Category: news

Renault has apologised to three executives it sacked over spying allegations after French prosecutors found no evidence against them.

The three were sacked in January amid claims they were involved in passing Renault secrets to a third party.

Police were investigating alleged Swiss bank accounts linked to the executives.

The affair has become an embarrassment for Renault, which now believes it may have been hoaxed into thinking the executives had leaked information.

Following a board meeting on Monday, Renault issued a statement saying the three men had been “wrongly accused”.

Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Renault and Nissan, said he would meet the executives as soon as possible and “make reparations” after it was reported that the source of spying allegations may have been a fraudster.

The case against the men – who always vigorously denied wrong-doing – began to unravel last week with a string of French media reports that the police had found no evidence.

Renault originally dismissed the three men after claiming that secret technology for a new “green” car had been passed to a company or foreign power.

There was a flurry of reports suggesting a Chinese company was involved – sparking an angry denial from Beijing.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Physicist Professor Brian Cox has said the BBC made a mistake by agreeing to turn down the music volume for his scientific series Wonders of the Universe.

The BBC agreed to lower the sound after receiving 118 complaints about the background music on the first episode being too loud and/or intrusive.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Start the Week, Cox said he thought it was an error.

“We can sometimes be too responsive to the minority of people that complain.”

He added: “It should be a cinematic experience – it’s a piece of film on television, not a lecture.”

In the BBC Two series, Cox reveals how the most fundamental scientific principles and laws explain the story of the universe and humanity. Each show in this series has been watched by more than 3m people.

The four-part series tackles life’s big issues, such as what we are and where we come from, as well as how gravity sculpts the entire universe.

Cox began his career as a rock star, when his band Dare signed a deal with A&M records in 1986. Dare recorded two albums and toured with Jimmy Page, Gary Moore and Europe before breaking up in 1992.

Cox then joined D’Ream, whose song Things Can Only Get Better was famously used by Tony Blair as the Labour Party election song in 1997.

Cox studied at Manchester University while he was in the band, and in 2009, he became a professor of particle physics at the same university.

He has since gone on to become a radio and TV presenter. His credits include BBC Two’s Stargazing and Wonders of the Solar System.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

How Gaddafi might win against rebels

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Warren Buffett’s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway has announced what it has described as one of the largest deals in its history.

It is buying chemicals company Lubrizol for $9bn (£5.6bn) in cash, the equivalent of 28% above its latest market valuation.

Fast-growing Lubrizol saw its net income rise by 46% last year to $749m.

Mr Buffett told shareholders this month that Berkshire expected to use its cash pile to buy more companies.

“We will need both good performance from our current businesses and more major acquisitions,” said Mr Buffett in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders.

“We’re prepared. Our elephant gun has been reloaded, and my trigger finger is itchy.”

Lubrizol, which had revenues of $5.4bn last year, makes chemical products used in engine oils as well as the plastics and pharmaceuticals industries.

Mr Buffett described the firm as the sort “we love to partner”.

Lubrizol chief executive James Hambrick said the deal was “a clear endorsement of the growth and diversification success” his company had achieved.

Lubrizol’s shares jumped to a record price of $134 in early trading in New York, just below the offer price of $135 per share. On Friday its shares had closed at $105.44.

The deal is still subject to gaining the approval of Lubrizol shareholders, but is expected to be completed in the third quarter of the year.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Events are taking place in the East Ayrshire village of Fenwick to mark its unique place in the history of the world wide co-operative movement.

Exactly 250 years ago, 16 Fenwick weavers signed a document, promising to support one another, work honestly, and charge fair prices.

Later they went on to bulk-buy food and sell it at a discount to members.

The group also founded a credit union, a lending library and an emigration society to help villagers move abroad.

Many historians have dated the formation of the co-op movement to the middle of the 19th Century, in Rochdale.

But now research by John Smith and John McFadzean, who live in Fenwick, has established the village’s claim as the world’s first fully recorded co-operative with all records and original charter intact.

Mr McFadzean told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “The [weavers] realised that they were facing financial ruin.

“Working independently, selling their goods to the merchants, and getting bartered down and bartered down, there was no profit left in their sales.

“So they banded themselves together, so they could actually fix a price, and buy stuff in in bulk.

“Then they used the money they made to look after the poor, and to expand the whole co-operative venture throughout the village.”

But Mr Smith said when the 16 original Fenwick Weavers gathered in the parish church to secretly sign their charter, they can’t have guessed where their initiative would end up.

