Category: news

The actor was released on police bail

EastEnders actor Jody Latham, 29, has been arrested by police on suspicion of drugs offences.

Mr Latham, who played Rob Grayson in the BBC soap, was detained at his home in Bacup, Lancashire, on suspicion of growing and supplying cannabis.

He was also questioned in connection with an assault and possession of an offensive weapon.

The actor, who also starred in TV’s Shameless, was later released on bail pending further inquiries.

A Lancashire Police spokeswoman said: “We can confirm a 29-year-old man was arrested at an address in Bacup on suspicion of the production and supply of a class B drug.

“He was also questioned in connection with a Section 39 assault and possession of an offensive weapon.”

Mr Latham has since been bailed pending further police inquiries.

The Burnley-born actor’s career took off when he was spotted, aged 12, at Burnley Youth Theatre.

He played Phillip “Lip” Gallagher, the intelligent and outspoken eldest son of Frank Gallagher, in Channel 4’s acclaimed drama Shameless, between 2004 and 2008.

Mr Latham went on to appear as Grayson, a pimp, in EastEnders, between February and March.

He also appeared in an earlier Paul Abbott creation, Clocking Off, and in the Jimmy McGovern drama The Street.

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Queen’s visit highlights shared history on African battlefields

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The government is to enshrine in law the military covenant, the duty of care promised to armed forces members and their families, the BBC understands.

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The White House stops short of granting Libya’s rebel council full diplomatic recognition, as Col Gaddafi taunts Nato saying he is beyond its reach.

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Rare tour of the government’s cellar reveals vintage treasures

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Microlights are not normally permitted to land at Prestwick on safety grounds

Microlights from across the UK are set to make a rare appearance at Glasgow Prestwick Airport this weekend.

Up to 20 of the aircraft are expected to fly in for the British Microlight Aircraft Association’s (BMAA) annual safety day.

It is the first time the event has ever been held in Scotland.

Aircraft expected at Prestwick include an autogyro – a mini-helicopter similar to one which featured in the 1967 James Bond film, You Only Live Twice.

The BMAA said it was delighted that Glasgow Prestwick Airport management had agreed to allow microlights to fly in to attend the safety day on Saturday.

BMAA safety officer Kim Taylor said: “This is a rare opportunity as microlights are not normally permitted to land at Prestwick.”

The association had hoped up to 50 microlights would fly in to the airport but windy weather conditions meant many were unlikely to make the trip from more distant parts of the UK.

National Air Traffic Services are providing the safety day venue at their nearby air traffic control centre, and a full day of practical safety information for microlight pilots has been arranged.

Glasgow Prestwick chief executive Iain Cochrane said: “Aviation safety is paramount and whilst we don’t generally allow microlights at Glasgow Prestwick due to the levels of commercial aircraft activity, we recognise that this safety day is very important and we’re delighted to host them.

“Prestwick Airport air traffic control has been working closely with the BMAA to ensure a successful and enjoyable day.”

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Lord McConnell said MPs should have less say than MSPs over who the Scottish leader is

Former First Minister Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale has said Labour MPs should have less say in choosing Scottish Labour’s next leader.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Lord McConnell said it was wrong that in the past MPs had equal votes with MSPs on the issue.

He was speaking ahead of a meeting of the party’s Scottish executive.

Iain Gray said last week that he would stand down as Scottish Labour leader following the Scottish election result.

Lord McConnell said: “I think it was wrong, in the past, that the MPs had equal votes with the MSPs on the election of the leader in Scotland.

“And I think, where the constitution cannot be changed in advance of a leadership election this summer, I think for both the leadership election and the deputy leadership election, MPs should voluntarily and collectively – all of them – withdraw from the process and not nominate and not vote as MPs.”

Lord McConnell, Scotland’s longest-serving first minister to date, stood down as Scottish Labour leader after the SNP’s 2007 election victory.

He took his seat in the Lords in June last year after being given a peerage in Gordon Brown’s dissolution honours list.

His comments come after Labour leader Ed Miliband appointed three MPs to help review the party’s poor showing at last week’s Holyrood election.

Former Scottish secretary Jim Murphy, shadow Scottish Secretary Anne McKechin and Stirling MP Anne McGuire have been lined up to review the defeat.

However, former Labour MSP Pauline McNeill, who lost her Glasgow Kelvin seat to the SNP, said the review should be conducted by the party in Scotland.

Speaking after the election, Ms McNeill, who was defeated by the SNP in Glasgow Kelvin, said: “There is a perception, not always the reality, that Scottish Labour always looks to London and I think that Ed Miliband appointing three MPs really should be left to the Scottish Labour Party.

“If you want to remove that perception then you have to leave the space for the Scottish Labour Party to take that decision forward.”

Alex Salmond’s SNP achieved an unprecedented overall majority in the Scottish Parliament, taking 69 of the 129 seats at Holyrood.

Labour went down from 46 seats to 37, losing some of its most senior figures.

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Blue formed in 2000, but disbanded five years later

Musical acts from across Europe are preparing to battle it out in the final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Newly re-formed boy band Blue are representing the UK with their song, I Can.

