Category: news

A British couple who spent almost 400 days held hostage in Somalia have spoken of their “traumatic” time.

Paul and Rachel Chandler, kidnapped off their yacht near the Seychelles in October 2009, said they were beaten when they refused to be separated.

“We were really distraught, we were very frightened at that point,” Mrs Chandler, from Kent, said after arriving safely in Kenya.

They said they had only the vaguest idea of how the rescue had come about.

Mr Chandler said they were driven across the country, then left locked in a car to sleep overnight.

“Just after dawn, about 7 o’clock, we were asked to leave and join our rescuer. It was hard to have any feelings really, almost disbelief, it was too good to be true,” he said, having travelled from Adado, then to Mogadishu, and finally flying to Kenya.

Details of their onward journey back to the UK have not been released yet.

They were held in harsh conditions, with intense heat, in rural Somalia for 13 months. Mr Chandler said they were well, albeit “rather skinny and bony”. Medical check-ups were available in Nairobi for them.

The long-term effects of their ordeal are unknown, with their family back in the UK asking “that everyone gives them the opportunity to adjust and return to their families and friends in the days to come”.

Both husband and wife – who are experienced sailors – said the worst time was leaving their yacht, in which they had been sailing from the Seychelles towards Tanzania as part of a longer voyage.

“The worst time was when we had to abandon our home and boat… in the ocean,” Mr Chandler said.

Mrs Chandler agreed, saying: “Abandoning [our yacht] Lynn Rival when we were taken on board the container ship and brought eventually on shore was the worst time.

“Another time that was very traumatic was when they decided to separate us. We were really distraught, we were very frightened at that point. We refused to be separated and we were beaten as a result. That was very traumatic.”

Mrs Chandler, 56, said they were told on Friday of their imminent freedom but remained doubtful it would happen.

She said it was the gang leader who told them the news, but “he was always telling us lies, from time to time, that we would be released. But we were hopeful as for the last few months we had heard so little”.

Mr Chandler, 60, said they could not comment on any details about how the rescue was negotiated as they had only the “vaguest idea” of what had happened, having had “no communication since the middle of June with the outside world”.

Details were not released by the Chandler family in the UK, who issued a statement saying: “The family believes it would be irresponsible to discuss any aspect of the release process as this could encourage others to capture private individuals and demand large ransom payments, something that we are sure none of us wants.”

Earlier this year their captors threatened to kill the couple if their demands for $7m (£4.4m) were not met.

A payment of about $430,000 (£267,000) was made to the pirates in June, but did not result in the release of the Chandlers.

Media speculation was thought to have influenced the pirates, and so the family opted for a super-injunction banning coverage of the kidnap.

The BBC’s Frank Gardner said the ransom paid for their eventual release was “the best part of $1 million”.

Our correspondent said it was thought unlikely any of those responsible would be brought to justice in Somalia, a country without an effective government since 1991.

The British government welcomed the news, with Prime Minister David Cameron “unreservedly” condemning the captors.

“Kidnapping is never justified,” he said.

Foreign Secretary William Hague reiterated the long-standing British policy of not paying ransoms.

“I think it is right that successive British governments have said we don’t make concessions to hostage-takers. But it is also right to do everything else we have done in this case and that the previous government did.

“We have used our contacts in the region to try to gain information and to influence the hostage-takers. But no British government is going to start paying ransoms for hostages.”

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

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has reappointed Francois Fillon as prime minister in the first stage of a cabinet reshuffle.

The move comes a day after the entire government handed in its resignation.

The two men are now drawing up a list of other appointments which are likely to be announced on Sunday or Monday.

There has been mounting political tension in France in recent months, and Mr Sarkozy’s popularity is at an all-time low.

Last month parliament passed controversial reforms to the country’s pension system which sparked widespread protests.

The incoming government will be in charge of implementing policy in the run-up to the next presidential elections in 2012.

The BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris says Mr Fillon is seen as a calm and steadying figure, whose popularity ratings regularly exceed those of the president, and Mr Sarkozy has clearly decided that he needs his reassuring presence at the helm.

Our correspondent says that other senior figures are on their way out – notably Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a socialist who has recently expressed unease at some government policies, and Defence Minister Herve Morin.

In a statement, Mr Fillon spelled out his priorities as head of the new government.

“After three and a half years of brave reforms, carried out despite a severe global economic and financial crisis, I am starting… a new phase with determination which will allow our country to strengthen the growth of the economy to help jobs, promote solidarity and safeguard the security of all French people,” he said.

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Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson has said he disagrees with Labour leader Ed Miliband on two key tax policies.

Mr Johnson, who backed Ed’s brother David for party leader, is against a graduate tax and does not think the 50p top rate should be permanent.

He told BBC One’s Politics Show Labour had yet to come up with a “considered policy” in these areas.

But he said both he and Mr Miliband were “determined” to sort out their policy differences.

Ed Miliband spoke out against university tuition fees during his campaign for the Labour leadership, saying he favoured a graduate tax instead.

But Mr Johnson, who as an education minister steered tuition fee legislation through Parliament, has been a vocal critic of a graduate tax.

He admitted there was a “very big difference” between himself and Mr Miliband on this issue but he said the shadow cabinet were in the process of working out a new policy – and he had shifted his own position since the publication of Lord Browne’s report.

He said the issue now was whether graduates should be paying for the whole of their higher education, adding: “I disagree with that fundamentally.”

Mr Miliband enhanced his standing with trade unionists and Labour’s left, whose support proved decisive in the leadership ballot, by saying the increase in top rate income tax to 50p introduced by Alistair Darling should be permanent.

Mr Johnson argued in a press interview over the weekend that it should be a temporary measure to help Britain through its current economic troubles.

Asked whether he was contradicting his leader, Mr Johnson said: “You have to separate out what’s going on in a leadership contest, where people say all kinds of things in the cut and thrust of that campaign – and where we stand now.”

Mr Johnson, who is on the Blairite right of the Labour Party, was a surprise choice for the role of shadow chancellor, getting the job ahead of Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper.

He said it was a “mark of the man” that Mr Miliband had appointed him to such a key role despite their differing views – and he denied the party was on the verge of a new civil war between its leader and shadow chancellor.

“We are working through these issues – on the graduate tax and on the 50p tax rate – and we will provide a considered policy option at the right time. We are not setting all our policies out now,” he told the Politics Show.

“We have to discuss those differences of opinion like mature people, which is really a mindset I think Ed has brought into the party and I think that is commendable.”

Mr Johnson has been described as Ed Miliband’s cabinet “enforcer” – the man who the other members of the shadow cabinet must go through to get approval of their policies.

And he insisted “we have to have some discipline here and we will.”

But he said his first task as shadow chancellor was to expose what he said were the coalition’s lies about Labour being responsible for bringing the UK to the brink of bankruptcy.

“It is a very serious misrepresentation of our position and the last 13 years,” he told The Politics Show.

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Sir John Madejski is about to find out what is going on inside his head.

After final preparations by a team of scientists the leading British businessman lies down on a stretcher and is wheeled gently into an MRI scanner.

But Sir John is not ill. The 45 minute brain scan is part of a unique experiment to try to work out whether science can be applied to the study of leadership.

Neuroscientists, psychologists and management experts at Reading University are collaborating on a study which aims to examine the brains of chief executives and leaders in other field like the military or voluntary organisations.

Dr Kevin Money of Henley Business School, now part of Reading University, explains the aims: “We hope to look at how leaders from different sectors make decisions, what actually leads people to move from making good to bad decisions, what goes on in people’s minds and how they make those choices.”

Inside the scanner, Sir John is not just having a rest, he is completing a series of exercises.

