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Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody sues the producers of a thriller for more than $2m (£1.3m), claiming he has not been fully paid.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Universities say that cuts will switch the costs of higher education from the state to students Universities in England are preparing for cuts of more than £4bn in the government’s Spending Review – with deep reductions in teaching budgets.
Universities UK has warned of “misplaced and mistimed cuts”, with expected cuts of about £3bn for teaching and £1bn for research.
Schools have been promised that front-line spending will be increased.
But there have been warnings of cuts to support services and changes to funding streams that supplement school budgets.
There are also expected to be shake-ups for education maintenance allowances and Sure Start early years projects.
Universities UK president Steve Smith said cuts of £4bn would account for the biggest change in higher education for more than 40 years – and would mean withdrawing state funding for teaching in many subjects.
A £3bn reduction in funding would represent the loss of about three-quarters of the teaching budget.
Lord Browne’s review last week recommended a sharp increase in tuition fees – but universities have been angered that the extra funding from fees look set to be used to fill the gap from cuts in public spending.
The 1994 Group of research-intensive universities said the country’s economic recovery was being “put at risk by starving universities of investment”.
“The government will have effectively transferred the responsibility for the future funding of teaching to students and graduates,” says the Million+ group of universities.
Schools have been promised that their core funding will be protected from spending cuts.
There has also been a commitment to a pupil premium to help schools teaching disadvantaged children, which will rise to £2.5bn per year.
Education Secretary Michael Gove said this money, as part of a £7bn package, “will be invested in accelerating social mobility”.
But teachers’ unions have warned that they are “holding their breath” to see the details of changes to support services and other funding streams that supplement school incomes.
Head teachers say they are “very nervous of the funding reality” if they lose services outside this protected core budget.
A special BBC News season examining the approaching cuts to public sector spending
“Schools will lose out if, for example, specialist school funding is axed, local authority services such as transport are cut, the capital fund for building repairs is chopped, or rising staff costs are ignored,” says the ASCL head teachers’ union.
More than 95% of secondary schools have specialist status, which adds £450m to their budgets and costs £16m to administer.
Education maintenance allowances, received by about 600,000 young people aged between 16 and 18, could also face an overhaul.
These mean-tested allowances, worth up to £30 per week for families earning less than £20,817, cost £564m per year.
The Sure Start scheme, which provides centres and services to families of young children, has also been suggested as being likely to face changes.
A number of education quangos and regulators have already been scrapped – and other projects, programmes and administrative organisations could also be set to follow them.
Campaigners for disabled people have expressed fears over the impact of welfare cuts.
The disability charity, Scope, has warned of “disabled being pushed further into poverty and closer to the fringes of society”.
The National Autistic Society said lives would be “hanging in the balance” over funding decisions.
The charity warned that cuts to support and local authority services “may push whole families to crisis point”.
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A Londonderry taxi driver hijacked and forced to drive a bomb to a police station in August has said he fears he will never get over the trauma.
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The Welsh culture minister is concerned about a deal which is expected to see the BBC take over the funding for S4C.
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Sport Direct warns that early 2011 will be “extremely challenging” for all retailers, despite posting a rise in recent sales.
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Seven people are arrested after the body of a man was discovered at a house in Newcastle.
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The Royal College of GPs is calling on the pharmaceutical industry to have a clearer warning on the effects of legal drugs
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Greek authorities have declared a state of emergency on the Aegean Sea islands of Ikaria and Chios after flash floods left two people dead.
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A British security consultant kidnapped six days ago by armed gunmen in Somalia has been released, the charity Save the Children says.
The Zimbabwean-born man was seized in the town of Adado last Thursday.
A local colleague seized with him was freed the next day.
A ransom was paid, according to local elders quoted by the AFP news agency, who were involved in negotiating the man’s release.
Save the Children said that the man was now heading to a place to safety.
Mr Barnard had gone to the area to see if it was safe enough for Save the Children to set up a new base to help malnourished and sick children, along with their families.
But on Thursday evening, a group of masked gunmen stormed the building used as a staff residence.
High walls and a heavy steel gate reportedly forced the kidnappers to climb in through a window before they fled with their hostages into an area said to be controlled by the hardline Islamist group al-Shabab, which has links to al-Qaeda.
Adado, which is near the Ethiopian border, is also closely linked to pirate groups who routinely take ships and crew hostage and demand hefty ransoms.
Until now, Adado had been seen as a relatively stable part of Somalia, with aid groups considering relocating there after being forced out of more volatile regions.
Several foreigners have been kidnapped in Somalia in recent years.
Most have been freed unhurt after a ransom has been paid.
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Mining giant Rio Tinto announces a $3.1bn investment in what it calls the “largest ever mining project” in Australia.
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The licence fee is being frozen for the next six years These are highly significant changes for the BBC, finalised in a hectic few hours before publication of the government’s spending review. They will be formally announced on Wednesday.
Only a few weeks ago, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he would not start discussions over the next licence fee until next summer. Suddenly, they are all over.
