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Patients with a broken hip should be offered surgery as soon as they are admitted to hospital, recommends new guidance that criticises current NHS waiting times in England.
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People over 65 should limit themselves to 1.5 units of alcohol a day, a report suggests.
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Asian shares open higher on optimism that Greece will not default on debts after the government won a crucial vote.
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The government had offered $2.5m reward for Mendez Vargas’s capture Mexican President Felipe Calderon has congratulated police on the capture of the alleged leader of one the country’s top drug gangs, the La Familia cartel.
Police arrested Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, also known as “The Monkey”, in the central city of Aguascalientes.
Mr Calderon described the capture as a great blow to organised crime.
La Familia has a reputation for violence but claims to protect local communities and promote family values.
Mexico’s security spokesman Alejandro Poire said the arrest had “destroyed the chain of command” of the cartel.
The Mexican Attorney General’s Office said Mr Mendez Vargas was “responsible for the transfer and sale of cocaine, marijuana, crystal methamphetamine in various states of Mexico and the US”.
He is also accused of having masterminded the kidnappings and killings of rival gang members.
International links
A previous leader of La Familia, Nazario Moreno, was killed by security forces in December 2010.
Meanwhile, police in Colombia have arrested three men suspected of being senior figures in the international drugs trade.
Julian Hernando Dias Porras, also known as “The Horseman”, Orlando Rodriguez Castrillon, aka “The Indian”, and Argemiro Sierra Pastrana, whose alias is the “Grey-Haired One”, are wanted on charges of trafficking drugs from Colombia across most of Latin America, and to the US and Europe.
The Colombian authorities said they would be extradited to Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina respectively.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Outside parliament, thousands of protesters chanted slogans against austerity measures The Greek government has won a critical vote of confidence in parliament as it struggles to win support for extra austerity measures and avoid a default.
Prime Minister George Papandreou’s new cabinet was approved by 155 votes to 143, with two abstentions.
MPs will now be asked to approve 28bn euros (£25bn) of cuts, tax rises, fiscal reforms and privatisation plans.
Eurozone ministers say the legislation must be passed to receive a 12bn-euro loan Greece needs to pay its debts.
Earlier, thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Athens to protest against both the austerity measures and politicians in general.
Mr Papandreou reshuffled his cabinet and replaced his finance minister last week after weeks of demonstrations against his handling of the crisis.
Just before Tuesday’s confidence motion, the prime minister told MPs that the last thing their country wanted now was an election.
“We all have to agree that we will put an end to deficits,” he said.
Greece’s economic reforms, which led to it abandoning the drachma as its currency in favour of the euro in 2002, made it easier for the country to borrow money.
Greece went on a big, debt-funded spending spree, including paying for high-profile projects such as the 2004 Athens Olympics, which went well over its budget.
The country was hit by the downturn, which meant it had to spend more on benefits and received less in taxes. There were also doubts about the accuracy of its economic statistics.
Greece’s economic problems meant lenders started charging higher interest rates to lend it money. Widespread tax evasion also hit the government’s coffers.
There have been demonstrations against the government’s austerity measures to deal with its debt, such as cuts to public sector pay and pensions, reduced benefits and increased taxes.
The government has already had to access a 110bn euro (£95bn; $146.2bn) bail-out package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, and now needs a second bail-out.
Eurozone ministers are worried that if Greece were to default it would make it even more difficult for other countries such as Portugal and the Irish Republic to borrow money.“We want to make a leaner, healthier state, because otherwise our country cannot take the burden.”
Mr Papandreou’s government must now persuade parliament to approve a five-year package of 28bn euros of tax increases and spending cuts by 28 June.
It must then push through laws implementing the reforms in time for an extraordinary meeting of eurozone finance ministers on 3 July.
The eurozone ministers on Sunday announced that they would withhold the payment of the latest tranche of the European Union and International Monetary Fund’s 110-bn euro bail-out package until the laws were in place.
Greece needs the loan to be able to keep up with payments to the creditors of its 340bn euros of debts, which amounts to 30,000 euros per person.
European Commission President Manuel Barroso warned that Greece faced a “moment of truth” and needed to show it was genuinely committed to the reforms needed to avoid a sovereign default.
Acting IMF chief John Lipsky echoed the comments, saying Greece’s fiscal system was broken but could be fixed with the right political will.
The eurozone finance ministers also agreed on Sunday to put together a second bailout package worth 120bn euros. The new aid package, to be outlined by early July, will include loans from other eurozone countries.
