

“It’s not that we never looked at the buttock before then, but it was a taboo subject. She drew attention to it in a good way.”

Demand for Dr Mendieta’s Miami Thong Lift operation – which transfers fat from other areas of the body to create a fuller bottom – has risen 20-fold in the last decade.

However, the cost of $14,000 (£8,700) is beyond the reach of some women, leading them to turn to cheaper, but dangerous methods to replicate the look.

“Many people don’t have a licence to practise, they’re injecting in hotels, spas and apartments – all non-sterile environments,” he says.

Cultural differences

Ms Mendible points out that buttock augmentation has been around for years – in the 19th Century, women wore “bustles” to exaggerate their behinds.

At the same time, she says, large bottomed-people have historically been a source of ridicule in many cultures.

The most striking example was the Hottentot Venus, a young African woman who was kidnapped and exhibited around Europe in colonial times because she had large buttocks.

“It was almost a freak show,” says Ms Mendible. “She was paraded around and exhibited as an example of what made African women different.”

Today, buttock augmentation procedures – both legal and illegal – are most common among African-American, Hispanic and transgender communities.

Female body types have always been a sign of what society aspires to, Ms Mendible says, with a lean muscular form preferred in capitalist countries, compared with larger rears in poorer places such as her native Cuba.

“There, if you’re thin it’s a sign of being poor, it’s not a sign of beauty,” she says.

“To them the voluptuous body is a sign of good health and fertility.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Lib/Lab pact?

Nick Clegg and Ed MilibandAn unlikely pairing? Their parties are working together behind the scenes
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The political marriage between Nick Clegg and David Cameron may be so strong that the idea of a future Lib/Lab Coalition looks rather fanciful.

And yet there are those in both parties who are gently blowing on the flickering embers of Lib/Lab cooperation.

Significantly a dozen or so Lib Dem former Parliamentary candidates and councillors have now decided to join the Labour Party’s policy review.

This is an unprecedented step.

Many in both parties will probably be intensely suspicious of the move.

Some Lib Dems will suspect their colleagues are simply being used by Labour.

Some in Labour will be deeply sceptical about allowing their political enemies to contribute to their next manifesto.

But Richard Grayson, the Lib Dem’s former head of policy who is among those joining Labour’s review, says it is simply about breaking down tribal divisions on the left and sharing ideas.

“This is about making progressive politics stronger and getting in place a coalition that votes for a more progressive kind of politics at the next election”

Liam Byrne Labour policy chief

It is, of course, also about building firmer bridges between Labour and the Lib Dems and opening up the possibility that after the next election the two parties could work together.

“We have to think about the prospect of a different coalition in the foreseeable future,” says Mr Grayson.

“There has been much talk of ‘the new politics’ but unless we are prepared to engage with Labour then there is a danger that ‘new politics’ will simply mean working with the Conservatives.”

From the Labour side too there is also a pressing need to forge better relations with the Lib Dems after they collapsed in acrimony in the days after the last election. And many in Labour still appear to enjoy nothing more than baiting and mocking Liberal Democrats.

Some senior voices in Labour, however, are keenly aware that they face an electoral mountain at the next election, particularly if the planned boundary review goes ahead, possibly depriving them of a further 20 seats.

And there is also a nagging worry that the electorate may have decided to bring to an end the era of one party government.

Ed Miliband interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show, Jan 2011

Hence the need to open up the possibility of a Lib/Lab coalition.

Publicly, of course, Labour figures are still careful to insist that they are fighting for an outright majority at the next election and that the cooperation with the Lib Dems over the policy review is simply about sharing ideas.

But the head of Labour’s policy review Liam Byrne does not close down all talk of coalition.

“This is about making progressive politics stronger,” he says, “And getting in place a coalition that votes for a more progressive kind of politics at the next election.”

And there is a also wider momentum developing behind cooperation between the two parties.

The left wing think tank Compass is currently balloting its members on allowing Lib Dems to join; and thinkers from the two parties regularly share platforms and attend seminars together.

One Lib Dem think tanker told me that 80% of their joint work was with Labour-leaning organisations rather than Conservative groups.

What seems clear is that on the broad left of British politics there is a growing acceptance that, if the left is to win, it may have to start learning to work together.

After all, if Nick Clegg and David Cameron if can forge a coalition why can’t the left?

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Global data storage calculated

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Mankind’s capacity to store the colossal amount of information in the world has been measured by scientists.

The study, published in the journal Science, calculates the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes.

That is the equivalent of 1.2 billion average hard drives.

The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 25 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books.

“If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 3 layers of books,” Dr Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California told BBC News.

Computer storage has traditionally been measured in kilobytes, then megabytes, and now usually gigabytes. After that comes terabytes, petabytes, then exabytes. One exabyte is a billion gigabytes.

The same information stored digitally on CDs would create a stack of discs that would reach beyond the moon, according to the researchers.

Scientists calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 analogue and digital technologies during the period from 1986 to 2007. They considered everything from computer hard drives to obsolete floppy discs, and x-ray films to microchips on credit cards.

The survey covers a period known as the “information revolution” as human societies transition to a digital age. It shows that in 2000 75% of stored information was in an analogue format such as video cassettes, but that by 2007, 94% of it was digital.

“There have been other revolutions before.” Dr Hilbert told the BBC’s Science in Action programme.

“The car changed society completely, or electricity. Every 40, 50 or 60 years something grows faster than anything else, and right now it’s information.

