Category: news

The government says the Royal Mail needs both outside investment and expertise

The exact way in which the government intends to privatise the Royal Mail will be announced later when it publishes its Postal Services Bill.

It comes after Business Secretary Vince Cable confirmed last month that a new private firm would be formed to run sorting and delivery operations.

Royal Mail staff will be offered at least 10% of the shares in the company, but unions oppose the privatisation.

The Post Office network will not be included in the sell-off.

This part of the Royal Mail will instead remain in public hands.

The Royal Mail’s pension fund – which has a substantial deficit – will also not be included in the privatisation, and will instead be taken on by the government.

Mr Cable said last month that he had come to his decision after an independent report said the postal service’s outlook had worsened.

This review by Richard Hooper, a former deputy chairman of communications regulator Ofcom, concluded that the Royal Mail’s universal postal service could only be maintained through an injection of private sector money and expertise.

The key detail expected to be announced in the bill is whether the government proposes that the Royal Mail be sold to a private company or companies, or in a public share sale instead – which would probably mean the existing management remaining in control.

The main postal workers’ union, the CWU, says that privatisation of the Royal Mail would lead to higher prices for consumers and job losses for staff.

The Royal Mail has 176,000 employees.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Ed Miliband will be keen to make a good first impression on the main stage

Ed Miliband is to face his first key test as Labour leader when he comes up against David Cameron at prime minister’s questions.

The 40-year-old, who beat his brother David to his party’s leadership, is expected to focus his questions on the coalition’s plans for the economy.

The Commons clash comes a week ahead of the spending review, when the government’s cuts will be revealed.

The 30-minute session is due to begin at 1200 BST.

While the economy is set to dominate proceedings, Mr Miliband could also raise concerns about Business Secretary Vince Cable’s acceptance of a report recommending that universities should be able to charge unlimited tuition fees.

Alternatively, Mr Miliband might decide to ask questions about the investigation into the failed US-led rescue of British hostage Linda Norgrove in Afghanistan.

The Labour leader will be keen to give an impression of competence during prime minister’s questions, which is regarded as the highlight of the parliamentary week.

He replaces Harriet Harman, who stood in as party leader following the resignation of Gordon Brown after the general election.

Mr Miliband, who was announced as Labour leader at the party’s annual conference last month, will be flanked on the opposition benches by members of his recently chosen shadow cabinet.

Among them are likely to be shadow chancellor Alan Johnson, who made his Commons debut in the role on Tuesday, and the husband-and-wife team of shadow home secretary Ed Balls and shadow foreign secretary Yvette Cooper.

The BBC News website will provide full text and video coverage of Mr Miliband’s first appearance at prime minister’s questions.

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Robert Weale strikes singles gold in the lawn bowls at the 2010 Commonwealth Games just hours after boxer Sean McGoldrick takes silver in Delhi.

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Howard Jacobson has been nominated for the award on several occasions

Bloomsbury are to print 150,000 fresh copies of Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question, which won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the publisher said it had ordered a “very large” reprint “to cover immediate stock needs”.

Author and columnist Jacobson beat contenders including double winner Peter Carey to win the £50,000 prize.

The book had sold 8,500 copies before it was announced as the winner, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Waterstones spokesman Jon Howells said the bookseller had ordered thousands of extra copies of The Finkler Question in the wake of Jacobson’s win.

Bloomsbury’s new print run includes 50,000 copies for the UK, 30,000 paperbacks for export to Europe and 75,000 for the US and Canada.

Before the prizegiving, Emma Donoghue was the biggest seller on this year’s shortlist – her book Room had sold more than 34,000 copies before Tuesday.

Jacobson’s winning book explores Jewishness through the lives of three friends – two of them Jewish and one who wishes he was.

Chair of the Booker judges, Sir Andrew Motion, described the novel as “very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle”.

Accepting the award, Jacobson joked he had been writing unused acceptance speeches for years.

“I note that my language in these speeches grows less gracious with the years,” he said.

“You start to want to blame the judges who have given you the prize for all the prizes they didn’t give you. But they aren’t, of course, the same judges.

“Tonight, I forgive everyone – they were only doing their job, those judges, every one of whose names I could reel off.”

Sir Andrew said the “marvellous book” was “all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be”.

“It’s highly articulate, everything works in it very well,” he said.

“That is what you expect from him but it’s also, in an interesting and complicated way, a very sad book, a very melancholy book.”