The BBC now knows its income for the next six years, which gives it some security and stability.
But that income will be frozen while inflation almost certainly rises, and its costs will be around £340m a year higher, as it takes over the funding of the BBC World Service, the Welsh language channel S4C, and the roll-out of broadband to rural areas.
The World Service currently costs £272m a year, paid for by the Foreign Office.
The new arrangement will give it clearer editorial and operational independence from the government, and that has been welcomed by a former head of the World Service, Sir John Tusa.
But funded by the licence fee, the World Service will now find itself part of a wider BBC that is required to find ever greater cuts.
“Some will say this looks suspiciously like the “top-slicing” that was vehemently opposed by the BBC Trust last year”
Torin Douglas Media correspondent
Some fear that it may lose some of its distinctiveness, or be first in line for those cuts. And some will criticise the way the far-reaching decision was made, with apparently little consultation.
The BBC is refusing to comment, but those close to the negotiations say these new obligations for the BBC will mean a 16% cut in real terms over the next six years.
They believe the settlement is tough, but realistic at a time of public spending cuts – and a better option than the proposal to make the BBC pay the cost of free TV licences for the over-75s.
That currently costs £556m a year – paid for by the Department of Work and Pensions – roughly the cost of running BBC Two or the whole of BBC Radio.
The BBC Trust said it would oppose such a plan, arguing that “it would be unacceptable for licence fee payers to pick up the bill for what is a DWP universal benefit.”
By contrast, the BBC’s new obligations are clearly rooted in broadcasting.
The BBC will also fund – though not control – the Welsh language channel S4C, which has been facing upheavals of its own, including budget cuts that threatened its future.
BBC Wales has been told there is no question of the BBC “taking over” S4C, which will retain its operational independence.
If that is the case, some will say this looks suspiciously like the “top-slicing” that was vehemently opposed by the BBC Trust last year, when the Labour government proposed handing some of the licence fee to ITV to preserve its regional news bulletins.
It was also opposed by Jeremy Hunt.
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A British soldier has been killed in an explosion while clearing bombs in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence says.
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Sales at Argos have fallen sharply due to “particularly challenging conditions for its customers”, says owner Home Retail Group.
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A decision by the Supreme Court later in the divorce case of a German heiress could change the law on pre-nuptial agreements.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Despite the disruption to transport services, the strikers continue to attract popular support French workers are set to continue their protests against planned pension reforms with a seventh day of walkouts.
Transport workers said they would continue their rolling strike on Wednesday, although some improvement to rail services is expected.
Student leaders have also called for more protests ahead of a senate vote on the retirement age later this week.
On Tuesday, at least 1.1 million people took to the streets across France.
The interior ministry put the figure at 1.1 million across the country, although the CGT union said the number was 3.5 million.
The street protests on Tuesday were comparable with the previous week’s national day of action, although police and unions gave widely differing numbers.
In Paris, the unions estimated that 330,000 demonstrators had taken to the streets but police put the number at 60,000.
Strikes have hit transport and education, 4,000 petrol stations have run dry and police have clashed with protesters in several cities.
President Nicolas Sarkozy appealed for calm but insisted he would press ahead with plans to raise the retirement age.
The day of action was being seen as a last attempt to mobilise protesters before the Senate’s final vote on the government’s pension reforms, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday.
The vote is now to take place later this week.
The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt in Paris says that union leaders have to decide how to keep up pressure on the government.
Although public support for their protests remain strong, workers are losing pay.
The planned increases in the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67 are widely unpopular in France. But the unions are wary about public reaction to long queues at petrol stations, our correspondent says.
Fuel supplies
The scale of disruption has begun to affect large parts of society, with a blockade of France’s 12 oil refineries hitting fuel supplies hard.
Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told MPs that just under 4,000 petrol stations out of a total of 13,000 were awaiting supplies.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon announced plans to end the shortages within four or five days, by asking the main oil companies to share their reserves to replenish stocks at petrol stations around the country.
Source: IEA
Trains on the Paris Metro were heavily crowded as only about half the services were running and national rail operator SNCF said as many as three-quarters of its fast regional trains had been cancelled.
Education was also affected: the education ministry said 379 secondary schools were either blockaded by pupils or had suffered some disruption, the highest number since the protests began at the start of September.
In some areas, schools became a focus for violence. Outside a secondary school in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, youths threw stones at police who responded with tear gas.
For the second day running, cars were overturned and set alight in Lyon. There were also disturbances in Mulhouse and Montbeliard in eastern France.
Presidential ratings
Despite the widespread disruption, the strikers continue to attract popular support with one opinion poll suggesting that 71% of those surveyed back the industrial action.
President Sarkozy’s poll ratings appear to have dropped even further as he tries to tackle the wave of protests.
One poll for BVA conducted on 15 and 16 October suggested his approval rating was down to 30%, the lowest for three years.
The number of French with either a negative or very negative opinion of their president rose five points from September to 69%.
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