“It started off as a local enterprise to help the people of the village, and to help the weavers themselves,” he said.

“But when you look into the history you can see how it developed locally after that, and you see other co-operatives springing up in the area.

“You can see that the principle was being taken to other places, where they thought it was a good idea, so they copied the example that was set here in Fenwick.”

As part of the 250th anniversary celebrations, guests at an event at the church have been asked to sign a copy of the Weavers’ charter.

Mr McFadzean said the modern co-operative movement went far beyond the supermarkets on British high streets.

“It’s a world-wide financial, and economic business model,” he said.

“It takes in farming, manufacturing, worker-owned co-operatives all round the world.

“Last year co-operatives traded in the trillions [of pounds]. The total was equivalent to the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of a country like Canada.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Preview followed by live coverage of Tuesday’s game between Manchester United and Marseille in the Champions League.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Children are using their experience of computer games and reality TV shows to give traditional playground games a modern twist, a study suggests.

Researchers found aspects of programmes like the Jeremy Kyle Show and Britain’s Got Talent included in children’s imaginative play.

Far from destroying their imagination, new technologies help to enrich it, the team from London and Sheffield says.

They observed play at two school playgrounds over two years.

They also drew on archived recordings of children playing made by play researchers in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

The study, led by London’s Institute of Education, said: “Ever since children’s games, songs, rhymes, rituals and objects of play were first documented in the mid-19th Century, there have been concerns over their vulnerability to a succession of perceived threats.

“They have regularly featured as symptoms of what adults imagine as the innocence of childhood, and its supposed fragility.

“In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, perceptions of the disappearance of children’s games led to muscular efforts to revive them, including the teaching to children of the songs and games supposedly lost.

“Research since then has has established beyond doubt, however, that this culture is much more robust than is often supposed.”

It added: “We have found singing games, clapping games, counting-out games, chasing games, skipping games, games with playthings, and so on.

“At the same time, it is clear that some games have declined – we found no evidence of marbles, conkers or French skipping, for example, and limited evidence of hopscotch.”

Some schools ban marbles and playing conkers from school playgrounds for health and safety reasons.

Professor Jackie Marsh, childhood expert at the University of Sheffield, said: “A lot of people talk about the demise of play but our project has found that is just not true.

“In fact, in some ways the scope for play now is wider. Children are drawing from computer games and online worlds for their games. Often people say, ‘isn’t that just copying?’ but children are highly inventive.

“Children are living in a media age and we found them playing with reality TV shows like Big Brother, Jeremy Kyle and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”

She said that they drew on programmes like Jeremy Kyle to work through issues that were relevant to them in their home surroundings, such as teenage pregnancy and drug misuse.

Play involving characters from computer games and virtual worlds featured combat scenarios and the use of fantasy weapons, she said.

But there should not be anything worrying in this, because children have always engaged in play fighting as a way of understanding the violence they see around them either in real life or on television.

Some researchers see rough and tumble play as a key part of children’s development, she added.

Today’s children have to manage in an increasingly complex world of technology and information, she said.

“The playground provides an important space for children to engage with how their culture is changing in a digital age,”

The findings of the two-year project will be unveiled at the British Library on Tuesday, March 15.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

The pathologist criticised over the death of a man at the G20 protests has been found guilty of 29 counts of misconduct and “deficient professional performance” over a separate case.

Dr Freddy Patel failed to properly examine a woman’s body in 2002, the General Medical Council (GMC) found.

It said he acted dishonestly and in a way likely to tarnish his profession.

Last year Dr Patel was suspended for three months for sub-standard work in three other cases.

And his decision that newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson had died from natural causes at the G20 demonstration was contradicted by another post-mortem examination which blamed abdominal bleeding.

The latest allegations to be upheld related to Dr Patel’s handling of a post-mortem examination on 31-year-old Sally White.

She was murdered by Anthony Hardy, who became known as the Camden Ripper.

Hardy was given three life sentences in 2003 for killing her and two other women.

Miss White’s naked body was found in Hardy’s flat in Camden, north London.

There were blood stains on her clothes and the bed, as well as the wall of the room in which she was found.

Dr Patel said injuries including gashes to her liver and bite marks could all have come from natural causes and there were no signs she was assaulted.

But the GMC decided 29 allegations of misconduct against him could be proved.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

A man, believed to be 20 years old, has been shot in the legs in Strabane.

It was discovered in the Springhill Park area at about 2015 GMT on Sunday.

