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Ice warnings for many parts of UK

Trains covered in snow

Robert Hall takes to the skies to survey the extent of the disruption

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Travellers face continuing disruption due to severe weather across the UK.

Gatwick Airport has reopened after two days of closure due to snow, but passengers are being warned to expect delays and cancellations.

There are continuing problems on trains, with Southern and Southeastern railways operating revised timetables and trains in East Yorkshire cancelled.

Snow showers have eased but the Met Office is now warning of widespread icy roads in south-west England.

BBC weather forecaster Laura Tobin said it would be much, much, colder across much more of Britain on Friday.

Overnight, temperatures plunged to -16C at Aberdeen airport and -15C in Edinburgh. Manchester airport and Yeovil recorded -10C, while temperatures dropped to -7C in Birmingham.

Areas such as Northern Ireland, western Scotland and north-west England are set to be the next affected by snow during the course of Friday.

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UK forecast for 03/12/2010

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The Independent Petrol Retailers Association claimed that up to 500 independent petrol retailers in Scotland and the east of England risked running out of petrol and diesel by the weekend. Filling stations in rural areas away from the main trunk roads were particularly vulnerable, it added.

The easing of snow showers meant Gatwick Airport reopened on Friday morning, although major delays and cancellations were expected to continue to cause headaches for travellers.

A statement on the airport’s website said: “Our advice to passengers remains – do not travel to the airport without first checking with your airline to make sure that your flight is departing today.

“Passengers should expect delays and cancellations and it is likely to take a few days before flight schedules return to normal. Train services to and from the airport continue to be limited and road networks are likely to remain severely affected by the weather.”

In other developments:

Southern trains, which operates in south London and between central London and the south coast, said it would be operating a revised timetable on FridaySoutheastern trains, which runs out of London Victoria and Charing Cross, said it was operating an extremely limited number of services from an emergency timetableNational Rail Enquiries has set up a hotline for information about snow-related disruption on 08453 017 641, and also has updates at @nationalrailenq on TwitterPolice forces in Kent and Surrey continued to advise drivers to only travel if necessary as the low temperatures turned snow into iceEurostar said its timetable would be significantly reduced, with cancellations and delays, until SundayBournemouth airport will be closed until at least 0800 GMT on FridayNo trains are running between Cleethorpes and Doncaster, Lincoln and Grimsby and between Lincoln and Doncaster.Humberside airport closed until 0730 GMT. Flights at Robin Hood Airports cancelled

On Thursday, Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond told the Commons he was doing everything he could to keep Britain moving, but his Labour shadow minister Maria Eagle accused him of “complacency”.

The government said that “challenging” road conditions were making it difficult to supply fuel to some areas – even though the refineries themselves were operating without major disruption.

The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) said that at Thursday lunchtime 70% of normal services were running and 58% of those were on time.

Mr Hammond said he had heard “far too many stories” of rail passengers being unable to obtain information about train services.

The transport secretary has written to the train companies to remind them of their responsibilities.

An active search by mountain rescue team volunteers for missing fell walker Gwenda Merriot, 60, from Wiltshire, has ended, but posters are being put up and hotels and B&Bs are being contacted.

She was last seen in Ambleside in the Lake District on Wednesday morning and there has been heavy snowfall since then.

Some 1,200 schools were closed in Scotland on Thursday, representing 45% of the total number of schools.

Some children in the north-east missed out on lessons for a sixth day and about 250,000 Scottish pupils had the day off.

More than 4,000 schools were closed in England.

A total of 38cm (15in) of snow has fallen in Sheffield, the most recorded in December since records began in 1882.

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Wikileaks warrant ‘issued to UK’

Julian Assange, file picMr Assange has dismissed the allegations against him as part of a smear campaign

UK authorities “imminently” expect an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the BBC understands.

Swedish prosecutors drew up a second European Arrest Warrant, after the first was rejected on legal grounds.

