Category: news

Action is needed to help people who suffer long-term pain, the Patients Association says.

The survey of more than 4,400 people found while many had suffered chronic problems, too few were given the help or support to deal with it.

The report called on the government to improve access to services and training of staff.

Chronic pain is pain lasting more than 12 weeks. About eight million people are thought to suffer at any one time.

But the report, funded by Napp, a drugs firm which specialises in pain control, said there was just one pain specialist for every 32,000 sufferers.

In total, more than a third of people surveyed had suffered chronic pain at some point, including everyone from those who have back pain to people recovering from surgery.

Of those who answered questions about their treatment when they had pain a third were unsure how to use prescribed medication and half were not aware of potential side effects.

Only 23% had been referred to a pain specialist, with many having to rely on GPs.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said the findings were “shocking”.

“With a lack of robust information, patients must rely on GPs and healthcare professionals who are often not equipped to deal with the specific problems that chronic pain can present.

“We need better information for patients to be able to make informed choices and complete decisions about their care.”

Anne Begg, chair of the all-party parliamentary chronic pain group, added: “Patients need to have the confidence to go to their doctor and talk about their pain without fear of being treated as a nuisance.

“They need employers to recognise that chronic pain is a seriously debilitating condition and healthcare professionals need a clear pain pathway in the NHS to follow.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said the government was looking to carry out a thorough audit of pain services.

“Despite examples of good practice, we recognise there is unacceptable variation in the care people receive.”

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

Language lessons are “weak” in too many secondary schools in England, Ofsted has said.

Pupils were not given enough chances to use the language they were learning in class, often because teachers were not prepared to do so, it added.

In some schools, reading was not taught beyond exercises in course books or previous exam papers.

But primary schools were found to be doing well in developing the teaching of modern languages.

Reporting on developments in language teaching since 2008, Ofsted drew on evidence of visits to 92 primary schools, 90 secondary schools and one special school.

Since languages were made non-statutory in 2004, the proportion of students taking language GCSEs has fallen from 61% in 2005 to 44% in 2010.

But the previous government had required all primary schools to offer languages to older pupils (Key Stage 2) by 2010.

Inspectors said progress towards providing this entitlement was good and that achievement was good or outstanding in six out of 10 primary schools visited.

They also said pupils’ enjoyment of language learning in primaries was “clear”.

“They were usually very enthusiastic, looked forward to lessons, understood why it was important to learn another language and were developing a good awareness of other cultures,” the report said.

However, Ofsted added: “Secondary schools were not always building effectively on the progress made by children at primary schools.”

It recommended that secondary schools think urgently how they could best build on the advances in primary school language teaching and learning.

Although inspectors found progress was good or outstanding in more than half of the 470 lessons observed, they said there “weaknesses” in too many lessons – particularly in speaking, listening and reading.

They also highlighted the lack of opportunities for students to use the languages they were learning.

The report said: “Too often, students were not taught how to respond to everyday requests and thus routine work in the target language and opportunities to use it spontaneously were too few.”

Inspectors also criticised the way reading was taught in some schools.

They said that in these schools: “Reading was not taught beyond exercises in course books or previous examination papers and teachers made insufficient use of the wealth of authentic material that is available to develop students’ speaking, listening, writing, knowledge about language, language learning strategies and intercultural awareness.”

Nonetheless, most secondary students were found to have positive attitudes to learning languages despite low take-up at GCSE.

But inspectors warned that GCSE teaching focused on achieving good exam results and that this did not always prepare pupils for study at a more advanced level.

Ofsted chief inspector Christine Gilbert said young people could gain tremendously from learning an additional language.

“However, too many students are failing to reach their potential, and do not choose to undertake more advanced study beyond 16, because of the way they are taught languages in many secondary schools.”

A Department for Education spokesman said it would be encouraging more secondary pupils to take modern foreign language GCSEs through its introduction of the English Baccalaureate.

This is not a new qualification in itself, but a way of measuring how many pupils in a school pass GCSEs in a science, language and history or geography, as well as English and maths.

Ministers have said they will give it prominence in school performance league tables.

