Category: news

Liverpool boss Roy Hodgson draws a line under his row with Inter Milan coach Rafael Benitez.

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Defending champion Andy Murray suffers a shock defeat by Argentine Juan Monaco in the second round of the Valencia Open.

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A woman in her 60s dies in an accident involving a car and lorry near Carland Bridge, Dungannon.

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Graduates in Wales will have to pay more when the cap on tuition fees in England rises to £9,000, an academic has predicted.

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US actor Kiefer Sutherland is to make his Broadway debut opposite Chris Noth, best known for playing Mr Big in Sex And The City.

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A moderate earthquake rattles central Serbia overnight, killing two people and injuring at least 50 others near the city of Kraljevo.

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UK graffiti artist Banksy’s documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop lands a top prize at the annual Grierson Trust awards in London.

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Commuters are set to face another day of severe disruption on London’s Underground network as a third 24-hour strike over job cuts begins.

About 11,000 members of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association and Rail Maritime and Transport union are striking over plans to cut 800 jobs.

Maintenance workers walked out from 1900 GMT. Operational staff will not report for shifts from 2100 GMT.

Transport for London said cuts would not result in compulsory redundancies.

It also said the planned cuts, mainly from ticket offices, would have no impact on safety

A Transport for London (TfL) spokesperson said: “The changes we’re proposing to ticket office opening hours are in line with customer demand, so that our employees are deployed in those places and at those times where passengers most value their help and reassurance.”

TfL issued a list of 80 stations of the total 270 stations on the network which will remain closed during the strike.

The list includes Angel, Piccadilly Circus, Heathrow Terminal 4, Fulham Broadway, Marble Arch and Charing Cross.

The union said the list was “pure fantasy” claiming that many stations could be opened “without staff with potentially dire consequences”.

But TfL said about 200,000 people viewed the list of closed stations it issued during the last strike in October.

“We intend to run well over a third of Tube services once again,” TfL said.

Extra buses and river services will also operate during the strike.

Earlier, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington John McDonnell tabled a motion in the Commons “commending” unions for protesting against job cuts on the Tube ahead.

The Commons motion, backed by Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, Ealing Southall MP Virendra Sharma, Jim Dobbin, MP for Heywood and Middleton, and Luton North MP Kelvin Hopkins, agreed with the unions’ proposals for “reasonable and safe staffing levels”.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “All we have been asking is that the London mayor stick to the pledge he made during his election campaign, when he too recognised that people wanted to see stations staffed properly.”

London Mayor Boris Johnson said: “I hope the RMT and TSSA leaderships will face facts and see that their action achieves nothing aside from depriving their members of another day’s pay.”

A fourth strike is planned for 29 November.

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By Dominic Casciani

The right to trial by jury for many lesser offences should be ended in England and Wales, the Commissioner for Victims of Crime has proposed.

Louise Casey said almost 70,000 crown court cases each year could be heard in magistrates’ courts, saving at least £30m in prosecution costs.

Ms Casey said the move would benefit victims of serious crime who suffer due to delays in “clogged up” crown courts.

It comes as the Ministry of Justice cuts the budget for courts and prisons.

Ms Casey said a jury trial should not be viewed as right for crimes known as “either way” offences, which can be heard in magistrates or sent to trial in crown court.

“We should not view the right to a jury trial as being so sacrosanct that its exercise should be at the cost of victims of serious crimes,” Ms Casey said.

“It is known that waiting for a criminal trial often means that victims put their lives on hold; bereaved families of murder victims cannot grieve until the trial is over,” she said.

“Defendants should not have the right to choose to be tried by a jury over something such as the theft of a bicycle or stealing from a parking meter.”

Sentencing increases?

Eight out of 10 of these cases are dealt with by magistrates. But the lower court sends 60,000 of them to crown court every year with a further 9,000 defendants also asking for jury trial.

Ms Casey, who took up her role in March, said the figures showed that very often this was a massive waste of time and money and trials of serious crimes were being “stacked up waiting for court time”.

In 50,000 of the cases sent to crown courts, defendants eventually plead guilty, wasting £15m of the Crown Prosecution Services money, she said.

She added that if just half of either-way cases remained in the lower courts, some £30m would be saved straight away.

Cases that should remain firmly in magistrates’ courts include petty theft, she said, highlighting one newspaper report of the pilfering of tea and biscuits.

If defendants are holding out to see if witnesses turn up, that is not justice, she added.

“It is an abuse of the system, and puts an intolerable pressure on victims and witnesses that could be called a form of witness intimidation.

“We need to stop the abuse of the process which allows defendants and their solicitors to string out a case at the expense of victims and the public.”

She said she had full confidence in magistrates to properly dispense justice.

Ms Casey also backed calls for magistrates’ sentencing powers to be doubled from six months to one year per offence, so they can avoid referring more borderline cases to the crown court.

In a separate report, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary estimated that better management of prosecution casework could save £40m a year alone.

It said it found an example of a shoplifter who was caught by police and sentenced in court two hours later. But it also said that it can take 1,000 steps to deal with a simple domestic burglary.

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A detective heading the Claudy bombing investigation travelled to the US to question a suspect detained by the FBI, a court case is told.

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The chairman of Edinburgh’s beleaguered trams project, David Mackay, has resigned with immediate effect.

After stepping down, the transport expert, who was chairman of both Edinburgh Trams and Lothian Buses, criticised the German contractors.

In an interview with The Scotsman newspaper, Mr Mackay described Bilfinger Berger as “delinquent”.

Work on the tram system is on hold due to a dispute between the contractor and city-council owned tram developer Tie.

Mr Mackay told the newspaper: “Bilfinger Berger was a delinquent contractor who scented a victim, who probably greatly underbid and would use the contract to make life extremely difficult for the city. And they have done exactly that.”

He went on: “We had found crazy things like underground chambers on Princes Street and cables were not where they should be – it was hell on wheels.”

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Robert Llewellyn on Carpool’s journey from the web to the telly

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Millions of voters are preparing to vote in the US mid-term elections to elect a new House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.

President Barack Obama’s Democratic party is expected to lose its majority in the House of Representatives, but may hold on to the Senate.

Republicans hope to capitalise on voter discontent with the economy.

The parties used a final day of campaigning on Monday to urge their supporters to go out and vote.

Voting is set to begin on the East Coast at 0600 EDT (1000 GMT) when the first polls open in Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, New York, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

The end will come 14 hours later when the last poll closes in Alaska at 0000 EDT (0400 GMT).

Up for election are all 435 House seats, 37 of the 100 seats in the Senate, governorships of 37 of the 50 states and all but four state legislatures.