The question of whether to protect next year’s health budget from cuts divides AMs.
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Thousands of Yemenis demonstrate in the south of the country, demanding the release of a separatist leader.
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The plane was carrying 42 people
Boeing has halted test flights of its long-delayed 787 Dreamliner after smoke in the cockpit forced an emergency landing in Texas on Tuesday.
The planemaker’s shares fell 3.4% in New York as investors worried about the risk of a further delay to the aircraft’s launch.
The Dreamliner is already nearly three years behind schedule.
“We have decided to not fly the other planes until we better understand the incident,” a spokeswoman said.
Boeing said it would take time to determine what caused smoke to enter the plane during the approach to Laredo, Texas on a routine test flight from Yuma, Arizona.
All 42 people on board were evacuated safely using emergency chutes in what was the first high-profile incident for the 787 under testing.
Boeing said it had no reason to suspect that the aircraft’s engines, which are made by Rolls-Royce, had anything to do with the incident.
Rolls is under pressure to allay concern about the failure of an engine on a Qantas Airbus A380 last week.
The 787 Dreamliner, being built in Seattle, is Boeing’s most sophisticated plane yet. The company claims it is lighter, faster and emits less CO2 than similar-sized planes currently flying.
It made its maiden flight in December 2009.
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Ask.com decides to stop investing in its search engine and return to answering questions using third party software.
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Many workers in Lagos stayed at home on Wednesday, while some joined union rallies
Nigeria’s two largest unions have agreed to suspend their three-day strike after one day’s stoppage.
Union leaders said the government had assured them the monthly national minimum wage would go up to $120 (£75).
But union leaders said they would meet again in a month’s time to review progress on the issue.
The strike has disrupted flights and activities in schools, offices and hospitals in major towns and cities across Africa’s most populous nation.
The BBC’s Caroline Duffield in Lagos says union leaders met as the nationwide strike brought government offices to a halt on Wednesday.
There has been panic buying and long queues at petrol stations amid fears of fuel shortages.
President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly pleaded with the unions to limit this strike to one day only, she says.
Union leaders were demanding that the government honour the national minimum agreement made in 2009.
Inflation has been running at double-digit rates in recent years, driven by increases in food and transportation costs.
The minimum wage has not risen for a decade.
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A newly-restored train carriage has been unveiled in Kent 90 years after it carried the body of the Unknown Soldier to Westminster Abbey.
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Stafford Hospital’s regulation systems were “wholly ineffective”, a public inquiry is told.
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President Barack Obama has arrived in Seoul ahead of the start of the G20 summit
President Barack Obama has pleaded with world leaders to put aside their differences and work together for global economic recovery.
On the eve of the G20 summit, he said the US would play its part to create jobs and reduce global imbalances.
But, in a statement ahead of the gathering in South Korea, he said that it alone could not restore growth.
He accepted the US must change, adding: “When all nations do their part… we all benefit from higher growth.”
Mr Obama’s comments will be seen as an attempt to calm fears that the Seoul summit could descend into a row between the US and China about so-called “currency wars” and trade imbalances.
Earlier UK Prime Minister David Cameron stepped into the fray with a warning that China should act to correct its trade imbalance.
In a speech at Peking University, he said that China’s export success was a potential threat to other economies.
China’s huge trade surplus is in part attributed to the weakness of the yuan, which helps the country’s exporters.
But ahead of the G20 summit, China’s President Hu Jintao said countries must “face their own problems”.
Latest figures show that China’s trade surplus rose to $27bn (£17bn) in October, despite rapid economic growth in the country starting to cool.
Critics blame Beijing for keeping the yuan artificially low, which helps boost exports and has led to China building up massive amounts of foreign reserves.
Mr Cameron, who is leading a trade mission to the country, said he wanted “to make the positive case for the world to see China’s rise as an opportunity, not a threat”.
He said China can play a leading role in dealing with economic problems as the world emerges from recession.
But China’s increasing economic muscle has given it “responsibilities” both economically and politically, said the prime minister.
“The recent crisis was certainly not caused by China’s currency”
Cui Tiankai China vice foreign minister
In an apparent reference to the low valuation of the yuan, Mr Cameron said: “The truth is that some countries with current account surpluses have been saving too much while others like mine with deficits have been saving too little.
“And the result has been a dangerous tidal wave of money going from one side of the globe to another.
“We need a more balanced pattern of global demand and supply, a more balanced pattern of global saving and investment.”
