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Bank robbers in Argentina tunnel into a bank vault to empty safety deposit boxes during new year weekend.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A small earthquake has hit northern England, scientists have confirmed.
The US Geological Survey said the 3.7-magnitude quake struck near Leeds just after 2100 GMT on Monday.
People in Bingley and Skipton, north-west of Leeds, have reported feeling tremors, which were also experienced in Cumbria and West Yorkshire.
The British Geological Survey said it was investigating the quake which is the second to hit the north of England in the past month.
British Geological Survey spokeswoman Dr Aoife O’Mongain said the epicentre of the quake was 10km west of Ripon at a depth of 6km.
“It would have only lasted for a couple of seconds. And at that strength it is not likely that it would have caused any damage,” she said.
“People living in the vicinity may have felt their windows rattling as if a lorry was going past.”
David Jones, who lives just outside Skipton, was one of those who felt the quake.
He told BBC News: “I was downstairs and a heavy cast iron wood stove we’ve got rattled quite loudly for about five seconds. My wife upstairs said wardrobe doors were also rattling.
“I’ve spoken to friends who’ve reported front doors rattling and things like that.
“I have felt a couple of earthquakes in other parts of the world from time to time so I was fairly certain what it was as soon as I felt it.”
Damian Boddy contacted the BBC to say he felt the earthquake in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire.
He said: “The house shook as if a door slammed – thought it was burglars until we checked online news.”
Emma-Jane Whelan, from Nunburnholme in the East Riding of Yorkshire, said: “I thought I had imagined it but I felt the tremor this evening. It made me jump.
“I turned off the TV and looked all round the house for what had caused the big ‘crump’ sound.”
Insp Chris Wright of Cumbria Police said the force received two calls from the Kendal area reporting tremors.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The top rate of VAT rises from 17.5% to 20% as the government looks to boost tax revenue to cut the budget deficit.
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Some return trips will be cheaper with Oyster pay-as-you-go instead of Travelcards, campaigners say Labour campaigners are set to hand out leaflets to commuters at 70 Tube, rail and bus stations in London on Tuesday, protesting about increases to fares which came into force on Sunday.
The party said average rises of 6.8% would “squeeze the standard of living”.
Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone said there had been a 44% rise in bus fares since Boris Johnson took office in 2008 and told him to “get a grip” on prices.
Mr Johnson has said the increases were kept to an “absolute minimum”.
Mr Livingstone, who served as mayor from 2000 to 2008, said: “The reality of life under the Conservatives is VAT up and fares up, whilst the Tory mayor of London defends bankers’ bonuses and presses for the richest to pay less tax.
“The increases in fares for outer London and the poor performance of many services show that the mayor does not speak up for the suburbs.”
He called this week’s price rises “unfair and unnecessary”.
Ken Livingstone (L) said Boris Johnson (R) should “get a grip” on transport pricing in London Campaign groups such as London TravelWatch have criticised the withdrawal of Travelcards serving zones 2 to 6, which avoid central London, as well as the daily passes for zones 1 to 3 and 1 to 5.
Mr Johnson said last week he had maintained fares at “the absolute minimum while still protecting the vital improvements that London’s transport network needs”.
“Those improvements include upgrades to the Tube, the delivery of Crossrail, and maintenance of London’s bus network,” he said.
Free and concessionary travel had been protected, the mayor added.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
People standing across a great swathe of the Earth’s surface will see the Moon take a big bite out of the Sun on Tuesday.
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Mr Maxwell is asking supermarkets to end the sale of alcohol through self-service tills The use of self-service supermarket tills for buying alcohol should be banned, according to an MSP.
The SNP’s Stewart Maxwell is writing to supermarkets suggesting they “act as responsible retailers” and voluntarily end sales through self-service tills.
He said a supervisor overseeing a number of tills may struggle to keep an eye on customers’ ages.
The Licensing Act 2005, which bans the unlicensed sale of alcohol, was drafted before the use of self-service tills.
Mr Maxwell said: “With the increasing use of self-service tills this is an area of licensing law we should look at.