The spokesman added: “Ofsted has cited good progress in the teaching of languages in primary schools which is something the government wants to promote further so that pupils start secondary education with a good grounding in a modern foreign language.”

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

The Organisation of American States will reportedly recommend that the governing party candidate in Haiti’s presidential election should be dropped from the run-off vote.

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

UK’s manufacturers enjoy export boom, but service sector weaker

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

UK retail sales fell last month as snow and job security fears hit consumer spending, says the British Retail Consortium.

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

An undercover officer who infiltrated a group of green activists apologised to them for his “betrayal” months before they were due to go on trial.

In taped conversation obtained by BBC Newsnight, Pc Mark Kennedy told an activist he was “sorry” and “wanted to make amends”.

The trial of six activists, accused of conspiring to shut down a power station, collapsed on Monday.

Mr Kennedy had offered to give evidence on the campaigners’ behalf.

Nottinghamshire Police has asked the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate the circumstances leading to the collapse of the case.

The six environmental activists were accused of conspiring to shut down the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottingham.

In the taped phone conversation, which was made in November, Mr Kennedy admitted he had been in the police, but said he was not now.

He said: “I hate myself so much I betrayed so many people.

“I owe it to a lot of good people to do something right for a change… I’m really sorry.

“If I can help in any way then I’d like to.”

He also suggested there were other undercover policemen involved in the protest movement.

“I’m not the only one – not by a long shot,” he said.

Mr Kennedy had been intimately involved in the green movement since 2000.

He told the campaigners’ defence team he would be prepared to help them, and the prosecution then offered no evidence before the trial was due to get under way.

Speaking outside Nottingham Crown Court after the collapse of his clients’ trial, solicitor Mike Schwarz said police need to answer “serious questions” about Mr Kennedy’s actions and efforts to charge the activists were a “serious attack on peaceful, accountable protest”.

He said: “My clients were not guilty. They did not agree to join in any plan to occupy the power station. The evidence of Pc Kennedy presumably confirmed this.

“Yet that evidence, had it been kept secret, could have led to a miscarriage of justice.”

A CPS spokeswoman said that “previously unavailable information that significantly undermined the prosecution’s case” had come to light on 5 January.

She said: “In light of this information, the Crown Prosecution Service reviewed the case and decided there was no longer sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.”

The Met Police are refusing to comment officially on Mr Kennedy and would not say whether or not he is still a police officer.

Twenty protesters were sentenced to a mixture of community orders and conditional discharges last week, after being convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at Ratcliffe.

Mr Schwarz said the case raised “key questions” over the cost of deploying the undercover officer and whether it was reasonable to incur “hundreds of thousands of pounds”.

He added: “One expects there to be undercover police on serious operations to investigate serious crime. This was quite the opposite.

“This is civil disobedience which has a long history in this country and should be protected.”

Mr Schwarz had earlier said he had “no doubt that our attempts to get disclosure about Kennedy’s role has led to the collapse of the trial”.

He added: “It is no coincidence that just 48 hours after we told the CPS our clients could not receive a fair trial unless they disclosed material about Kennedy, they halted the prosecution.”

Danny Chivers, who was one of the six defendants in the failed case, said Mr Kennedy was not just an observer, but an agent provocateur.

“We’re not talking about someone sitting at the back of the meeting taking notes – he was in the thick of it.”

Mr Kennedy lived a double life as Mark Kennedy of the Metropolitan Police and as Mark Stone, green activist, based in Nottingham.

He was known within the green campaign as Mark “Flash” Stone, having earned the nickname because he always seemed to have more money than the other activists.

But in October 2010, Mr Kennedy was confronted by some of the activists after they found documents which revealed his true identity.

He admitted he had been a Met Police officer and had infiltrated their organisations, before then disappearing.

Speaking about the Ratcliffe-on-Soar protest, Mr Chivers said: “Mark Stone was involved in organising this for months – they could have stopped it at the start.”

Instead, Mr Chivers said the police officer helped recruit as many people as possible.

He also drove a reconnaissance party to the power station in his van and then hired a truck for the main protest, Mr Chivers added.