“Basically what you can do with information is transmit it through space, and we call that communication. You can transmit it through time; we call that storage. Or you can transform it, manipulate it, change the meaning of it, and we call that computation.”

Other results from the global survey show that we broadcast around two zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 1000 exabytes). That’s the equivalent of 175 newspapers per person, per day.

The fastest growing area of information manipulation has been computation. During the two decades the survey covers, global computing capacity increased by 58% per year.

These numbers may sound large, but they are still dwarfed by the information processing and storage capacity of nature.

“The Human DNA in one single body can store around 300 times more information than we store in all our technological devices” according to Dr Hilbert.

This study looked at the world as a whole, but the scientists say that it does show that the “digital divide” between rich and poor countries is growing. Despite the spread of computers and mobile phones, the capacity to process information is becoming more unequal.

In 2002 people in the developed world could communicate eight times more information than people in the developing world. Just five years later, in 2007, that gap has nearly doubled, and people in richer countries have 15 times more information carrying capacity.

The study also pinpoints the arrival of the digital age as 2002, the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook analogue capacity.

Hear more about the study on Science in Action on the BBC World Service.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Fewer ‘face child worker checks’

Boy - posed by modelThe government says the system of checks on child workers has become too bureaucratic
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Millions of people in England and Wales who work or volunteer with children and vulnerable adults will no longer need criminal record checks, ministers say.

The change is part of the government’s Freedoms Bill, being unveiled later.

It also includes limits on police stop and search powers, ends indefinite storage of innocent people’s DNA, and gives residents more control over CCTV.

But some child protection campaigners fear it will be easier for adults in positions of trust to abuse children.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “The Freedoms Bill will protect millions of people from state intrusion in their private lives and mark a return to common sense government.

“Protecting children and keeping them safe remains our top priority, but it’s also important that well meaning adults are not put off working or volunteering with children”

Tim Loughton Children’s minister

“It delivers on our commitment to restore hard-won British liberties with sweeping reforms that will end the unnecessary scrutiny of law-abiding individuals.”

The new bill calls for a merging of the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Independent Safeguarding Authority to form “a streamlined new body providing a proportionate barring and criminal records checking service”.

That body will provide what ministers say will be a more “proportionate” checking service for about 4.5m people who work “closely and regularly” with children or vulnerable adults.

Teachers will continue to be vetted – but those who do occasional, supervised volunteer work will not.

Job applicants will also be able to see the results of their criminal record check before their prospective employer so mistakes can be corrected.

And the bill promises a “portability of criminal records checks between jobs to cut down on needless bureaucracy” and to stop “employers who knowingly request criminal records checks on individuals who are not entitled to them”.

Home Secretary Theresa May suspended Labour’s Vetting and Barring scheme – set up in 2009 after an inquiry into the murders of the Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – in June last year and a review was carried out.

Children’s minister Tim Loughton said: “The new system will be less bureaucratic and less intimidating. It will empower organisations to ask the right questions and make all the appropriate pre-employment checks, and encourage everyone to be vigilant.

“Protecting children and keeping them safe remains our top priority, but it’s also important that well meaning adults are not put off working or volunteering with children.”

However, former police detective and child protection expert Mark Williams Thomas has told the BBC he believes the changes will give offenders more opportunities to gain access to children.

“If it was about keeping children safe then this vetting scheme would continue. CRB would continue in the fashion it is,” he said.

“This is simply about saving money, it’s about scrapping any ideas that Labour had previously. Whoever is advising the government on this position has got it completely wrong.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Dutch cardinal ‘protected abuser’

Cardinal Adrianus Simonis (file image from 25/1/2011)Cardinal Simonis said he thought the priest had changed
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A senior figure in the Dutch Catholic Church protected a priest who sexually abused children, Dutch media reports say.

Cardinal Ad Simonis is accused of knowing of the allegations made against the priest when he transferred him to another parish, where he abused again.

According to AFP, Mr Simonis said that at the time he believed that the priest – who has not been named – had changed.

He said the priest’s renewed abuse in Amersfoort was “lamentable”.

The priest was moved from his parish in Zoetermeer to a parish in Amersfoort after the local bishop complained about his abuse, Radio Netherlands says.

Ad Simonis – who served as archbishop from 1983 to 2007 – Radio Netherlands reports, did not tell the new parish of Amersfoort about the allegations against the priest, or monitor his behaviour.

Dutch officials say six of the priest’s victims reported incidents to the police from 1987 to 2008, the radio station reports.

Erwin Meester, who says he was abused by the priest, is quoted as telling Radio Free Netherlands that Cardinal Simonis “wilfully and knowingly gave a paedophile his protection, when he should have been protecting the faithful under his care”.

Outrage

According to AFP the cardinal admitted in a statement that he was “aware” of the priest’s history. He said the priest had undergone therapy and received “serious, written psychological advice” which he believed was “adequate” ahead of the appointment.

He also added that there had never been any signal from the parish that the priest “had fallen back into child abuse”, saying the allegations first came to light on Wednesday.

The cardinal, now retired, caused outrage last year when, commenting on abuse within the Catholic Church in the Netherlands said that they had known nothing of it.

He repeated a phrase in German, rather than Dutch, which is associated with Nazi excuses after World War II.

In March 2010, Dutch bishops ordered an independent inquiry into more than 200 allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests, in addition to three cases dating from 1950 to 1970.

Allegations first centred on Don Rua monastery school in the eastern Netherlands, with people saying they were abused by Catholic priests in the 1960s and 70s.

This prompted dozens more alleged victims from other institutions to come forward.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.