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Saina Nehwal’s badminton victory hands India second place in the medals table at England’s expense as the Commonwealth Games end, with Scotland 10th, Northern Ireland 13th and Wales 15th.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
George Clooney, a UN messenger of peace, has just returned from Sudan
US actor George Clooney has called for the freezing of assets held by Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir.
The Sudanese leader is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur – charges he denies.
Mr Clooney told the BBC that freezing his bank accounts would be a good way of putting pressure on Khartoum.
The Hollywood star has just returned from Sudan in his role as a UN messenger of peace ahead of January’s referendum on secession for the south.
The vote was part of a 2005 peace deal to end the two-decade north-south civil war – separate from the ongoing conflict in Darfur in the west of Sudan.
There has been growing international concern that the referendum could be delayed, sparking renewed violence.
The aim of Mr Clooney’s trip was to push the US government to take measures to prevent a new cycle of violence in Sudan.
After meeting US President Barack Obama this week on his return from Sudan, Mr Clooney said the international community had been inconsistent in its dealings with the Sudanese leadership.
“Real diplomacy, robust real diplomacy means you get the British, the French, everybody together,” he told BBC Arabic.
He also said other Arab states should get more involved.
“It would be nice to have as much involvement as we could from an Arab state. It would make a very big difference in the negotiating and Egypt is certainly a huge player in this.”
“Bashir isn’t saving his money in Sudanese pounds you know”
George Clooney US actor
Mr Clooney, who spent several years trying to raise awareness on the situation in Darfur, urged all countries to close ranks.
“Bashir isn’t saving his money in Sudanese pounds, you know. They are in euros or they are in English pounds or they are in dollars. They are somewhere,” he said.
“We should be freezing those assets, if you really want to deal with it, if you really want to put pressure on them.”
An estimated 1.5 million people died in the civil war between the mainly Muslim north and Christian and Animist south.
The UN estimates the six-year conflict in Darfur has cost the lives of 300,000 people and driven a further 2.7m from their homes.
The government puts the death toll at 10,000 and has said the problems in Darfur have been exaggerated for political reasons.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The investigation has been a long-running affair The Office of Fair Trading will rule later on its reopened investigation into so-called “beer ties” between pub companies and their tenant landlords.
It follows after the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) asked the OFT to study if the arrangement hurt landlords who had to buy their beer from the pub owners.
The OFT initially ruled in October last year that there was no evidence the arrangement damaged competition.
Yet it reopened the investigation in February after Camra lodged an appeal.
Camra did this by taking the case to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. The beer pressure group then put its application to the tribunal on hold when the OFT said it would look again at the matter.
The OFT said in February that it would reopen its investigations to focus on whether effective competition in the pub industry was delivering choice and value for customers.
The big pub companies have always denied any wrongdoing.
Since Camra first went to the OFT in July of last year, pub industry body British Beer and Pub Association has brought in a new code of practice that sets out information that must be given to prospective pub tenants by breweries.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Loans were made to local authority finance vehicles to help stimulate the economy More than one quarter of loans to Chinese local government are at risk of default, according to a report.
About two trillion yuan ($300bn; £187bn), or 26% of the 7.66tn in loans to local authority financing vehicles, is at risk says state media.
The figures, published in the official China Securities Journal (CSJ), were slightly higher than prior estimates which put 23% of these loans at risk.
In 2009, banks lent heavily to regional financing vehicles for construction.
It came after Beijing called for nationwide efforts to boost the economy.
But the government has now promised deal with the chaos left by that surge of stimulus spending, introduced last year to counter the global financial crisis.
Local governments are banned from borrowing, so to get round this thousands of hybrid local government-company bodies were founded.
These financing vehicles were able to contravene the regulations and used the funding they obtained for infrastructure projects.
‘Serious risk’
However, the CSJ, citing a government investigation, says adequate repayments are being made on only 24% of the debt owed by these local government financing vehicles.
And about half of the total loans went to projects run by local authority investment vehicles that are now unable to fully meet their repayments.
These must now be covered by the local governments or with collateral.
And the final 26% of cash may never be repaid.
