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Russia crash ‘may be pilot error’

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At least 40 people have been killed in a plane crash in north-western Russia, local media report.

The aircraft tried to land on a road 2km (1.2 miles) from Petrozavodsk airport in the republic of Karelia, but crashed and caught fire, officials say.

The Tupolev Tu-134, belonging to RussAir, was carrying 43 passengers and five crew. One official said eight people were being treated in hospital.

The plane came down while flying from the capital, Moscow, to Petrozavodsk.

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

China defends Omar al-Bashir trip

Rights groups say Omar al-Bashir’s visit could make China a “safe haven” for genocide suspects

Chinese officials have defended a decision to invite Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to China next week, after criticism from rights groups.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said his government had every right to invite Mr Bashir, whom China has supported for many years.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Mr Bashir for genocide and war crimes in 2009.

But Mr Hong said China was not signed up to the ICC.

“China has reserved its opinion towards the International Criminal Court lawsuit against President Omar al-Bashir,” he said.

“President Bashir has been visiting other countries on a number of occasions and has been warmly welcomed by those countries.”

Since the ICC issued its arrest warrant, Mr Bashir has visited countries including Eritrea, Egypt, Libya and Qatar – none of whom are signed up to the ICC.

He also visited Kenya, which decided not to detain him despite being a signatory to the ICC’s treaty. The treaty obliges signatories to detain anyone wanted by the court.

Amnesty International last week urged China to arrest the Sudanese leader.

The organisation’s Catherine Baber said China would become a “safe haven for alleged perpetrators of genocide” if the country did not detain him.

The ICC has charged Mr Bashir with crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide over alleged atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region.

China has invested heavily in Sudan, and has frequently voiced support for Mr Bashir’s government.

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

High street art

The artists taking over empty shops and offices

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

Buzz off

The Master of the Queen’s Music insists that using mobiles during concerts is an “act of vandalism”

A leading composer has called for people who use mobile phones during concerts to be fined. How do you stop them?

The chirping mobile interrupting a live performance is, for many, one of the great artistic blights of the modern age.

Now Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Master of the Queen’s Music – the musical equivalent of poet laureate – has proposed that the “artistic terrorists” who use mobile phones during classical concerts should be fined.

His comments raise the question of how best the nuisance can be tackled. In theory, venues could jam phone signals but such a practice is banned in countries like the UK.

Instead, classical music pundits suggest the best method is either to operate a “zero tolerance” policy during concerts, or ensure that audiences police themselves.

Sir Peter’s patience snapped after at least three phones rang as the London Sinfonietta played in a cathedral during Orkney’s St Magnus music festival, of which he was the founder.

The answerMobile jamming technology exists – but is illegal in countries like the UKSome believe that concert venues should pro-actively clamp down on mobile phone useBut others argue that it is better that audiences are self policing

He announced that he would write to mobile networks asking how a penalty system might be introduced, with any levies raised going to the Musicians Benevolent Fund.

Moreover, he added that his proposed clamp down would apply not just to those taking or receiving calls during performances, but also to those texting or checking their emails, which he argued was “equally distracting and discourteous”.

Sir Peter told reporters: “It breaks the concentration of the performer and the audience and breaks the spell and bond between them.

“It is an act of vandalism as far as I’m concerned and should be punished as such.”

“Most of these people are totally insignificant and the idea that the world turns on them reading their messages is ridiculous”

David Mellor Opera lover

His view of discourteous mobile users is widely-shared within the classical music community. However, opinion is divided about the best method of stopping the practice.

The technology does exist to cut out mobile phone signals altogether, by forming a Faraday shield, or an enclosure made of conducting material. However, the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 forbids the “use of any apparatus, whether or not wireless telegraphy apparatus, for the purpose of interfering with any wireless telegraphy” anywhere within the UK.

So how can music lovers enjoy a concert in peace in the mobile age?

David Mellor, the former heritage secretary and presenter at BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM, admits that recently he has “got a bit of a reputation for telling people who talk in the opera to stop” after he attracted headlines for remonstrating with fellow audience members.

Unsurprisingly, he is not enamoured with the proliferation of mobile phones and argues that staff in venues should be more pro-active about silencing those who disturb others – ejecting them if necessary.

