Category: news

Usage figures for the recently launched UK Radioplayer show a ‘solid’ first month, the group says.

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Britons who can defend the nation’s networks armed only with a keyboard are being sought in a national competition.

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As pubs use trivia nights to lure drinkers, test yourself on quizzes

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A specialist residential hospital in Bristol is being investigated by police after secret filming by BBC Panorama found a pattern of serious abuse.

Winterbourne View treats people with learning disabilities and autism.

Andrew McDonnell, a leading expert in working with adults with mental disabilities, labelled some of the examples captured on film “torture”.

The hospital’s owners, Castlebeck, have apologised unreservedly and suspended 13 employees.

During five weeks spent filming undercover, Panorama’s reporter captured footage of some of the hospital’s most vulnerable patients being repeatedly pinned down, slapped, dragged into showers while fully clothed, taunted and teased.

The hospital is a privately owned, purpose-built, 24-bed facility and is taxpayer-funded.

Mr McDonnell, a clinical psychologist who viewed the footage, told the programme that basic techniques for dealing with patients with challenging behaviour were ignored.

He said he was shocked by the treatment of vulnerable patients at the hands of those charged with their care.

After seeing footage of an 18-year-old patient named Simone being verbally abused and doused with cold water while fully clothed as a punishment, he said: “This is not a jail…people are not here to be punished.

“This is a therapeutic environment. Where’s the therapy in any of this? I would argue this is torture.”

Simone’s parents told the programme that she had told them she was being abused at the hospital, but they had assured her that it would not be allowed to happen.

“She told us, that she had been hit, her hair had been pulled and she’d been kicked – and I said no, this wouldn’t happen, they’re not allowed,” said the patient’s mother.

Professor Jim Mansell, from the University of Kent, is a government advisor on the use of physical restraint for those with developmental disabilities.

He said from the Panorama footage it appeared staff were “waiting to pounce on people and restrain them”.

“This is the worst kind of institutional care. It is the kind of thing that was prevalent at the end of the 60s and that led Britain to gradually close the large, long-stay institutions,” he added.

The programme decided to secret film after being approached by a former senior nurse at the hospital who was deeply concerned about the behaviour of some of the support workers caring for patients.

“I have seen a lot over 35 years but this I have never seen anything like this. It is the worst I have seen,” Mr Bryan told the programme.

“These are all peoples’ sons, daughters, parents, aunties, uncles. These are all people who have got families… the families themselves do not know what goes on there.”

Mr Bryan reported his concerns to both management at Winterbourne View and to the government regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) but his complaint was not taken up.

Ian Biggs, regional direction of the CQC for the southwest, said an opportunity to prevent abuse was missed when Mr Bryan’s complaints were not investigated.

“Had we acted at that time, as we have done now, we can act very quickly to cease that kind of treatment.

“We missed that chance and we are sorry for that and we’re doing everything we can now to make sure we’re responding properly.”

Winterbourne View’s owners, Castlebeck, have launched an internal investigation into their whistle-blower procedures and are reviewing the records of all of their 580 patients in 56 facilities.

The vulnerable patients filmed by Panorama have been moved to safety and the police notified.

The hospital charges taxpayers an average of £3,500 per patient per week and Castlebeck has an annual turnover of £90m.

Chief executive Lee Reed told the programme he was “ashamed” by what had happened.

“All I can do is unreservedly apologise to both the families and the vulnerable adults that have been involved in this and recommit to making sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

Panorama’s Undercover Care: The Abuse Exposed, BBC One, Tuesday, 31 May at 2100BST and then available to view in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.

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Australia reports its biggest quarterly fall in gross domestic product in 20 years as floods and cyclones take their toll.

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Government changes to the welfare system are having a “devastating” effect on people with mental health problems, campaigners say.

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The US space shuttle Endeavour comes back to Earth on Wednesday for a landing in Florida that will close its 19-year operational career.

