Category: news

Less than half all Scotland’s schools opened last week

About 90% of Scotland’s schools are hoping to reopen after being closed for a week due to snow.

A relatively dry weekend allowed local authorities to clear roads, though travel disruption was still expected.

Heavy snow is falling in Dundee, Perth, Stirling, Falkirk and parts of Fife.

There are blizzard conditions on the A9 between Perth and Dunblane. The road is down to one lane in places. The M80 is also badly affected through Stirling.

The M90 between Perth and Fife has a covering of snow and traffic is moving very slowly.

Scotrail are now running trains between Aberdeen and Inverness, and from Glasgow and Edinburgh to Aberdeen and Inverness.

Buses are replacing trains between Dundee and Edinburgh and Perth and Edinburgh.

There are no trains between Glasgow and Dunblane or on the far north line.

Edinburgh to Glasgow Queen Street services are reduced to half hourly.

Inverness and Wick airports are closed.

Grampian Police said drifting snow was affecting roads between Fochabers and Elgin; Inverurie and Huntly; Huntly and Banff; and MacDuff to New Pitsligo. Some higher routes were closed.

Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire councils said school transport would been affected, with some routes cancelled and others changed.

Education Secretary Michael Russell said: “We have experienced the worst snowfall at this time of year since 1965.

“Despite the best efforts of local authorities and school staff, road closures and hazardous conditions made school closures unavoidable in many parts of the country.”

At the height of last week’s disruption less than half of Scotland’s schools opened.

Mr Russell added: “We do not expect any blanket school closures and many local authorities which experienced significant disruption last week are hoping to open most, if not all, schools in their area.”

Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson said transport staff across the country were working round the clock to keep networks open.

“I am pleased our national roads network is almost entirely reopen again,” he said.

“We have adequate salt supplies to see us through further bad weather, currently four times more than at the worst time in the winter last year and more deliveries due in the next few weeks.

“We also have a contingency supply ready for use in an emergency.”

While schools are set to reopen and transport links have been restored, forecasters are warning of more bad weather to come.

Forecasters warned that the wintry weather would push into Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders during Monday afternoon.

During Monday night, wintry showers will become confined to the Northern Isles, Northwest Highlands and Galloway.

Elsewhere, it will be dry, clear and very cold with a widespread frost, severe in places.

There will be a risk of icy roads once again, and patches of freezing fog, as temperatures dip to -6C in the towns and cities, and as low as -15C in the Central Highlands.

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

Pete Sampras was ranked number one in the world from 1993 to 1998

Former world number one men’s tennis player Pete Sampras has had most of his tournament trophies stolen.

The American said the trophies were taken from a warehouse in Los Angeles, where they were being kept in storage.

“Losing this stuff is like having the history of my tennis life taken away,” the retired star told the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

Mr Sampras said he wanted his children to see the trophies and appealed for help in getting them back.

“I’m not one to gloat about trophies, or show them off. I’ve never been like that. They didn’t see me play, but I would like them to see these things,” he said.

He said he was making the theft public in the hope that it would lead to the return of the items.

“I know this is a long shot, but I would regret it if I didn’t at least try. Maybe somebody knows something. That’s all I can hope for,” Mr Sampras said.

He said he had put the trophies in storage after moving home twice, but that none of the items was insured because there was no way of placing a monetary value on them.

“I thought there were security cameras. I thought these things were locked up tight,” Mr Sampras said. “I was shocked.”

The paper said the thieves had made off with most of his trophies from his 64 tour wins, two Davis Cups victories, an Olympic ring and six trophies for his world number one rankings from 1993 to 1998.

Magazine articles and newspaper clippings were also taken, along with memorabilia autographed by the musicians Elton John and Carlos Santana.

However, Mr Sampras said that only one of the 14 Grand Slam trophies he had won had been stolen – the first one he won at the Australian Open in 1994.