Ireland’s entry is Jedward, the teenage twins who found fame on The X Factor, after they qualified in the second semi-final on Thursday.

Coverage of the competition starts at 2000 BST on BBC One.

It was announced in January that Blue would perform at Eurovision on behalf of the UK.

The group, best known for hits such as One Love and All Rise, formed in 2000 before disbanding five years later.

But their decision to participate in the contest has been criticised by their former manager Daniel Glatman, who described their choice as “reckless insanity”.

Simon Webbe, one of the band’s members, told Radio 1 Newsbeat that they did not agree with his comments.

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Obviously we don’t agree with him,” he said.

“We believe this is going to be the best springboard for us to come back on.”

The UK has not won Eurovision since 1997, when Katrina and the Waves triumphed with Love Shine a Light.

Last year Josh Dubovie, 19, came last in the competition.

His song, That Sounds Good to Me which was penned by record producer Pete Waterman, scored just 10 points.

Blue are among 25 acts in Saturday’s grand final, including last year’s winner Lena Mayer-Landrut, who will again represent Germany.

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Britain is a special effects leader, so where are the new stars?

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Explore the Swash Channel wreck – which was a 17th Century armed merchant trader

Marine archaeologists are in a race against time to preserve parts of a shipwreck they believe is the most significant found in British waters since the Tudor ship, the Mary Rose. Paul Rose, explorer, diver and presenter of Britain’s Secret Seas, visited the site.

“We’ve watched it fall apart in front of our eyes for five years,” said Dave Parham, senior lecturer in marine archaeology at Bournemouth University. “But you can only do one thing at a time.”

The Swash Channel wreck is an early 17th Century armed merchant ship.

It was found in 7-9m of water on a sand and shingle seabed on the edge of Hook Sands near Poole Harbour in Dorset in March 1990, when a Dutch dredger hit it.

It was left for almost 15 years until an assessment for English Heritage in 2005 found it was a much more significant site than first thought.

Bournemouth University’s Marine Archaeology programme began visiting and recording the wreck as parts of it became exposed, in work funded by English Heritage and Poole Harbour Commissioners.

But the archaeologists say the wreck is disappearing as sediment, which protects the ship, has been eroding so quickly that parts of the structure are exposed and decay before they can be recorded.

Divers from Britain’s Secret Seas were the first team apart from the archaeologists working underwater, to see and film this beautiful piece of history.

The ribs of the ship’s hull are protected by sandbags

After swimming for a couple of minutes, large ship’s timbers raised up from the sandy bottom by about a metre came into view, giving me a hint of the functional, beautiful lines of its bow.

Surrounding the wreck site is a steel framework grid which has been built by the research team as an aid to document the excavation accurately.

Countless sandbags are placed all around the exposed parts of the wreck to help to protect it from wave, tidal and storm damage.

The more timbers that are exposed, the more we learn and understand about this wreck.

It faces other threats – its surface is being eaten away by a small crustacean called a gribble.

But it is the shipworm, a mollusc with a bivalve shell, that is boring its way in to the wood and causing structural damage to the timbers.

“It’s an absolute disaster, because we’re not just talking about one single organism,” said Bournemouth University’s marine archaeologist Paola Palma.

“We’re talking about millions of organisms. So the damage that they cause is absolutely, you know, horrendous.”

The ornate Baroque carving of a man on the rudder is clear to see

The survival of rare finds, including the ship’s forecastle or upper deck in front of the foremast, and rudder, have cemented its place in history as a significant wreck.

Five carvings have been found so far, including a male head at the top of the rudder and another on the outside of the forecastle, which are early Baroque in style.

On our dive, we moved to the stern and started dragging piles of sandbags away from one of the excavation areas, which I thought would be exposing more structural timbers.

But my breath was taken away when the last bag came off to reveal the fabulous ornate carving on the rudder.

I had never seen anything like it and this beautiful carving was all I needed to see that this really was no ordinary trader. We also saw pottery and canon.

One carving has been raised, a merman, and is already in conservation.

“Initially this was quite a small wreck of unknown character,” said Mr Parham. “Now we know it’s a large wreck, it’s a high status wreck – it’s plotted in these carvings.

“It’s built and constructed to trade out to the tropics, in a period when this was something new.

“What this ship was engaged in and other ships like it were engaged in, is the reason why we have Japanese cars and Chinese videos.

“So actually, in world history terms, this is an important object.”

However not all of the ship can be lifted from the seabed this summer.

“We’re going to raise the first 12 metres of the bow. The rest we’re going to bury in situ and leave it there,” said Mr Parham.

The remains of the wreck that cannot be brought up will be left and buried in the sands for protection.

No-one has brought a wreck to the surface for 30 years in the UK – and the last time this happened it was the Mary Rose.

Britain’s Secret Seas continues on Sunday 15 May on BBC Two at 2000 BST or catch up at the above link.

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President Correa said his hands were clean

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa says he is prepared to take a lie detector test to prove he did not accept money from Colombian left-wing rebels.

Mr Correa’s denial comes three days after a UK think tank alleged links between Farc rebels and Ecuador.