Mr Assange, who has helped release thousands of secret files, is wanted in Sweden for questioning on sex crimes although no charges have been laid.

The UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which processes European Arrest Warrants, declined to comment.

Detectives in Sweden want to question Mr Assange after two women claimed they were sexually attacked when he visited the country in August.

The Swedish Supreme Court has upheld a court order to detain Mr Assange.

Mr Assange – reported to be staying at a secret address in the UK – denies the allegations and has vowed to fight them in court, saying they are part of a smear campaign against him.

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His British lawyer Mark Stephens told the BBC’s Today programme that the police knew where Mr Assange was living if they needed to get in touch with him.

He said his client was in a “bizarre situation” where he had tried to seek a meeting with the Swedish prosecutor to discuss the charges against him, but had been rebuffed.

“If the prosecutor had any concern for the women making the complaints, any concern about truth or justice, she would pick up the phone and get in touch with Julian – she knows how to do it.”

The original Stockholm district court arrest warrant for Mr Assange issued on 18 November was for suspicion of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion”.

A Swedish appeals court later upheld the detention order and the Supreme Court backed that ruling.

According to Swedish police, Soca requested a new warrant because the original listed only the maximum penalty for the most serious crime alleged, rather than for all of the crimes.

Once the European Arrest Warrant is received by Soca, officers will check it and pass it on to local police, who will serve it on Mr Assange.

Mr Stephens has said his client will challenge the warrant in court on the grounds that the process has been “utterly irregular”.

The warrant, valid in all EU member states, requires the receiving member state to arrest and extradict the suspect within 90 days of arrest, or within 10 days if the arrested person consents to surrender.

The warrant can only be issued for offences carrying a maximum penalty of 12 months or more.

Mr Assange’s legal battle comes as some 250,000 US diplomatic secret messages – or cables – were released by Wikileaks, to the embarrassment of governments and politicians all over the world.

The latest cables released on Friday suggest that Gordon Brown’s premiership was written off as almost “beyond repair” by the US embassy in London after less than a year.

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‘End of road’ for Woolas appeal

Phil WoolasPhil Woolas was immigration minister in the last Labour government
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Phil Woolas has lost his bid to overturn an election court’s ruling that stripped him of his Commons seat and barred him from politics.

He narrowly won his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat in May but the result was declared void by an election court over his conduct in the campaign.

He argued that the election court’s interpretation of the law was flawed.

But three High Court judges upheld the election court’s decision. If he does not appeal there will be a by-election.

Lord Justice Thomas, Mr Justice Tugendhat and Mrs Justice Nicola Davies said that, although Mr Woolas was entitled to have one of the findings against him set aside, there had been “illegal practice” by the former immigration minister.

Mr Woolas retained his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat in May – beating his Lib Dem opponent Elwyn Watkins by just 103 votes.

But the result was declared void by a specially convened election court in November, which ruled that Mr Woolas had made false statements as he sought to hang on to his seat during a closely fought campaign.

Although Mr Woolas is no longer the MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, a by-election has not yet been called while legal proceedings continue.

The election court heard that Mr Woolas had stirred up racial tensions during the campaign.

It found that, although made in the context of an election campaign, comments in campaign material suggesting Mr Watkins tried to “woo” the votes of Muslim extremists clearly amounted to an attack on his personal character and conduct.

The court ruled he was guilty of breaching the Representation of the People Act 1983 and barred him from standing for elected office for three years.

But lawyers for Mr Woolas argued during a two-day hearing in November that the election court’s interpretation of the law was flawed.

They argued that the election court misdirected itself in law, when it found that Mr Woolas had made attacks on his Lib Dem rival Elwyn Watkins’ “personal character or conduct” with “no reasonable grounds for believing them to be true, and did not believe them to be true”.

They argue that the statements were about the “political conduct” of his Lib Dem opponent – not his personal character – and suggest the election court’s interpretation was inconsistent with free speech.

