Residents of Memphis have described the rising waters as “overwhelming”
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The southern US city of Memphis is coping with near-record flooding that has forced the evacuation of at least 1,300 homes, officials have said.
The Mississippi River was expected to crest at 48ft (14.6m) on Monday in the Tennessee city, 14ft above flood stage.
The authorities have evacuated low-lying neighbourhoods, and officials said they were confident flood control systems would prevent further harm.
Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell said 400 people were staying in shelters.
Officials said they were confident levees along the river would hold back the water and that the authorities had 20,000 sand bags in reserve in case of a breach.
The National Weather Service said the Mississippi River would crest at about 1900 local time (2300 GMT) on Monday.
The record river height of 48.7ft was set in February 1937 during one of the worst Mississippi floods in US history.
Col Vernie Reichling Jr of the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the Mississippi River flood control system, told reporters: “There should be no concern for any levees to fail.”
In downtown Memphis, the river had swollen to three miles (4.8km) wide from its typical width of half a mile, the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper reported.
Engorged by the spring thaw, the river has caused significant flooding upstream in Illinois and Missouri.
Further downstream in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, the river has already passed flood stage.
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Yvonne Freaney has admitted her son Glen’s manslaughter but denies murdering him
A 49-year-old woman has admitted killing her autistic son at a hotel near Cardiff Airport.
Yvonne Freaney, 49, of Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her son Glen, 11, Cardiff Crown Court was told.
The jury heard she used a belt to strangle him at the Sky Plaza Hotel in Rhoose, Vale of Glamorgan last May before trying to take her own life.
She is charged with his murder, which she denies. The case continues.
Ms Freaney, who was going through marital problems, was found in the hotel room with multiple knife wounds but was still alive.
She had moved out of the family home and had been living in hotels for about a month before Glen’s death.
The court heard Glen, who needed one-to-one care, could walk, run and ride a bike, and communicated through a computer.
Prosecutor Greg Taylor QC said: “Glen was a young boy who suffered from severe autism – he was diagnosed when he was aged four.
“He was generally fit and well and had a normal life expectancy but he was totally dependent on adult care.
“He needed help, dressing, washing, brushing his teeth and feeding.
“He was not toilet trained even by the age of 11 and still wore nappies.”
Ms Freaney, who has three other children with her husband, had left a number of letters intending them to be read after she had committed suicide, the court heard.
She wrote to her 14-year-old son: “You may not understand what has happened but just think of it as I am finally getting rest.
“I wish you good luck and I am sure you will have a brilliant future and I would be very proud of you.”
The jury was told how Ms Freaney’s marriage was “filled with problems.”
Mr Taylor said: “When they lived together they had problems which revolved around employment, alcohol consumption on her part as well as his, and violence from both parties.”
Police were called several times to the family home after alleged incidents of domestic violence.
Ms Freaney was seen by doctors several times for injuries but never pressed charges against her husband, the court heard.
Social services became involved with the family after a police officer described their home as “uninhabitable.”
Mr Taylor said: “There was rubbish strewn from floor to ceiling and you couldn’t get in the kitchen for rubbish. Police said it was most cluttered house they had ever seen.”
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At least six Afghan police officers have been killed in an ambush in Ghazni province, officials have told the BBC.
The attack took place in Deh Yak district, several kilometres from the district headquarters.
Police officials said a group of police was hit by a roadside bomb and then came under gunfire.
The attack comes a day after government forces beat back an attempt by scores of militants to seize parts of Kandahar city, to the south of Ghazni.
The police of Ghazni province, Dilawar Zahid, told the BBC that six police officers were killed and four wounded in Monday morning’s attack in Deh Yak district.
Security officials in the district said eight police were killed and four injured.
“The group of our police were leaving for the provincial capital of Ghazni,” one of the security officials told the BBC.
“It was a shock because the attack took place so close to the district headquarters. They ambushed our forces. There was a roadside bomb followed by a firefight.”
The district, just eight kilometres (five miles) south-east of the provincial capital, Ghazni city, was considered one of the safest in the province.
In Kandahar, government forces took two days to fight off co-ordinated assaults with suicide bombers and rocket-propelled grenades on government buildings.
The raid paralysed Kandahar, with civilians too afraid to go out
The provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa, said 11 insurgents were killed and seven suicide bombers blew themselves up.
Two soldiers and three civilians died, and dozens more were wounded.
The attack came less than two weeks after nearly 500 prisoners, among them Taliban field commanders, escaped from Kandahar’s main prison.
Afghan officials say the complex nature of the Taliban assault was due to the presence of some of the escapees, who are experienced fighters.