The ship has spent the past two weeks at the International Space Station (ISS), where it delivered a $2bn particle physics experiment.

Once on the ground, the orbiter will be decommissioned and prepared for public display in Los Angeles.

This will leave just the Atlantis shuttle to make a final flight in July.

Assuming the weather is favourable, Commander Mark Kelly should be able to glide Endeavour to a touch down at the Kennedy Space Center at 0235 local time (0635 GMT).

The ship will then have spent a cumulative 299 days in orbit, travelling more than 197.6 million km (122.8 million miles) during its 25 missions. Endeavour was first launched on 7 May, 1992, as a replacement for the Challenger vessel which was destroyed on launch six years previously.

Nasa is committed to ending its shuttle programme. The vehicles are too costly to maintain and operate, and the agency believes a more affordable approach to getting astronauts to the ISS can be achieved by contracting out their transport to private companies.

The first of these commercial carriers is expected to enter service sometime in the middle of the decade.

Nasa will concentrate its efforts and resources on a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) that can go beyond the space station to destinations such as asteroids.

“Endeavour and the space shuttle have been a workhorse for space exploration, building the entire space station and fixing the Hubble telescope, and doing a whole bunch of interesting tasks,” said Endeavour pilot Greg Johnson during an in-flight interview on Monday.

“When the space shuttle retires, we’re going to lose a lot of capability of moving large payloads out to space; but then that opens the door for new things that are going to come across the horizon. The children out there ought to be inspired that when they get to go to space they’ll probably get to go beyond low-Earth orbit, maybe to the Moon, maybe to Mars or beyond.”

Endeavour undocked from the station in the early hours of Monday (GMT). The ship’s crew of six had gone to the platform to install the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a seven-tonne detector designed to survey the blizzard of high-energy particles that are fired at Earth from all corners of the cosmos.

Scientists hope that by characterising these cosmic rays, they can learn more about the origins and make-up of the Universe.

Endeavour had also carried up a tray of critical spare parts for the ISS that included cooling, robotic and communications equipment. The four spacewalks conducted by Endeavour crewmembers Drew Feustel, Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff, to carry out routine maintenance on the exterior of the platform, were the last in shuttle history.

And by flying on this mission, Fincke, a colonel in the United States Air Force, has broken the record for the most time spent in space by an American, breaking the 377-day mark set by Peggy Whitson.

Much of the media focus on Endeavour’s flight has centred on Mark Kelly. He stood down from the mission briefly in January when his wife, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head by a gunman at a constituency meeting outside a Tucson supermarket.

She made sufficient progress in her rehabilitation to permit Kelly to re-join the mission, and was even present to see Endeavour’s launch from Kennedy on 16 May. But Ms Giffords will not be present at the landing.

Atlantis is scheduled to undertake its final mission on 8 July. The vehicle was due to make the five km trip to the launch pad from its assembly hangar late on Tuesday.

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Fifa president Sepp Blatter is set to win a fourth term in office in Wednesday’s presidential elections as calls to postpone the voting appear to have failed.

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A film advert which featured a man’s head exploding and was broadcast during teen show Glee has been banned by the advertising watchdog.

The Mechanic showed a “stream of violent imagery”, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said.

The advert for the 15-rated movie, starring Jason Statham, prompted 13 viewer complaints.

Film studio Lions Gate said it was unavoidable that sensitive members of the public would complain.

Some of the scenes that featured in the taster showed a man’s leg being speared and another man being shot in the face through a window.

The ASA said although two versions of the advert were broadcast after the watershed, it was likely a large number of viewers under the age of 16 would have been watching Glee at the time.

“We considered that the ad was inappropriate for children and were therefore also concerned that a significant proportion of children had been exposed to the violent imagery,” the organisation said.

The ASA ruled that both ads should be withdrawn from transmission completely.

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Toyota Motors has said its production in Japan is likely to return back to normal levels faster-than-expected.