This is where money went to projects that failed to meet official regulations, faced “serious default risk”, or was embezzled, the CSJ report said.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Tourists have not been able to get into the monuments at the Acropolis Greek police have fired tear gas and charged at workers who had occupied the Acropolis in Athens in a protest over unpaid wages and lay-offs.
TV images showed police chasing the culture ministry workers around the ancient monument.
Dozens of workers had shut down the Acropolis on Wednesday morning, demanding two years of back pay.
They had barricaded themselves inside, padlocked the entrance gates and refused to allow in tourists.
The protesters said they intended to blockade the Acropolis, Greece’s most famous tourist attraction, until 31 October.
Greece has seen waves of strikes and protests over austerity measures agreed by the government to in order to secure a huge bail-out from eurozone countries.
As well as the back-pay issue, the workers are angry that about 320 temporary staff will lose their jobs when their contracts expire at the end of the month.
One of the striking workers, Nikos Hasomeris, had earlier warned the authorities not to attempt to break the blockade by force.
“All our colleagues stand beside us, so the monument will not operate today no matter what happens,” he told Greek TV in comments carried by the AFP news agency .
But police in riot gear arrived on Thursday morning after a court order said the protesters were hindering access to an ancient site.
TV footage showed the police entering the site using a side entrance.
They used tear gas to clear protesters and a group of journalists who had gathered at the main gate.
The Associated Press reported that dozens of bemused tourists hoping to visit ancient site watched the police operation unfold, some of them taking pictures of the officers.
“We know the workers have a right to protest, but it is not fair that people who come from all over the world to see the Acropolis should be prevented from getting in,” Spanish tourist Ainhoa Garcia told AP.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Bird’s home now has a guide price of between £30,000 and £40,000 Only a “handful” of people have shown an interest in buying the home of Cumbria gunman Derrick Bird, prompting auctioneers to drop its guide price.
The taxi driver killed 12 people and wounded 11 others in west Cumbria on 2 June before shooting himself.
His home in the village of Rowrah is going under the hammer at Carlisle Racecourse later.
Initially, the guide price was listed as between £35,000 and £45,000, but this has now been lowered by £5,000.
Colin West, from Auction House Cumbria, said that due to its “associated history” it was hard to put a price on the property and described the sale as “difficult”.
“It has to be handled professionally and sensitively,” he said.
“We are part of the community as well as a business and the staff know some of the bereaved and injured as well as the Bird family.
“My advice was that the swiftest way to bring it to a conclusion was to put it [the property] in an auction.
“There has not been a great deal of interest, only a handful of viewings.”
The mid-terraced property, described as being “in need of modernisation”, is now listed as between £30,000 and £40,000.
Similar houses in the village are on sale at about £70,000.
Mr West added: “We hope a home owner will buy it, improve it, put their own stamp on it and turn it back into a home.
“But my feeling is that the buyer will be an out-of-town investor.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A number of families had to spend the night in Ligoniel Community Centre A security alert which caused families to spend the night in a community centre in north Belfast is over.
The army investigated a suspicious car found at Weavershill Court at about 2300 BST on Wednesday. There were at least two controlled explosions on it.
Eighty homes have been evacuated and two ambulances assisted elderly residents. Ligoniel community centre was opened to accommodate people.
The Ligoniel Road has now reopened, but an inner cordon remains around the car.
St Vincent de Paul Primary School has been closed.
Bernie Kelly from the Belfast Trust emergency response team said she was contacted about the incident just before midnight.
“It’s been a long night for the families, they have been very good about it.
“It’s not very nice to have to leave your home in the middle of the night.
“This is following a pattern recently and people across the city have been in the same position.”
Ms Kelly said so far there has been at least one controlled explosion.
“The police can’t give us an estimation of when we can go back in, so we have no idea.”
Carmel Brown lives nearby and has spent the night in Ligoniel community centre.
“We got the call at about 0140 there was a policeman at the door who said there might be a bomb in a car
Roads have been closed due to the alert “I think its awful – my children were hysterical, but the people in the community centre have been great.”
Kathleen Kelly also had to leave her family home.
“I am absolutely disgusted this has happened, we have people here who are disabled, sick and need to get their medication and get them back home
“The people who have done this have disrupted the whole community. We don’t know how long we were going to be here.”