“It would make much more sense for alcohol as a licensed product to only be for sale through a full service till where a sales assistant can properly assess a customer’s age.
“I will be writing to the supermarkets asking them to institute this policy as part of their approach to selling alcohol responsibly and I hope they will take up this idea.”
He said expecting an assistant to check identification and assess the age of customers, while overseeing a number of tills, could put undue pressure on staff.
In November, a Glasgow supermarket was banned from selling alcohol through its self-service tills for a month after a 16-year-old was sold a bottle of cider in a police test purchase operation.
Some supermarket systems automatically flag up age-restricted items, such as alcohol, and these need to be manually authorised by an assistant.
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The Pentagon denies claim by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that it shot down US drones over the Gulf.
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This time last year, petrol was priced on average at 107.74p a litre and diesel at 109.46p There have been renewed calls for the UK government to include rural areas of Scotland in a pilot project to reduce fuel prices.
It comes as the cost of petrol and diesel increased across Scotland as VAT went up to 20% at midnight.
Fuel duty rose on 1 January, and the AA estimated the two rises would add about 3.5p to a litre of petrol and diesel.
Prices in Scotland’s remote areas will be even higher, with fuel now costing £1.45 a litre or more in some parts.
The average price of a litre of unleaded stands at £1.24, while diesel costs, on average, £1.28 a litre.
But the Western Isles MP, the SNP’s Angus MacNeil, said people in the Highlands and Islands would be hardest hit by the price rises.
“Before the election there was talk of a fair fuel regulator, which would mean when there were spikes in oil prices the duty would go down,” he said.
“We’ve seen none of that yet, so in this new year I’m calling for the government to honour their promises.
“The last time fuel prices were as high as this many people came to me, worried about their commute to work and what it might mean for their jobs, their take-home pay and disposable income.
“So this is going to start to bite and to bite quite hard.”
A Scottish government spokesman described the VAT hike as “damaging to consumers and the wider economy”.
He said the Scottish Parliament should have responsibility for such powers.
However, Chancellor George Osborne has argued the increase was needed to cut the deficit.
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200,000 people are said to have been affected by the devastating floods hitting parts of Australia.
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Will West African leaders convince Laurent Gbagbo (left) to cede power? A delegation of African leaders is due in Ivory Coast in a new effort to persuade its incumbent president to step down following disputed elections.
Leaders from Benin, Cape Verde, Sierra Leone and Kenya are expected to make an amnesty offer to Laurent Gbagbo if he quits, the BBC has learned.
West African states have said they will remove him by force if he does not.
The UN and the African Union regard Mr Gbagbo’s rival, Alassane Ouattara, as the winner of the 28 November election.
The heads of state travelling to Ivory Coast are Benin’s Boni Yayi, Sierra Leone’s Ernest Bai Koroma and Cape Verde’s Pedro Pires – who represent the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
It is their second visit in less than a week. Last Tuesday they flew to Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, but failed to convince Mr Gbagbo to stand down.
On Monday they will be joined by Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, representing the African Union.
“He will seek a peaceful settlement to the election crisis… and seek an assurance of safety and security for Mr Laurent Gbagbo and his supporters, if he agrees to cede power,” Mr Odinga’s office said in a statement.
He was one of the first African leaders to call for military intervention to oust Mr Gbagbo.
Sierra Leone’s Information Minister, Ibrahim Ben-Kargbo, said the leaders would tell Mr Gbagbo to step down and did not intend to negotiate with him.
But a source within the African delegation told the BBC that the incumbent would be offered a legal amnesty, as well as a guarantee that his financial assets would be secure if he left office.
The UN says some 200 people have been killed or have disappeared in the past month – mostly supporters of Mr Ouattara.
Few observers have any hope that a compromise can be found that would see Laurent Gbagbo hand over power to his rival, Alassane Ouattara.
The Ecowas mission will almost certainly go over the various deals that have been offered for exile and amnesty but, in his New Year message, Mr Gbagbo said he would not cede power and insisted that he was the rightfully elected president.