The 39-year-old retired in 2003 and has two children with his wife, the actress Bridgette Wilson.

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

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested by UK police

Internet hacktivists have fired the latest salvo in the Wikileaks infowar.

A group called Anonymous has hit sites that have refused to do business with the controversial whistle-blowing site with a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks.

It mirrors similar attacks aimed at the Wikileaks site.

Targets include the Swiss bank that froze founder Julian Assange’s assets and PayPal which has stopped processing donations to Wikileaks.

Anonymous is a loose-knit group of hacktivists, with links to the notorious message board 4chan.

A member of Anonymous who calls himself Coldblood told the BBC that “multiple things are being done”.

“Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets,” he said.

“As an organisation we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means.”

“We feel that Wikileaks has become more than just about leaking of documents, it has become a war ground, the people vs. the government,” he said.

So far the denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), which swamp a site with so many requests that it becomes overwhelmed, have failed to take any sites offline although that is not the point of the attack, according to Coldblood.

“The idea is not to wipe them off but to give the companies a wake-up call,” he said. “Companies will notice the increase in traffic and an increase in traffic means increase in costs associated with running a website.”

DDoS attacks are illegal in many countries, including the UK.

Coldblood admitted that such attacks “may hurt people trying to get to these sites” but said it was “the only effective way to tell these companies that us, the people, are displeased”.

Anonymous is also helping to create hundreds of mirror sites for Wikileaks, after its US domain name provider withdrew its services.

“At the last count there were 507 mirrors of Wikileaks,” said Coldblood.

Ending contracts

Wikileaks has been hit by a series of denial-of-service attacks, following the release of a quarter of a million US embassy cables.

It is unclear who is behind the attacks but it seems that Wikileaks is getting too hot to handle as many of the businesses that work with the site, distance themselves from it.

On 3 December, domain name provider EveryDNS cut off service, citing the denial-of-service attacks as the reason.

Amazon also ended an agreement to host the site, saying Wikileaks failed to adhere to its terms of service.

It said that Wikileaks was unable to ensure that it “wasn’t putting innocent people in jeopardy” by leaking classified documents.

Online payment company, PayPal, has permanently restricted Wikileaks’ account, making it harder for supporters to make donations.

MasterCard Worldwide is also choking payments to the site.

The Swiss bank, PostFinance has closed the account of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

In all cases, the companies have insisted their decisions are not politically motivated.

PayPal said Wikileaks’ account had violated its terms of services.

PostFinance, meanwhile, claimed Assange had provided false information when opening his account.

BitTorrent file

But some have taken a different view.

French internet service provider OVH said it had no plans to end the service it provides to Wikileaks.

“OVH is neither for nor against this site. We neither asked to host this site nor not to host it. Now it’s with us, we will fulfil the contract,” said OVH managing director Octave Klaba.

“It’s neither for the political world nor for OVH to call for or to decide on a site’s closure,” he added.

French industry minister Eric Besson had called for the site to be shut down, saying France could not host internet sites that “violate the confidentiality of diplomatic relations and put in danger people protected by diplomatic secrecy”.

But on 6 December, a French judge declined to force OVH to shut Wikileaks down, saying the case needed further argument.

Wikileaks has amassed some high-profile enemies including Senator Joe Lieberman, who chairs the US Homeland Security Committee.

He has urged the US government to “use all legal means necessary to shut down Wikileaks before it can do more damage by releasing additional cables”.

Dr Joss Wright, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute thinks it could be too late to legislate Wikileaks offline.

“Wikileaks has released an encrypted file containing all of the embassy cables,” says Dr Wright. “The information is already out there.”

Dozens of copies of that encrypted file have been shared using peer-to-peer networks, such as BitTorrent. “Once the information is there, it’s virtually impossible to stop people sharing it,” said Dr Wright.

Founder of Wikileaks Julian Assange has been arrested and is due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court later.

He is accused by the Swedish authorities of sexual assault.

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