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England’s cricketers fly to Australia to begin their defence of the Ashes they won on home soil in 2009.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Liverpool owner John Henry insists the club have no intention of selling the Anfield outfit’s top players.
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A teenage boy has died after a road incident involving a bus as it left a bus station in Powys.
The 16-year-old was treated by paramedics at the scene in Newtown at around 1800 BST on Thursday, said Dyfed-Powys Police.
A Tanat Valley Coaches service was travelling into Back Lane when it was in collision with the boy, from the Welshpool area.
Police have asked anyone who may have witnessed the incident to contact them.
The teenager was taken by ambulance, under police escort to the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Any witnesses should contact Dyfed Powys Police on 101 or their local police station.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Nobody should be made homeless by controversial cuts to housing benefit, David Cameron has said.
The PM refused to comment on London Mayor Boris Johnson’s claim it will mean “Kosovo-style social cleansing”.
But he said the housing benefit budget had to be controlled and the government would still be “prepared to pay up to £20,000 a year” to families.
“I don’t think it will be necessary for anybody to go without a home,” he added at a press conference in Brussels.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
New Zealand’s parliament passes legislation that will keep the production of two Hobbit films in the country.
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Gerard Kelly was one of Scotland’s best known comic actors Actor Gerard Kelly has died at the age of 51 after suffering a brain aneurysm earlier this week.
Kelly died in intensive care on Thursday evening after collapsing at his home in London on Tuesday.
He came to fame in comedy City Lights and appeared in EastEnders and Brookside as well as other TV and film parts, most recently in Extras.
He also regularly starred in pantomime and was due to appear in The Rocky Horror Show in Glasgow next month.
“Gerard will be deeply missed by his friends and family and indeed his huge fan base across his beloved Scotland and further afield”
Family statement
His family and closest friends were with him when he died at West Middlesex University Hospital. His family said he had died peacefully after a sudden illness.
Kelly was born in 1959 and appeared in a string of television roles which included Juliet Bravo, Rab C Nesbitt, Scotch and Wry and Hamish Macbeth along with his villainous portrayal of Callum Finnegan in Brookside.
He remains best known in Scotland for his starring role as hapless would-be author Willie Melvin in City Lights, but recently appeared in the Ricky Gervais comedy Extras as Bunny.
A statement issued by his family said: “Gerard will be deeply missed by his friends and family and indeed his huge fan base across his beloved Scotland and further afield.
“He was a private and gentle man and his family and friends would appreciate privacy during this sad and difficult time.”
A private service is to be held for family and closest friends and details of a memorial service are expected to be announced later.
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Thomson Reuters says the average FTSE 100 boss earns 88 times the average full-time UK worker The pay received by chief executives of the companies listed in the FTSE 100 rose 55% this year, a survey has found.
Company bosses earned an average of £4.9m ($7.8m) each in the 12 months to June this year, up 34%, as bonuses returned to their pre-crisis levels, research by Thomson Reuters found.
That equals 88 times the earnings of an average full-time UK worker.
It confirms a the findings of a report produced by accountants Deloitte Touche published last month.
Across the broader FTSE 350 index of company stocks, the highest individual earner was Bart Becht, of household goods company Reckitt Benckiser, who received £92.6m.
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Protesters are reminding delegates of the need to protect plants Talks have run through the night at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity meeting as delegates tried to salvage talks on protecting nature.
Major differences remained on targets for protected areas, equitable access to genetic resources, and funding.
France followed Japan in pledging funds for conservation; but the sums were well short of what poorer nations want.
Brazil is arguing that by 2020, $200bn per year should be made available for biodiversity conservation.
By comparison, the new pledge by French Ecology Minister Chantal Joannou amounted to $4bn over a decade.
China was criticised by environment campaigners for insisting that the agreement here should call for protection of no more than 6% of the marine environment – and none at all outside coastal waters.
The current global target is 10%.