Professor Douglas Saddy of Reading’s Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics looks on as the businessman presses a keypad to make various financial decisions by pressing buttons: “In this case,” he explains, “what he is being asked to do is make a judgement about whether given a certain set of information a short-term reward would be better than a long-term reward.”

While he presses the keypad his brain activity is being measured. The results of this and a number of other scans will be aggregated to try to draw out some lessons.

Sir John emerges from the £1m scanner looking cheerful enough.

“I think they found my brain,” he jokes. The entrepreneur has made enough money from a string of businesses to buy a football club and endow a Centre for Reputation at Henley Business School.

He is enthusiastic about the project and has promised to encourage fellow tycoons to submit their brains for scanning.

Dr Money is cautious about promising instant results from this research: “It’s way too early, we can’t look at one person’s brain and conclude too much. What we can do is look at different groups, say military and business leaders, and compare leadership education within those different groups.”

But using technology to examine what makes a good leader is nothing new. For many decades organisations around the world have used psychometric testing to help choose candidates for senior positions, and to try to understand what constitutes a good leader.

But psychometrics is a controversial science, with some critics suggesting it makes claims that cannot be substantiated.

Professor Peter Saville has run businesses supplying psychometric techniques for more than 30 years.

He outlines for me a history of his science which he says stretches back to techniques used by Samuel Pepys to select naval officers, and insists that it makes a valuable contribution to the process of choosing job candidates: “You still find interviewers who judge people on the first minute of an interview,” he says. “All we are doing is reducing the odds of choosing the wrong person. It’s science versus sentiment.”

Then Professor Saville sets me a psychometric test of my leadership skills. It involves some 36 quite complex questions, where I am asked to rank my own skills – from decisiveness to strategic thinking.

Often, I am asked to decide between aspects of my personality that are not mutually exclusive – whether I seek to consult other members of the team, whether I am keen to promote my own work.

After I complete the questionnaire, Professor Saville hands me a report on my leadership skills.

It is not encouraging. “You come in the bottom 2% of the population for strategic vision,” he tells me. He tactfully tries to reassure me that I have scored very highly as a networker and a communicator – important skills for a journalist – but makes it clear that I am not going to be asked to lead some major organisation any time soon.

So is there a chance that a recruitment industry which already uses psychometrics will now look to other techniques, including perhaps bran scanning? One headhunter is sceptical.

Virginia Eastman of Heidrick and Struggles hunts down candidates for senior roles in global media organisations. She says that new technology is helping to make the process of communicating with and assessing suitable leaders more rapid, but it only goes so far: “Our whole profession is built on one thing, the consensus that we all know what good looks like, and that we make that judgement. No machine can replace that.”

Neuroscientists and psychologists believe they can make a real contribution to our understanding of what makes leaders tick.

But for now, those whose job it is to select leaders still believe it is more of an art than a technology.

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

The US has offered Israel a package of incentives in exchange for a settlement construction freeze in the West Bank, diplomatic sources say.

Under the reported plan, Israel would stop construction for 90 days in the West Bank but not in East Jerusalem.

Israeli media say the cabinet has been discussing the package.

The settlement row threatens to derail direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which resumed in the US in September after a break of almost 20 months.

In addition to the 90-day construction freeze, the plan includes a US pledge not to seek any further extension to the moratorium, the diplomatic sources say.

In return, Washington reportedly offers Israel various security guarantees and commits itself to fighting international resolutions critical of Israel.

The US-brokered Middle East peace talks stalled only a few weeks after their resumption in September.

The Palestinians – backed by the Arab League – have pledged not to return to the talks without a full settlement construction freeze, but have given US negotiators until early November to try to break the impasse.

Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967, settling close to 500,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements. They are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

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Lebanese police arrest radical Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Muhammad after a military court had sentenced him in absentia to life in jail.

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A retired British couple are freed more than a year after being taken captive by pirates who boarded their yacht off the Seychelles.