It will also feature a voluntary contribution from private investors, who will be invited to buy up new Greek bonds as old ones mature.
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The president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, announces she will run for re-election in the presidential election in October 2011.
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MPs have called for action over the case of Gary McKinnon The UK’s extradition arrangements with the US and the EU must be overhauled to better protect rights of individuals, a committee of MPs and peers is arguing.
It said safeguards in US cases were “inadequate”, more evidence was needed to justify requests and judges should be able to refuse them if they were not in the “interests of justice”.
High-profile extradition cases, such as that of computer hacker Gary McKinnon, have fuelled demands for a reappraisal.
Ministers are reviewing current rules.
Home Secretary Theresa May ordered the review last year to determine whether the UK’s extradition arrangements with the US – in place since 2003 – were “balanced” following a spate of controversial cases.
In a new report, the cross-party Joint Committee on Human Rights said tougher safeguards were needed to ensure individuals’ rights to a fair trial and to protect their private and family lives.
It has called for the the 2003 US-UK Treaty to be “urgently renegotiated” to enable the government to refuse extradition requests if UK prosecutors have decided against beginning proceedings at home.
Requests should only be considered if the US authorities provide prima facie evidence that the suspect has a case to answer to prevent people being sent to face trial abroad on “speculative charges”, it says.
Although provisions already exist for judges to deny extradition if an alleged offence took place wholly or legally in the UK, the committee said these were not being put into practice.
The committee also calls for the government to renegotiate the terms of the European Arrest Warrant, which came into force in the UK in 2004 to speed up extradition requests between EU member states.
It says there are “serious problems” with how the system is operating, that some warrants have been issued disproportionately and for relatively minor offences.
The BBC’s Home Affairs Correspondent Danny Shaw said the committee believed judges did not have enough discretion about how to act in such cases.
Hywel Francis, the Labour MP who chairs the joint committee, said human rights provisions in the Extradition Act were “clearly inadequate”.
“The government should spell out detailed safeguards, he said.
“A most appropriate safeguard would require the judge in an extradition case to consider whether it is in the interests of justice for the individual to be tried in the requesting country.”
The home secretary is currently reviewing the case of Gary McKinnon, whom the US authorities want to extradite for hacking into Pentagon computer systems in 2001 and 2002.
Mr McKinnon, who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, faces a potential sentence of 60 years in jail if convicted and campaigners say such a vulnerable person should not face trial in the US on medical grounds.
In its report, the committee concluded that the power of the home secretary to refuse extradition to non-EU countries should not be extended but it should be up to judges to adequately protect an individual’s rights.
One leading extradition lawyer said calls for change to a “draconian” system were long overdue.
“Any changes to our extradition procedure should take place without delay,” Michael Caplan, from solicitors Kingsley Napier, said.
“We must not lose sight of the fact that we are dealing with the freedom of individuals. If extradited, they are separated from their families, often held in custody in a foreign jurisdiction, alone, many miles from home.”
The last Labour government resisted calls for a review of extradition laws, saying they struck the right balance between liberty and security and other countries had to meet the same evidence thresholds as the UK.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Flights are gradually resuming from airports in southern Australia after two days of cancellations caused by an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano.
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London Assembly members want ‘more dynamic’ ideas to tackle congestion London needs a more dynamic approach to tackling its transport issues or face gridlock, a report has warned.
The London Assembly paper asks Mayor Boris Johnson how he plans to tackle congestion over the next two decades.
Mr Johnson previously predicted traffic delays to increase by 20% in 20 years if no action was taken or 14% if measures were introduced.
A spokesperson for the mayor said tackling congestion was one of his “top priorities”.
The report, the Future of Road Congestion in London, has been prepared by the assembly’s transport committee and it calls for updated congestion projections and a more detailed response to the capital’s traffic problems.
The potential consequences of Transport for London’s (TfL) lane rental scheme need to be investigated – particularly the extent to which utility companies could pass the cost on to customers – some members of the committee felt.
The lane rental scheme proposes to charge utility companies for digging up roads in the capital, requiring them to apply for a permit.
The majority of members on the committee called for increased priority to be given to sustainable modes of transport such as walking, cycling, public transport and economically important traffic such as freight.
Deputy chairman Val Shawcross said: “The situation on the road network will only get worse unless the mayor actively looks for better ways to manage congestion and promote public transport, walking and cycling.”