“I think we have to say ‘stop it’,” he argues. “The problem is not just mobile phones going off, it’s checking them as well. Most of these people are totally insignificant and the idea that the world turns on them reading their messages is ridiculous.

“A lot of people go to a lot of trouble to go to the opera. I do think that venues that charge as much as these places do should ensure that people talking or reading their mobiles are given a warning and, if necessary, ejected.”

WHO, WHAT, WHY?

A part of BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer questions behind the headlines

However, not everyone agrees that venues should take such a hard line.

Samara Ginsberg, a cellist and classical music journalist, fears that imposing too many stringent rules could reinforce negative stereotypes about classical music and opera being inaccessible and elitist.

Instead, she argues that audiences are already self-policing and more than capable of letting miscreants know in know uncertain terms of their displeasure.

“There’s a much more effective system already in place and that’s the reaction of your fellow concert goers,” she says. “Anyone whose phone has ever gone off during a concert will never let it happen again – they know that they’ll be strung up.”

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

John Barry remembered at memorial

John Barry receiving his Bafta Fellowship in 2003

The late John Barry received a Bafta Fellowship in 2003

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Friends and fans of the late film composer John Barry have celebrated his life and career at a memorial charity concert.

Dame Shirley Bassey was amongst the performers at the event, held at the Royal Albert Hall in central London.

Ex-James Bond Timothy Dalton and Beatles producer Sir George Martin were among the speakers.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performed selections from a host of Barry scores.

Broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson opened the tribute, remembering the composer – who died in January at the age of 77 – as “a great man of music”.

Barry, he said, had “an intuitive understanding of how to create the perfect union of music and the moving image”.

Those sentiments were echoed by Sir Michael Caine, who appeared via video message to salute “one of the all-time greats”.

“John was one of my oldest and closest friends,” the actor continued, reliving the night he had stayed with the erstwhile bandleader only to be kept awake by him working on one of his most famous compositions.

“I was the first person in the world to hear Goldfinger,” the veteran star recalled. “And I heard it all night.”

Lyricist Don Black remembered Barry as a proud Yorkshire man who remained so, despite living in the US for much of his life.

“I like to say John put the York in New York”

Don Black

“I like to say John put the York in New York,” said Black, whose collaborations with the multiple Oscar-winner included the title song from 1966’s Born Free.

Zulu, Midnight Cowboy, Dances with Wolves and Out of Africa were among other films to have their soundtracks showcased in the extensive programme.

The concert also featured excerpts from some less familiar Barry scores, among them music from 1965 comedy The Knack… And How To Get It.

Elsewhere Welsh tenor Wynne Evans – standing in for the indisposed Alfie Boe – gave a powerful rendition of ‘Ave Maria.

Inevitably, though, it was Barry’s contributions to the Bond series that took precedence at an event attended by several members of the so-called “007 family”.

These included Bond producer Michael G Wilson, Goldfinger’s Shirley Eaton and actress Samantha Bond, who played Miss Moneypenny from 1995 to 2002.

David Arnold, who wrote the music for the last five Bond films, produced the programme with Barry’s widow Laurie and also performed.

The celebrated composer was awarded an OBE in 1999 for services to music

Dalton – whose first outing as Bond, 1987’s The Living Daylights, was graced by Barry’s last contribution to the series – said the composer had been “generous, warm and funny.”

The actor went on to recite a poem by John O’Donohue, the Irish writer and philosopher who inspired Barry’s final album, Eternal Echoes.

“John would love to know you were here for him,” said Sir George Martin, declaring that his friend had had “an unerring instinct for what a film needed”.

His tribute followed a ‘Bond Suite’ featuring music from Thunderball, From Russia with Love, You Only Live Twice and others that brought the audience to its feet.

London-born singer Rumer got a similarly warm reception, despite fluffing a line during her performance of ‘We Have All the Time in the World’ from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

The song – originally performed by Louis Armstrong and later used in a Guinness advert – had been a personal favourite of Barry’s.

The most sustained applause was saved for Dame Shirley as she took to the stage near the end of the evening to belt out the theme tunes to Diamonds are Forever and Goldfinger.

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

Villas-Boas resigns as Porto boss

Chelsea target Andre Villas-Boas resigns as Porto coach, the Portuguese club confirm.

