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Australia captain Ricky Ponting is reprimanded for damaging a television set in the dressing room after being dismissed against Zimbabwe.
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The grey border hugs the German coast – but Germans do not see it that way Emden is a town in north-west Germany but its harbour now belongs to the Netherlands – at least according to the internet map service Google Maps.
Emden officials complained about the error, but Google Maps still shows the Dutch border winding into the harbour.
A Google spokesman quoted by Deutsche Welle news said a continuing border dispute may be to blame.
Both countries agree that the border runs through the Ems-Dollart estuary, but its exact location is disputed.
Germany says the border runs close to the dykes on the Dutch side, while the Netherlands puts it further out from the Dutch shore.
The dispute has not disrupted peaceful shipping traffic through the estuary.
Last year Google Maps was embroiled in a fierce border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Costa Rica complained that the website had fuelled the row by showing an island to be on the Nicaraguan side of the border.
Google admitted making an error and revised its map.
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The king was greeted by hundreds of well-wishers on his arrival at Riyadh airport Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has announced increased benefits for his citizens, as he returned after months abroad getting medical treatment.
There will be extra funds for housing, studying abroad and social security, according to state television.
King Abdullah has been away from the country for three months, during which time mass protests have changed the political landscape of the Middle East.
There have been few demonstrations in Saudi Arabia.
Hundreds of men in white robes performed a traditional sword dance at Riyadh airport as the king’s plane touched down.
He disembarked and queues of people waited to personally greet him.
The streets of the city had already been decorated with welcome banners and national flags.
The 86-year-old left for New York on 22 November and had two operations in New York to repair spinal vertebrae and a herniated disc.
After a period of convalescence at his New York home, the king flew to Morocco on 22 January and had been recuperating there since.
By that time, Tunisia’s president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali had become the first leader in the region to be ousted after weeks of mass protests – and he had fled to Saudi Arabia.
Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak was the next to go.
King Abdullah’s health has been the subject of intense speculation, especially since the men tipped to succeed him are also elderly.
His half-brother Crown Prince Sultan – who is in his eighties and has been in poor health – has been in charge in his absence.
The monarch’s imminent return was welcomed by the Saudi media.
“The king is the only pillar of stability in the region now,” read the editorial in the English-language daily Arab News. “He is the assurance of orderly progress… in the Arab world as a whole.”
Saudi television reported that Bahrain’s King Hamad was also flying into Riyadh on Wednesday.
The small state on Saudi Arabia’s eastern border has seen more than a week of protests and the Bahraini authorities were criticised internationally for their initial crackdown on demonstrators.
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Some 1.5m students take AQA exams each year Thirteen A-level students missed out on their first choice of university or course last September because of a marking error by exam board AQA.
An inquiry by the exams regulator, Ofqual, found 622 grades had to be changed as a result of the blunder.
In total, 146 A-level, 289 AS-level and 187 GCSE grades were changed after new on-screen marking systems meant some answers went unmarked.
AQA has said it regrets the errors and has moved to prevent future problems.
Around 1.5 million candidates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland sit AQA exams each year.
The Ofqual report said: “AQA could have identified the failure earlier if more effective risk assessment and arrangements for handling and reporting problems concerning the onscreen marking of scripts had been in place.”
It said the exam board “did not properly consider or monitor the risks” associated with extending the use of on-screen marking for separate answer booklets.
“Had more effective risk assessment taken place, AQA would have been more alert to the potential problems and had the opportunity to put in place suitable contingency arrangements to ensure marks were accurate before publication,” it concluded.
Chief executive of Ofqual Isabel Nisbet said: “The failings by AQA identified by this inquiry are very disappointing, especially as they led to some candidates missing out on their first choice of university or course.
“Factors that contributed to the marking error included limited piloting of the new on-screen marking system, a lack of effective risk assessments and deficiencies in the role and training of examiners on the new system.”
AQA has conducted and published its own internal inquiry into the errors.
The board said it had taken steps to learn from the mistakes made and had implemented an action plan to prevent such errors occuring again.