Critics, especially in the US, have called for tariffs on Chinese imports unless the yuan is allowed to appreciate.
It is feared that other countries will rush to allow currency devaluation to also make their exports more competitive.
The issue will be a key topic at the G20 summit in South Korea on Thursday and Friday.
Stephanie Flanders explains the background to the US-China currency dispute
However, in an interview with China’s official Xinhua news agency, President Hu Jintao told countries to “face their own problems” rather than casting blame.
Separately, China’s vice foreign minister Cui Tiankai rejected foreign interference in what Beijing regards as an internal matter.
“The recent crisis was certainly not caused by China’s currency,” he said in an interview.
An he warned that the summit should not descend into a row about currencies. If either side “chooses a confrontational approach, I think everybody will come out as losers”, he said.
Meanwhile in London, Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, also called for co-operation, not confrontation, at the summit.
“I hope that at the G20… we will get a co-operative message rather than some of those that we have been getting in the last few days and weeks.”
But he said that the G20 must agree to let current account imbalances unwind, rather than impose targets and policy instruments.
This, he said, was in the collective interest.
“Unless we recognise that… then we will face a situation where more and more countries will resort to policy instruments that in the end will be damaging to everyone. It is that serious.”
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The cousins fled to Iraq after the murder
Two cousins have been found guilty of murdering a relative because her family did not approve of her boyfriend.
Banaz Mahmod, 20, an Iraqi Kurd from Mitcham, south London, was strangled in January 2006 and her body buried in a suitcase in Handsworth, Birmingham.
Mohammed Saleh Ali and Omar Hussain, both 28, of no fixed address, had denied murder at the Old Bailey trial.
The 20-year-old’s father Mahmod Mahmod and uncle Ari Mahmod were jailed for her murder in 2007.
Saleh and Hussain, who also denied burying Ms Mahmod’s body, conspiring to kidnap her boyfriend Rahmat Suleimani and threatening to kill him, fled to Iraq after the murder.
In a letter handed to police weeks before she died, she had named Hussain and Ali as men “ready and willing to do the job of killing me”.
Victor Temple QC, prosecuting, had told the court that the victim had complained to police that she and her boyfriend were in danger in the run-up to her death.
She was also recorded on a phone saying her father tried to make her drink brandy and bring a suitcase with her for a car journey.
Mr Temple told the court she realised what was in store for her and fled.
But by 24 January she had disappeared and was later found dead.
Boyfriend Mr Suleimani narrowly escaped an abduction attempt after friends came to his aid, the court heard.
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The test was seen as the first examination of pan-EU internet security
Related stories
Europe needs to do more to prepare itself for cyber attacks, an EU report has concluded.
The judgement follows a simulation of how member states would deal with a sustained attack on their networks.
The simulation tested how countries would cope if international net connections failed to work, leaving citizens, businesses and public bodies unable to access online services.
Future tests must involve the private sector, the report said.
Cyber Europe 2010, a so-called “cyber stress test”, aimed to give member states better understanding of how to handle such cyber incidents and create best practices for the future.
Organisers said that while the exercise met its stated aims, it revealed that more still needs to be done.
“Member states need to do more with their national security exercises,” said Ulf Bergstrom, a spokesman for the organisers, the European Network Security Agency (Enisa).
“Not enough member states are doing such exercises and they must increase their efforts.”
“Countries need proper policies about what to do if channels break down, how communications will function and what the roles and responsibilities are,” he added.
The report also concluded that future simulations should include the private sector.
“The networks are largely owned by the private sector and they should be involved,” said Mr Bergstrom.
UK plans
A pan-European cyber attack is a real possibility, Mr Bergstrom suggested.
The cyber war simulation steadily cut off net links
“All systems are interconnected and cross national boundaries. These networks are crucial for the European economy and that is why are are co-operating at a European level,” he said.
There were 30 European countries involved in the European simulation.
A full report into the exercise will be published at the beginning of next year.
UK Defence minister Nick Harvey said this week that it was just “a matter of time” before terrorists used the internet to launch an attack.
The UK plans to spend £650m over the next four years on a National Cyber Security Programme, aimed at protecting individuals and the national infrastructure from hostile computer attacks.
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Hundreds of coach loads of students travelled from around England
Thousands of students and lecturers are demonstrating in central London against plans to almost treble tuition fees and cut university funding in England.
The National Union of Students says about 30,000 people are taking part.
It is threatening to try to unseat Liberal Democrat MPs who go back on pre-election pledges they made to oppose any rise in tuition fees.
