Category: news

Funding for all state schools in England could soon be decided by Whitehall rules, the Department for Education confirms.

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A woman accused of attacking US actor Leonardo DiCaprio with a broken bottle in 2005 pleads no contest at a court in Los Angeles.

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Holiday camp company Pontin’s has been placed into administration, the accountancy firm KPMG has said.

The company, famous for its Bluecoats entertainers, currently runs five parks, all of which will continue to trade as normal, KPMG added. No redundancies have been made.

In 2009, Pontin’s announced a £50m plan to redevelop its centres but was forced to close Blackpool Park.

Pontin’s was established in 1946 and employs 850 people.

It was bought by Oceans Park for £46m in 2008. Its five sites are in Brean Sands in Somerset, Camber Sands in Sussex, Pakefield in Suffolk, Presatyn Sands in Denbighshire and Southport in Merseyside.

At its height, Pontin’s owned more than 30 parks.

KPMG said it was in the process of appointing an experienced leisure operator to the company in order that it can “continue trading and ensure that guests’ holiday expectations are met.”

It added that it intended to honour all reservations.

“Pontin’s is an iconic British brand which forms the backdrop to thousands of treasured family holiday memories,” said Jane Moriarty, joint administrator at KPMG.

“It has unfortunately struggled in the current economic environment but, with some support from new management, we are optimistic that it will be part of thousands of family memories in the years to come.”

The administrators have set up a helpline number for customers, which will be open from Monday 15 November. It is 0844 576 8481.

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Burma’s generals are said to have signed an order authorising the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

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A file containing new evidence on the News of the World phone hacking scandal has been submitted to prosecutors, Scotland Yard says.

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Brazil’s vice-president, Jose Alencar, is in a stable condition and has been moved out of intensive care, after suffering a heart attack on Thursday.

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A man is arrested after a fire extinguisher was thrown from a roof during a student rally in central London.

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Police have rejected a claim by a Policing Board member that dissident republicans have almost all of the capabilities of the Provisional IRA.

Ulster Unionist Basil McCrea said his analysis was based on intelligence information from the Policing Board.

However, police sources expressed “astonishment” at the claim.

They told the BBC the dissidents are “a long way off” having the capabilities of the PIRA.

Mr McCrea told Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan show that he expected more violence from dissident republican groups.

“The message coming out from me is to understand that there is a serious threat out there,” he said.

“They are about 97% at the moment in terms of capability and capacity and the only thing stopping them doing it is an extremely efficient PSNI operation in terms of disrupting serious crime and these people,” he said.

Mr McCrea said the information his analysis was based on was confidential but said the threat was “serious”.

A week ago a military hand grenade was used in an attack by dissidents on police officers in west Belfast.

The dissident paramilitary group Oglaigh na hEireann (ONH) said it was responsible for the attack.

The group has been responsible for a number of car bomb attacks on police stations and other targets in Northern Ireland this year.

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Newsweek magazine is merging with news website The Daily Beast, it has been announced.

It will bring together one of US publishing’s oldest names with one of its newest, under the stewardship of former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown.

She co-founded The Daily Beast two years ago and said the two companies would be a “powerful dual platform”.

Newsweek, established in 1933, was sold by the Washington Post to businessman Sidney Harman for $1 earlier this year.

The new venture, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, will be jointly owned by Mr Harman and IAC, which owns websites including Ask.com and Reference.com.

IAC’s chairman and chief executive is the billionaire Barry Diller, a former chairman of broadcaster Fox.

“In an admittedly challenging time, this merger provides the ideal combination of established journalism authority and bright, bristling website savvy,” Mr Harman said.

Just last month, Tina Brown had written on The Daily Beast site that the deal was not to be.

But she confirmed that the deal had been sealed over coffee on Tuesday evening in Manhattan and the details of the deal hammered out on Thursday night.

“Some weddings take longer to plan than others,” she wrote.

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A model of the new, fuel-efficient, routemaster bus has been unveiled in London.