A community worker, Paul Gallagher, said, “I got a call and went over to the estate and saw the young fellow with bullet wounds to the leg. He had been taken into the estate in a car and shot twice in the legs.”

The man is in a stable condition in hospital.

Mr Gallagher said some children were in the area after the shooting and had to be moved on.

“It was just a sad sight. There was some kids around. They had to be moved on. They saw the young fellow lying on the ground. It was pouring with rain. Some of the neighbours came over and wrapped him in a blanket until the ambulance came.”

He also saw the man’s father, who had been searching for his son before finding him shot.

There is speculation that the shooting was carried out by the vigilante group, RAAD (Republican Action Against Drugs).

“From a community aspect I would like to say vigilantism won’t work. It’s never worked in the past and it won’t work now.

“What we need to do is to is engage in some dialogue with these people to see if we can get this stopped.”

The police have appealed for information.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Niger opposition leader Mahamadou Issoufou won Saturday’s presidential run-off with nearly 58% of the vote, the election commission has announced.

Mr Issoufou had been defeated in two previous polls by former President Mamadou Tandja, who was ousted by the military a year ago.

The presidential candidate for Mr Tandja’s MNSD party, ex-premier Seini Oumarou, received about 42% of ballots.

The election is intended to return Niger to civilian rule.

Social Democratic Party leader Mr Issoufou, 59, was the favourite going into the run-off, having led the first round of voting in January.

The army, which has pledged to step down by April, said before the ballot that it was not backing either candidate.

Mr Tandja spent 10 years in power before being overthrown in a military coup in February last year when he tried to overstay his legal term limit.

The former president is currently in prison facing charges of corruption.

General Salou Djibo, who has led the junta since its largely popular coup, hailed Saturday’s peaceful vote as an example to the rest of Africa.

Turnout was about 48%.

Niger, a largely desert nation in West Africa, has reserves of uranium and has attracted billions of dollars of investment.

It remains one of the world’s poorest nations, and has witnessed a number of coups since independence from France in 1960.

Al-Qaeda has been blamed for a spate of kidnappings and killings of Westerners in the region in recent years.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Soon the only way to get at Twitter might be through “official” software produced by the company itself.

The firm has angered many software developers by telling them to stop making “clients” that let users write, read and respond to Tweets.

The move is widely seen as an attempt by Twitter to take control of the service to boost ad revenues and improve commercialisation.

Developers responded quickly, with one calling the announcement “appalling”.

In a blog post, Twitter’s coding chief Ryan Sarver said that the service’s rapid growth had sharpened demand for a “consistent” way to use it.

Mr Sarver, head of platform and API at Twitter, used the company’s software development discussion board to outline its changing policy.

In it, he said, Twitter’s growth in the last year from 48 million to 140 million Tweets per day had forced it to think about how users get at the service.

Before now, many people have spurned the official Twitter application or client in favour of alternatives such as TweetDeck, Seesmic, Echofon, HootSuite and others.

In the blog post, Mr Sarver posed the question of whether building Twitter clients was going to continue to be a good business to be in.

“The answer is no”, he wrote.

While existing makers of clients should continue to serve their users, Mr Sarver said others should stop creating software that replicated the official experience of Twitter.

Instead, he said, they should put their efforts into applications and programs that, for example, mine Twitter streams to help with brand management, or into novel services such as FourSquare which use the information in Tweets for other ends.

He indicated that life for existing client makers could get more difficult as Twitter steps up efforts to police third-party software. In the past month, Twitter cut off Ubermedia, which owns many Twitter clients, from its service for violating its terms of use.

Mr Sarver justified the policy change by saying that Twitter already had de facto control of the way people see the service as 90% of its users got at it through official applications.

He warned that the increasing number of clients was creating inconsistent ways to send and read Tweets that would inevitably lead to user confusion.

“We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere,” wrote Mr Sarver.

Response to the announcement was swift, with many developers challenging Mr Sarver’s characterisation of the way Twitter is used and worrying about the monoculture it could encourage.

Commenting on the blog post, Eric Mill said all developers would be “walking on eggshells” as they constantly tried to avoid offending Twitter’s demands on how the service should be used.

He said it was “chilling” for Twitter to declare that only certain kinds of innovation were welcome.

Adam Green said that Twitter needed to recognise what externally developed clients added to the service.

“They give us raw materials, we add value to them. We all benefit,” he wrote.

Duane Rolands summed up Mr Sarver’s post by paraphrasing it as: “Thanks for getting so many people interested in Twitter. Now get lost.”

“This is appalling,” he wrote.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.