The MP for the area, Nigel Dodds, said it was “deeply regrettable that so many people have been put out of their homes in this way.”
St Patrick’s College Ligoniel school remains open and the headmaster said he “would like pupils to still come to school even if they are late”.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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The US dollar has reached another fresh 15-year low against the Japanese yen at the end of trading in Tokyo.
The dollar was worth as little as 81.12 yen at one stage, just above the post World War II low of 79.75 yen.
The dollar’s continued fall reflects speculation that the US Federal Reserve will expand its quantitative easing programme.
But Japan’s central bankers have also repeatedly threatened further action to curb the recent rises in the yen.
A strong yen is hurting Japanese export companies, which are relied upon to spearhead a recovery in Japan’s struggling economy.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
A total of 73 people have charged in connection with the allegedly massive fraud US officials have charged 73 people over what is thought to be the largest ever attempt to defraud the country’s medical insurance system.
Prosecutors say a network of Armenian gangsters and their associates set up fake clinics using stolen identities to make false claims for treatment.
Investigators said more than $35m (£22m) was paid out.
A US Attorney said the scheme’s scope and sophistication put the traditional mafia to shame.
The group, most of whom are of Armenian origin, are accused of setting up some 118 clinics across the US, most of which existed only on paper or were “nothing more than shams, shells, and storefronts”, said US Attorney Preet Bharar.
They allegedly stole the identities of real doctors and beneficiaries of Medicare – the US federal insurance programme for the elderly – and “submitted bill after bill for treatment that no doctor ever performed and that no patient ever received,” he added.
In addition, the gang were accused of carrying out “a raft of rackets, extortion, credit card fraud, identity theft, immigration fraud, and even the distribution of contraband cigarettes and stolen Viagra”.
“This emerging international organised crime syndicate would be the envy of any traditional mafia family”
Preet Bharar US Attorney
Investigations began after the personal details of 2,900 Medicare patients in New York were reported stolen, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Much of the paperwork involved also raised suspicion by showing inconsistences such as doctors specialising in dermatology giving heart examinations and ear, nose and throat specialists performing pregnancy ultrasounds, said AP.
Most of the accused were arrested during raids in New York City and Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, but there also were arrests in New Mexico, Georgia and Ohio. The 73 people charged are accused of racketeering and related offences.
Officials say some of the proceeds from the operation were couriered back to Armenia in cash.
The alleged leader of the gang, Armen Kazarian, is now in jail in Los Angeles. He was described by officials as equivalent to a mafia godfather.
“When it comes to making money illegally, this Armenian-American group puts the traditional mafia to shame,” said Mr Bharar.
“The reach of this organisation stretches clear across the country and well beyond our shores.
“So in terms of profitability, geographic scope, and sheer ambition, this emerging international organised crime syndicate would be the envy of any traditional mafia family,” he said.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Garfield (centre) was recently cast as the new Spider-Man British actresses Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan have helped launch this year’s London Film Festival with the European premiere of their latest film.
The pair joined co-star Andrew Garfield on the red carpet at a gala screening of dystopian drama Never Let Me Go.
“It means a huge amount to all of us that we are opening the festival,” said Knightley, who previously worked with Mulligan on 2005’s Pride and Prejudice.
The 54th BFI London Film Festival runs until 28 October.
Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go tells of friends who grow up at boarding school, unaware of a dark secret that looms over their future.
Directed by US film-maker Mark Romanek, it will be released in the UK in January.
X-Files star Anderson was among the other guests at the premiere Knightley, 25, described the chance to work with “close mate” Mulligan, also 25, as “a wonderful opportunity”.
The Pirates of the Caribbean star said she was “excited” to be launching the festival, despite it being “freezing” in London’s Leicester Square.
“Keira and I have been friends for a long time,” said Mulligan, Oscar-nominated earlier this year for her role in An Education.
“It’s always nice to do a film where you’ve got a young cast.”
“It’s very rare that you find a script that is so full of what it is to be alive – to be human and the struggles that we collectively go through,” said Garfield.
“There are terrible scripts, there are good scripts, and then there are scripts and stories like this one.”
Recently cast as the new Spider-Man, the 27-year-old can be seen in cinemas this week in The Social Network, a film about the creation of Facebook.
