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At least 27 people were killed when security forces opened fire on a crowd of about 50,000 people in the central city of Hama, activists say.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Governments have been trying to privatise the Tote for 14 years UK-based bookmaker Betfred has been chosen to buy the Tote after an auction process that began in November.
Betfred, the country’s fourth-biggest bookmaker, will pay £265m for the business.
The sale is subject to consultation with the Tote’s employees and is expected to be completed in about four to eight week’ time.
The Tote has 517 High Street shops and the monopoly to run pool betting online and at 60 UK racecourses.
The sale agreement signals the end of a 14-year attempt by governments to privatise the betting group, which employs more than 3,500 staff.
Betfred’s main rival in the auction was Sport Investments Partners (SIP), a consortium led by the British Airways chairman Martin Broughton.
The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt said: “It was a closely fought contest.
“Of the £265m in the headline price only just over £90m will end up being paid to the Treasury.”
As part of the deal, Betfred will keep exclusive control of the pool betting system on UK racecourses for seven years.
In return, it has committed to paying the racing industry £11m to March 2012, with payments of £9m a year for the next six years of the licence.
Pool betting differs from that offered by other bookmakers.
The Tote takes a percentage of stake money placed. Of this percentage, some is used to cover the Tote’s expenses while the rest goes to the racing industry.
The rest of the stake money is paid out to winners.
Betfred’s executive chairman, Fred Done, said in a statement: “Buying the Tote has been an ambition for years, so I am absolutely delighted.
“The Tote is an opportunity I just could not miss. Over the coming months I will develop the Tote’s relationship with the sport into a highly successful commercial partnership.”
The gambling and racing minister, John Penrose, said the government had “bent over backwards to deliver a good deal for racing”.
He added: “Most people can’t understand why, in the modern world, the government should be even part owner of a bookie. So we pledged last year to end years of dithering and resolve the future of the Tote, and today we have done just that.”
The Tote was set up 83 years ago by Winston Churchill to provide a safe haven for punters, as it was controlled by the state and beyond the reach of illegal bookmakers.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Two companies are fined a total of £510,000 after a maintenance worker fell to his death at a power station three years ago.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Kevorkian conducted many assisted suicides using his so-called mercy machine, Jack Kevorkian, the man known as “Dr Death”, for helping the terminally ill end their lives, has died in the US aged of 83, his lawyer has said.
Mayer Morganroth told the Associated Press news agency Kevorkian died on Friday at Michigan’s Beaumont Hospital.
Kevorkian died after a blood clot from his leg broke free and lodged in his heart, the Detroit Free Press reported.
He was believed to have assisted in 130 suicides and was released from prison in 2007, after serving eight years.
Kevorkian had been in hospital since last month with pneumonia and kidney problems, said Mr Morganroth, who was also a friend of Kevorkian’s.
He added that hospital staff played recordings of classical music for Kevorkian before he died.
Kevorkian was originally given a 10-25 year sentence for a second-degree murder conviction in the death of terminally ill Thomas Youk.
But the former pathologist later won an appeal based on his own failing health and served only eight years.
His lawyers had said he suffered from hepatitis C and diabetes.
He had promised in affidavits that he would not assist in a suicide if he was released.
Kevorkian told the BBC in 2007 he had no regrets for conducting assisted suicides.
“I knew what I was doing… I accepted the consequences because I had to do the right thing,” he said.
The doctor ran for US Congress as an independent in 2008, receiving just 2.7% of the vote in a suburban Detroit district.
A film about Kevorkian’s life, called You Don’t Know Jack, was shown for the HBO television network in 2010.
The actor Al Pacino won an Emmy and Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of the pathologist.
Kevorkian had claimed to have assisted in some 130 suicides, mostly in the Detroit area between 1990-98.
Many assisted suicides were conducted using his so-called mercy machine, which delivered lethal amounts of drugs intravenously.
Kevorkian’s methods alienated many. In 1998 he offered on a “first come, first served” basis the kidneys of a man he had helped to die.
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Libya: David Loyn on the road with Misrata’s rebel army as they prepare to take advantage of any new Nato offensive.
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This month’s rise in the cost of going bankrupt could discourage people with financial problems from seeking a solution, debt experts warn.
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Favourite St Nicholas Abbey, trained by Aidan O’Brien and ridden by Ryan Moore, wins a thrilling Coronation Cup at Epsom, pipping Midday to earn victory.
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New MPs are finding the combination of long hours and a heavy workload a struggle and worry the job is damaging their family lives, research suggests.
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Mr Papandreou is to present a further 6.4bn euros in austerity measures Greece has agreed in principle a new bail-out package with its European partners in Vienna, according to a source cited by the Reuters agency.
The new three-year plan will supersede Greece’s existing 110bn euro ($159bn, £97bn) EU and International Monetary Fund bail-out, Reuters said.
Greece would target another 6.4bn euros in austerity measures and finally start its 50bn euro privatisation programme.