He still has control of state television and the public backing of the army, but Mr Ouattara has the support of most West African leaders, who have already told the West African central bank to give him control over the state accounts.
The leaders will report back to the current chairman of the Ecowas region, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, on Tuesday, at which point a decision will be made on the way forward.
UN peacekeepers in the country say security forces have twice blocked them from visiting the site of one of two alleged mass graves.
The UN has also expressed concern that some of the homes of opponents to Mr Gbagbo have been marked to identify the ethnicity of their occupants.
The Gbagbo camp has denied sanctioning abuses.
UN peacekeepers are protecting Mr Ouattara, who is holed up at a hotel in Abidjan. Mr Gbagbo has called on the 10,000-strong UN force to leave the country.
The election was intended to reunify Ivory Coast – the world’s leading cocoa producer – which has been divided since a 2002 conflict.
Mr Ouattara was initially proclaimed the winner by the country’s election commission – a verdict backed by the UN, which helped organise the poll.
But the Constitutional Council, headed by an ally of Mr Gbagbo, said he had won, citing irregularities in the north which is controlled by former rebels supporting Mr Ouattara.
Both men have been sworn in as president.
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John Wheeler led efforts to create a Vietnam War memorial in Washington DC Police are investigating the death of a former US government official after his body was found at a dump in Delaware.
The body of John Wheeler, 66, was discovered on Friday as a rubbish truck emptied its load at the state’s Cherry Island landfill site.
Mr Wheeler, a military veteran, served in the administrations of ex-Presidents George Bush Senior and Ronald Reagan.
He was reportedly last seen on a train from Washington to Delaware on Tuesday. His death has been ruled to be murder.
Mr Wheeler, himself a Vietnam veteran, was involved in fundraising efforts for the Vietnam War memorial on the capital’s National Mall, as chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
“He was just not the sort of person who would wind up in a landfill,” Bayard Marin, a lawyer who was representing Mr Wheeler in a property dispute, told the Associated Press.
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Gabor has been admitted to hospital a number of times since breaking her hip in July Zsa Zsa Gabor has been admitted to hospital in Los Angeles to undergo surgery to have part of her right leg amputated, her husband has said.
Frederic Prinz von Anhalt said she had gangrene in her leg and that doctors told her she would die without surgery.
The 93-year-old has been admitted to hospital a number of times since breaking her hip in July.
In August she asked for a priest to read her the last rites following surgery to remove two blood clots.
A month later she was rushed to hospital after slipping into unconsciousness.
Gabor’s publicist John Blanchette said the amputation was likely to be below the knee.
If successful, the treatment, at UCLA Medical Center, could add a few years to her life, Mr Blanchette added.
Gabor, who starred in films including Moulin Rouge and Touch of Evil, is partially paralysed following a car accident in 2002 and a stroke in 2005.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The arrests were linked to an alleged attack on the Teddy stadium Two Palestinian employees of the UK consulate general in East Jerusalem have been arrested over an alleged weapons plot, Israeli officials say.
The UK Foreign Office confirmed the arrests, allegedly linked to plans to fire a rocket at a football stadium.
The men, who had maintenance jobs and did not have sensitive security clearance, allegedly helped obtain weapons for two others behind the plot.
No rockets were found and the plot was in its preliminary stages, police said.
A Foreign Office spokeswoman told the BBC that the arrests of their employees, which happened several weeks ago but were subject to a gagging order, were unconnected with their work.
However, the BBC’s Wyre Davies says the incident will raise concern about vetting procedures at the consulate, which is situated in one of the most politically sensitive parts of Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory under international law. Israel took over the predominantly Arab area in 1967, then annexed it in 1981 and sees it as its exclusive domain.
Israel claims the city as its eternal, undivided capital, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future Palestinian state.
The international community does not recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and most countries maintain embassies in Tel Aviv.
The Foreign Office spokeswoman said the two consulate employees were suspected of trying to obtain weapons for an alleged attack on Teddy Stadium, the home of the Beitar Jerusalem football team.