Mr Woolas’s case is the first time an MP has been found guilty of making false statements of fact in an election petition since 1911.

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

Students stop Lib Dem conference

Student protestStudents had been planning the protest on social networking websites

Threats of a student protest this weekend have forced a Liberal Democrat conference to abandon its planned venue in London.

The party’s London MPs were to have met at a north London school on Saturday, but the head teacher has now cancelled the booking.

Head teacher of Haverstock School, John Dowd, said the risks from the protest were too great.

The Liberal Democrats say the meeting will now go ahead at another location.

Mr Dowd said it was clear from protest websites that there was going to be a demonstration against the Liberal Democrat MPs meeting at the school and he thought that it posed too great a risk.

Fiona Edwards, speaking for the Free Education Campaign protest, said: “The cancellation of the venue for the conference is yet another sign of the deep unpopularity of the Liberal Democrats’ policy on fees and is hugely embarrassing for the party.”

The vote by MPs on whether to raise university fees in England to an upper limit of £9,000 will be held next week and a number of protests have been announced.

Liberal Democrats have become particular targets for student protests as their MPs had given students a signed pledge that they would vote against any increase in fees.

There has been a wave of protests and occupations in universities, against the fee increase and plans to cut public funding for many arts and humanities courses.

Students at the London School of Economics say there are now 400 people taking part in an occupation.

This weekend students are planning talks which will link the current wave of unrest with the protests of the 1960s – in which students at the London School of Economics played an iconic role.

There are also occupations taking place in universities including University College London, SOAS, Newcastle, King’s College London, Leeds, Sheffield and Cambridge.

On Friday, the National Union of Students has sought to broaden the protest against fees by encouraging parents and families to write to MPs.

“Over the past few weeks I have been contacted by a great number of parents who are desperately concerned about how their children will be affected,” says NUS president, Aaron Porter.

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Ex-MP pleads guilty over expenses

David ChaytorDavid Chaytor arrives at court

Former Labour MP David Chaytor has pleaded guilty to three charges relating to his expenses claims.

Mr Chaytor, 61, the former MP for Bury North, was charged with false accounting totalling just over £20,000.

He stood down as an MP at the general election after stories about his expenses emerged in the press.

He changed his plea ahead of a trial which was due to start on Monday. He was the first Parliamentarian due to face trial over his expenses.

He will be sentenced on 7 January at Southwark Crown Court. He faces a maximum seven years in jail but is likely to receive a more lenient sentence because of his guilty plea.

Three other former MPs and two members of the House of Lords are due to face separate trials over their expenses claims.

Mr Chaytor had claimed £12,925 between 2005 and 2006 for renting a flat in Regency Street, near Westminster, which he owned the lease to – he produced a tenancy agreement falsely showing he was paying £1,175 a month rent.

He also falsely claimed £5,425 between 2007 and 2008 for renting a home in Castle Street, Bury, which was owned by his mother. He had produced a false tenancy agreement showing he was paying £775 a month.

The charge said that he was not paying his mother and would not have been allowed to claim for leasing a property from a family member.

A third charge related to falsely charging £1,950 for IT support services in May 2006 – money which was not paid to him. The charge said that he supplied two invoices from a man named Paul France for his professional services “when in fact the services had not been provided or charged for”.

He had denied the charges but appeared at the Old Bailey on Friday to change his plea, having failed in a court bid to argue that expenses cases should be heard by Parliament, not the courts.

He was granted unconditional bail.

Mr Chaytor who was elected during Labour’s 1997 landslide victory, had spent his 13 years in the Commons on the back benches.

He was suspended by the Labour Party and barred from standing for them again after stories about his expenses claims emerged when the Daily Telegraph published hundreds of claims made by MPs over several years.

At the time he apologised for what he called accounting errors and referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner for investigation.

But after a lengthy police inquiry the Crown Prosecution Service announced in February he would face criminal charges.

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