The company’s spokesperson Paul Nolasco told the BBC that output at its domestic factories is expected to recover to 90% of pre-quake levels as early as this month.

Last week, Toyota had reported a 74.5% plunge in production at its Japanese factories in April.

Toyota is the world’s biggest car manufacturer.

Production at Japan’s car manufacturers has been hit hard due to disruptions in the country’s supply chain in wake of the 11 March earthquake and tsunami.

However, the company said the situation had been gradually improving.

“We have had a constant recovery in our supply chain and that is starting to have a positive effect on our production,” Mr Nolasco said.

Toyota said the speed at which the company’s production is recovering was a result of the combined effort of the firm and its suppliers.

“The key behind all of this has been the extremely committed effort by our suppliers to get back on track,” Mr Nolasco said.

“After the quake we were facing a shortage of almost 500 parts, the numbers have since decreased to 30 parts or may be even less right now,” he added.

Toyota said that it had also sent workers from its own factories to help its part suppliers get back to normal production.

The company said that while the recovery had been fast, there was still work to be done.

“Ninety percent is not the end game, there is still room for improvement,” Mr Nolasco said.

“We still have to reach full capacity and also have to take care of our overseas production,” he added.

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Concacaf general secretary Chuck Blazer, who made corruption allegations against Fifa, appears to have survived an attempt to sack him.

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A Colombian court has ordered the state to pay $1m in damages to three soldiers injured in a 1996 left-wing rebel attack on a military base.

Colombia’s highest administrative court, the State Council, ruled that the military command at the time had not done enough to prevent the attack.

Around 600 Farc rebels attacked Las Delicias base in Putumayo, in southern Colombia in August 1996.

Thirty-one soldiers died and 60 were kidnapped in the attack.

The court ordered the Ministry of Defence to pay $933,000 to three of the injured soldiers and the family of one of those killed.

The court ruled that “the state created a risky situation by placing Las Delicias army base in a location with limited protection and defences without providing the support and protection required under the constitution.”

‘Unjust ruling’

The magistrates said the soldiers stationed at Las Delicias lacked the necessary training and preparation to repel the guerrilla attack.

The base was not strategically located and the military command failed to send back-up once the attack was under way, the magistrates added.

Colombian Defence Minister Rodrigo Rivera said his ministry was looking into the legal implications of the case.

He said it was worrying that the court had ruled against the state in a case based on the actions perpetrated by a group of “narcoterrorists”.

Retired Gen Harold Bedoya, who headed the Colombian army at the time of the attack, called the ruling unjust.

He said the magistrates failed to take into account the difficult security situation the country was living at the time.

Gen Bedoya said the day of the attack on Las Delicias, the rebels staged 20 other offensives in different parts of the country, leaving the army thinly stretched.

Farc offensive

Former President Ernesto Samper also criticised the ruling.

Mr Samper, who was in office from 1994-1998, said it set a precedent which could lead to any type of military operation coming under scrutiny.

“No matter how well-prepared the soldiers could have been, it still would have been very difficult for them to repel the attack by the 600 to 800 guerrillas,” he added.

Mr Samper negotiated a prisoner exchange with the Farc after the attack, which resulted in the release of the 60 kidnapped soldiers.

Las Delicias was the first of a series of high-profile offensives by Farc rebels.

In December 1997, they overran a military base on Patascoy mountain, killing 10 soldiers and kidnapping 18.

And in March 1998, they launched an offensive against El Billar base in southern Caqueta province, killing 65 soldiers and taking 43 hostage.

The rebels have lost much of its strength since, with their numbers dropping from 16,000 fighters in 2001 to about 8,000.

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Health staff have made seven pledges to patients near the end of their lives.

The Charter for End of Life Care aims to ensure patients’ remaining days are as comfortable as possible.

It includes calls for healthcare teams to do all they can to preserve patients’ independence, dignity and sense of personal control.

