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Alan Johnson accuses the government of “distorting” Labour’s economic record and peddling the “myth” that it had no plan to deal with the deficit.
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Mohammad Sidique Khan detonated his device in a tunnel near Edgware Road Tube station in 2005 A survivor of the 7 July bombings in London has described the moment he was blown off his feet and left trapped under a set of Tube train doors.
Daniel Belsten told an inquest one of the blasts left him lying on the floor feeling like he was being electrocuted.
He was on the same Edgware Road train as bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan who killed himself and six others in 2005.
The inquests into the deaths of the 52 victims began in October, and are expected to last several months.
‘Burning metal’
Mr Belsten said: “I just felt a whack to the side of my head. I saw a white flash, everything was in slow motion. I felt like I was falling through the floor of the carriage.
“I could feel hot metal burning, I felt like I was being electrocuted.
“I felt like my legs were on the track and they were going down the track and my legs were being sliced off.
“I just remember the doors being on top of me. I was trapped down on the floor then looked up.”
Eventually help arrived and the doors were lifted off the dazed passenger, allowing him to sit down in a seat, the inquest heard.
He said he sat for a long period of time and was given a glass of water before being led to a platform while still shaky.
“I looked down at my legs and they were still there. I just felt a bit relieved. I just sat there, in shock, a bit dazed,” he said.
He recounted the scene of carnage before him, including seeing a man previously dressed in a suit sitting in his underwear and a woman who was short of breath crying out and holding her chest.
He recalled: “I just sat there, just staring into space, I was just looking, just thinking it’s crazy the situation I was in.”
Mr Belsten was taken to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington with a fractured cheekbone and left arm, plus damaged ears.
CLICKABLE Find out more about the victims of the Edgware Road bomb attack.
Ms Webb was from Islington in north London and worked as a personal assistant with DDB Europe, an advertising company, based in Paddington. Witness statements indicate that she survived for a short period after the explosion, despite being the second closest to the bomber. A number of passengers tried in vain to save her and to maintain her circulation, with the help of other commuters who shouted instructions.
Mr Downey lived in Milton and Keynes and worked in human resources for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, one of the capital
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A report into the Western Health Trust’s involvement in the case of four brothers who abused children in Donagh finds no major failings.
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Mr Sharon was born in Palestine in 1928, when it was under British administration The family of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is preparing to bring him home from hospital “within days”, Israeli sources say.
The 82-year-old has been in a coma since 2006, when he suffered a massive stroke.
Sources told the BBC he could be moved to his farm in the Negev “as early as Friday” from his hospital in Tel Aviv.
Nicknamed “the bulldozer”, the former general was seen as a strong leader by Israelis, but reviled by Palestinians.
Last month, medics at Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv said the former leader remained in a vegetative state but that his condition was stable.
“He does have periods of sleep and in the daytime he opens his eyes. Sometimes the family believes there is recognition,” his long-time personal physician and friend Dr Shlomo Segev told the BBC.
On Thursday, the Jerusalem Post reported that the initial transfer from Sheba hospital would be a temporary “vacation” for Mr Sharon at his beloved farm – Sycamore Ranch – in southern Israel, where his late wife is buried.
Early visits would be supervised by hospital staff, to make sure that private carers hired by the family were able to keep him in a stable condition, the paper added.
Mr Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001, pledging to achieve “security and true peace”.
He was a keen promoter of the expansion of the state and initiated the construction of the security barrier around the West Bank.
But despite fierce opposition in Israel, he ordered Jewish settlers to leave Gaza and four settlements in the West Bank.
As defence minister, Mr Sharon masterminded Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. During the invasion, Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel massacred hundreds of Palestinians in two refugee camps under Israeli control.
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Newcastle’s Joey Barton is charged with violent conduct after appearing to punch Blackburn’s Morten Gamst Pedersen at St James’ Park.
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Reforms to higher education funding that allow universities to charge higher fees will not save the government money, a report says.
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Mr Duncan Smith has said the benefits system has “trapped” millions in poverty Ministers are to set out how they plan to overhaul the benefits system to provide greater incentives for work and sanctions for those unwilling to do so.
Central to the plan, being announced by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, is a single universal credit which replaces work-related benefits.
Claimants moving into work will keep more of their income than now, but face losing benefits if they refuse a job.
Labour said it would back making work pay but warned about a lack of jobs.
Publishing a white paper on welfare reform in Parliament, Mr Duncan Smith is expected to say the current system is hugely complex and costly to administer, vulnerable to fraud, and deters people from finding a job and extending their hours.
Mr Duncan Smith, who campaigned for root-and-branch welfare reform while in opposition, has said millions of people have become “trapped” on benefits and long-term unemployment has become entrenched in communities where generation of families have not worked for years.
He will propose consolidating the existing 30 or more work-related benefits – including jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit, working tax credit, income support and employment support allowance – into a single universal payment.
This is likely to come into force for new claimants by 2013, with a target of migrating all recipients onto it in the first few years of the next Parliament after 2015.