In return the country would be offered some form of reduction in its debts.
The broad terms of the package were agreed at a meeting of eurozone deputy finance ministers in Vienna that went on until after midnight on Thursday night.
Although the size of the new package was not revealed, the Reuters source said it would cover Greece’s borrowing needs for this year and next.
Details of the new plan still need to be finalised, so that it can be signed off by the “Eurogroup” of eurozone finance ministers when they meet on 20 June.
The blessing of the IMF and the European Central Bank is also likely to be needed.
The Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, will present the government’s privatisation plans and its new austerity measures to the Eurogroup chairman, Jean-Claude Juncker, in Luxembourg on Friday.
Protesters hung a banner from the Greek finance ministry calling for a general strike The additional spending cuts and tax rises would come at time when the government already faces daily demonstrations by thousands of protesters against its existing plans.
On Friday, protesters from the pro-Communist PAME union blocked access to the finance ministry in Athens, and hung a banner from it calling for a general strike.
The previous night, about 20 protesters hurled stones and yoghurt at government spokesman George Petalotis as he was stepping up to the podium at an event for the ruling PASOK party.
The original bail-out plan has been overtaken by events, leaving the Greeks desperately short of money again.
The plan had envisaged Greece returning to the financial markets to help fund its deficit from next year.
But with its two-year borrowing cost currently at about 25%-per-year, the market is effectively closed to Athens.
Earlier this week, ratings agency Moody’s cut its rating of Greece to one of the worst levels available, on a par with Cuba, and only slightly above recently-defaulted Ecuador.
Moreover, Greece has failed to bring down its deficit as quickly as planned, largely because its economy has remained mired in recession.
Last week, the IMF threatened to veto the release of the latest 12bn euro tranche of Greece’s existing rescue package because the country could not guarantee its solvency over the next 12 months.
The “troika” of EU, IMF and ECB negotiators is due to announce a decision on the the fifth tranche later on Friday.
The government faces 13.7bn euros of immediate cash needs.
The new bail-out agreement is likely to include a “soft restructuring” or “reprofiling” of Athens’ private sector debts, advocated by Mr Juncker as a way of making the nation’s debt burden more manageable.
Until now the idea has been fiercely resisted by the European Central Bank, which fears that by imposing losses on Greece’s lenders – including overstretched European banks – the move could spark a broader eurozone financial crisis.
But it appears that an agreement has now been reached to grant Greece debt relief, so long as it is done in a way that does not trigger a “credit event”, according to the Greek government source quoted by Reuters.
This “credit event” could refer to the risk of triggering payments under derivative contracts used by financial markets to hedge or speculate on the risk of a Greek default.
It could also refer to methodologies used by the credit rating agencies and by the banks to determine whether loans are in default.
Many European banks have not yet recorded any losses on most of their lending to Greece, and could find their own solvency is put at risk if they are forced to do so.
It is likely that the restructuring would involve the postponement of debt repayments due in the next two years, as well as a possible reduction in interest payments.
It would also have to be done with the agreement of Greece’s private sector creditors.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Babar Ahmad was arrested in a dawn raid on his home in south London in 2003 Four police officers accused of beating up a terror suspect have all been found not guilty at Southwark Crown Court.
A jury acquitted Pc Roderick James-Bowen, 40, Pc Mark Jones, 43, Pc Nigel Cowley, 34, and Det Con John Donohue, 37, of assaulting Babar Ahmad.
Mr Ahmad, 37, was arrested at his home in Tooting, south London, in December 2003 on suspicion of leading a group which supported al-Qaeda.
Mr Ahmad was never charged in relation to his arrest but is in custody.
He is awaiting extradition to the US for alleged terrorism offences.
Mr Ahmad said he feared he would die in the early morning Metropolitan Police raid.
But jurors rejected claims that the officers attacked him, taking less than an hour to reach their decision.
The officers’ solicitor Colin Reynolds said secret recordings from a listening device planted in Mr Ahmad’s home, which emerged in evidence, corroborated his clients’ accounts.
“They are hoping that they will be able to put these unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations behind them”
Colin Reynolds Solicitor
“It was only weeks before this trial commenced that the prosecution then disclosed that a listening device had been planted in the home address of Babar Ahmad some time before his arrest in December 2003,” he said.
“Many hours were spent analysing what could be heard as a result of that probe before and during the trial and that evidence proved the account originally given by these officers was correct and specific details of the complaint made by Mr Ahmad were not present.”
Asked why the Met paid out £60,000 to Mr Ahmad in a civil case when the force admitted liability, he said: “That’s a matter for the Commissioner and his lawyers.”
Mr Reynolds also spoke of the men’s relief at the verdicts and said they were “looking forward to getting on with their professional lives”.
“The officers look forward to returning to work and… serving the public within the MPS and they are hoping that they will be able to put these unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations behind them now.”
After the not guilty verdicts were returned, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC said he hoped what he described as Mr Ahmad’s “ordeal” would come to an end as quickly as possible, either by his extradition to the US or his release.
