The annual parade through Glasgow attracts thousands of marchers
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Police and the Orange Order have warned people to leave the “booze and bigotry” behind, ahead of the Order’s annual march through Glasgow later.
About 8,000 people from 182 lodges are expected to take part in the parade.
The Order will deploy specially trained stewards to free up police officers to tackle any disorder, street drinking or sectarian behaviour.
Motorists, residents, businesses and shoppers have been warned to expect delays in and around the city centre.
The Order has also agreed to an earlier finish, at 1330 BST, to its traditional Glasgow Green rally at the end of the event.
This will mean the entire march is covered by one police shift.
Ch Supt Bernard Higgins who is in charge of policing the parade said his officers would take a “zero tolerance approach” to any disorder or sectarianism from those who follow the march.
He said: “Our priority is to make sure the parade is peacefully facilitated with the safety of those taking part, the general public and my officers being paramount.
“Don’t bring booze and don’t behave like a bigot or you could find yourself spending the rest of the weekend in a cell.”
Chf Supt Bernard Higgins Strathclyde Police
“We will not tolerate anti-sectarian behaviour of any kind. Commit sectarian offences and you will be arrested.
“Don’t bring alcohol as again my officers will seize it from you and you will be given a fixed penalty fine for public drinking. This kind of behaviour is totally unacceptable and only causes fear and alarm to innocent people enjoying time in the city centre.”
Strathclyde Police has worked closely with the Grand Orange Lodge and Glasgow City Council to agree a route for the march.
Ch Supt Higgins added: “Our message is by all means come to support the parade but don’t bring booze and don’t behave like a bigot or you could find yourself spending the rest of the weekend in a cell.”
Mr Henry Dunbar, Grand Master of the Orange Order, said: “I call upon every member of the Order to enjoy the day with the utmost decorum.
“I also have a message to our more boisterous supporters: you are welcome, but please enjoy the music, colour and excitement of the march responsibly – and leave the booze at home.”
People driving in and around the city centre while the march is taking place have been advised to leave extra time for their journey or consider alternative routes for the duration of the marches.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Student numbers should not be affected by any mergers, says university leaders
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University leaders in Wales have signalled they will cooperate with proposals to halve the number of Welsh institutions.
Higher Education Wales (HEW), which represents 12 universities, has agreed they need “fewer but stronger”.
But HEW said any mergers should be for the particular university governing bodies to decide.
The Welsh Government has welcomed HEW’s “positive statement”.
Professor Noel Lloyd, chair of Higher Education Wales and vice chancellor of Aberystwyth University, told BBC Wales HE institutions had to become as efficient as possible.
“We have this hugely competitive environment and we have to be as a sector as strong as possible to deliver to our utmost abilility in Wales,” he said.
“That means taking a strongly strategic approach to future development.”
Last December Education Minister Leighton Andrews warned universities that they must “adapt or die”.
His comments came after an assembly government sponsored body, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW), said the number of institutions should be reduced to make the sector sustainable.
HEFCW, which is responsible for administering funds from the Welsh Government for higher education institutions, said by 2013 distribution should reflect regional needs with no more than two institutions in each region.
“This is clearly a significant statement of intent from the body representing Wales’ university leaders”
Professor Sir Steve Smith President, Universities UK
Wales had 15 higher education institutions in 2000, including the Open University in Wales.
Following an alliance between the University of Glamorgan and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the merger of the Wales College of Medicine and Cardiff University, and the merger between Trinity University College, Carmarthen and University of Wales, Lampeter, it currently has 12.
On Friday, HEW committee members agreed the “challenges facing higher education are of an unprecedented nature” and said “we have to move fast in order to meet these challenges”.
They said: “In this changed environment we are working with the approach of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Welsh Government on the size and shape of the university sector.”
Universities UK, the representative body for universities across the UK, welcomed “the leadership being shown by colleagues in Wales”.
President Professor Sir Steve Smith said: “The direction of travel set out in this statement is unmistakable.
“This is clearly a significant statement of intent from the body representing Wales’ university leaders.”
A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “We welcome HEW’s positive statement, their recognition of the need for fewer, stronger and more successful universities and their commitment to reconfiguration for the benefit of the Welsh higher education sector.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
British Apache helicopters were involved in the raid in western Libya
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British Apache helicopters targeted a military base being used by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.
The raid, on Friday night, targeted the al Mayah military camp, near Az Zawiyah, west of the Libyan capital Tripoli.
It came as Col Gaddafi threatened to carry out attacks against civilians in Europe unless Nato halts airstrikes.
Nato is enforcing a UN resolution to protect civilians from Gaddafi forces.
In a statement, the Nato-led international coalition said its forces had destroyed more than 50 military targets in the west of Libya this week.
MoD spokesman Major General Nick Pope said Apaches from the Army Air Corps were used in the latest raid.
“The camp has been used by regime forces as a base from which to terrorise the local population,” said Maj Gen Pope.
“In a single mission before midnight, UK Apaches used Hellfire missiles and cannons to destroy or disable a command and control vehicle, a bunker firing position and three main battle tanks.”
It followed raids on Thursday night in which RAF Typhoon and Tornado aircraft destroyed ammunition storage facilities near the central Libyan town of Waddan.
They also hit a militarised 4×4 in the al Khums area, near Tripoli.
On Friday, Col Gaddafi threatened to attack Europe in revenge for Nato’s operations in Libya.
He said Libya would target European “homes, offices, families” unless Nato stopped its campaign.
He spoke via an audio message broadcast to tens of thousands of supporters gathered in a central Tripoli square.