“You cannot have a situation where if someone gets out of bed and goes and does a hard day’s work they end up worse off”
David Cameron
Allied to this, ministers want to make sure people keep more of their benefits for longer when in work and that state support is withdrawn in a less abrupt and more transparent way.
In addition, some groups will be able to retain more of their income than they do now before benefits start to be reduced to make work more financially worthwhile.
Officials believe that up to two million people will be better off as a result of the changes, which will cost an estimated £2bn to implement over the next four years.
David Cameron, who is in South Korea for the G20 summit, has said the reforms would create a simpler, fairer benefits system and do away with “indefensible anomalies” currently discouraging work.
“You cannot have a situation where if someone gets out of bed and goes and does a hard day’s work they end up worse off,” he said.
“That’s not fair and it sends entirely the wrong message – both to those on benefits and to the hard working majority who are being asked to support them.”
“It simply has to pay to work.”
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem Leader, has backed the plans, saying the coalition’s welfare changes will “reduce worklessness” in more than 300,000 families.
But ministers, who say they are drawing up the largest programme of work support ever devised, have warned there will be tougher penalties for those people fit to work but unwilling to do so.
A sliding scale of sanctions will see those refusing work on three occasions having their benefits taken away for three years.
Labour has said it will co-operate with the government where it is rewarding work but stressed there must be jobs for people to take up.
“If the government gets this right we will support them because, of course, we accept the underlying principle of simplifying the benefits system and providing real incentives to work,” Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Douglas Alexander said.
“But the government will not get more people off benefits and into work without there being work available. We back real obligations for people receiving out of work benefits but these should be matched by guarantees of real work.”
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The Tory party headquarters were targeted by protesters The police response to Wednesday’s student protests in London “did not go to plan” but the blame lay on those who were violent, Nick Herbert has said.
The policing minister told the House of Commons that a small “hardcore” group had carried out the violence but the police would learn lessons.
Earlier Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the violence during the protests over university tuition fees.
The Met Police has announced an inquiry into how the protests were handled.
Fifty people who were arrested during the protests over planned university fee increases have been released on police bail until February.
The majority had been held for criminal damage and aggravated trespass.
Mr Herbert said that 41 police had been injured during the protests outside 30 Millbank – the Conservative Party headquarters in Westminster – on Wednesday.
He said that some of the 2,000 students circling the building had been encouraged by a small group to be violent.
Earlier Mr Cameron called the protests “unacceptable” and said there had not been enough officers to control the crowds.
He called for the “full force of the law” to be used against those who had been violent.
Windows were smashed, fires lit and missiles thrown at police after a group of protesters broke away from the main demonstration against a rise in tuitiion fees – of up to £9,000.
Some broke into the building itself, although hundreds of workers, including Tory Party staff, had already been evacuated.
“I put it to the PM that we could be seeing a re-run of the Thatcher years. He denied that, claiming that the fact that this government is a coalition ensures that this is not a case of back to the future”
Nick Robinson BBC’s political editorRead Nick’s thoughts in fullRiots aftermath dominates papers
He said he had seen what had happened while in Seoul, where he was attending a G20 summit.
“I was worried for the safety of people in the building because I know people who work in there, not just the Conservative Party, but other offices as well, and so I was on the telephone”, he said.
He said protests were a part of democracy but violence and law-breaking was not.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has said the police should have better prepared and called Wednesday’s events “an embarrassment”.
He said: “It’s not acceptable. It’s an embarrassment for London and for us.”
Police are continuing to examine CCTV footage of the incident.
The National Union of Students (NUS) said about 50,000 people joined the demonstration, but according to Scotland Yard, only 225 officers were initially drafted in to police it because no trouble was anticipated.
Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman said the party supported the inquiry and added: “We deplore the violence which marred an important demonstration which the tens of thousands of students who took part and their leaders had intended to be completely peaceful.
But shadow business secretary John Denham said the students had a legitimate cause and needed to be listened to.
Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledges there were too few police at the fees protests
He said: “Those parents and the students who were there yesterday have a legitimate cause that needs to be taken up and debated. We mustn’t allow the despicable action of some protesters to divert attention from a real issue.”
Hundreds of coachloads of students and lecturers travelled to London from across England, Wales and Scotland for the demonstration in Whitehall.
As well as higher fees, they were protesting against plans to cut higher education funding by 40% and to all but wipe out teaching grants except for science and maths.
However Mr Cameron said he would not abandon his plan to reform tuition fees to allow some institutions to charge up to £9,000 a year.
NUS president Aaron Porter said he believed members had “lost a lot of public sympathy” because of what happened.
But Clare Solomon, president of the University of London Student Union, predicted a growing wave of similar protests in coming months.
London Mayor Boris Johnson said he also hoped those responsible for violence “paid a serious price for their actions”.
Asked about his decision to sign an NUS pledge promising to fight any rise in fees, Mr Clegg told ITV1’s Daybreak: “I should have been more careful perhaps in signing that pledge. At the time I thought I could do it.”
But Shadow Commons leader Hilary Benn said Mr Clegg knew exactly what he was doing.
Angry scenes at Millbank Tower at student fees protest
“Before the election [the Lib Dems] made everything of their pledge to vote against the lifting of tuition fees, after the election they couldn’t dump it fast enough.”