AQA’s chief cxecutive, Andrew Hall, said: “We deeply regret the original marking issue and are determined to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
“We know where we went wrong, and have taken all necessary steps to put it right.”
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Protesters in Sanaa say government supporters fired live rounds at them on Tuesday night Seven members of parliament belonging to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ruling GPC party have resigned.
They said the move was in protest at violence used to quell demonstrations calling for the president to quit.
At least one person was killed late on Tuesday in the capital Sanaa as supporters of President Saleh tried to break up a protest near the university.
Thousands of protesters have again rallied at a square near the university to call for the president to resign.
The protesters say government supporters fired live rounds at them on Tuesday night.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh in power since 1978Population 24.3m; land area 536,869 sq kmThe population has a median age of 17.9, and a literacy rate of 61%Youth unemployment is 15%Gross national income per head is $1,060 (World Bank 2009)Protests: Country-by-country
“The people must have the right to demonstrate peacefully,” Abdulaziz Jubari, one of the members of parliament who resigned, told Reuters news agency.
Mr Saleh has said he would step down after national elections in 2013 but that has not been enough for the protesters.
Yemen is one of a number of countries from the Gulf to North Africa that have seen an increase in unrest since uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia unseated the presidents there.
Thousands of people have turned out for regular demonstrations in cities including Sanaa, Aden, Taiz and elsewhere, calling for corruption and unemployment to be tackled and demanding the president steps down.
The protests have often been met by riot police firing teargas and rubber bullets or supporters of President Saleh armed with knives and batons.
The president has lasted in power for 32 years, and has faced a separatist movement in the south, a branch of al-Qaeda, and a periodic conflict with Shia tribes in the north.
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Chaytor changed his plea to guilty shortly before his trial was due to start Former Labour MP David Chaytor has launched a bid to challenge his jail sentence for fiddling his expenses.
The former MP for Bury North was sentenced to 18 months’ jail in January, after admitting fraudulently claiming more than £20,000 in expenses.
He is currently serving the sentence at Wandsworth Prison, south London.
The Court of Appeal will consider his application on 22 March – if he is granted leave to appeal four judges will hear the full challenge.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Many foreigners are now trying to get out of Libya The Indian government has said that it is preparing for a “mammoth operation” involving planes and ships to evacuate its nationals from Libya.
Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said Delhi was in the process of obtaining permission from Libya for its aircraft to land in the country.
The Bangladeshi government has also restated its plans to repatriate 50,000 mostly manual labourers in Libya.
The Pakistani embassy in Libya says that 18,000 Pakistanis there are safe.
“We have not received any report regarding untoward incidents against Pakistanis. We have no consulate or a commercial section in [the eastern city of] Benghazi but we are in contact with Pakistani people living there and according to them they are safe,” Pakistan’s acting ambassador to Libya, Ali Javed, told the BBC.
“So far we have not received any reports about injuries or deaths of Pakistanis,” he said.
The Nepalese embassy in Libya meanwhile says that it is continuing with efforts to evacuate immediately about 600 Nepali migrant workers stranded in the city of Darnah.
It says that plans have been initiated to bring the workers 800km (497 miles) from Darnah to Cairo after the South Korean construction company which employs them said that it was unable to arrange for their evacuation because of the turmoil in Libya.
“We will rescue the workers by Thursday,” First Secretary Tirtha Aryal said in Kathmandu. “We have already initiated a process to obtain legal permission from the Egyptian authorities to rescue our citizens.”
There are about 2,000 Nepali labourers in Libya.
Most Bangladeshis in Libya work in construction Of some 18,000 Indians in Libya, about 3,000 are reported to be in Benghazi working for car companies and hospitals.
Ms Rao said an Indian passenger ship was on standby in the Red Sea which could carry 1,000 people to safety.
The Indian foreign ministry on Wednesday condemned the violence, saying that it gave cause for “serious concern”.
“The government [of India] deplores the use of force which is totally unacceptable and must not be resorted to,” it said.