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Antarctic penguin’s wrong turn leads to New Zealand

New Zealand's Department of Conservation ranger Clint Purches watches an Emperor penguin on Peka Peka beach

Conservation ranger Clint Purches keeps an eye on the rare Antarctic visitor

A young emperor penguin, normally found in the Antarctic, has turned up on a New Zealand beach.

It is a rare event, the first confirmed sighting of an Emperor penguin in New Zealand in 44 years.

“I saw this glistening white thing standing up and I thought I was seeing things,” said Christine Wilton, who found it while walking her dog.

The department of conservation is baffled by how it arrived, saying it may have taken a wrong turn.

“It’s amazing to see one of these penguins on the Kapiti coast,” says the department’s Peter Simpson.

The visitor has attracted crowds of onlookers, who are being advised not to disturb the penguin and keep their dogs on leads.

Conservation experts say the bird is a juvenile, about 10 months old and 32in (80cm) tall.

Emperor penguins are the tallest and largest of their species and can grow up to 4ft (122cm) high and weigh more than 75lb (34kg).

Colin Miskelly, a penguin expert at Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum, said the bird was likely born during the last Antarctic winter.

It may have been searching for squid and krill when it took a wrong turn and arrived on New Zealand’s North Island.

“Usually they stay among the pack ice,” said Mr Miskelly.

“This one just kept going north and it’s a very long way from its usual range.”

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

Ice mission produces first map

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This is the best view we have yet had of the thickness of sea-ice across the entire Arctic Ocean basin.

It is the first fully processed map from Europe’s new Cryosat spacecraft.

It only covers the months of January and February, but the UK team behind the data says it can now roll out the information on a continuous basis.

The extent of Arctic sea-ice has become a major issue in recent years, with summer melting appearing to outstrip what many climate models had predicted.

But a proper assessment of the status of the sea-ice requires knowledge also about its thickness – something scientists have only recently had the tools to measure from space.

“Some years the wind will push the ice out of the way or pile it up, and it may look from the area coverage like it’s all melted,” explained the Cryosat mission’s principal investigator, Professor Duncan Wingham.

The old ice in the Arctic tends to have rough ridges

“But it’s only when you combine the area coverage information with the thickness information that you get the product – volume. And that’s what you really need to know to answer the question about melting,” he told BBC News.

Professor Wingham presented Cryosat’s first ice map here at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, a major event in the space calendar.

The European Space Agency (Esa) launched its “ice explorer” last year. It carries one of the highest resolution synthetic aperture radars ever put in orbit.

The instrument sends down pulses of microwave energy that bounce off both the top of the Arctic sea-ice and the water in the cracks, or leads, which separate the floes.

By measuring the difference in height between these two surfaces, the Cryosat team is able, using a relatively simple calculation, to work out the overall volume of the marine ice cover in the far north.

Wingham’s group at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London, has spent the past year learning how to interpret the radar data and turn it into a form that the research community can use.

How to measure sea-ice thickness from space

Cryosat’s radar has the resolution to see the Arctic’s floes and leadsSome 7/8ths of the ice tends to sit below the waterline – the draftThe aim is to measure the freeboard – the ice part above the waterlineKnowing this 1/8th figure allows Cryosat to work out sea ice thickness

This has involved calibrating the instrument and then validating its output by comparing it with independent assessments.

One such assessment employed a German Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) aeroplane.

It obtained thickness information by flying a laser altimeter to record the distance to the top of the ice and a conductivity sensor to identify the location of seawater on the underside of the floes. Being an aeroplane, it could only record limited lines of data, but these strongly correlated with the Cryosat observations.

Another independent assessment called on a different type of radar satellite instrument known as a scatterometer, which, as its name suggests, looks at how much of the energy beamed down from space is reflected back or scattered away. This type of instrument can discern the thin flat seasonal ice from the rough terrains associated with floes that have been around for many years.

Again, what the scatterometer saw with its approach was an excellent match for the Cryosat map.

The Cryosat team has been “in the field” to validate the satellite’s measurements

“We’re now processing the rest of the Cryosat data to get it to the same standard as we’re showing you here,” said CPOM researcher Dr Katharine Giles. “Then we will use that data to look at how the ice cover is changing. This is only two months of data – and we’re very excited to have our first map – but we need to compare year-on-year changes.”