Under the coalition’s plans, students would not have to pay anything “up front” and as graduates, would only have to pay back their tuition fee loans once they were earning £21,000 or more.
But the NUS and other opponents say the prospect of such large debts will deter young people from poorer backgrounds from going to university.
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There are tough decisions for the NHS ahead of next week’s budget, says first minister Carwyn Jones.
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The government will be able to transfer some powers from Britain to the EU without a referendum, despite promising the public would get to vote on any such move in the coalition agreement.
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Satyajit Ray was one of the greatest Indian film-makers The government of the Indian state of West Bengal has gone ahead with plans to show a banned documentary made on the Himalayan state of Sikkim.
The film was banned after Sikkim merged with India under controversial circumstances in 1975.
It was made 40 years ago when Sikkim was an independent kingdom by legendary director Satyajit Ray.
But a private trust challenged the screening in the courts, arguing that it has sole copyright to it.
The Art and Culture Trust of Sikkim (Acts) – an organisation promoted by former Sikkim King Palden Thondup Namgyal – approached the Calcutta film festival organisers and appealed to them not to show it.
“But they were not prepared to listen and told us they screened the film at the festival on Thursday,” Acts Managing Trustee Ugyen Chhopel told the BBC.
“So we filed a case of copyright infringement in the Sikkim High Court.”
Nilanjan Chatterjee, chief of the Calcutta Film Festival, said that the decision to go ahead with the screening was taken because they had not received any orders from the court not to do so and had not received any documents proving the copyright.
A senior West Bengal government official told the BBC earlier that if someone could prove they had the copyright for the documentary, it would have been “honoured”.
Mr Chhopel said that although Acts has exclusive copyright and other relevant permits in relation to the film, the West Bengal government had not bothered to obtain the mandatory permits before screening it.
“We want everyone to respect the law,” Mr Chhopel said.
Acts is entrusted with the task of preserving ethnic Sikkimese art and culture. It says that it not only has exclusive copyright to the documentary, but also the censor board certificate and written permission to screen it from the erstwhile king.
Acts says that it has plans for a gala screening of the film in Gangtok – the capital of Sikkim – in March 2011.
The film was commissioned by King Palden Thondup Namgyal in the early 1970s.
When it was completed, the king and his wife were reportedly furious – especially over a shot that showed poor people scrambling for leftover food behind the royal palace in the capital, Gangtok.
“My father was asked to drop some shots and redo the final product,” Satyajit Ray’s son Sandip – also a film-maker – said. “He did that but the situation changed.”
By the time the film was finally ready, Sikkim had been merged with India.
Unsure how the people of Sikkim would react to the controversial shots in the film, the Indian government decided to ban it.
“Except for a private screening by my father, the film has not been seen by anybody else,” Sandip Ray said.
The two existing copies of the film are in the US and the British Film Institute.
Satyajit Ray died in April 1992 after receiving an Oscar for lifetime achievement.
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Former Australia captain Ian Chappell believes England’s decision to put faith in Alastair Cook for the Ashes is “a hell of a gamble”.
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Official statistics have revealed the extent to which household wealth was hit by the financial crisis.
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The Met Office says winds of up to 80mph (129km/h) could cause disruption in parts of northern England and north Wales overnight.
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The Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey pays tribute to those who have died since WWI Millions of people are expected to observe a two-minute silence at 1100GMT to mark Armistice Day.
Ceremonies will take place across the UK to honour all who have fallen since WWI, including the 110 servicemen killed in Afghanistan in the past year.
In London, a service will be held for the 90th time at the Cenotaph memorial.
Meanwhile, David Cameron has layed a wreath at the site of the Army’s bloodiest battle since the end of WWII – at the Imjin River in South Korea.
Some 59 men from the 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, died and 526 were captured when they were cut off by vastly superior Chinese Communist forces during the Battle of the Imjin River in the Korean War in 1951. Another 34 men died in captivity.
The British soldiers succeeded in delaying the advance of the Communist troops, preventing them from outflanking the forces of the Republic of Korea and the UN, who were then able to prevent a direct assault on the capital Seoul.
The prime minister, who is in the country for a G20 summit, spent several moments in contemplation at the memorial in what is now known by Koreans as Gloster Valley.
On Wednesday evening, British journalists who have died reporting conflicts around the world were honoured for their bravery in a memorial service attended by the Duchess of Cornwall.
The duchess joined families of reporters and cameramen killed over the last decade to commemorate their sacrifice “in the pursuit of truth”.
A host of media figures packed into St Bride’s church, on Fleet Street, the former home of many of Britain’s national newspapers, for the ceremony of remembrance.
On Tuesday, the first remembrance field dedicated to the British servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan was opened by Prince Harry.
The prince also planted a cross in the Royal British Legion Wootton Bassett Field of Remembrance, at Lydiard Park, Wiltshire.
The 342 UK service personnel who have lost their lives in the conflict were honoured with a two-minute silence.
Up to 35,000 crosses will be planted, each with a personal message.
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