Jacobson writes a weekly column for The Independent

The Finkler Question is Jacobson’s 11th novel. It tells the story of a former BBC radio producer, Julian Treslove, who is attacked on his way home from an evening out reminiscing with friends.

After the incident, his sense of his own identity begins to change.

Jacobson, who describes himself as “the Jewish Jane Austen”, has said the book is about “what Jewishness looks like to someone from the outside”.

“I bring the ways of Jewish thinking into the English novel,” he added.

The five-strong judging panel met on Tuesday afternoon and decided the winner in one hour.

But the decision was not unanimous with the judges – Sir Andrew, journalist and broadcaster Tom Sutcliffe, Royal Opera House creative director Deborah Bull, author Frances Wilson and Financial Times literary editor Rosie Blau – voting three to two for The Finkler Question.

Jacobson, who lives in London, was born in Manchester and educated in Whitefield, Greater Manchester, before studying at Downing College, Cambridge,

He taught at the University of Sydney before returning to Cambridge to teach at Selwyn College.

Jacobson’s time lecturing at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in the 1970s provided the inspiration for debut novel Coming From Behind, published in 1983.

He went on to write books including 1992’s Cain-and-Abel inspired The Very Model of a Man, 1998’s No More Mister Nice Guy – the story of a TV critic’s mid-life crisis – and the Mighty Walzer, based in the Jewish community of 1950s Manchester.

He was previously longlisted for the Booker in 2002, for Who’s Sorry Now, about a south London luggage entrepreneur who loves four women.

Jacobson, who writes a weekly column for The Independent and has presented a number of TV documentaries, was again longlisted four years later for Kalooki Nights.

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Teachers need more access to “classroom tools” to help them keep discipline in class, MPs heard

Shop assistants are given more training on how to deal with angry customers than teachers are on how to deal with unruly pupils, educationalists warn.

Appearing before a committee of MPs, psychologists and unions said teacher training courses did not cover enough ground on classroom management.

Courses should also contain modules on child development, the MPs were told.

The Department for Education said ministers were considering how to develop teacher training in England.

A DfE spokesman said an education White Paper, to be published this autumn, would also detail how teachers would have more power to deal with behaviour problems.

The concerns over teacher training were raised at the Commons education committee’s first session for an inquiry into behaviour and discipline in schools in England.

David Moore, a former Ofsted inspector with special responsibility for behaviour and discipline policy, said it was wrong to have dropped child psychology from teacher training in the Education Reform Act of 1988.

“Most teachers manage youngsters well, despite the fact that in initial teacher training, since Kenneth Baker became secretary of state for education, there has been no training in child development and child psychology – which is is an extraordinary thing,” Mr Moore told MPs.

“If you do a three-year course, if you’re lucky, you get four to five hours and if you’re on a PGCE course, which is now how most teachers come into the profession, you’re lucky if you get in between an hour and two hours on classroom management and behaviour.

“Now Marks and Spencers spend more money on training their staff to handle angry customers than we actually give to teachers, which is extraordinary.”

Professor Pam Maras, honorary general secretary of the British Psychological Society, also expressed concern to the MPs that there was “virtually no child development in any teacher training”.

Her concerns were echoed by Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers.

“It is absolutely critical that those who go into teaching understand, if you like, what the normal process of child development would be,” Ms Blower told the committee.

She said training and support throughout a teacher’s career was “critical”.

“Teaching can be essentially quite an isolated activity and it’s important that you get out and discuss with people how behaviour can be best managed.

“And that isn’t something that ends at the end of your initial training – you need to do it and develop that repertoire and revisit bits of your repertoire throughout your career.”

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said it was teachers’ unions that were offering teachers the training they needed and classroom management and behaviour courses were the most popular on offer.

“Our behaviour management courses are full to bursting within a week,” said Dr Bousted.

“There are certain techniques that, if well applied, can be used to keep very good order in the classroom.

“There are things which can be done which could be much more clearly disseminated throughout the system, which will help teachers.

“So I don’t think we want to make a PhD out of managing bad behaviour… but much can be done within CPD [continuous professional development] and ITT [initial teacher training] to ensure that there are certain tricks of the trade, tools of the classroom that can be applied and we need to get better at that.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Posters and flags line the main road from Beirut airport, but not everyone in Lebanon is enthusiastic

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due in Lebanon for a visit seen as a boost for Tehran’s Shia ally Hezbollah, an enemy of Israel.

The two-day visit will include a tour of villages along Lebanon’s tense border with Israel.