Scientists already have a number of insights on sea-ice thickness in the Arctic – from buoys, from submarine sonar data, from field expeditions, from aircraft sorties such those by the AWI, and from previous generations of satellite radar and laser altimeters. But Cryosat should be a big boost to that data haul, not least because it sees the entire Arctic basin, right up to two degrees from the pole.

In addition to its sea-ice mission, Cryosat is also tracking changes in land-ice.

For this, the radar instrument carries a second antenna. By listening to the radar echoes with an additional device offset from the first by about a metre, the satellite can sense much better the shape of the ice below, returning more reliable information on slopes and ridges.

This is especially important in Greenland and Antarctica where past missions have struggled to discern events at the edges of the ice sheets – the very locations where some of the biggest, fastest changes have been taking place.

Here at Le Bourget, an elevation model built from Cryosat data was displayed of Antarctica. Again, this covered just the months of January and February this year.

Antarctica (CPOM/UCL/A.Shepherd/Esa/Planetaryvisions)

• As with the Arctic sea-ice map, this height model of Antarctica incorporates just two months of data at the start of the year

• The outer ring shows the closest older satellites could get to the pole. The inner hole is the only portion unseen by Cryosat

• The exaggerated model has been sliced open like a cake to show the position of the Antarctic bedrock under the ice

• By subtracting ice-surface height from bedrock height, Cryosat can derive ice thickness across the entire continent

[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.

Bank help for Greece ‘is default’

Protesters participate in a rally against the government's latest austerity measures on Sunday 19 June

Mass protests against the government’s austerity measures are continuing across Greece

The Fitch credit ratings agency has said that if commercial lenders roll over their loans to Greece, it will deem the country to be in “default”.

As Greece awaits further bail-out money from the EU and International Monetary Fund, private investors are under pressure to extend their loans.

Last week, France and Germany reached a compromise over whether such investors should assume a greater burden, saying any such move should be “voluntary”.

But few think their help is by choice.

Fitch’s comments come as the Greek government is due to face a vote of confidence, a crucial first step towards gaining another 12bn-euro ($17bn; £10bn) loan from the EU and the IMF.

If the government survives the vote, Greece’s parliament will be asked to back the latest spending cuts – worth 28bn euros – on 28 June.

Fitch Ratings believes that any softening of terms by commercial banks would come only as a result of political pressure and therefore cannot be deemed “voluntary”.

Categorising a borrower as “in default” will mean a further lowering of Greece’s credit rating.

This is already deemed to be “junk”, meaning that lenders are not expected to get back anything like the value of their original loan.

A further downgrade to default would mean a fire-sale of Greek loans, as certain investors would no longer be allowed to hold such risky assets.

Greece is trying to pass austerity measures through parliament in order to qualify for another slice of aid, worth 12bn euros ($17bn, £12bn) from the EU and IMF. The measures, which have cut benefits, public sector salaries and pensions, have sparked protests across the country.

In any case, that new money will still not be enough to keep Greece afloat long-term, and the institutions are planning to provide another bail-out, which could be worth more than another 100bn euros.

But amid political pressure from certain quarters, particularly the German government, this requires the willing contribution of private lenders.

Any contribution may prove worthless if it is viewed as a technical default.

Another agency, Standard & Poor’s, has also warned that any attempt to restructure the country’s debt would be considered a default.

The third leading agency, Moody’s has a rating on Greece’s debt that implies a 50% chance of a reneging on repayment within three to five years.

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

Bats’ hairs are ‘airspeed sensor’

The hairs are just 100 millionths of a metre long – only as long as human hairs are wide

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Tiny hairs that cover bats’ wings seem to act as a complex airspeed sensor, researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Experiments showed that bats’ brains distinguished between airflow direction when air flowed over them at low speed.

However, with the hairs removed, the bats executed fewer tight turns and flew at higher speeds.

The researchers suggest the hairs allow fine control over aerodynamics as airflow changes during manoeuvres.

The hairs are exceptionally small – only as long as human hairs are wide, and just billionths of a metre thick.

Tiny hair-like structures on many insects are known to respond to stimulation, but their role in aerodynamic control remains a subject of study. At issue is the complex manoeuvring that is required to generate enough lift to keep insects – or, indeed, bats – aloft.