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More than 20% of children tested showed signs of the bone disease rickets, Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust said.

Consultant orthopaedic surgeon Prof Nicholas Clarke checked more than 200 of the city’s children for bone problems caused by a lack of vitamin D.

He was astonished by the results, which, he said, were “very reminiscent of 17th Century England”.

Prof Clarke works for Southampton General Hospital.

He said vitamin D supplements should be more widely adopted to halt the rise in cases.

The crippling bone disease can lead to deformities like bowed legs as well stunted growth and general ill-health.

A lack of vitamin D can be caused by poor diets and insufficient exposure to sunlight, which helps the body synthesise the vitamin.

Prof Clarke said: “A lot of the children we have seen have got low vitamin D and require treatment.

“In my 22 years at Southampton General Hospital, this is a completely new occurrence in the south that has evolved over the last 12 to 24 months and we are seeing cases across the board, from areas of deprivation up to the middle classes.

“There is a real need to get national attention focused on the dangers this presents.”

He added that the “modern lifestyle, which involves a lack of exposure to sunlight, but also covering up in sunshine” had contributed to the problem.

“The return of rickets in northern parts of the UK came as a surprise, despite the colder climate and lower levels of sunshine in the north, but what has developed in Southampton is quite astonishing,” said Prof Clarke.

“We are facing the daunting prospect of an area like Southampton, where it is high income, middle class and leafy in its surroundings, seeing increasing numbers of children with rickets, which would have been inconceivable only a year or so ago.”

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A student convicted of hacking into former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s email account in 2008 has been sentenced to a year in state custody.

David Kernell guessed the answers to Ms Palin’s security questions and reset her password, prosecutors said.

Defence lawyers described the offence as a youthful prank. Kernell was a 20-year-old student at the University of Tennessee when he committed the crime.

The judge recommended his term be served in a halfway house, not prison.

Ms Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, compared the hacking to the Watergate scandal.

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Student leaders want to push protests against the raising of university tuition fees towards politics rather than violence.

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Three children have died and a woman has been seriously injured in a house fire in East Yorkshire.

The fire broke out at the property in Clarence Avenue, Bridlington, shortly before midnight.

Humberside Fire and Rescue Service confirmed the children, whose ages have not been revealed, had died.

The 27-year-old woman, who is thought to be the children’s mother, is said to be in a serious but stable condition at Scarborough General Hospital.

A fire service spokeswoman said: “It is too early at this stage to ascertain the cause of the fire, but it is believed the fire started inside the property.

“Police and the fire service are investigating.”

The spokeswoman said she could not say at this stage whether the fire was being treated as suspicious.

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Downing Street has rejected calls to protect the armed forces from cuts to public sector pensions.

A spokesman for prime minister David Cameron’s spokesman said “tough decisions” were needed and the policy decision had been made.

The Forces Pension Society claims widows and injured soldiers face losing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Ministers plan to link public sector pension rises to an alternative, and historically lower, inflation measure.

Widows who remarry or move in with a new partner will lose their military pensions.

The Forces Pensions Society calculates that the inflation link – which affects pensions and annual guaranteed income payments – mean a 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan could lose almost £750,000 over her lifetime.

Writing in the Times, the society’s head, Vice Admiral Sir Michael Moore, said: “It is so easy for Mr Cameron to extol the forces at every opportunity … but his words will have a hollow ring unless he addresses these issues personally.

“His ministers do not understand, show no inclination of wanting to do so and appear to be rendered impotent and mesmerised by the Treasury.”

The move was also criticised by former Labour defence secretary Lord Hutton – the man the government appointed to oversee a review of public sector pensions – in his maiden speech in the House of Lords.

He said linking the military pension to the consumer price index, rather than the retail price index, would mean war widows and the injured would get smaller payments in future, which he said was “wrong”.

But a Downing Street spokeswoman said the military could not be exempt from changes affecting the public sector.

“A policy decision has been made,” she said.

“The prime minister has the highest regard for the armed forces and their families but tough decisions had to be made in this particular respect.”

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