The Bangladeshi government says it will do “everything it can, whatever it takes, to ensure the safety and security of our workers, but the situation is very, very volatile”.
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By Richard Black
Healthy coral reefs provide a living for about 275 million people, with many more dependent on them Three-quarters of the world’s coral reefs are at risk due to overfishing, pollution, climate change and other factors, says a major new assessment.
Reefs at Risk Revisited collates the work of hundreds of scientists and took three years to compile.
The biggest threat is exploitative fishing, the researchers say, though most reefs will be feeling the impact of climate change within 20 years.
But, they say, there are measures that can be taken to protect at least some.
“If we don’t learn from these successes then I think that in 50 years’ time, most reefs will be gone”
Dr Mark Spalding The Nature Conservancy
The report is compiled by a group of more than 20 research and conservation organisations, led by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington DC.
“This report serves as a wake-up call for policymakers, business leaders, ocean managers, and others about the urgent need for greater protection for coral reefs,” said Jane Lubchenco, head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa).
“Local and global threats, including climate change, are already having significant impacts on coral reefs, putting the future of these beautiful and valuable ecosystems at risk.”
The report revisits some of the territory explored in the original Reefs at Risk project, published in 1998, but in much greater detail.
Over the 13 years intervening, the area at risk of destruction has increased by nearly a third.
The main reason for that change has been a massive increase in damage from exploitative fishing, particularly in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Altogether, more than half of the world’s reefs are threatened by the ways in which fishermen use them.
Tackling issues such as fishing and pollution can keep reefs healthy, the report says – for now These range from simply catching more than nature can replace to the use of extremely damaging fishing methods such as dynamiting fish to stun or kill them – which also blasts coral formations to smithereens.
Other major threats are pollution carried in rivers, coastal development, and climate change.
If climate projections turn into reality, then by 2030 roughly half of the world’s reefs will experience bleaching in most years – rising to 95% during the 2050s.
Coral polyps – the tiny reef-building creatures – live in partnership with algae that provide nutrition and give corals their colour.
When the water gets too hot, the algae are expelled and the coral turns white.
Although reefs can recover, the more often it happens, the more likely they are simply to die.
In addition, the slow decrease in the pH of seawater as it absorbs more carbon dioxide – usually known as ocean acidification – will compromise coral’s capacity to form the hard structures it needs.
“Reefs are already being hit by global warming,” said Mark Spalding, senior marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy.
“They are the canaries in the coal mine, super-sensitive to warm summer temperatures, such that even a small background induces bleaching.
“Into the future, I suspect warming and acidification will become the major threats, but as we say again and again, no threats act in isolation; often it’s the combination that really hurts,” he told BBC News.
Regionally, southeast Asia is the worst affected region, with 95% of reefs on the threatened list.
But in terms of the impact on human society, threat is only part of the equation.
The researchers reasoned that societies most affected by reef degradation would be those where the threats are high, where a big proportion of the population depends on reefs for their livelihood, and where people’s capacity to adapt is low.
Combining these criteria, the countries highest on the risk register are Comoros, Fiji, Haiti, Indonesia, Kiribati, Philippines, Tanzania and Vanuatu.
Against this bleak backdrop, the researchers have been at pains to emphasise that there are things that can be done to reduce the damage.
“There are reasons for hope,” said Lauretta Burke, senior associate at WRI and a lead author of the report.
“Reefs are resilient; and by reducing the local pressures, we can help buy time to find solutions to global threats that can preserve reefs for future generations.”
Research has shown for example that allowing a diversity of life to flourish on a reef keeps it healthy and more resistant to rising water temperatures.
Protecting important regions of sea would be one obvious strategy.
However, having evaluated more than 2,500 protected areas of reef, these researchers concluded that even though over a quarter of the world’s coral is nominally protected, only one-sixth of those areas offer good protection.
“The report is full of solutions – real world examples where people have succeeded to turn things around,” said Dr Spalding.