“A wide range of measures have been put in place to ease congestion…”
Spokesperson for Mayor of London
A spokesperson for the mayor of London said: “The mayor knows exactly how important reducing the burden of congestion is to Londoners and that is why he has made tackling it one of his top priorities.
“A wide range of measures have been put in place to ease congestion including the rephasing of thousands of traffic lights, a trial of pedestrian countdown crossing timers, the creation of a roadworks permit scheme and a code of conduct for utility companies.”
The spokesperson added that the mayor’s cycle hire scheme had been used for more than five million journeys within its first year of use.
A Transport for London spokesperson added: “The mayor and TfL are investing billions of pounds to upgrade and increase capacity on London’s transport network and smooth traffic flow.”
The TfL spokesperson said they had seen a 7% reduction in delays at 2,000 sets of lights over the past year and a 32% cut in “serious disruption caused by road works”.
The spokesperson added that the lane rental scheme would “further reduce delays caused by unplanned and unnecessary road works”.
The London Assembly transport committee will discuss the report on Wednesday.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Louise Voss and Mark Edwards failed to get a conventional publishing deal for their two thrillers As American John Locke becomes the first self-published writer to sell a million Kindle electronic books on Amazon, the first “indie authors” to top the UK e-books chart explain their success.
Fed up that your latest masterpiece has failed to make it out of the literary agents’ “slush piles” of unread manuscripts?
Self-publishing – paying a printer to run off a few hundred copies – has long been available as a last resort to frustrated amateur authors.
But it does not come cheap, and the chances of having a hit are virtually non-existent – it’s with good reason that the practice is known as “vanity publishing”.
Help appears to be at hand in the form of websites on which writers can publish their novels and sell them as e-books for electronic readers such as the Kindle.
On the face of it, the rise of such technology has the potential to democratise the publishing process.
British authors Louise Voss and Mark Edwards gave up on their dream of writing a bestseller years ago when their two finished thrillers failed to attract the attention of publishers.
Voss and Edwards take 35% of the sale price of their e-books But when Edwards, who is the marketing director of a student finance website, bought an e-book reader last autumn and heard about Amazon’s free direct publication system, he sensed a second chance.
Their second co-written novel, Catch Your Death – the tale of “a killer virus” and “a race to save the world” – is currently number one in the Amazon e-books bestsellers chart ahead of works by Stieg Larsson, John Grisham and Michael McIntyre.
It follows the success in the chart of their first novel, Killing Cupid, also still in the top 10.
“Its extraordinary and really unexpected,” says Voss, a concert organiser at Kingston University.
“We did a lot of work and we worked hard to promote them but I don’t think either of us thought in our wildest dreams that we’d be number one for two weeks and have two books in the top 10.”
Apart from their material, the key to success has been learning how best to market their material, including “piggy-backing” on the success of other similar e-books, as well as cross-promoting within their own two novels.
“I was published a few years ago. I had a publishing deal and one of the things that was very distressing was how out of your own hands your destiny is”
Louise Voss Author
“We rewrote the blurb for Killing Cupid to try to make it a lot more commercial and straightforward and within an hour sales doubled,” she says.
“I was published a few years ago. I had a publishing deal and one of the things that was very distressing was how out of your own hands your destiny is.”
Promotion methods for e-books were “very specific” and “in another six months or so, the publishers will have caught up with how to market books and get them up there and keep them up there”, she added.
Voss and Edwards’ two books have achieved combined e-book sales of more than 30,000, with Catch Your Death now selling an average of 1,000 copies a day and Killing Cupid 550.
US contemporary crime writer Locke, who has enjoyed huge success with his Donovan Creed series, boasts on his website that “every seven seconds, 24 hours a day, a John Locke novel is downloaded somewhere in the world”.
Locke, who, according to Amazon has become only the eighth member of the “Kindle million club” – alongside authors including Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts – charges 99 cents for his e-books.
He has said he started with this pricing system as a “loss leader” to entice readers into buying his more expensive titles.
Locke has also written a non-fiction title, How I Sold 1m E-books in Five Months But “my loss lead became my biggest earner”, he says.
Independent authors who sell their e-books for less than $2.99 (£1.84) receive 35% of that figure, taking 70% for books selling for above that price threshold.
These terms are far more generous than the cut taken by authors in conventional publishing.
Voss says she and Edwards priced low – Catch Your Death is on sale for 95p – “because we’re not known authors” but always intended to raise the price to £1.99 “if the momentum got going”.
But the duo – who as of last week have an agent working on securing a conventional publishing deal – now have no intention of changing the price.