The region was devastated during the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel and rebuilt partly with Iranian money.

During his visit, Mr Ahmadinejad will meet President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

He will also attend a rally in the capital Beirut organised by Hezbollah.

It is the Iranian leader’s first visit to Lebanon since he took office in 2005.

The highway that runs from the airport to the centre of the capital Beirut has been decorated with Iranian flags and posters for Mr Ahmadinejad’s visit.

But correspondents say that although the Iranian leader will be welcome in Hezbollah’s strongholds, some members of Lebanon’s pro-Western parliamentary majority see it as a provocation.

As the visit approached, Hezbollah’s rivals in government issued a statement saying Mr Ahmadinejad was seeking to transform Lebanon into “an Iranian base on the Mediterranean”.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced her concerns over the visit with Mr Suleiman.

Mr Ahmadinejad’s visit also comes amid tension over a UN inquiry into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The UN tribunal is believed to be close to issuing indictments, including ones naming members of Hezbollah.

Prime Minister Hariri – Rafik Hariri’s son – is under pressure from Hezbollah and Syria to denounce the tribunal.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Liu Xiaobo was jailed for 11 years in December 2009

A group of 23 Communist Party elders in China has written a letter calling for an end to the country’s restrictions on freedom of speech.

The letter says freedom of expression is promised in the Chinese constitution but not allowed in practice.

They want people to be able to freely express themselves on the internet and want more respect for journalists.

The call comes just days after the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr Liu was sent to prison for 11 years in 2009 for expressing his desire to see peaceful political change in China.

The letter’s release also comes ahead of a key party meeting that is expected to promote future leaders and shape policy for the next few years.

The authors of the letter describe China’s current censorship system as a scandal and an embarrassment.

Many who signed the letter were once influential officials.

One author is a former personal secretary to the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong and a former editor of the official People’s Daily newspaper.

They make eight specific demands – all designed to enhance Chinese people’s right to express themselves in public.

They say people who lived in Hong Kong while it was still a British colony enjoyed more freedom than is currently allowed in mainland China.

The letter is addressed to the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament.

It was widely available on the internet – although it has already been taken down from many websites.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Paddy Barnes, Paddy Gallagher and Eamonn O’Kane win Northern Ireland’s first golds of the Commonwealth Games as English and Scottish boxers also triumph.

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The trip is Mr Hague’s first to Moscow as foreign secretary

William Hague will hold meetings later with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in his first trip to Moscow as foreign secretary.

Mr Hague has played down expectations ahead of the visit, but said “the door was open to better relations”.

Relations between the two countries have been strained over the murder of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006.

Britain’s 2007 request for the extradition of a suspect still stands.

UK investigators suspect former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi of the murder, but he has always denied any involvement in the poisoning of Mr Litvinenko with the radioactive substance polonium-210.

In May 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service formally submitted an extradition request to Moscow for Mr Lugovoi to stand trial in Britain.

Russia has refused to co-operate, saying it would be against its constitution to do so.

Ahead of his talks with Mr Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Mr Hague told the BBC that better, businesslike relations were desirable, but that did not mean Britain was setting aside differences with Russia over the Litvinenko murder.

Russia has signalled it hopes Mr Hague’s visit will help put irritants aside, and called on Mr Hague to take concrete steps towards it.

Mr Hague, though, insisted it was not yet time to turn a corner.

“[The Litvinenko murder] remains a major problem in bilateral relations and I don’t think that problem is going to go away.

“It’s not going to be set aside, it’s not going to be put behind us, it is something we will have to continue to discuss with Russia.

“So, it’s not a problem that can be ignored but I think while we discuss that with Russia there are other things we can be doing.”

However, Mr Hague does want to explore the potential for collaborative projects that could help businesses and jobs in Britain.

No “reset button” – as the US has described its hopes for its own relations with Russia – then, or a fresh start, but a small step to improve relations, says the BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall.

Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear programme, and the Middle East peace process are also expected to be on the agenda.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Wylfa nuclear power plant on Anglesey is to continue generating electricity for around another two years, say industry regulators.

The Magnox-type reactors were due to shut down in December after 39 years in operation.

The site operators had applied to extend the lifespan of the power station.

An agreement on extending generation at the plant has now been agreed with the Health and Safety Executive.

More follows…

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Users can text to get a temporary password

Facebook is launching one-time passwords in an effort to make it safer to log on to the social network from public computers.

It also claims the system will help prevent cyber-criminals accessing users’ accounts.

