Category: news

By James Landale

This Christmas David Cameron was supposed to be jetting off to Thailand.

After the year he has had, what could be better than a little winter sun with the family? But the trip was called off.

In a time of austerity, such largesse with his – and the taxpayers’ – money might appear, well, a tad out of touch with a nation collectively tightening its belt amid the snow.

Instead, the prime minister will slum it here in the UK at his 1,000-acre mansion at Chequers. Its motto? “All care abandon ye who enter here.”

Who could deny Mr Cameron a little respite? This year he fought an election, moved house, got a new job, formed a coalition, lost a father and gained a daughter.

Even for someone with the prime minister’s energy, that is quite a year.

For much of the time, he has had the wind in his sails. He took his party back into government for the first time in 13 years. He formed a bold coalition that has a comfortable majority of 82 in the House of Commons.

In its first six months, his government published a Budget and a Spending Review, beginning the deepest, fastest cuts to public spending in living memory.

It began radical reforms to health, education and welfare, changes that would be politically difficult, if not nigh-on impossible, without the political cover and parliamentary arithmetic of a coalition.

This administration has been busy, busy, busy, desperate to avoid the stagnation of the early Blair years.

And yet, note this. David Cameron took a large opinion poll lead into the election and he failed to win. He was forced into coalition. It is from this fact that many of his problems next year may stem.

The Conservative right is restless. Many believe the prime minister has conceded too much ground to the Lib Dems.

They are unhappy that he is not repatriating powers from Europe, that he is allowing Ken Clarke to push community sentences, that they are ignored by what they call an “imperial clique” in Downing Street, that their mainstream conservatism is being replaced by liberal conservatism.

Already some Tory MPs on the right are cooperating with Labour whips, just as they did when they opposed the Maastricht treaty almost 20 years ago.

But David Cameron is also under pressure from the other side of the coalition.

Many Lib Dem MPs feel that they have taken most of the anti-government flak this year – not least over tuition fees – and they want a little payback. They are hoping for some New Year goodies, on, say, control orders, Lords reform, Europe or bank taxes.

But any give and take here would only further inflame the Tory right. Such are Mr Cameron’s political choices as he manoeuvres to keep the coalition together.

However, his deeper concerns lie elsewhere. This is the year that the spending cuts will begin to bite.

Thousands in the public sector will start losing jobs. Voters will notice public services being squeezed. Parents and patients will feel the upheaval as health and education reforms begin. How will Mr Cameron respond if waiting times rise, if school standards drop, if there are more demonstrations on the streets?

As Mr Cameron goes for his run around the gardens of Chequers, it will be these spending cuts that he’ll mull over, not Business Secretary Vince Cable’s latest antics.

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

Sam Taylor-Wood investigates the attitude to home births in 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.

Seventy years on from the night St Paul’s cathedral in London almost fell victim to the Luftwaffe, firefighters in London are gathering to remember those who dies in one of the defining moments of the Blitz. Robert Hall reports

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

Twelve crew die as a giant Antonov 22 military cargo plane crashes during training in Russia’s central Tula region.

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

South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak calls for new six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear programme through diplomacy.

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

Unemployment will increase to 2.7 million and average earnings will rise by 2% in 2011, says a leading business group.

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

Nearly half the women in England are at increased risk of some cancers because of their large waistlines, says a cancer charity.

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

Colombian police say they may have killed one of the country’s top drugs traffickers, Pedro Guerrero Castillo.

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

The leader of the UK’s midwives says there needs to be “a seismic shift” in the way maternity care is provided.

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

How did St Paul’s Cathedral survive the Blitz?

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

Why elephants can’t dance, and other facts explained

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

North-eastern Australia’s worst flooding in decades is continuing to cause chaos across the region.

Around 1,000 people in Queensland have been evacuated, including the entire population of the town of Theodore.

The government has declared Theodore and two other towns in the region to be disaster zones, and forecasters say the floods have not yet peaked.

The cost of the damage is expected to top AU$1bn (£650m), including massive losses of sunflower and cotton crops.

Army Black Hawk helicopters are being despatched to help evacuate the 300 residents of Theodore, where every building in the town apart from the police station has been flooded, local media report.

The town’s river has risen more than 50cm (20 in) above its previous recorded high, Emergency Management Queensland spokesman Bruce O’Grady told Australia’s ABC News.

“We’re in unchartered territory in that area,” he said. “The [weather] bureau is indicating it could go higher.”

Inland towns such as Chinchilla and Dalby are all under water; the nearby town of Warra, and the towns of Alpha and Jericho, west of Emerald, have also been declared disaster zones, with hundreds of homes flooded or at risk.