“The presence of these hairs on the wings of the bat was described in physiological studies over a hundred years ago… but they weren’t really followed up,” said Cynthia Moss, the University of Maryland cognitive scientist who led the study.

“These are not the same hairs as those you have on your arm,” she told BBC News. “They’re very tiny and very stiff, and that makes them good candidates for carrying detailed information about airflow across the wing.”

Professor Moss and her team started by measuring the responses in bats’ brains as the hairs were stimulated by controlled, directed blasts of air. The responses were distinct for airflows of differing directions, suggesting the bats can distinguish between them.

The bats were then presented with an obstacle course, and their movements captured and mapped out using video cameras. The hairs were then removed from the wings, and the experiment repeated.

Bats without the hairs executed fewer tight turns, and flew on average much faster. Combined with the result that the hairs on the wings’ back edges were most sensitive to airflow opposite to the direction of travel, there is a good explanation for just what the hairs may be controlling.

The hairs are particularly stiff, making them more sensitive to small changes in airflow

Insects make use of what is known as a “leading-edge vortex” – at high angles, the airflow at the wings’ front edges actually separates from the wing surface, creating a “bubble” of low pressure over the wing’s area.

This bubble rejoins the wing at its back edge, where airflow is opposite to the direction of travel.

The low-pressure region above the wing creates a great deal of extra lift, which is particularly useful when the animals are flying at low speeds and executing tighter turns.

However, these vortices are unstable; slight changes in airflow can disrupt them, removing the lift that they provide.

In 2008, Anders Hedenstrom of Lund University in Sweden and his team showed in an article in Science that despite being much larger animals, bats too use leading-edge vortices for extra lift at slow speeds.

“It’s a nice experimental demonstration of the function of these hairs, since depilation changed flight behaviour. But there is a long way to go before we know in detail what these hairs do,” Professor Hedenstrom told BBC News.

“The hair cells of the present study were most sensitive to flow in the reverse direction, suggesting to me that they may play a function in sensing whether a leading-edge vortex is present or not, and helping the bat to control the wing movement to form a leading-edge vortex.”

Professor Moss agreed that “there’s certainly a lot more work to be done to get a clear picture of what’s going on” with the hairs.

She and her team are hoping to carry out experiments watching bats’ neural responses in mid-flight, as well as more detailed studies of how airflow changes across bats’ wings as they fly.

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

VIDEO: How Alice Cooper got to tour with a snake

Music promoter Harvey Goldsmith reveals why he hasn’t always said no to some of the outlandish demands made by rock stars.

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Mobile firms can trade spectrum

There are now 12.8 million smartphones in the UK according to Ofcom.

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UK regulator Ofcom has given phone operators the green light to trade spectrum in a move intended to increase mobile network capacity.

Available bandwidth is becoming a huge issue as smartphones put increasing demand on networks.

The trading of airwaves comes ahead of a crucial spectrum auction next year that will usher in 4G data services.

Both the auction and the decision to allow operators to trade existing spectrum have caused controversy.

Spectrum trading allows operators to sell off the airwaves they own in the 900MHz, 1800MHz and 2100MHz frequency bands.

Historically the 900MHz slice of spectrum has belonged exclusively to O2 and Vodafone because they were the only two mobile operators on the market when it was handed out.

While other nations have reallocated this spectrum to offer a more level-playing field ahead of 4G auctions, this has not happened in the UK.

Ofcom had originally planned to redistribute the spectrum allocated to O2 and Vodafone, but was met with a legal action, initiated by the two operators.

Ofcom dropped its plans following the merger of T-Mobile and Orange.

Everything Everywhere (EE), the parent company of T-Mobile and Orange will be the biggest beneficiary of spectrum trading.

It was required to sell off about 19 percent of its spectrum frequencies as a condition of the merger.

Three is unhappy as it has the least spectrum to trade.

“Spectrum is the lifeblood of smartphones and the mobile internet and for those with surplus holdings it is also a strategic asset, so voluntary trading is the exception,” it said in a statement.

“This move simply allows those who have been gifted access to public spectrum to profit from it, with no benefit for UK taxpayers.”

Three will voice its concerns later today at a Department of Culture select committee hearing set up to discuss the way spectrum is being allocated.