Two other men charged with plotting an attack have been named as Musa Hamada Bassem Omeri Israel’s Shin Bet security service has said that two other men were plotting to carry out a rocket or missile attack on the stadium – although it is believed the attempt never got further than the planning stage.
Both of these plotters – named as Musa Hamada from the east Jerusalem district of Sur Bahr and his friend, Bassem Omeri, an Israeli citizen from Beit Safafa – are accused of having been operatives of the Islamist militant group, Hamas, on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, the most important religious site in Jerusalem.
Their activities included systematically checking how best to launch a rocket while the stadium was crowded with people during a game, officials said. They also allegedly visited a nearby hillside to survey the area.
According to Shin Bet, the two began planning the attack after the Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip in December 2009. They also acquired a number of rifles to carry out additional attacks, it added.
Mr Hamada and Mr Omeri, who were arrested in November, were charged on Sunday with being members of a terrorist organisation, illegal use of weapons and planning an attack, Shin Bet said.
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Seed was asked to audition for the role in 1980 after being spotted in Birmingham. One of The Archers’ best-known characters, Nigel Pargetter, has died after falling from a roof on the show’s 60th anniversary, listeners have heard.
The drama unfolded during a new year’s party hosted in the fictional village by Pargetter and wife Elizabeth.
But it ended with Nigel, played by Graham Seed for nearly 30 years, falling off the roof of Lower Loxley Hall while trying to untie a banner.
Listeners had been told the story would “shake Ambridge to the core”.
The show’s five million listeners also heard Helen Archer being rushed to hospital to have her baby delivered six weeks early.
Series editor Vanessa Whitburn said it had been a “tough decision” to kill off one of the programme’s main characters.
“We thought long and hard about a storyline that would befit a landmark anniversary like the 60th and one that would reverberate through Ambridge well into the year,” she said.
“But we have given Nigel a grand exit that listeners will talk about for years.
“Nigel’s death will have a profound impact on Ambridge and central characters and it will go on affecting them in 10 years’ time.”
The radio drama’s strategy of secrecy was in contrast to the tactics of TV soaps, whose storylines are regularly released in advance.
Pargetter, 51 in the show, and described as being born of country gentry, leaves a fictional wife Elizabeth, and 11-year-old twins Lily and Freddie.
Seed, 60, a regular theatre, TV and film actor, was spotted in 1980 performing in a Birmingham Rep production by then Archers editor William Smethurst and asked to audition for the drama.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Jerry Brown has warned California faces difficult choices to plug its huge deficit Jerry Brown is set to be inaugurated as the new governor of the US state of California, taking over from outgoing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mr Brown, a Democrat who also served as California’s governor from 1975 to 1983, will be only the second person to lead the state for three terms.
He has warned California residents to expect “shared sacrifice” as the state struggles to overcome a fiscal crisis.
Among his first tasks will be to present a new budget plan.
The state faces a $28bn (£18bn) budget shortfall over the next 18 months.
Voters may be asked to agree to the extension of temporary taxes that were brought in in 2009 and are due to expire in July.
Mr Brown, 72, will need the backing of some Republicans in the state legislature if he is to put any tax measures to voters.
“Brown faces huge challenges. California, which would be eighth in world economic ranking if it was a country, faces bankruptcy”
Mr Brown’s inauguration ceremony is due to take place at 1100 local time (1900 GMT) in the state capital, Sacramento.
He defeated billionaire Republican candidate Meg Whitman in the November mid-term elections to win office.
When he last held the governorship, Mr Brown became known as “Governor Moonbeam” for what were then viewed as outlandish ideas.
In the intervening years he twice pursued the Democratic nomination for president, campaigned for the US Senate and most recently served as state attorney general.
Mr Schwarzenegger, a Republican, leaves after seven years at the helm of the country’s most populous state.
The 63-year-old former action movie star, best known for his role in the Terminator films, has not yet confirmed what he plans to do next.
He was not eligible to run for governor again because of term limits.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.