“However, if we don’t learn from these successes then I think that in 50 years’ time, most reefs will be gone – just banks of eroding limestone, overgrown with algae and grazed by a small variety of small fish.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Nicholas Courtney appeared opposite five different Doctors, including Sylvester McCoy (l) Veteran Doctor Who actor Nicholas Courtney, best known for playing Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart, has died in London at the age of 81.
The series regular passed away after a short illness, his agent told the BBC.
The actor appeared on screen opposite five different Doctors and worked with two more – David Tennant and Paul McGann – on Doctor Who audio stories.
In 2008 he reprised his Brigadier role in Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Courtney had already appeared in such series as Escape and The Saint before making his first Doctor Who appearance in 1965, playing a character named Bret Vyon.
He returned to the show in 1968 to make his first appearance as the Brigadier opposite the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton.
The stalwart of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) would periodically return over the next two decades before his final appearance in 1989.
In 2008 he appeared in an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures Courtney continued to work on other shows during that time, including The Avengers, The Champions, Callan and Minder.
After Doctor Who he had parts in such popular dramas as The Bill, Casualty and Doctors.
In 1997 he became honorary president of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society in recognition of the 107 episodes in which he appeared.
League of Gentlemen star and Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss remembered the actor as “a childhood hero and the sweetest of gentlemen”.
Impressionist Jon Culsaw said Courtney was “a brilliant actor and warm, charming man”, while Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright paid tribute to “a true gent”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Samsung user Alex Roebuck took this picture of his ‘bricked’ phone Microsoft has withdrawn a software update for its Windows Phone system after it made some handsets unusable.
The problem appears to have affected a small number of mobiles made by Samsung.
Owners reported their phones crashing, and in some cases failing to start up altogether.
Microsoft said it was working to fix the issue and would send out a new update as soon as possible.
The download in question was the first update for Windows Phone since it launched last October.
“In some circumstances it renders the phone completely unusable and can’t be restored to a previous version,” said Leigh Geary, editor of Coolsmartphone.com.
“It is going to portray Microsoft in a bad light,” he added.
Angry users shared their experiences of installing it on user forums.
“I’ve got an unmodified Samsung Omnia 7, now bricked,” wrote one contributor to Microsoft’s Answers site.
“My phone is currently unusable, even after hard reset,” another user wrote on the same site.
In a statement, Microsoft said: “We have identified a technical issue with the Windows Phone update process that impacts a small number of phones.
“We have temporarily taken down the latest software update for Samsung phones in order to correct the issue and as soon as possible will redistribute the update.”
Samsung Omnia 7 owner Alex Roebuck tried to upgrade, but found his phone became unusable.
He said it was unclear if he should take up the issue with his network provider or Microsoft.
“I do not want to be without my handset, so I have decided to wait for a few days to see if a solution can be found, either by Microsoft or the hacker community,” he told BBC News.
The update problem comes at a bad time for Microsoft, as it attempts to grow its share of the lucrative smartphone market.
The company recently announced a partnership with Nokia to manufacture handsets running the Windows Phone operating system.
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MLAs voted to remove a proposed ban on drinking at major sports grounds from the Justice Bill.
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New Zealand has declared a national state of emergency following the devastating earthquake which struck the city of Christchurch yesterday.
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Qatar already has a stake in Barclays but will it invest in RBS or Lloyds? Qatar has expressed an interest in investing in the part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group.
“About any investment in the state or partially-state owned banks, we are very open for any investment in the UK,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim said.
The UK government plans to sell its 83% stake in RBS and 43% holding in Lloyds.
Qatar invested heavily in Barclays in the wake of the financial crisis.
And last year the Qatari royal family’s investment company bought Harrod’s for a reported £1.5bn, while the Qatar Investment Authority owns about a quarter of retailer Sainsbury’s.
After meeting UK Prime Minister David Cameron, the Qatari prime minister expressed interest in doing more deals with UK companies.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim said he had “discussed some ideas” with Mr Cameron, who was visiting Qatar on Wednesday as part of a Middle East tour.
“Our team has been engaged and we will continue to discuss investment in the UK,” he added.
The government’s stakes in the part-nationalised banks, which also include Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley are managed by UKFI.