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Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola receives a lifetime achievement Oscar, during a Los Angeles ceremony.

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Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney has hinted at a public sector pay freeze, as he faces a £1bn budget cut.

He said his spending plans for the year ahead, due to be set out on Wednesday, would be the toughest “in the history of devolution”.

Mr Swinney, who said pay restraint could save £300m, is also planning to end big public sector bonuses.

SNP ministers say they have £1.3bn less to spend in 2011-12, but the UK government insists the cut is £900m.

In return for public sector pay restraint – which could see a year-long pay freeze – Mr Swinney said the government could relieve pressure on peoples’ household bills.

He said: “Hard choices will need to be made – but it can be easier for all who live here and cohesion maintained within our communities by developing a ‘social contract’ with the people of Scotland.”

Salaries account for more than half of the Scottish government budget.

Mr Swinney blamed the previous UK government for two-thirds of the cuts, adding the Tory-Lib Dem coalition was “cutting too far and too fast” in its efforts to tackle the spending deficit.

Despite the reduction, he said the Scottish government was committed to continuing the council tax freeze and abolishing prescription charges, as part of plans to help hard-pressed families.

Elsewhere in the budget, the finance secretary is expected to announce plans to move some day-to-day spending to projects involving capital investment, to help save jobs and promote economic growth.

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The 70th anniversary of the Coventry Blitz is being marked in the city.

Coventry saw one of Britain’s largest raids in World War II on 14 November, 1940. An estimated 1,200 people died with most of the city centre destroyed.

A remembrance service at Coventry Cathedral earlier was attended by dignitaries including, the German Ambassador and the Mayor of Dresden.

A civic service will be held at the cathedral later and an air-raid siren sounded within the building.

Residents were asked by the city council if they wanted the siren sounded during commemorations.

Coventry’s Lord Mayor Brian Kelsey said the views of people who had experienced the bombings first hand had been taken into account

He said: “They [sirens] will mark the beginning and end of a two-minutes’ silence at 7.15pm and will only be heard around the cathedral and not across the city.”

The Luftwaffe dropped thousands of tonnes of bombs in a bid to destroy Coventry’s industrial strength.

Bombs destroyed the ancient cathedral, hospitals, schools and the tram system.

Coventry Cathedral was rebuilt and has become recognised as a world centre for reconciliation.

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A common sight at Catalonian festivals, castells can be up to 10 human storeys high, with a small child usually being placed on the top.

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Militant groups such as al-Qaeda will never be defeated by the West, but can be contained, the head of the UK’s armed forces says.

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The work of a modern-day war artist

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Historian Tim Skelton on how the Cenotaph became a focus for grief

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The Organization of American States has urged Nicaragua and Costa Rica to withdraw their security forces from a disputed river border, where there has been tension for a month.

In a resolution, the OAS said the two countries should begin urgent talks to resolve their differences.

Costa Rica accuses Nicaragua of deploying troops inside its territory on an island in the San Juan river.

Nicaragua insists the island is on its side of the border.

Costa Rica welcomed the OAS resolution as a “diplomatic victory” after 22 countries voted in favour, with only Nicaragua and its ally Venezuela voting against.

But Nicaragua says the organisation does not have the authority to rule on border disputes, and says it will not withdraw its troops.

The San Juan river marks the border between the two countries but an island at its mouth, Isla Calero, has been disputed for more than a century.

Nicaraguan troops set up a camp there last month in support of a dredging operation.

Costa Rica, which has no army, responded by sending armed police to the region.

Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla has accused Nicaragua of “invading” her country.

Thousands of Costa Ricans marched in the capital San Jose on Saturday in support of a peaceful solution.

Police have tightened security outside the Nicaraguan embassy in the city after a petrol bomb was thrown at the building.

Costa Rica has complained that the Google maps website fuelled the dispute by showing the island on the Nicaraguan side of the border.

Google has admitted making an error and has now revised its map.

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