Differences on the draft agreement on ensuring developing countries receive recompense when products are made from genetic material of organisms from their territory – known as Access and Benefit-sharing (ABS) – came down to seven crucial words, according to Hugo Schally, EU lead negotiator on the issue.
“These words are not just words, they mean differences in economic circumstances,” he told BBC News.
“What material does this protocol actually apply to? That means in terms of research-based industry, in terms of… economic exchanges – they’re literally worth billions of dollars or euros or pounds, or whatever you want.”
In essence, developing nations have been demanding that the agreement cover anything made from this genetic material – technically known as “derivatives” – whereas western nations, where the world’s pharmaceutical giants are principally based, want a far smaller scope.
At one point during the negotiations, agreement was reached on this issue in a small group including Brazil, the EU, Namibia and Norway.
But other developing countries did not accept it.
“[In the] critical part of the changes, that would allow derivatives to be included, they draw the line there and said ‘no’ – so what can we do, we can only go so far,” said Gurdial Singh, chief negotiator for Malaysia.
Biodiversity is the term used to describe the incredible variety of life that has evolved on our planet over billions of years. So far 1.75m present day species have been recorded, but there maybe as many as 13m in total.
The term “biodiversity” refers to diversity of ecosystems, species and genes. In wetlands, for example, you might find different types of fish, frogs, crabs and snails; and within each species, differences in the genes which determine disease resistance, diet and body size. Research shows that ecosytems containing more variety are more productive and more robust.
Biodiversity loss affects most of the major branches of life on Earth. Amphibians and corals are among some of the most threatened. Rising human populations, habitat loss, invasive species and climate change all take their toll.
Around half of the planet’s natural environments had been converted for human use by 1990. The IUCN projects that a further 10-20% of grass and forest land could be converted by 2050.
Deforestation represents one of the most serious threats to biodiversity. The map shows the extent of the planet’s remaining frontier forests – which exist in a state untouched by human interference – and the original extent of forest cover.
The rising population and economic growth mean that natural resources are used at less and less sustainable rates. WWF calculates that by 2050, humanity’s resource use would need two-and-a-half Earths to be sustainable.“We cannot go all the way until we get no real benefit. We cannot have an empty protocol. If I take an empty bottle of beer and I go home, I cannot drink anything.”
Negotiations on the draft ABS treaty – which have been going on for nearly two weeks here, as well as in a number of preparatory meetings – were suspended by Japan, as conference chair.
A “chair’s text” is being considered as an alternative.
Failure here would be a major blow for Japan, which has invested a lot of political capital in securing a protocol with the name “Nagoya” on it.
Other delegations – most of which currently include environment ministers – seem equally keen to leave with something.
“Clearly things are on a knife-edge,” said James Leape, director-general of WWF International.
“It comes down now to whether ministers are ready to find a political deal.
“It does seem, though, that many ministers are aware there’s a need to make the most of this opportunity to go forward.”
The mood has veered between optimism and despair; and this appears likely to continue up to, if not beyond, the scheduled close at 1800 local time (0900GMT) on Friday.
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Huddersfield’s Shaun Lunt and Leroy Cudjoe and Warrington’s Ben Harrison will make their England debuts against Australia in Melbourne on Sunday.
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Actor James MacArthur, best known for playing Detective Dan “Danno” Williams on the original Hawaii Five-O TV show, dies aged 72.
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Actresses Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes avoid the red carpet at the Rome Film Festival opening after protesters picket the event.
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Tobin dropped an appeal against his life sentences earlier this month Two fathers are writing to serial killer Peter Tobin demanding to know why he murdered their daughters.
They believe the letters could be their last chance to discover what drove Tobin to kill 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, 18.
Tobin, 64, of Renfrewshire, is serving life sentences for the murders and that of Polish student Angelika Kluk, 23.
Mr McNicol, 71, of Essex, and Michael Hamilton, 60, of Redding, Falkirk, plan to work together on the letters.
“I really want to aggravate him into him losing his temper yet again, and again, and again – I will keep going just to grind under his skin,” said Mr McNicol.