“We’re superstitious and, now that it’s number one, we don’t want to mess with it in case it suddenly drops out of the chart.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Europe’s big space freighter is commanded to destroy itself in the Earth’s atmosphere, burning up over the South Pacific.
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The digital switchover in Scotland began in the Borders Scotland is in the last stages of completing the switch to digital television.
The last analogue TV signals were turned off at the main Black Hill transmitter in North Lanarkshire, and local relay transmitters in the central belt, at about midnight.
The Freeview signal is also being boosted.
By Wednesday afternoon the main Freeview channels will be as readily available as analogue TV used to be.
Digital television began in 1998 and the switchover has been taking place region by region over the past two and a half years.
The process will be completed on Wednesday afternoon when digital broadcasts begin at a local relay transmitter near Lanark.
The switchover will be witnessed by two Scottish broadcasting legends – Mary Marquis, the original presenter of BBC Reporting Scotland, and Glen Michael who hosted STV’s Cartoon Cavalcade for 26 years.
The switchover process has gone smoothly, although some reservations were expressed initially.
The Scottish Borders saw the first widespread switchover in the UK.
When it began, some there believed the area was being used as a guinea pig while others were disappointed that some of the commercial Freeview channels were not being broadcast from relay transmitters.
The switchover process will end completely in 2012 But the success of the switchover – along with the help available to elderly and disabled viewers – meant that there has been little, if any, resistance or criticism from viewers in other parts of the country.
Relay transmitters – which cover local reception blackspots including substantial chunks of the Highlands and Islands – only broadcast the BBC’s Freeview channels and a limited range of additional commercial channels.
But the launch of Freesat – a way of receiving satellite television without paying a subscription – helped to allay concerns that rural areas were losing out.
By the time the switchover process began in the central belt last month, more than 95% of viewers had a digital service on their main set.
However, many sets in bedrooms and kitchens were not converted.
Freeview viewers affected by this last switch will need to rescan their boxes. Advice is available on Digital UK’s website or by ringing 08456 505050.
A help scheme for some disabled viewers and those aged over 75 is still taking applications for assistance.
Digital switchover has already been completed in Wales and some English regions. The process will end completely next year.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The value of Bitcoins fell from $17.50 to almost nothing in a matter of minutes The virtual currency Bitcoin will “bounce back” after a hack attack caused its value to collapse, according to one of its senior developers.
Gavin Andresen said he hoped the crisis would lead to better security on sites where Bitcoins are bought and sold.
Prices on the main exchange, Mt.Gox, fell from $17.50 (£10.80) to almost zero when a large number of stolen Bitcoins were dumped on the market.
Trading was suspended and eventually rolled back to pre-crash rates.
Mt.Gox revealed details of the security breach on June 20 with an announcement on its website.
“It appears that someone who performs audits on our system and had read-only access to our database had their computer compromised. This allowed for someone to pull our database,” the statement read.
Around the same time, an unidentified person accessed one of the compromised accounts and sold all of its Bitcoins.
They then attempted to buy the coins again and withdraw them in US dollars.
The fraudster was partially foiled when they hit Mt.Gox’s $1000 daily limit.
The decision to reset the Bitcoin rate to a point just before the malicious trades were placed was criticised by some users who had taken the opportunity to buy low.
“Why should everyone who profited from the crash suffer your inability to secure the site?” wrote a user called Elments.
Although the problem was caused by security failings at Mt.Gox, it has raised wider questions about the viability of Bitcoin as a virtual currency.
“Like any start-up, it could change the world but it could also be risk.”
Gavin Andresen Bitcoin developer
“I am sceptical about its longer term prospects,” said David Birch, director of Consult Hyperion, a consultancy specialising in electronic transactions.
“There were two things here – the specific bubble (caused by the dumping of stolen coins) and the exchange mechanism.”
Bitcoin transactions are made by swapping anonymous, heavily encrypted codes which only a specific user can unlock.
Details of who owns each Bitcoin are distributed across a peer-to-peer network, with no central repository.
If an encrypted coin file is deleted, the money is lost.
The system has proved popular with online criminals, keen to keep their financial transactions secret, although it has a wider, legitimate, user base.
Mr Birch said the fact that so many Bitcoins were traded on a single exchange made it vulnerable to market shocks.
He also questioned the fundamental workings of the currency, saying that its emphasis on anonymity and decentralised nature meant there was little recourse for users when things go wrong.
Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen conceded that current safeguards around the currency may be inadequate.