X-Files star Gillian Anderson, actor Sir Ben Kingsley and novelist Salman Rushdie were among the other guests at Wednesday’s launch.
The London Film Festival continues on Thursday with screenings of Let Me In, a US remake of Swedish vampire thriller Let the Right One In.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
TI is due in court on Friday for a parole hearing US rapper TI helped to talk a suicidal man down from the top of a 22-storey building in Atlanta, Georgia.
Police say TI joined an assembled crowd of people below the skyscraper before asking officers if he could help.
The man agreed to come down in exchange for a few minutes with the rapper, police said.
“I told him it ain’t that bad. It’ll get better, to put the time and effort into making it better,” said TI, whose real name is Clifford Harris.
“It looks bad right now but it can turn around”
Rapper TI’s advice to the man
He told the Associated Press news agency the man seemed “beat up by life”.
“I just reminded him, know that I know. It looks bad right now but it can turn around.”
TI said he drove to the building after hearing about the incident on the radio.
The musician recorded a video of himself on a mobile phone which was shown to the man to prove that he was really there.
The man, who has not been named, was later taken to hospital.
TI is due in court on Friday for a parole hearing after he was arrested last month on suspicion of possessing ecstasy.
He is on probation following his release from prison in December after serving several months for possessing illegal weapons.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
This might be the best place for the tastiest meal The level of background noise affects both the intensity of flavour and the perceived crunchiness of foods, researchers have found.
Blindfolded diners assessed the sweetness, saltiness, and crunchiness, as well as overall flavour, of foods as they were played white noise.
While louder noise reduced the reported sweetness or saltiness, it increased the measure of crunch.
The research is reported in the journal Food Quality and Preference.
It may go some way to explaining why airline food is notoriously bland – a phenomenon that drives airline catering companies to heavily season their foods.
“There’s a general opinion that aeroplane foods aren’t fantastic,” said Andy Woods, a researcher from Unilever’s laboratories and the University of Manchester.
“I’m sure airlines do their best – and given that, we wondered if there are other reasons why the food would not be so good. One thought was perhaps the background noise has some impact,” he told BBC News.
“Nasa gives their space explorers very strong-tasting foods, because for some reason thay can’t taste food that strongly – again, perhaps it’s the background noise.
“There was no previous research on this, so we went about seeing if the hunch was correct.”
In a comparatively small study, 48 participants were fed sweet foods such as biscuits or salty ones such as crisps, while listening to silence or noise through headphones.
Meanwhile they rated the intensity of the flavours and of their liking.
In noisier settings, foods were rated less salty or sweet than they were in the absence of background noise, but were rated to be more crunchy.
“The evidence points to this effect being down to where your attention lies – if the background noise is loud it might draw your attention to that, away from the food,” Dr Woods said.
Also in the group’s findings there is the suggestion that the overall satisfaction with the food aligned with the degree to which diners liked what they were hearing – a finding the researchers are pursuing in further experiments.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By Hugh Pym
Mr Osborne may face difficult questions from the nations and regions A fair amount of debate in the run-in to the spending review has focused on how much each department’s budget might be cut.
The coalition government has made a pledge to “ring-fence” health spending – in other words, no cuts after allowing for inflation.
There is talk of education not being as hard hit as other departments, with cuts of 10% or less.
But these statements have no relevance to 16% of the population – the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Those big-picture numbers bandied around for schools and hospitals relate to England only.
In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, these areas of government are run by the devolved administrations.
Other devolved spending includes policing, culture, media and sport and much of the transport budget.
So how will the spending review numbers announced at Westminster feed through to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast?
It’s all down to the so called Barnett formula, invented by a former Labour minister in the 1970s, Joel Barnett.
This is aimed at ensuring that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland benefit proportionately from any spending changes announced at Westminster.
Under the formula, you take the increase or decrease in spending for each relevant Whitehall department and allocate a percentage of that to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland based on population.
Add them up and you get a lump sum for each administration.
Their ministers decide how to hand out the cash.
And, crucially, they can work out their own priorities.
So, for example, they could raise health spending more than England, but cut harder elsewhere.