“I’m going to say things that are wrong to him intentionally in the hope that he will correct me by saying to the police ‘that’s wrong’, which he probably will.”
Tobin was jailed for 30 years in 2008 for the murder of Vicky, who disappeared as she was waiting for a bus in Bathgate, West Lothian, in February 1991.
He was told in December 2009 he would never be freed from prison when he was sentenced for strangling Miss McNichol.
Miss Kluk was murdered in Glasgow four years ago.
Police across the UK continue to investigate whether Tobin was responsible for numerous other unsolved killings of young women.
Mr Hamilton, from Redding, Falkirk, said he had already written one letter to Tobin in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison but never got a reply.
He said: “If I live to be 100, I will never get a visitation to speak to him in jail.
“We want to get some kind of reaction from him, we are hoping it will upset him.
Ian McNicol said he wants to “grind under Tobin’s skin” “We’ve found out what happened to our daughters, but there’s people out there who haven’t found their loved ones.
“I went 18 years without hearing anything and I feel sorry for those still waiting to find out.”
In November 1997, the bodies of Vicky and Dinah were uncovered in the garden of a house once occupied by Tobin in Margate, Kent.
In his first letter to Tobin, written in December last year, Michael tried to appeal to Tobin as a fellow father.
He told Tobin: “She (Vicky) was the love of my life – just like Daniel was yours. Why hurt children, including your own?”
Earlier this month, Tobin dropped an appeal against his sentence.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The Athena is being kept outside Falmouth’s harbour limits A fish factory ship on fire for days off Cornwall’s coast has been evacuated and the last five people on board flown to hospital after inhaling smoke.
The Faroes-registered Athena caught fire about 230 miles (370km) south west of the Isles of Scilly on Wednesday and is now under tow off Falmouth.
Nearly 30 firefighters and crew members on board were taken off after a release of carbon monoxide, coastguards said.
About 650,000 cardboard boxes are believed to be on fire on board.
The final four firefighters and the captain of a pilot boat were taken to the Royal Cornwall Hospital overnight suffering from the effects of breathing in smoke.
The fire had been kept under control while the vessel sailed in from the Atlantic under its own power.
Twelve Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service personnel specially trained in dealing with marine fires were airlifted on to the Athena by helicopter on Thursday.
The group, and other specialists brought on board to assess the situation, joined 13 crew members who had remained on the vessel to tackle the fire.
The fire started to get worse again from about 1700 BST on Thursday, Martin Bidmead from Falmouth Coastguard said.
He said: “A large release of carbon monoxide from somewhere on board this vessel caused the fire officer in charge on board make the decision that the vessel should be evacuated for the safety of the 28 persons on board.”
The vessel has no power after heat from the fire affected the engine room.
Rescued crew members arrived in Falmouth on Thursday Coastguard tug Anglian Princess took it under tow at about 1900 BST. It is being kept about five miles (8km) outside Falmouth’s harbour limits.
A Dutch tug, the Typhoon, is also nearby. It was to spray water jets at the Athena in an attempt to cool the Athena’s exterior, coastguards said.
Decisions were also to be made later about whether it was safe to go back on board and fight the fire, they added.
The Secretary of State’s Representative for Maritime Salvage and Intervention, Hugh Shaw, was due in Falmouth later to meet salvors and decide on the next move, Mr Bidmead said.
Coastguards were alerted to the fire, which is believed to have started in a store, at about 0620 BST on Wednesday.
A container ship, the Vega, rescued 98 of the 111-strong crew on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at Falmouth on Thursday. Tugs and tenders brought the crew ashore a few at a time.
No-one was hurt in the fire or the evacuation of the vessel, but the Athena’s skipper has been kept in hospital overnight suffering from exhaustion after his ordeal at sea.
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Parents who push their children to work hard at school have a bigger impact on their child’s academic success than their teachers, research suggests.
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New suspected cholera cases in Haiti raise fears that the epidemic is moving closer to the capital Port-au-Prince as some Haitians blame UN peace keepers for the outbreak of the disease.
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