Users need to text the words ‘otp’ to 32665 and they will be sent a temporary password that will expire after 20 minutes.

But security experts questioned whether the system was safe.

“If someone else is able to gain access to your phone then that’s an open door for mischief-makers to access your Facebook account,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos.

It may also not be a foolproof method of avoiding Facebook hackers.

“A temporary password may stop keylogging spyware giving cybercriminals a permanent backdoor into your account, but it doesn’t stop malware from spying upon your activities online and seeing what’s happening on your screen,” he said.

Users of the system must have a mobile phone number registered to their account, which could also open the system up to exploitation, thinks Mr Cluley.

“Do you know if you’ve registered your mobile phone number on Facebook? Would you notice if someone changed it? Imagine a scenario where some ”fraper’ changes the mobile number of your account to one to which they have access. That may mean that anytime they like they could access your Facebook account,” he said.

Facebook also launched another new feature which will allow people to sign out of Facebook remotely, aimed at those who log in to the social network via a friends phone or computer and then forget to sign out.

People will be able to keep a closer eye on the status of their accounts, Jake Brill wrote in the official Facebook blog.

“In the unlikely event that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorised login before resetting your password,” he wrote.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Firms seeking offshore drilling permits in Europe may have to meet EU-wide standards

The European Commission is to propose tightening the rules for deep-water drilling in the oil industry.

The move follows April’s devastating BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

There are 900 offshore wells in European waters, although only one country – Norway – currently allows drilling at depths comparable to BP’s ill-fated Deepwater Horizon facility.

The Commission wants to ensure that firms drilling in European waters can cover the costs of a spill.

The BP disaster not only allowed more than 4m barrels of oil to pollute the sea, it also frightened oil regulators worldwide. If it could happen once, they thought, it could happen again.

The EU Energy Commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, wants any company drilling within European waters to prove it has either the cash in the bank to pay for a clean-up, or appropriate insurance to cover the cost.

He also intends to change rules that currently make companies liable for costs if they are drilling up to 12 nautical miles from shore. He wants this distance extended to 200 nautical miles.

Greenpeace activists boarded a Greenland in protest at drilling

Scottish Lib Dem MEP George Lyon said: “The proposed voluntary moratorium will allow European safety standards to be revised and renewed without harming the operations of North Sea rigs that already have outstanding safety records.”

Greenpeace is opposed to deep-water drilling and has been involved in high-profile protests in recent weeks.

The environmental group ended its blockade of a drilling ship 100 miles off Shetland late last month after oil company Chevron won a second court order.

Protesters had brought drill ship Stena Carron to a standstill by swimming in front of it.

Earlier they spent five days in a pod which they had attached to the ship’s anchor chain, before Chevron took legal action to remove it.

And four Greenpeace activists were arrested at the beginning of September after giving up their occupation of a Scottish company’s drilling rig off Greenland.

The group had boarded the rig, which was operated on behalf of Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy.

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Northern Ireland boxers Paddy Barnes, Paddy Gallagher and Eamonn O’Kane win gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

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The 12th miner to be rescued, Edison Pena, has been greeted by his girlfriend at the surface.

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Mr Mitchell is alleged to have preyed on women he met on duty

A drug addict who said she was sexually abused by a policeman kept her silence for 10 years, a court has been told.

Pc Stephen Mitchell, 42, denies five counts of rape, six of indecent assault and 15 of misconduct in public office.

The policeman, of Glasgow, was based in Newcastle, where he offered “favours” to heroin addicts and vulnerable women in return for sex, jurors have heard.

The woman told Newcastle Crown Court she feared she would not be believed because she was a heroin addict.

She said Mr Mitchell groped her at Newcastle’s Pilgrim Street police station when she was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting in 1999.

He then visited her home and had sex with her twice a week for several months, she told the court.

Giving evidence on the second day of the trial, the woman, now 36, said: “At the time I was a heroin addict and he was a police officer.

“I was an addict with a criminal record. Who would believe me over a policeman?

“I was just standing there shocked and thinking, ‘this is not happening’. I was hoping someone would come in. That didn’t happen.”

She added: “For us addicts, some police officers are really nice, and others treat you like dirt.”

The charges relate to 16 complainants Mr Mitchell met in the line of duty, the hearing has been told.

Mr Mitchell, who joined Northumbria Police in 1998, is also accused of repeatedly raping a heroin addict who asked him to help her get back her children from care.

The offences are alleged to have happened between 1999 and 2006.

The trial continues.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.