The report’s authors said they had seen testimony from a rebel which allegedly detailed Mr Correa’s knowledge of Farc contributions to his campaign.

At a news conference, President Correa denied ever meeting the Farc.

“My hands are clean,” he told media in Quito on Friday.

“I’ll take a lie detector test to prove I never received funds from the Farc,” he added.

‘Monumental lie’

Allegations that President Correa’s campaign received financing from the Marxist guerrillas resurfaced on Tuesday.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies published research on ties between the rebels and neighbouring Venezuela and Colombia.

It is based on a two-year study of e-mails and documents recovered during a raid by Colombian forces on a Farc camp in Ecuador in March 2008 and testimony provided by a former rebel who later defected.

The researchers said the former rebel’s testimony “appears to detail Mr Correa’s personal interest in and knowledge of illegal Farc contributions to his campaign”.

The report says the rebel recounted “being lobbied by Correa’s campaign team before the presidential elections, speaking first with an intermediary; then by telephone and in person with Ricardo Patino (currently Ecuador’s foreign minister) and finally with Correa himself in a series of three telephone conversations in which Correa clearly showed an awareness of ongoing negotiations between his subordinates and Farc”.

Both Ricardo Patino and President Correa have vehemently denied they have ever had dealings with the Farc.

Mr Patino told the Associated Press news agency he had never in his life seen anyone from the Farc.

President Correa said the claims were a “monumental lie”.

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Michael Gynn fears he will have to switch off, despite taking steps to save energy

Rising fuel bills may force a quarter of homes to turn off their heating at some point next winter, a price comparison site claims.

Uswitch says that last winter, an estimated 20% of people it surveyed had regularly turned off their heating.

And it predicts that with fuel tariffs expected to rise, the number will be higher this year.

The Bank of England said this week that gas prices could rise by 15% later this year, and electricity by 10%.

Uswitch said that a survey of almost 1,600 of its customers carried out in January had indicated that 20% of them had turned their heating off regularly in order to save money last winter.

The firm’s spokesman Ann Robinson, the former chairman of Energywatch, says: “This time it’s going to be a minimum of 25%.”

If the Bank of England’s predictions are true, she calculates that the average British household will have to find an extra £148 over the next year.

“Many people are really going to struggle to pay their bills,” she says.

“We have to pray for a mild winter.”

At his bungalow behind the seafront in Margate, Kent, Michael Gynn has already done everything possible to cut his energy bill.

After last year’s rise of just under 6%, he says he cannot afford any further increases.

He has had insulation laid in his loft, a new efficient condenser boiler fitted, along with double glazing and cavity wall insulation.

But even if the weather is cold later in the year, he knows he may now have to switch the heating off altogether.

“We’ve run out of options,” he says. “We’re now reaching the point where it’s got to be turned off.”

Michael works in a school art department, and does not count himself as poor.

But like millions of others, he has not had a recent pay rise, and his income is being squeezed.

“There’s a lot of help out there,” he says.

The energy suppliers are not able to give advance notification of price rises.

Centrica has already warned of higher fuel bills to come

Any such information would breach competition law.

But Centrica, the owner of British Gas, has predicted that the wholesale cost of gas could go up by 25% this winter, implying that the Bank of England’s predictions might be realised.

In the meantime, the industry advises people to save energy as much as they can, and to take advantage of schemes to help vulnerable customers.

Last year, Britain’s biggest energy suppliers spent £153m on programmes to give financial relief.

Christine McGourty, of industry body Energy UK, says that amount is likely to rise in the coming months.

“We would urge people who have friends or family, who they think could benefit from that, to call up their energy company and see if they’re eligible, because there is a lot of help out there,” she says.

For example, 250,000 pensioners benefited last year from a rebate of £80 on their bills.

Uswitch says that more than six million families are likely to be classified as “fuel poor” by the end of the year.

This prediction calls into question the government’s strategy on fuel poverty, which aims to eradicate it by 2016.

By that, it means that no one should have to pay more than 10% of their take-home income on fuel bills.

But the number of people falling into that category is rising, not falling.

According to National Energy Action, there were nearly 5.5 million people in fuel poverty by the end of 2010.

Ann Robinson calculates that that figure has already risen by a quarter of a million, and may rise by another half million if the Bank of England is right about price rises.

The government is currently carrying out a review into fuel poverty, with a first report due in the Autumn.

It may decide to change the target, or even the definition of what fuel poverty means.

But in any case that report is unlikely to come soon enough to prevent millions getting cold this winter.

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Sienna Miller is to accept £100,000 in damages from the News of the World, after the paper admitted liability over the hacking of the actress’s phone.

The newspaper will make a full disclosure in private to her legal team to show the extent of all wrongdoing.

Lawyers for Ms Miller said there had been a full admission of liability and that she had been vindicated.

Following a two-day hearing at the High Court, Mr Justice Voss indicated he would give his full judgment next week.

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The EU voices concerns over Denmark’s plans to reintroduce controls on internal borders, abolished under the Schengen Agreement.

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The Bosnian Serb leader scraps a controversial referendum after talks with EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton.

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