Category: news

Low-income families could be locked out of the market, the NHF said

Homeowners who bought at the peak of the market peak may face four more years of negative equity, a housing group has said.

The National Housing Federation (NHF) said the average buyer paid £216,800 for a home in 2007.

They may now have to wait until 2014 before prices recover enough to make their homes worth more than they paid.

The organisation, which campaigns for affordable housing, also said prices are still too high for many buyers.

According to the NHF, house prices will dip again next year by 3%, before steadily climbing thereafter.

They expect prices to rise some 22% by 2014, bringing the average price of a house to £226,900.

According to NHF chief executive David Orr, prices will “inevitably increase in the long term because of the huge under-supply of housing”.

But even at current depressed prices, he cautioned that houses remain unaffordable for most low-to-middle income families, thanks in part to tighter mortgage lending standards.

“There’s a very real risk that an entire generation will be locked out of the housing market for the foreseeable future,” he said.

He criticised government decisions to scrap regional house-building targets and withdraw funding for affordable housing.

“Proposed caps on housing benefit payments could also put nearly a million people on low incomes at risk of losing their home,” he added.

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

The International Cricket Council says Pakistan’s tour of England will continue – despite calls for it to be abandoned because of an alleged betting scam.

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

Police rushed to the area and residents were warned to stay off the streets

A gunman has opened fire at random in a street in Slovakia’s capital Bratislava, killing six people and injuring 14, local officials say.

Latest reports say four women and two men were killed in the incident, in the Devinska Nova Ves district, on the city’s north-western outskirts.

The Slovak daily SME said the attacker was believed to be a drug-influenced 15-year-old boy who shot at neighbours with an automatic weapon.

The shooter’s fate is not yet clear.

Police rushed to the scene and sealed off the area, but details of the shooting remain sketchy.

A three-year-old child was reportedly among the 14 injured taken to hospital.

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The IPCC came under fire after using the wrong date for Himalayan glacier melt

The UN’s climate science body needs fundamental reforms to the way it is managed, an international review has concluded.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has faced mounting pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007.

The review commends the IPCC on the way it carried out previous assessments.

But the report recommends changes to the way the body is run and the way science is presented.

The IPCC has admitted it made a mistake in its 2007 climate assessment in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

But officials at the UN organisation said this error did not change the broad picture of man-made climate change.

Dr Pachauri has said he welcomes a “vigorous debate” on climate science

The review was overseen by the Inter-Academy Council (IAC), an international umbrella body for science academies.

The IAC committee charged with examining the IPCC’s workings recommended that the UN body appoint an executive director to handle day-to-day operations and speak on behalf of the body.

It also said the current limit of two six-year terms for the chair of the organisation is too long.

The report says that the post of IPCC chair, currently occupied by Dr Rajendra Pachauri, and that of the executive director should be limited to the term of one climate science assessment.

Dr Pachauri became head of the organisation in 2002 and was re-elected for his second term in 2008.

Speaking at news conference in New York, Harold Shapiro, who chaired the IAC committee’s review, said: “Overall, in our judgment, the IPCC’s assessment process has been a success and has served society well.”

But he said fundamental changes would help the IPCC continue success under a “public microscope”. Dr Shapiro also conceded that the controversy over errors in climate science assessments had dented the credibility of the process.

The report also suggests the UN body establish an executive committee which should include individuals from outside the IPCC or even outside the climate science community in order to enhance the UN panel’s credibility and independence.

The review did not address the state of knowledge in climate science, but instead concentrated on review processes at the UN body, including the use of non-peer reviewed sources, and quality control on data.

The review committee said the processes used by the UN panel to review material in its climate assessment reports were thorough. But the IAC said that the IPCC’s response to revelations of errors in its 2007 assessment had been “slow and inadequate”, adding that procedures needed stronger enforcement to minimise the number of errors.

The review also called for more consistency in how the IPCC’s different working groups characterised uncertainties in climate science.

The report says that each working group used a different variation of the IPCC’s uncertainty guidelines and the committee found that the guidance was not always followed.

The use by the IPCC of so-called “grey literature” – that which has not been peer-reviewed or published in scientific journals – has been subjected to particular scrutiny of late, partly because this type of material was behind the glacier error.

The committee said that such literature was often relevant and appropriate for inclusion in the IPCC’s assessment reports. But it said authors needed to follow the IPCC’s guidelines more closely and that the guidelines themselves are too vague.

The report’s recommendations are likely to be considered at the IPCC’s next plenary meeting in Busan, South Korea, from 11-14 October.

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

US President Barack Obama will sign an executive order on Monday mandating new financial sanctions on North Korea, senior administration officials say.

The sanctions will hit three North Korea state owned entities and one individual, targeting the trade in arms, luxury goods and narcotics.

The new sanctions come after the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, in which 46 sailors died.

North Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking.

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

Coming as most of Pakistan is struggling to cope with the worst floods in decades, the betting scandal surrounding some of the country’s cricket team has shaken already low national morale.

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Engineers in Chile are beginning to drill a shaft more than two thousand feet deep to rescue 33 miners trapped underground.

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President Obama also alluded to possible new stimulus spending.

US President Barack Obama has attacked Senate Republicans for blocking a bill aimed at helping small businesses.

“Unfortunately [the bill] has been languishing in the Senate for four months, held up by a partisan minority that won’t even let it go to a vote. That makes no sense,” he said.

Mr Obama claimed the bill “pays for itself” and would not add to the deficit.

Half of the Senate faces reelection in November mid-term elections.

Speaking to press in the White House’s Rose Garden, the US president also referred to other ideas for helping the economy, a possible allusion to further stimulus spending measures.

“My economic team is hard at work identifying additional measures that could make a difference in both promoting growth and hiring in the short term and increasing our economy’s competitiveness in the long term,” he said.

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

More officers could face disciplinary action in the wide-ranging crackdown

The federal police force in Mexico has sacked almost 10% of its officers in an effort to combat corruption.

The 3,200 fired officers had either failed to do their job properly or had been linked to corruption or organised crime, said Commissioner Facundo Rosas.

Mr Rosas said more than 1,000 others faced disciplinary proceedings and might also be sacked.