The activists’ plan was to try to shut down the coal-fired power station for a few days as a protest against global warming.

But in April 2009, when 114 people had gathered for a meeting at the Iona School in Nottingham, hundreds of police swooped on the building and arrested them all for “conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass”.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar was one of many actions in Britain and across Europe which Mr Kennedy was involved in, including the protests against the G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005 which helped give birth to the Climate Camp movement.

When confronted, Mr Kennedy told the activists he left the police after the Nottingham arrests in 2009.

It is unclear whether this is true, or where he is now.

David Winnick, a Labour member of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, has called for Home Secretary Theresa May to make a statement to MPs on the case, saying his concern was “the manner in which it has been alleged that Kennedy acted almost as an agent provocateur”.

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

UK economic growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to an estimate from the British Chambers of Commerce.

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

The chief executive of chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has resigned, after what the company said was a “mutual” decision.

AMD said Dirk Meyer had left with immediate effect, and that chief financial officer Thomas Seifert would take on the top job on a temporary basis until a replacement was found.

The company said the change would help it “establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns”.

AMD trails behind market leader Intel.

While AMD is the world’s second-largest maker of microprocessors, Intel’s chips are still used by more than 80% of the world’s personal computers.

Mr Meyer, 49, had been chief executive at the California firm since 2008.

Kevin Cassidy, a computer industry analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, said: “I thought he [Mr Meyer] did a good job getting the company into a different direction rather than trying to compete against Intel on a head to head basis.”

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

Astronomers have discovered the smallest planet outside our solar system, and the first that is undoubtedly rocky like Earth.

Measurements of unprecedented precision have shown that the planet, Kepler 10b,has a diameter 1.4 times that of Earth, and a mass 4.6 times higher.

However, because it orbits its host star so closely, the planet could not harbour life.

The discovery has been hailed as “among the most profound in human history”.

The result was announced at the 217th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, US, by Nasa’s Kepler team.

The Kepler space telescope, designed to look for the signs of far-flung planets, first spotted the planet 560 light-years away, alongside hundreds of other candidate planets.

Kepler relies on the “transiting” technique, which looks for planets that pass between their host star and the Earth.

A tiny fraction of the star’s light is blocked periodically, giving a hint that the star has a planet orbiting it.

The radius of the planet correlates to exactly how much light is blocked when it passes.

Follow-up measurements by a telescope at the Keck observatory in Hawaii confirmed the find of Kepler 10b by measuring how the planet pulls to and fro on its parent star as it orbits.

This cosmic dance causes tiny changes in the colour of the starlight that is measured by telescopes.

However, what completed the suite of measurements for the Kepler team was the use of asteroseismology – a study of distant stars that is akin to the study of earthquakes on the Earth.

The oscillations that occur within a star – as within the Earth – affect the frequencies of the light that the star emits in a telltale sign of the star’s size.

With the size of the host star, the details of the planet’s and star’s mutual dance, and the planet’s radius, the density of the planet can be calculated.

“All of our very best capabilities have converged on this one result and they all converge to form a picture of this planet,” said Natalie Batalha, a San Jose State University professor of astrophysics who helps lead the Kepler science mission for Nasa.

She told BBC News that the result is unique in an ever-expanding field of exoplanet discoveries, with smaller and smaller exoplanets discovered as experimental methods improve.

“We’re always pushing down toward smaller and less massive, so it’s natural that we’re arriving there,” she said.

“But perhaps what’s not so natural is that we’ve pinned down the properties of this planet with such fantastic accuracy that we’re able to say without a doubt that this is a rocky world, something that you could actually stand on.”

One could, if it were not so close to its host star that it’s daytime temperature exceeds 1300C – so Kepler 10b is not a sensible candidate to host life. However, as Professor Batalha explained, it is a significant step in Kepler’s mission.

“We want to know if we’re alone in the galaxy, simply put – and this is one link in the chain toward getting to that objective.

“First we need to know if planets that could potentially harbour life are common, and we don’t know if that’s true – that’s what Kepler is aiming to do.”