“The issues that have arisen out of the arrest have now been ongoing for a long time”
Acting Commander Carl Bussey Metropolitan Police
He said Mr Ahmad had been detained in the UK for a number of years and it was a matter of concern.
Mr Ahmad claims the officers, then all constables in the Met’s Territorial Support Group (TSG), beat him repeatedly, swore at him, mocked his Islamic faith and humiliated him by touching his genitals in an assault that began at his house and continued in a police van and at a police station.
He alleged that one officer grabbed his throat and cut off his breathing.
Mr Ahmad told the court: “He kept squeezing to the point where I thought, ‘This guy is going to kill me. He wants to kill me. I am going to die in the back of this van’.”
But the officers said his injuries were either self-inflicted or caused by a legal tackle that took him to the ground when he was first detained.
Pc James-Bowen told the court he had a “ferocious” struggle with martial arts expert Mr Ahmad in which he used “significant force”, but rejected accusations that he and his colleagues beat him up.
The four officers involved in the raid had been told by senior officers to arrest Mr Ahmad.
The four-week trial heard that the suspect’s arrest came 11 months after DC Stephen Oake was murdered in Crumpsall, Manchester, by terror suspect Kamel Bourgass.
Police chiefs briefed the arresting officers that Mr Ahmad was to be considered as dangerous as Bourgass and said they feared he would resist, the jury heard.
Pc Jones told the court he and the other officers in his unit were told by their sergeant before the operation that the suspect had been trained by al-Qaeda in armed and unarmed combat.
Mr Ahmad was believed to be the leader of an al-Qaeda-linked cell that acted as a conduit to terrorism overseas, providing recruits and logistical support.
In evidence during the trial, Mr Ahmad confirmed that he travelled to Bosnia three or four times to fight during the 1992/95 war, but insisted he was not an “al-Qaeda superman”.
Misconduct review
The Metropolitan Police Authority is set to publish an investigation into the incident.
In a statement, the Met Police said the court had heard evidence that did not support Mr Ahmad’s account of events following his arrest.
Acting Commander Carl Bussey, head of the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards, said: “The issues that have arisen out of the arrest have now been ongoing for a long time and undoubtedly this will have been a difficult seven years for all involved.
“Given the result I will now ensure a misconduct review is conducted immediately so that the officers can be given a decision as soon as possible and this matter finally brought to a conclusion.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A hacker group has claimed it has attacked the Sony network and stolen more than one million passwords, email addresses and other information.
Lulz Security said it broke into servers which run SonyPictures.com.
It said it had hacked into a database that included unencrypted passwords as well as names, addresses and dates of birth of Sony customers.
In April, hackers broke into Sony’s PlayStation Network and stole data from more than 77 million accounts.
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Chelsea captain John Terry has said he would welcome the appointment of either Mark Hughes or Guus Hiddink as Blues manager.
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At least 16 people have been killed and dozens injured in a bomb attack aimed at worshippers at a mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit.
Reports say police and local officials were among the casualties.
It is not clear who carried out the attack or whether a suicide bomber was involved.
It is the second attack in Iraq in as many days, after bombings in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, killed at least six people on Thursday.
The blast happened at about 1245 local time (0945 GMT) on Friday, officials said.
Medics said that 16 bodies were brought to the main hospital after the explosion.
Doctor Raeid Ibrahim was quoted by the AP news agency as saying that another 54 people had been wounded.
Among the injured was at least one member of the Salaheddin provincial council.
Some reports suggest the bomb was hidden inside a fuel canister at the entrance to the mosque.
Tikrit – about 130km (80 miles) north of Baghdad – is the home town of the deposed Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.
Many of his relatives and former associates live there.
While violence has decreased in Iraq in the last few years, attacks are still frequent and government or security officials are often targets.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The fire broke out late on Thursday Some 28,000 people have been evacuated from near the Russian city of Izhevsk where a fire broke out at an arms depot housing artillery shells and rockets.
At least 45 people were injured and hundreds of homes are reported to have been damaged in the overnight fire.
Shells detonated by the fire caused windows as far away as 10km (6 miles) to shatter.
The arms depot is in the Udmurtia region of the western Urals, 900km (560 miles) east of Moscow.
It stores artillery shells, rocket-propelled missiles and old ammunition.
Some reports suggest the blaze may have been sparked by a discarded cigarette.
The fire has interrupted the flow of oil along a nearby pipeline.
Emergency teams have flown from the Russian capital to the scene where firefighters are battling the blaze.
Balls of fire rose from the depot, according to eyewitness accounts.
Two elderly people living near the depot have died of heart attacks caused by stress from the explosions, regional health minister Vladimir Muzlov said.
This is the second time in a week that a Russian ammunition dump has exploded.
An arms depot caught fire in the Russian region of Bashkiria at the end of May.
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Boss Fabio Capello finally makes peace with Rio Ferdinand over his decision to strip the defender of the England captaincy in March.
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