“I have been the person saying that Bitcoin is an experiment, so you can have confidence in it as much as you can have confidence in any start-up.
“Like any start-up, it could change the world but it could also be risk,” he said.
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The study found “big differences” in the frequency GPs prescribed high-risk drugs Thousands of people in Scotland are being prescribed drugs by their GP which could potentially do them harm, according to new research.
The report, from Dundee University, analysed the records of almost 140,000 patients who were at risk of suffering bad reactions to drugs.
They found about one in seven, more than 19,000 people, had been prescribed drugs which could harm them.
The study highlighted “big differences” in how cases were treated by GPs.
High-risk drugs defined by the study included antipsychotic medication for dementia patients.
Prescribing anti-inflammatory drugs such as Ibuprofen to people with a history of stomach ulcers or kidney problems could also cause serious or fatal side effects, the study said.
Professor Bruce Guthrie, who led the research, said “preventable” adverse reactions to prescribed drugs were a frequent cause of hospital admission and death.
The study looked at data from 315 Scottish GPs with 1.76m registered patients – about a third of all patients across Scotland.
The team found that 139,404 were defined as being at risk of receiving selected high-risk drugs, due to factors such as their age and pre-existing conditions.
Of those at-risk patients, 19,308 had been prescribed at least one high-risk drug in the previous year, researchers said.
“If you take this across the whole of Scotland, approximately 60,000 people particularly vulnerable to side effects might be being prescribed high-risk drugs,” the professor said.
“We’re not saying that all this type of prescribing should not be happening, but that we have to be satisfied that it’s appropriate and ensure that doing so doesn’t put the patient at more risk.”
“We can’t make sweeping statements about people routinely being put at risk because of inappropriate prescribing,” he added.
“We would need to know more about the individual circumstances of the patient, but the fact high-risk prescribing varies between practices suggests that there is scope to make prescribing safer.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Which? is concerned about the consequences when the Bank of England raises interest rates The consumer group Which? is accusing banks and building societies of putting the squeeze on homeowners who have standard variable rate mortgages.
Which? warns that thousands will be pushed into financial difficulty when interest rates go up.
More than 40% of mortgage borrowers are now on standard variable rates, which kick in after cheap introductory mortgage deals expire.
The highest are around 6%, double the cost of the best value mortgages.
“They’re just milking people,” one homeowner from Peterborough, Mark Fellowes, complained to BBC News.
“I think what we have is the banks and the building societies trying to restabilise the system which was in shock in 2008”
Michael Coogan Council of Mortgage Lenders
He says the interest rate on his Egg mortgage dropped by just 1.5% when the Bank of England cut official rates by 4.5% after the financial crisis.
“I was very puzzled initially and then you just get angry,” he says.
The Which? research reveals that 95% of lenders failed to pass on cuts to standard variable rate customers in full when the Bank of England reduced interest rates.
Since then 20% of of lenders have actually put their rates up, while the Bank’s rate has stayed at a rock bottom 0.5%.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders argues that the standard variable rate, or SVR, is dependent on the cost of attracting deposits from savers, rather than the Bank of England.
Mark Fellowes says he was initially puzzled that his mortgage interest rate did not go down But its director general, Michael Coogan, admitted to BBC News that lenders have been widening their profit margins after losing heavily during the crisis.
“I think what we have is the banks and the building societies trying to restabilise the system which was in shock in 2008,” he explained.
“They are trying to recapitalise their organisations, deal with past losses, deal with the risk of future losses, and at the same time keep their customers as happy as possible through the economic cycle.”
An increasing number of families with large loans are trapped on their lender’s standard variable rate because other banks and building societies don’t want their business.
These financially-stretched households could suffer badly if the Bank England starts to push interest rates higher.
David Hollingworth from the mortgage brokers, London & Country, says they should brace themselves for larger monthly payments.
“I think lenders will look to push up standard variable rates by more than any base rate increase,” he warns. “That’s where vulnerable borrowers really stand to lose.”
Mark Fellowes’ lender, Egg, said: “We strive to maintain good rates for all of our customers based on how mortgages are funded.
“Funding is based on wholesale market rates, specifically Libor, which are frequently at a premium to Bank of England base rates.”
Mr Fellowes has managed to moved to another lender, choosing a mortgage which does track the Bank of England’s rate.
He is saving £120 a month.The consumer group Which? is accusing banks and building societies of putting the squeeze on homeowners who have standard variable rate mortgages.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.