Pioneer of the hunt for exoplanets Geoffrey Marcy, from the University of California Berkeley, said that Kepler 10b represented “a planetary missing link, a bridge between the gas giant planets we’ve been finding and the Earth itself, a transition… between what we’ve been finding and what we’re hoping to find”.

“This report… will be marked as among the most profound scientific discoveries in human history,” he said.

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

Former US House Republican Leader Tom DeLay is sentenced in Texas to three years in prison on conspiracy charges.

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

The daughter of Tyrone GAA manager Mickey Harte has been found dead on her honeymoon in Mauritius.

Michaela Harte, 27, married John McAreavey, a Down GAA footballer on 30 December.

It is believed she was found dead in her hotel room at the Legends resort by her husband.

A joint statement by Mr Harte and Catholic Bishop of Dromore John McAreavey said they had been notified of the young woman’s death.

“We ask for prayers for Michaela, John and their families and loved ones,” the statement said.

“Both families are deeply shocked and devastated by this tragic news and they ask for privacy and space at this time of profound grief.”

Bishop McAreavey, an uncle of the groom, married the couple at St Malachy’s Church at Ballymacilroy, not far from the bride’s parents’ home at Glencull Road.

The Tyrone GAA County Board issued a statement on their website expressing their condolences.

“The board is shocked and greatly saddened to learn of the sudden death of Michaela, only daughter of our senior football team manager Mickey Harte, while on honeymoon in Mauritius.

“Michaela and indeed the wider Harte family of Marian, Mark, Michael and Matthew have been very closely associated with the present senior football team since Mickey took over as Tyrone minor manager in 1991.

“It is difficult for us to comprehend the devastation that her new husband John and the Harte family must be feeling at this time.

“This tragedy will be sorely felt throughout the Tyrone GAA family and on behalf of our players, officials and members in Tyrone, and around the world we wish to express our deepest sympathy to John, Mickey, Marian, Mark, Michael and Matthew”.

Father Brian Hackett, the family priest, said: “Her big thing was her daddy being the manager of Tyrone. She went everywhere with him. She was a religious girl. She was a dedicated Tyrone supporter.”

Ms Harte taught Irish at St Patrick’s Girls Academy in Dungannon, County Tyrone and was a former Rose of Tralee contestant.

Friends of the family said the Tyrone manager and his wife Marian worshipped their daughter.

Journalist Adrian Logan, a former sports presenter in Northern Ireland said her father “adored her”.

“He was totally devoted. He just thought the world of her. He told me: ‘She’s my little jewel’,” he said.

Michaela was at her father’s side on the three occasions his team won the all-Ireland championship at Croke Park, Dublin, in 2003, 2005 and 2008.

Mr Logan added: “He refused to do any post-match interviews after those games until she stood beside him. That’s how much she meant to him. She was his number one fan.”

Fermanagh,South Tyrone MP, Michelle Gildernew has expressed her condolences to the Harte family.

“Michaela was a beautiful and talented young woman who will be sadly missed,” she said.

“The fact that just a week ago she was experiencing the love and happiness of her wedding to County Down Footballer John McAreavey in the company of family and friends makes it even more difficult to take in that she has passed away.”

SDLP Leader Margaret Ritchie MP also offered her sympathy to family.

“To lose a child in any circumstances is upsetting but for her life to be cut short while on honeymoon and at such a young age is so very sad,” she said.

Police in Mauritius have said a post mortem will be carried out on the body at 9am local time on Tuesday.

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

A prison officer is thought to have been knocked unconscious and another scalded with hot water in a disturbance at a prison in Cambridgeshire.

The ongoing incident at Littlehey, near Huntingdon, began at about 1700 GMT.

A Prison Service spokesman said: “A number of prisoners refused to return to their cells following an incident in which two staff were injured.”

The Prison Officers Association (POA) said up to 60 prisoners were involved in the disturbance.

The incident took place in the young offenders unit, it added.

The Prison Service spokesman said four or five inmates “were actively involved at the moment”, but could not say how.