Media reports said Dalby was running low on drinking water supplies after its water treatment plant was damaged by the floods.

A further 200 homes were swamped in Bundaberg on the south-east coast and hundreds of roads in the region have been made impassable.

The state capital, Brisbane, has recorded its wettest December in more than 150 years. Cyclone Tasha, which hit Queensland on Saturday, also brought torrential rain to the state.

Long traffic queues have formed outside isolated towns and police are arresting people who need rescuing after driving into badly hit areas, says the BBC’s Steve Marshall in Sydney.

Further south, in New South Wales, about 175 people who had spent the night in evacuation centres have returned home.

But 800 people in the towns of Urbenville and Bonalbo are expected to be cut off for another 24 hours.

While the rain is now easing, water is continuing to flow from sodden land across central and southern Queensland into already swollen rivers, adds our correspondent.

Australia’s Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts told ABC the worst was yet to come.

“Over the next 48 hours rain will be easing but the real impact in some communities won’t be felt for a couple of days when floodwaters begin to recede,” he said.

“Once the rain finishes there will still be significant flooding impacts over the next few days.”

Farming groups says the floods could cause up to $403m (£261m) in damage to crops, badly hitting an industry which was already suffering the effects of a lengthy drought.

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

Cuba’s Supreme Tribunal has commuted the sentence of the country’s last death row inmate, a rights group has said.

Humberto Eladio Real, a 40-year-old Cuban American, was convicted of killing a man in 1994 during an attempted insurgency raid.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation commuted his sentence to 30 years in prison.

Cuba has had an effective moratorium on carrying out death sentences for years.

Earlier this month, two other death row inmates also had their sentences commuted.

Ernesto Cruz Leon and Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, both from El Salvador, had been convicted over a bombing campaign of tourism sites in Cuba in the 1990s which killed one Italian and injured 11 other people.

They were sentenced to death by firing squad but their sentences were commuted to 30 years at a hearing on 7 December.

Cuba’s last executions were in 2003, when three people convicted of attempting to hijack a boat to escape to the United States were killed by firing squad.

Two years ago, within a month of taking over the presidency from his brother Fidel, Raul Castro issued a decree lifting the death sentence for 30 prisoners.

In a groundbreaking deal brokered by the Roman Catholic church, Mr Castro has also agreed to free the 52 most prominent political prisoners on the island.

The majority are now with the families in Spain, but 11 are refusing to go into exile and have yet to be released, says the BBC’s Michael Voss in Havana.

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

At least 80 people are now known to have died in violence around the Nigerian city of Jos in recent days.

Officials revised the death toll from about 40 after consulting hospitals.

Bombings struck mainly Christian areas of Jos on Christmas Eve, and Christian and Muslim youths clashed two days later. Security forces have been drafted in from neighbouring states.

Religious leaders have accused local politicians of using religion to stir up trouble between communities.

Jos has been a flashpoint for sectarian trouble in recent years.

Officials from Nigeria’s emergency management agency (Nema) said at least 80 people had died and more than 190 had been injured in the violence.

Ayo Oritsjafor, head of the Christian Association of Nigeria, said local politicians were trying to exploit religion to whip up trouble.

“I believe there are politicians in this country who know the weaknesses of our people,” he told the BBC.

“Some of them are creating these kind of problems to make Nigeria ungovernable.”

National and local elections are set for next April, and politicians are frequently accused of stirring up trouble to further their ambitions.

Meanwhile, a radical Muslim sect reportedly said they carried out the Christmas Eve bombings.

A website apparently belonging to the Boko Haram group, which staged an uprising in the city of north-eastern city of Maiduguri in 2008, said it launched the attacks to “start avenging the atrocities committed against Muslims”.

But police chief Abdulrahman Akano cast doubt on the claims, saying it was not Boko Haram’s usual method.

“Anybody can post anything on the internet,” he told the AFP news agency.

Boko Haram members who took part in the 2008 uprising were armed mostly with sticks and home-made rifles.

Security forces put down the uprising and killed about 800 people, including the group’s leader.

Sultan Mohammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s estimated 70 million Muslims, played down the Boko Haram link.

He called on all Nigerians “not to succumb to the moves and practices of the few destructive elements that really don’t want peace in this country”.

The city of Jos lies in Nigeria’s volatile Middle Belt – between the mainly Muslim north and largely Christian south.

Jos has been blighted by sectarian violence over the past decade, with deadly riots in 2001, 2008 and this year.

The clashes usually pit Muslims against Christians, but analysts say the underlying issues are political and economic.

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