UKFI declined to comment on the suggestion of interest from Qatar.
However it has previously said that no sale was likely until RBS and Lloyds had seen some share price stability and until the government’s Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) was published.
Last month, the head of UKFI warned that if the ICB recommended a break-up of British banks, this would damage taxpayers’ returns from their stakes – worth about £67bn at the time of investment.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Manchester is among the councils that have had to make significant cuts Newspapers have savagely attacked the retention of council “non-jobs” while front line services are axed. But are there such things as “non-jobs” and what exactly is an essential job?
With cuts beginning to bite, attacks on alleged council waste are intensifying.
Newspapers and ministers – led by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles – have lambasted councils for protecting “non-jobs” while front line staff are being laid off.
There has been criticism about posts like “walking co-ordinator”, “roller disco coach”, “bouncy castle attendant”, “cheerleading development officer”, “future shape programme manager” and “Nuclear Free Local Authorities policy officer”.
The coalition government has released figures suggesting that since 1997 councils have taken on an extra 180,000 workers. The critics claim that it brings the number of “non-jobs” – those not in traditional front-line roles such as education, refuse collection or social care – to almost 750,000.
“Crazy non-jobs like cheerleading development officers and press officers tasked with spinning propaganda on bin collections provide no value to the public,” said Bob Neill, the local government minister.
Most would say elderly care was front line, but what about elderly care managers? So are these types of jobs being retained while front line services are cut?
Islington council leader Catherine West says her new administration axed the “walking co-ordinator” post after its election in May.
“Some lazy journalists and even a government minister keep repeating the myth that Islington ‘has a walking co-ordinator’ without even bothering to check. It is unbelievably cynical to criticise ‘non-jobs’ that don’t even exist,” she says.
Angus council says it pulled the plug on the bouncy castle attendant “some years” ago while Falkirk council says the cheerleading development officer hasn’t existed for “several years”.
But some of the criticised posts remain. North East Lincolnshire Council is recruiting for a “Future Shape programme manager”, an appointment which Tony Hunter, the council’s chief executive, says is about saving money.
“Future Shape involves reshaping what we do and how we do it, in line with the government’s Big Society and broad localism principles,” he states.
Manchester City Council still has a Nuclear Free Local Authority policy officer. A spokesman defends the job’s existence by saying that they pay only 20% of the salary with the rest funded by the NFLA Secretariat, which the council hosts.
He argues that the job “involved links to other cities” around the UK which were beneficial to Manchester.
“Most people polled in Manchester would not want to pay for a nuclear free worker,” says Neil O’Brien, director of the Policy Exchange think tank.
John O’Connell, research director at TaxPayers’ Alliance, a group which lobbies for lower taxes and greater government efficiency, admits there is no precise definition for a “non-job”.
One definition is a council employee who doesn’t work in a front line role but there is uncertainty over what “front line” actually means, as can be seen from the debate over front line policing numbers.
One good example of an “expendable role” is the post of diversity officer, Mr O’Connell believes, citing figures showing that during 2009-2010 there were 543 diversity officers working at England’s councils at a cost of almost £20m.
Birmingham City Council topped the list, spending £1.9 million on 28 diversity officers.
But a council spokeswoman said these staff played a valuable role and stressed the need to comply with government equality legislation.
“We do not have ‘diversity officers’,” says the spokeswoman. “We have officers working within the equality and diversity division who engage with other public agencies and community groups to ensure that everyone has the ability, knowledge and confidence to know how to access services, what help is available and what help they are entitled to.”
Mr O’Connell acknowledges that councils have to comply with equality legislation but says some like Birmingham were being disproportionate.
It doesn’t help that council jobs are often hard for the layman to decipher. Mr O’Connell points to the advertisement for the £70,000-a-year “Future Shape programme manager” at North East Lincolnshire Council.
“The duties are explained as ‘setting out the council’s vision to be a commissioning, enabling and facilitating organisation’. An ordinary council tax payer wouldn’t have a clue what that means,” Mr O’Connell argues.