“Prisoners are contained securely within one wing and do not have the run of the prison,” he said.

“Specially-trained prison staff are on their way.

“No fires have been reported and staff were treated at the prison.”

The spokesman said the injured staff did not need to be taken to hospital.

Colin Moses, national chairman of the POA, said he believed a female officer had been knocked unconscious.

He said: “They were trying to bring [the disturbance] back under control. Young offenders were acting in a violent way.”

A POA spokesman said the incident happened in the young offenders unit, where he believes 200 to 300 people are housed.

He said: “I believe one member of staff was scalded with hot water. The other was assaulted.”

They were both treated in the prison’s hospital, but have been discharged.

He added that there had been problems at the prison, including brawls and assaults, for the past 12 months.

Specialist officers are bringing the situation under control, he said.

The category C prison was opened in 1988 and consists of eight units.

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

The hunt for the elusive Higgs boson particle – crucial to current theories of physics – looks set to become a one horse race.

A US “particle smasher” has been denied an extension that would have kept it running until 2014.

The Tevatron accelerator will now end operations this year as was originally planned.

After 2011, Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will have a clear run at searching for the particle.

The Tevatron facility is operated by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) which is in turn run by the US Department of Energy (DOE).

In October last year, an expert panel recommended extending the Tevatron’s lifetime by three years, allowing physicists to continue using the accelerator in their hunt for the Higgs.

But Fermilab employees have now been told that a difficult US budget situation means the panel’s recommendation will not be followed, and the particle smasher will be closed this year.

But scientists are keen not to write off the Tevatron, which will continue to gather data until September 2011.

Analysis of those measurements will continue long after September, and could yet exclude the Higgs over its allowed mass range, or find some hints of the sub-atomic particle.

The Higgs boson is of huge importance to the widely accepted theory of physics, known as the Standard Model.

It is the sub-atomic particle which explains why all other particles have mass. However, despite decades trying, no-one, so far, has detected it.

The LHC, which is based underground on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, is the only other competitor in the race to find the Higgs.

In 2010, physicists at Fermilab said they were closing in on the elusive particle.

The Tevatron and the LHC alone are powerful enough to probe energy ranges where the Higgs may reside.

Some physicists have previously said the European machine may not be in a position to detect the Higgs for two to three years.

Extending the Tevatron’s lifetime beyond 2011 would have been a game-changer, giving the US lab a potential advantage in the race to make a discovery.

Cern, the organisation which runs the LHC, has for some time been planning to shut down the machine in late 2011 for up to one year.

But recently, officials had been considering whether to delay this scheduled closure – for maintenance work – until the end of 2012, giving the LHC more time to hunt for the elusive particle.

Fermilab would have needed an extra $35m per year to operate the Tevatron into 2014.

[email protected]

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

The Ministry of Defence will have to make further savings of £1bn-£2bn a year if it is to avoid overspending by 2015, a defence think-tank has warned.

The government’s strategic defence and security review in October outlined cuts of £4.7bn over four years.

But the Royal United Services Institute said this would not be enough to balance the MoD’s budget.

Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey said the review had significantly reduced underfunding but more work was needed.

Research by professors Michael Clarke and Malcolm Chalmers at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) suggested rising costs would outstrip the MoD’s planned savings.

They described the MoD’s current planning round for its 2011 budget, due to be finalised by the end of March, as a “nightmare”.

Mr Harvey told an audience at Rusi that the MoD was facing up to “very tough circumstances”.

He blamed what he called a “massive unfunded liability” left by the previous government.

Mr Harvey admitted the MoD needed to continue to “develop and refine” plans to live within its means – and that it was not at that stage yet.

RAF Harrier jump jets, the Royal Navy’s flagship – aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal – and planned Nimrod spy planes will all be axed as a result of the defence review.

Some 42,000 defence jobs will be cut by 2015 – including 25,000 civilian staff at the MoD, 7,000 in the Army and 5,000 each at the Navy and RAF.

Axing the Harriers and Ark Royal means no planes will be able to fly from British aircraft carriers until 2019. Two new aircraft carriers will be built although one of them will not enter service.

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