Ministers insist their plans offer a “fair deal for students”.
Higher education funding is being cut by 40% – with teaching grants being all but wiped out except for science and maths.
The government expects the costs of teaching other courses to be funded by tuition fees.
It proposes that tuition fees should rise from 2012.
The plan is for a lower cap at £6,000, with universities able to charge up to £9,000 – triple the current cap – in “exceptional circumstances”.
At Question Time in the Commons, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg had a fiery exchange with Labour’s Harriet Harman over fees.
He was accused of hypocrisy, because the Liberal Democrats opposed tuition fees in the run-up to the election.
But he said Labour had brought in tuition fees – and had no policy on university funding.
“ The government has asked students to pay three times as much for a quality that is likely to be no better than what they are receiving now and perhaps worse”
Aaron Porter President, National Union of Students
Ms Harman said Nick Clegg was “going along with a Tory plan – to shove the cost of higher education on to students and their families”.
Like many freshers she said, he had been led astray “by a dodgy man” he met in his first week.
Twice, she asked him to specify the size of the cut to universitiy teaching grants – a figure she said was 80%.
But Mr Clegg did not say – and instead attacked Labour’s record on fees.
“Against fees in 1997 – introduced a few months later; against in manifesto in 2001 – introduced top up fees,” he said.
Outside the Commons, tens of thousands of students and lecturers marched, chanted and whistled, leaving no doubt about their verdict on the government’s plans.
Hundreds of coach loads of students and lecturers had travelled to London from across England for the rally in Whitehall, with 2,000 students also travelling from Wales.
President of the National Union of Students Aaron Porter says students will attempt to force a by-election in the constituencies of MPs who renege on a pre-election pledge to oppose any hike.
He said: “We will initiate a right to recall against any MP that breaks their pledge on tuition fees.”
Students say there are no guarantees teaching quality will improve
In a speech in June, the deputy prime minister and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said the coalition would bring in a right for voters to re-call their MP and force a by-election if he or she was found to have been engaged in “serious wrong-doing”.
Students plan to make Mr Clegg their first target – and say they will be collecting signatures in his constituency on Monday.
But as yet, no laws have been brought in to make such “re-calls” possible.
Mr Porter said that in some Lib Dem MPs’ constituencies, between 15 and 20% of voters were students and lecturers.
He said the cuts to university teaching budgets laid the groundwork for the government to to justify trebling fees.
But he added: “We should be clear that the government has asked students to pay three times as much for a quality that is likely to be no better than what they are receiving now and perhaps worse.”
The Universities Minister David Willetts said the new system would be fairer than the present one, offering more help to the poorest students.
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.
“It’s a very progressive package and I hope young people will not be put off,” he said.
“We are really putting power in the hands of students. The money will go where they choose but they will only have to pay back when they are graduates in well-paid jobs.
“I hope at the end of this we will have a better university system than we have at the moment.”
Among the crowds at the rally in London are about 400 students from Oxford.
Oxford University Student Union President David Barclay said: “This is the day a generation of politicians learn that though they might forget their promises, students won’t.
“Oxford students are making a statement that we won’t sit back and watch teaching funding decimated, we won’t sit back and watch the next generation of students saddled with unbearable debt, and we won’t sit back and watch our university become once again a haven for the privileged elite.”
Student Hannah Williams and lecturer Kathy Taylor will join the anti-tuition fee protest.
Also among the crowd thronging Westminster is Johnny Davis, who travelled from Birmingham University, with 11 coach loads of students.
“The level of passion to protest is amazing,” he said.
“It shows how people are very concerned. It seems that students are getting hit time after time.
“This is an outrage to all students who have been told for the last decade to raise their aspirations and go to university.”
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said the union had hired hundreds of coaches from across the country.
She said the protest was a “very significant event”.
“It speaks volumes about the anger and concern of students and academics in further and higher education at what this Government is trying to do,” she said.
Greg Judge, a student at the Centre for Deaf Studies in Bristol and an executive member of Liberal Youth, the youth wing of the Lib Dems, said: “We simply don’t agree with what the government is trying to do.
“The government needs to think again and about the damage it will cause to a generation of young people if this increase goes ahead.”
Anna Tennant-Siren, a student at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, said: “I am here because it is important that students stand up and shout about what is going on.
“Politicians don’t seem to care. They should be taking money from people who earn seven-figure salaries, not from students who don’t have any money.”
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