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At least 36 people have died in Togo when their boats capsized during a storm, police sources say.
The boats were caught in strong winds and torrential rain as they sailed across Lake Togo, about 40km (25 miles) east of the capital, Lome.
Police say the victims were returning home from a funeral on the other side of the lake.
It is not known how many people were on board the boats, and a search is continuing for further bodies.
“When the winds hit, the largest boat carrying some men and drums capsized first,” a survivor told a local radio station, according to Reuters news agency.
“Then two or three other smaller boats carrying women and children also capsized,” he said, adding that he had lost three of his children who were with him.
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Norman Lamb said the government had been right to “pause” its NHS reform plans
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The government’s decision to reconsider its plans for the NHS “should not be regarded as a concession” to the Liberal Democrats by the Conservatives, Nick Clegg’s chief adviser has said.
Norman Lamb insisted the Lib Dems and Tories had to work “in partnership”.
The coalition has promised a “pause” in getting its plans for the English NHS through Parliament, after criticism from GPs, nurses and leading Lib Dems.
But Labour has urged ministers to throw out the “bad” legislation.
The Health and Social Care Bill, already backed by the House of Commons but still going through Parliament, would give GPs control of much of the NHS budget, remove some tiers of management and open the service up to more competition.
However, following rejection by the Lib Dem spring conference and the Royal College of Nursing ministers agreed to “pause” and “listen” to concerns before proceeding further.
Deputy Prime Minister Mr Clegg has vowed be more assertive in his relationship with the Conservatives amid Lib Dem fears they are being unfairly blamed by voters for unpopular coalition decisions.
“This should not be regarded as a concession to the Liberal Democrats”
Norman Lamb
The Conservatives increased their share of the vote in Thursday’s local elections – rare for a party in government at a “mid term” election.
But the Lib Dems received a drubbing, losing about 700 councillors in England and 12 of their 17 MSPs at Holyrood, where the SNP scored an historic victory.
Mr Clegg told the BBC on Sunday that Lib Dem ministers were committed to the plans set out in the coalition agreement, but they needed to work harder to get their voice heard by the public.
He added that getting the NHS reforms right was “now my number one priority” and called for guarantees there would not be “back-door privatisation”.
He also vowed to be a “moderating” influence on the Conservatives on issues such as the NHS – a marked change in tone from the early days of the coalition government.
Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes went further, saying there should be “no privatisation at all” of the NHS.
But Mr Lamb told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The government should be congratulated for pausing and listening. There’s clearly been a gathering storm against this legislation.”
He added: “This should not be regarded as a concession to the Liberal Democrats. There has to be agreement between the two parties to get the legislation through Parliament… We need to do this in partnership.”
Former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood told Today said the bill had “more Lib Dem in it than anything else”.
He said the party’s MPs had voted for the plans – and that the principle of introducing more competition into the NHS had been supported and promoted by the Lib Dem leadership.
Labour is holding a debate on the NHS in the House of Commons later.
Shadow health secretary John Healey said he was glad the Lib Dems were “starting to make the arguments Labour has been making since the early autumn”.
He said: “This is a bad bill and if Nick Clegg is serious he must spell out exactly what his bottom line is. But in truth this is David Cameron’s call, not Nick Clegg’s.”
Last month, Mr Lamb threatened to quit his coalition role unless changes were made to the NHS plans, citing the “financial risk of doing it too quickly”, which, he argued, could damage patient care.
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There have been warnings about barriers blocking poorer students from university
The university admissions system which allows pupils to apply before they know their A-level results is “unfair and inefficient”, says research.
A study by academics at the University of Warwick says applying on the basis of predicted results discriminates against poorer students.
The current applications timetable places “higher hurdles” for disadvantaged groups, say researchers.
University access is due to be examined in a White Paper this summer.
With tuition fees in England set to rise to up to £9,000 per year from next year, there has been concern about the impact on applications from young people from poorer families.
There are already worries about the under-representation of disadvantaged groups at the top universities, and the researchers say the admissions system schedule creates another bias against poorer groups.
At present the majority of students apply to university before they know their actual A-level grades.
Admissions bodies look at information such as predicted grades, GCSE results, school references and interviews.
But the study suggests that relying on such information, rather than a common currency of exam results, favours confident, well-drilled applicants from ambitious schools.
The “late developer” in a state school, who might eventually score very highly when A-level results are published, will have lost out in this admissions system, says the report.
The groups disadvantaged in the current system are not just youngsters from low-income families.
The study says that girls are more likely to receive offers of places ahead of similarly able boys.