But John Ransford, chief executive of the Local Government Association, says some of the designations of “non-job” are wholly wrong.
He defends Liverpool City Council, which has come under fire from ministers for advertising the job of “assistant director of adult services” on a salary of £90,000.
“Many of the posts being denigrated as ‘non-jobs’ reflect a lack of understanding about the complex nature of the work local authorities do. To suggest that an assistant director of adult services – responsible for overseeing the care of thousands of elderly and vulnerable people – is a ‘non-job’ absolutely beggars belief,” Mr Ransford says.
The real issue is not exotic sounding jobs but the massive scaling up of pay and headcounts at local authorities, says Mr O’Brien. Between 2002 and 2009 spending on local authority payrolls increased by £67bn, he says.
About £4bn of that, according to the Policy Exchange, went on jobs like marketing and PR, but a much bigger increase – £14bn – has gone on paying for managers.
“There is a lot of waste,” Mr O’Brien says. “But most of that is not in overtly weird jobs but massive increases in pay and staff numbers. The median hourly salary is now 30% higher in the public sector than the private sector.”
But Stephen Overell, associate director of the Work Foundation urges caution when knocking councils.
“If the ‘non-job’ is about peculiar job titles then the public sector has no monopoly on that. We need to remember that in the private sector companies have departments of fun.”
And the equality and diversity department is just as much a feature of corporations as councils.
The difference is that councils are democratically accountable and paid for by taxes, and therefore attract more criticism, he says. It can be argued that the whole world of work, whether private or public sector, has seen an explosion in managerialism in recent years.
And it’s often very hard to describe what these jobs do, Mr Overell says.
Critics argue that local government is employing too many managers instead of protecting front line staff from cuts. But Mr Overell doubts this is the case.
“It’s very difficult to say what is an essential managerial post to support front line staff. If it comes to a toss up between paying teachers’ salaries or trimming the diversity and equality function, I suspect it’s the latter that will get cut.”
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Wintek maes touch screens on contract for Apple and other mobile firms. Chinese workers injured while making touchscreens for mobile devices, including iPhones, have written to Apple asking it to do more to help them.
137 workers suffered adverse health effects following exposure to a chemical, known as n-hexane.
They claim that the Taiwanese factory owner has not given them enough compensation.
Apple did not offer comment on the letter.
Five workers, including 27-year-old Jia Jingchuan, have signed a letter to chief executive officer Steve Jobs, asking Apple to offer more help over the incidents.
They say that the factory owner has not given enough compensation, has pressured those who took compensation to give up their jobs and failed to offer assurance that workers who may suffer fresh illnesess will have medical bills taken care of.
Jia Jingchuan is among victims of the chemical poisoning Wintek, the Taiwanese company that owns the factory, said that it used the chemical in place of alcohol because it evaporated more quickly and speeded up production of touch screens.
It has now reverted to using alcohol to clean screens.
Workers exposed to n-hexane experienced faintness and tiredness, sweaty hands and feet, numbness in hands and swelling and pain in feet. Some claim they are still suffering ill-effects.
Experts say that daily exposure to n-hexane can cause long-term damage.
In its annual report, published last week, Apple acknowledged the incident.
“In 2010 we learned that 137 workers at the Suzhou facility of Wintek, one of Apple’s suppliers, had suffered adverse health effects following exposure to n-hexane, a chemical in cleaning agents used in some manufacturing processes,” the report read.
“We required Wintek to stop using n-hexane and to provide evidence that they had removed the chemical from their production lines,” it said.
Apple said it also asked the firm to provide adequate ventilation in the factory. It will monitor the plant and will reaudit the facility later this year.
Wintek also supplies components to a number of other companies, including Nokia and HTC.
This is not the first problem Apple has experienced with its Chinese factories.
Its annual report also references an incident at its main China supplier Foxconn’s factory, where over a dozen workers committed suicide.
“We were disturbed and deeply saddened to learn that factory workers were taking their own lives,” the report read.
It said “suicide prevention specialists” were working with Foxconn to improve conditions.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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