O2 and Vodafone are unlikely to sell off any of their assets, according to Mr Howett.

“It is simply too valuable to them and they would only trade it if they were forced to,” he said.

What may force their hand is the upcoming 4G auction in which Ofcom has set caps on the amount that can be bought.

It will mean the operators with more existing spectrum will be able to buy less of the more valuable 4G airwaves.

Ofcom has also ring-fenced some of the spectrum for new entrants such as Three.

“It has done this because it recognised that 3 might not be able to survive and it values the disruptive nature of a player like 3,” said Mr Howett.

But O2 said it was tantamount to “state aid” and has threatened legal action.

Any further delays to the auction could put the UK behind other European countries in the roll-out of 4G services, said Mr Howett.

4G will be crucial as the market continues to grow.

According to Ofcom there are now 80 million mobiles in the UK, 12.8 million of which are smartphones.

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

Google Street View halts in India

Google launched Street View in Bangalore last month

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Google has stopped collecting images for its Street View service in the southern Indian city of Bangalore after objections from police.

Police in Bangalore said they had security concerns and that Bangalore was a “highly sensitive” area.

Google launched its project to collect high definition images to give Google users 360 degree views of streets only last month in Bangalore.

Google data collection has caused concern in numerous countries.

Cameras mounted on cars and tricycles had been taking pictures in streets across Bangalore.

“We received a letter from Bangalore’s commissioner of police and are reviewing it. We will not be collecting any more images for Street View until we speak to the police,” a Google spokeswoman told AFP.

Police told the BBC that they had expressed concern about the project and said they asked Google to seek clearance from India’s ministry of home and external affairs.

Bangalore’s police commissioner, Sunil Kumar, said that Bangalore, home to key defence and scientific institutions such as Indian Space Research Organisation and Hindustan Aeronautics, was high on the list of terror targets.

In 2008 a series of bombs exploded around the city, killing one women and injuring several others.

But Google India’s Product Head Vinay Goel told India’s CNN-IBN news channel that they were “only driving on public roads and taking publicly available imagery.”

Last year almost 250,000 Germans told Google to blur pictures of their homes on the Street View service and the Czech government also banned Google from taking any new photos for the service.

In the UK Google has also agreed to delete private emails and passwords mistakenly picked up from wireless networks by its Street View cars.

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

UK public borrowing back on track

May’s borrowing figure takes some off the pressure off the Treasury

Public sector net borrowing fell in May, reversing a surprise overshoot in government borrowing seen in April.

The total borrowing requirement, excluding the cost of bank bail-outs and other interventions, was £17.4bn for the month, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) said.

This was down 6% from a year ago, helped by a jump in VAT receipts.

It takes some of the pressure off the Treasury, coming after an unexpected 5% rise in April’s borrowing figure.

Total tax revenues rose 8.2% to £38bn, boosted by the January increase in the VAT rate from 17.5% to 20%, which pushed VAT receipts up 17%.

In contrast, total spending in the month rose just 2.2% to £51.7bn.

One of the fastest-growing components of spending was interest payments.

The bill for servicing the UK government’s debtload, which has now reached 60.6% of annual economic output, rose 8.9% to £4.4bn, or 8.5% of total government spending.

The government wants to cut total borrowing for the financial year by 15% to £122bn, in line with the forecast of the Office for Budget Responsibility.

However, two months into the year the government is still struggling: borrowing has increased slightly for the year to date when April’s surprise figure is included.

“The numbers for May are more or less in line with expectations,” said Philip Shaw, economist at Investec.

“That still leaves progress during the full year so far as disappointing. It’s early days, but we would be hoping to see more positive effects of the spending cuts coming through in the figures.”

The data for the first two months highlight the the fact that the chancellor faces a very tough battle, according to Howard Archer, economist at IHS Insight.

“Going forward, the chancellor will need reasonable growth to lift tax receipts… and the current softness of the economy does not bode well on this front,” he said.

“On the positive side, going forward the public finance figures should increasingly reflect the public expenditure cuts kicking in as many measures were enacted from April.”

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

VIDEO: Tornadoes rip through Nebraska

Tornadoes have swept through central Nebraska, damaging buildings and throwing parked train carriages from their tracks.

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