The document, created by the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Nursing, will be sent to 8,500 GP practices in England.

The charter is the result of collaboration between patients, nurses, GPs and others involved in health and social care.

Primary care professionals are encouraged to help patients think ahead to identify choices they may face and assist them to record their decisions clearly.

Patients and carers will be invited to give their comments on the charter, which will be revised over time.

Healthcare teams will also pledge to support friends and relatives, both as patients near the end of their lives and through the subsequent bereavement process.

The Royal College of Nursing said that although end of life services have improved in recent years, there was still a long way to go before they were confident patients will receive the best possible care.

The college has called on primary care teams to use the charter as a standard against which to review and appraise their care.

NHS director for end of life care, Professor Mike Richards, said: “GPs are often best placed to identify people who are approaching the end of life and to initiate discussions with them about their priorities and preferences for care.”

Professor Mayur Lakhani, of the National Council for Palliative Care said: “We need to do more to meet people’s wishes and needs at the end of life. Someone dies in Britain every minute.”

“By implementing [the charter] we can all make ‘living and dying well’ the norm.”

Michelle Mitchell, charity director at Age UK, said: “The Charter is a useful sign of intent. However, older people must be able to expect more from their GP and wider healthcare team.

“All medical staff need more and better training on end of life issues, particularly communication, and there needs to be much closer coordination between health and social care.”

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Republicans in the US House have rejected a bill to raise the US debt limit, in what analysts describe as a bid to force government spending cuts.

The chamber voted 318-97 against the bill, rejecting a call by US President Barack Obama to raise the debt limit without conditions.

Republicans have called for spending cuts in return for a debt increase.

The US treasury department has warned the US risks default if Congress does not authorise more borrowing by August.

Some Democrats who supported Mr Obama’s position also voted against the bill after Democratic leaders criticised the bill as a Republican political ploy, noting Republican leaders brought the bill to a vote, then directed their caucus to vote against it.

Republicans leaders have not indicated they will ultimately refuse to grant a debt limit increase, but say the US must bring government spending in line with tax revenue.

The US national debt is $14.3 trillion (£8.7 trillion), and the annual budget deficit is roughly $1.5bn.

Leaders of both parties agree to the need to trim the budget, but Republicans have refused to allow tax increases, while Democrats have vowed to protect costly social programmes.

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Political desire to see more police on the street must not reduce the Metropolitan Police’s overall capability, a report has cautioned.

The Metropolitan Police Authority wants to increase the percentage of officers on so-called “front-line” duty.

But the London Assembly report warned political commitments to protect front-line policing mean little because there is no popular definition of the term.

The Met said it would provide a balance of visible and specialist staff.

A spokesman said: “The Met has been very proactive in seeking to identify savings from areas such as its estate, vehicles and contracts so that it can prioritise operational policing services.

“In order to keep London safe it is necessary to maintain a balance of highly visible uniform officers and specialist investigators who have the additional skills to target rapists, child abusers, and drug and people traffickers.

“Finding the £600m savings that we are likely to have to make by 2015 is extremely challenging but the Met is committed to keeping the capital safe whilst it does so.”

Currently officers fill 45% of operational support roles – some of which could be done by civilians.

The report found that money could be saved by using more civilians for these roles.

John Biggs AM, one of the report’s authors, said: “Londoners need to know they are getting value for money from their police force but talk of funding cuts to such a vital service will understandably worry people.

“Any changes will need to be based on a better understanding by all parties – including the public – of how policing works now and what needs to happen in the future.

“It is not just about having more visible police on our streets, but ensuring that the Met is working in a way that makes it more effective and efficient at every level of its operations.”

A spokesperson for London Mayor Boris Johnson said: “London is set to have a new pioneering model for policing with the establishment of The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, due later this year, pending the passage of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill.

“In light of this development, the mayor has welcomed the London Assembly’s report and will respond in due course.”

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