“We can decide to treat you in a similar way. If we decide to, we are able to move to Europe like locusts, like bees,” Col Gaddafi said.
“We advise you to retreat before you are dealt a disaster.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged the Libyan leader to resign.
“Gaddafi should put the well-being and the interests of his own people first and he should step down from power,” Mrs Clinton said in Spain.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn enjoys his first night of freedom in New York
The case is not over. There will be no rush to judgment. The process will go on.
These were the words of Judge Michael Obus in New York as he freed Dominique Strauss-Kahn from house arrest.
The former IMF chief was still charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid, said District Attorney Cyrus Vance, and the investigation would continue.
So how did a case that Mr Vance’s prosecutors had so much confidence in winning subside to a point where the maid’s lawyer accused him of “laying the foundation to dismiss” it?
The lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, said: “We believe that he’s afraid that he’s going to lose this high-profile case.”
In the days after 14 May, when Mr Strauss-Kahn was arrested at John F Kennedy airport after boarding a flight to Paris, prosecutors and police strongly defended the maid’s credibility, saying her story was consistent.
The prosecution fought an attempt to grant Mr Strauss-Kahn any bail, citing the severity of the charges and that his “unusual haste” in leaving the alleged crime scene showed he was a flight risk.
It lost the argument and, on May 20, he was granted bail, albeit under severe restrictions.
“She is going to tell you what Dominique Strauss-Kahn did to her. The victim will stand before you”
Kenneth Thompson Maid’s lawyer
Information continued to leak out in the US media, including reports that DNA found on the clothes of the maid matched Mr Strauss-Kahn.
The leaks annoyed the defence team, which had kept its case largely under wraps.
Mr Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, had merely said: “The forensic evidence, we believe, will not be consistent with a forcible encounter.”
However, on 25 May, a letter from Mr Brafman to the prosecution suggested the defence team had not been idle in its own investigations. It had employed at least two sets of investigators to look into the maid’s background in the US and her country of origin, Guinea.
“We could now release substantial information that, in our view, would seriously undermine the quality of this prosecution and gravely undermine the credibility of the complainant,” Mr Brafman wrote.
The prosecution wrote back, saying that it trusted Mr Brafman would forward any such information immediately.
The maid changed her story about the aftermath of the alleged attack
It is not yet known whether the defence or the prosecution, or a combination of both, created the doubts of credibility in the maid that led law enforcement officials to tell the New York Times on 30 June that the accuser had repeatedly lied and the case was in trouble.
On the same day, Mr Vance wrote to the defence team, outlining a number of untruths the prosecution had now attributed to the maid.
They fell into two main areas – the maid’s asylum application and her story of what happened after the alleged assault at the Sofitel, where she worked.
Mr Vance said she had admitted that her story – submitted “under penalty of perjury” – of mistreatment, abuse, persecution and gang-rape in Guinea had been false.
She accepted it had been fabricated with the help of a man who had supplied a cassette of facts that she had memorised.
Relating to the alleged assault in New York, Mr Vance said the maid had originally claimed she had fled to a hallway on the 28th floor and waited for Mr Strauss-Kahn to leave before reporting the incident.
This was her Grand Jury testimony which she now admitted was false, he wrote. She instead went to clean another room and then went back to clean Mr Strauss-Kahn’s suite 2806.
The New York Times has gone further, quoting law enforcement officials and lawyer statements as showing there had been a six-week deterioration of credibility.
The paper said that “sit-downs with prosecutors became tense, even angry. Initially composed, she later collapsed in tears and got down on the floor during questioning”.
The Times also points to another area which is not covered in Mr Vance’s letter.
The maid’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, accused the district attorney of preparing for dismissal
This was a phone call the maid allegedly made to a man in an Arizona jail just a day after the alleged sexual assault in which, the Times quotes a law enforcement official as reporting, she said: “Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing.”
At the time, one of her lawyers, Jeffrey Shapiro, said the maid had found out Mr Strauss-Kahn’s identity a day after the alleged assault when a friend had called her.
He said: “When she found out this encounter was with a man of great power and wealth she feared not only for herself but more importantly for her daughter.”
The timings of any of the alleged calls remains unclear.
There are also unconfirmed reports of tens of thousands of dollars being paid into the woman’s bank account over the past two years.
So where does this leave the case?
There had been indications the defence would point to a consensual act.
In sexual assault and rape cases, where there are often no other witnesses, the credibility of the two parties can become crucial, so the defence clearly seems to have been strengthened.
However, many cases have still been successfully prosecuted with compromised complainants.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyprus Vance vows to pursue the investigation
And judging by the comments of the maid’s lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, she still intends to pursue the case vigorously.
He is likely to focus on the alleged act itself, which he says was “a violent sexual assault” in which Mr Strauss-Kahn bruised the maid’s body and threw her to the floor.
“She has never once changed a single thing about that account. The district attorney knows that,” Mr Thompson said. “The only defence Dominique Strauss-Kahn has is that this sexual encounter was consensual. That is a lie.”
And although she has admitted fabricating evidence on her asylum claim, she would certainly not be the first person desperate enough to get to the United States to do so.
Her team may also point to the fact that the shame and humiliation of rape victims often leads them to delayed or confused reporting of the aftermath.
The defence may say her current story opens up the possibility she doctored the scene or used the time to plan a particular course of action.
One possibility is the prosecution could drop the three felony charges in a plea bargain in which the defence accepts the four lesser misdemeanour charges – and a maximum one year in jail.
But most analysts believe the defence is now committed to full acquittal.
As for the maid, Mr Thompson says: “She is going to tell you what Dominique Strauss-Kahn did to her. The victim will stand before you.”
But will she be believed?
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