The formula is as follows: change to the United Kingdom department’s spending limit X comparability percentage X appropriate population proportion.
The comparability percentage covers the amount of departmental spending which is devolved. So, for example, the figure for schools is 100% (totally devolved), but lower for transport.
The population proportions (in relation to England’s) are about 10% for Scotland, 6% for Wales and 3.5% for Northern Ireland.
Officials in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Northern Ireland will be busy with their calculators on the afternoon of 20 October.
They will use the Barnett formula to work out their overall spending totals.
It’s possible that the headline numbers for real cuts will be relatively modest compared to some UK-wide departments which have not been ring-fenced.
Health is a big chunk of the devolved administrations’ spending, so if it is protected at Westminster, that will underpin their overall budgets.
So far, so good.
But then comes the hard part.
Own budgets
Ministers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will draw up their own budgets in the weeks after 20 October.
They are already under intense pressure to preserve spending on essential services.
Deciding where to make cuts will be a fraught process.
Unlike the coalition at Westminster, which is at the beginning of the parliamentary cycle, the devolved governments face elections next spring.
Spending decisions could dominate the campaigns.
There is another cause for concern.
Public sector job cuts could hit some parts of the UK harder than others.
Some 20% of the English workforce is in the public sector. But in Scotland it’s 25%.
The figure is 27% in Wales, while in Northern Ireland, as many as 30% of the workforce are ultimately paid by the government.
So for politicians in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Northern Ireland, there is a lot riding on George Osborne’s statement to the House of Commons next week.
The aftershock of that statement will be felt in differing ways around the United Kingdom.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Let Me In, starring Chloe Moretz, is Hammer’s first big screen horror since 1976 The newly-resurrected Hammer film company is planning a return to television for the first time since the 1980s.
Hammer chief executive Simon Oakes said the company was “very keen to build a television business” alongside its current film and publishing projects.
After a hiatus of more than 30 years, the British horror brand is returning to the big screen with Let Me In.
The film is a remake of Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In.
“We’re taking baby steps in television but we’re very, very keen to build a television business.”
Simon Oakes CEO, Hammer
“Television is incredibly important,” Mr Oakes told the BBC. “I like the idea of going against conventional wisdom. People tell me that anthology doesn’t work any more. So that makes me think let’s try and make it work.”
Hammer’s last excursion into traditional TV was with the Hammer House of Horror and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense series in the first half of the 1980s.
“I think it’s possible to do this anthology series where Hammer House of Horror has a one hour event story every week,” Mr Oakes added.
“Television is very different – you have to be very cognisant of what the controllers want – and they are looking a year, two years in advance.
“We’re taking baby steps in television but we’re very, very keen to build a television business.”
Hammer recently announced that it was moving into the literary world to publish new works of horror and adapt classic films for the page.
The first commission is a novella from by author Jeanette Winterson, best known for Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.
Stage fright
Hammer is also expected to announce details of a theatrical project before the end of this month.
“We are creating a Hammer Theatre of Horror,” Mr Oakes said. “I believe that the best brands can exist in multimedia… and I think there’s no better storytelling platform than the theatre.”
He added: “It’s also a chance to have that repertory feel to it that Hammer had in its film days.”
Hammer’s last horror movie was 1976’s To the Devil a Daughter, starring Christopher Lee and Nastassja Kinski.
Lee returns to Hammer with the release next year of thriller The Resident, with Hilary Swank in the lead role.
The studio is also filming a new adaptation of supernatural novel The Woman in Black, starring Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe.
The Hammer company was founded in the 1930s but it was not until the 1950s that its name became synonymous with the horror genre. The company also produced comedies, thrillers and science fiction.
Its run of Gothic monster movies included Dracula and The Curse Of Frankenstein and it made stars of British actors like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
After being dormant since the 1980s, the company and its back catalogue was bought in 2007 by a consortium, with Simon Oakes as CEO.
Hammer’s initial return to horror was an interactive web serial Beyond The Rave, which was broadcast via MySpace in 2008.
Meanwhile, Let Me In is due to have its European premiere at the BFI London Film Festival later tonight. The film goes on general release on 5 November.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Andy Murray makes sure of a place at the ATP World Tour Finals after reaching the last eight of the Shanghai Masters.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.