Further education students face a tougher battle for places than school applicants and applicants from the London area are more successful than their equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The researchers, Wiji Arulampalam, Robin Naylor and Jeremy Smith, also say there are penalties in the timing of applications.
Deadlines to apply to university are in October, January and after exam results are published.
But the study says students who apply late have a lower chance of getting into their chosen universities.
Since there is a pattern of later applications from disadvantaged groups, the “‘lateness penalty is particularly harmful to the under-represented populations”, says the report.
The report says that it would be fairer to consider applications at the same time against a more objective, reliable measure.
The unfairness of applying before A-level results has already been identified as a serious problem by the last major report into fair access.
The Schwartz Report, commissioned by the government and published in 2004, argued that applying before A-level results were known gave an unfair advantage to better-off applicants.
It found that predicted grades were unreliable and that “tossing a coin” would be as fair as much of the interviewing process.
Ministers accepted the need to tackle the “inherent unfairness” of the current system – but such a change in timetable, known as PQA (post-qualification application), has never been implemented.
A subsequent report published by the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation and the Sutton Trust claimed that each year thousands of the most talented state school pupils were missing out on places because of the system of applying on the basis of predicted grades.
The government is once again set to announce a shake-up of the higher education system in England, with a White Paper in the summer – and there have been reports that the timing of the application process is once again to be under scrutiny.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Rounded up: Mau Mau suspects in camps
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Documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans directed by the British authorities were a “sort of guilty secret,” a report says.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said the papers should now be made public.
The internal review found some Foreign Office officials had chosen to ignore the documents’ existence.
It comes as the High Court is due to rule on a compensation case brought by four Kenyans over alleged human rights abuses in the 1950s and 1960s.
The documents give further details of what ministers in London knew about how the colony was attempting to crush the rebellion that paved the way to independence.
Many of them, which were released by the High Court last month, were only recently found in the Foreign Office’s own archives after years of investigations by academics.
The papers were brought to the UK when Kenya became independent but, unlike others, were never made public in the National Archives. Until recently, they were in boxes kept at the Hanslope Park archives near Milton Keynes.
In a written statement released last Thursday, Mr Hague said it was time to make the files public through the National Archives, “subject only to legal exemptions”.
Former British High Commissioner to Canada Anthony Cary, who conducted the review, found there was confusion about the status of the files, but this only explained the failure up to a point.
But he said that while some officials realised their importance, they chose to “ignore” their existence following three Freedom of Information requests from the Kenyans’ lawyers in 2005 and 2006.
Mr Cary said: “It was perhaps convenient to accept the assurances of predecessors that the migrated archives were administrative and/or ephemeral, and did not need to be consulted for the purposes of FOI requests, while also being conscious of the files as a sort of guilty secret, of uncertain status and in the “too difficult” tray.”
Adding that officials at the Foreign Office need urgently to review all its documents, he said: “The migrated archives saga reminds us that we cannot turn a blind eye to any of our holdings.
“All information held by the FCO should have been retained by choice rather than inertia, and must be effectively managed from a risk perspective.”
Four Kenyans – three men and one woman aged in their 70s and 80s – are the lead claimants in the reparations case.
They want the UK government to acknowledge responsibility for atrocities committed by local guards in camps administered by the British in the pre-independence era.
The UK says the claim is not valid because of the amount of time since the abuses were alleged to have happened, and that any liability rested with the Kenyan authorities after independence in 1963.
Daniel Leader, counsel for their lawyers Leigh Day, said the report was significant because if the High Court ruled the British government was liable, it could not legitimately claim there was a time lag because it withheld crucial documents needed by his team.
Historians say the Mau Mau movement helped Kenya achieve independence. But their actions have also been blamed for crimes against white farmers and bloody clashes with British forces throughout the 1950s.
Veterans say they suffered barbaric treatment, including torture, as the British suppressed the rebellion.
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.
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The home secretary said planned reforms would free up police officers to fight crime
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Proposals aimed at reducing police bureaucracy have been announced by Home Secretary Theresa May.
She said the plans marked a “watershed moment” in policing and could save up to 2.5 million police hours each year.
The Home Office’s plan would allow police officers, rather than the Crown Prosecution Service, to decide whether to press charges in up to 80% of cases, with some people being charged by post.
The police should be “chasing criminals not chasing targets,” said Mrs May.
The home secretary said the reforms would “send a clear signal that the professional judgment of individual officers is valued and it is expected”.
“We’ve stopped the weary cycle of over-reaction, inquiries, blame, legislation, codes and guidance and blanket remedial training for all,” she said.
“We will take a different approach – we will trust the police.”
The move to charge thousands of people by a letter would see bailed suspects sent formal charges through the post, instead of being asked to attend police stations.
It is hoped the approach could save up to 40,000 police hours annually.
However, the home secretary said targets and guidance which are scrapped nationally should not be replaced by local versions in each of the 43 forces.
“It will be key for the reforms I have outlined to be carried through by individual forces and individual officers at the local level.
“The potential rewards for the police are enormous, but they must make them happen,” Mrs May said.
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Many of the insurgents killed over the weekend had escaped from a central jail just weeks beforehand
One of the most audacious raids by the Taliban in recent months paralysed the southern city of Kandahar over the weekend, as militants launched a co-ordinated assault on the very heart of government there.
Dozens of insurgents were involved as they positioned vehicles packed with explosives across the city and fought street battles with security forces.
Kandahar is no stranger to violence. But the frequency of attacks in the past few weeks has shocked even the most pessimistic officials in the Afghan administration.
“Forget humans, even the birds have fled the city,” one shopkeeper in Kandahar’s Chowke Madad district said.
The attack comes as a major blow and an embarrassment to the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai less than two weeks after hundreds of Taliban, among them field commanders, managed to escape from Kandahar’s main prison.
“My force has paid in blood to capture these men. Now that they are out, this will have an impact on Kandahar’s security”
Khan Mohamamd Mujahid Kandahar police chief
A senior Kandahar police official blamed the latest attacks on last month’s escape.
The official, who did not want to be named, told the BBC: “If Taliban field commanders – some of them the very backbone of the insurgency – had not escaped from the prison, attacks like this would not have occurred.”
Many believe the complex nature of the Taliban assault was due to the presence of these experienced fighters. Most of the insurgents killed in this incident were in fact those who had escaped from the jail.
Nato says up to 60 militants took part in the attack. The Taliban puts the number at 100. Twenty-five of them were killed as well as three civilians and two Afghan security personnel. Many other people were left injured.
The Taliban has warned of attacks to avenge the death of Osama Bin Laden, but it says the Kandahar raid was not connected to the al-Qaeda leader’s death – a point disputed by President Karzai.
No matter what the motivation, life has ground to a halt in Kandahar, the commercial hub of southern Afghanistan and the home province of both Mr Karzai and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
The streets are empty and the shops are shut. With people too afraid to go out, it raises yet more questions over the security situation ahead of a fighting season.
Less than two weeks, ago I met the acting police chief of Kandahar, Sher Shah Yousafzai. He predicted it all.
Police were positioned in government buildings across the city during the two-day assault
“The past 17 days were the worst in 30 years of my police service,” Mr Yousafzai said when I met him shortly after the prison break in late April.
He explained how the authorities and civilians were trying to come to grips with a chaotic situation throughout April. Taliban fighters had carried out a string of bomb attacks, assassinations and suicide attacks in the city.
Then on 15 April, a suicide attacker, dressed as a policeman, entered the police headquarters in the city and detonated explosives attached to his body. That attack killed the police chief of Kandahar and Mr Yousafzai’s boss, Khan Mohammed Mujahid.
Mr Mujahid’s loss was a big blow to the war on the Taliban and the authorities were still in mourning when the Taliban freed 488 of their fighters in the prison break shortly afterwards.
“We have many challenges ahead of us this summer,” Mr Yousufzai said.
“Number one is the escape of 106 Taliban commanders. My force has paid in blood to capture these men. Now that they are out, this will have an impact on Kandahar’s security.”
One official in Afghanistan’s spy agency told me that some of those who escaped had been responsible for roadside bombs, suicide attacks and the supply of weapons to the Taliban.
People in the city say Kandahar has become a war zone.
“As soon as it gets dark, there is no life in Kandahar city,” says Haji Malik, a secondary school teacher. “Shops and businesses close. The only thing you see are Afghan and international forces patrolling the city.”
“There is no life for common people here,” said another, a local tribal elder.
“As soon as it gets dark, there is no life in Kandahar city”
Haji Malikl Teacher
Back in the city, I met a senior officer working with the country’s spy agency. He said he was frustrated that the prison break took place despite alerts issued by them. The official asked one of his aides to bring a file.
The bulky file contained dozens of NDS reports warning the prison directorate of Taliban’s plan to launch an assault on the prison.
”Credible intelligence from our operatives in the field and our sources indicate the enemy wants to attack the prison, please review your security inside and outside of the prison,” one of the reports said.
The obvious question was what does this mean for the security of the province ahead of the summer?
”This is a disaster,” the NDS officer said. “We lost dozens of our officers, police, army and international forces in trying to capture these men. They are the backbone of Taliban insurgency.
“But there is no point in moaning now when the genie is out of the bottle.”
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