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On Friday morning, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft will launch from Baikonur on the Kazakstan steppe, heading for the International Space Station.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Fine wine merchants in London say they have had their best year ever, with single bottles on sale for more than the price of a flat. But what drives the trend? And more importantly, how do these most rarefied of elixirs taste?
BBC London attempts to track down the most expensive bottle of wine on sale in the city to find out.
Petrus – a wine so expensive Gordon Ramsay named a restaurant after it From his cavernous, 300-year-old cellar in central London, Simon Staples exuded all the confidence of a 1980s stockbroker.
The sales director at wine merchant Berry Brothers and Rudd calls the last six months “the most astonishing time for the market I have ever seen”.
He said: “People have always enjoyed fine wine. But as new markets emerge it has got stronger and stronger. We have never seen it this bullish.”
With that bombastic statement began the quest to track down the most eye-wateringly expensive tipple of all.
Top lot at the auctioneer Christie’s’ next sale is the 1982 Petrus, a wine so prestigious Gordon Ramsay named a restaurant after it.
It is estimated to fetch £4,000 a bottle – just 16 months ago one sold for £1,530. But would the layperson even taste the difference?
“People say: ‘Oh, it would be wasted on me’,” says Christie’s’ head of fine wine David Elswood.
“This is an extreme case – you would recognise it is superior.
“But you might not realise it is something extraordinary.”
Mr Elswood continued: “Petrus ’82 is generally recognised to be the best wine there is.
“But if you had it next door to a good Bordeaux costing £20 the differences are small. For £20 you can enjoy 99% of the quality range in wine. Above that the gloves come off.”
The recession made an initial dent in the market. But investors then found wine far more profitable than sluggish stocks and shares and parked their money in grapes.
That combined with the emergence of a new, superwealthy market in the Far East to send prices surging.
Mr Elswood explained: “For 200 years London was the capital of the world’s wine trade, the capital of appreciation.
Mr Elswood says Hong Kong has replaced London as world wine capital “Never ask a Parisian what French wine is like – you already know their answer.
“But in the Far East, where people once never drank wine at all, a whole new market has emerged. Hong Kong is the new capital.”
Petrus ’82 also tops the bill at Bonhams auction house.
Anthony Barne, head of fine wine, said: “The hallmark is that it’s powerful but not heavy. You get this intense flavour without being too hefty.
“It’s very well balanced so you don’t get a great thump at the beginning or the end.
“The few clients buying it for drinking are in China, Russia or Brazil.”
But compared to wines on sale elsewhere the price tag is small beer.
Berry Brothers and Rudd offers a 1978 Richebourg Burgundy.
The case price? £135,000, or a cool £11,250 per bottle.
“It seems an absurd amount of money,” employee Joss Fowler admitted. “But it was made by one of the first legendary winemakers – you are paying for the kudos.”
He continued: “The selling point is that you have a finite product. And the supply decreases still more at drinking point.
Not one to put on expenses – these six bottles cost more than the £65,738 salary of an MP “Plus it will improve for 40 years – it’s not a bar of gold sitting there doing nothing.
“The buyer may just store it for the pleasure of knowing it’s in their cellar, even though that sounds silly.
“Or will they open a few bottles? An expensive dinner party.”
But the Burgundy is a mere whippersnapper compared to the blueblooded aristocrat at the Antique Wine Company’s cellar.
The merchant, based in Islington, north London, offers a war veteran for sale – the Napoleonic War, no less.
Managing director Stephen Williams said of his 1811 Chateau d’Yquem: “Drinking antique wine is about the sensation of nostalgia – it takes you on a journey.
“Think about what was going on in 1811. The aeroplane had not been invented. Neither had electricity.
“The world was a very different place – the grapes that went into this wine were picked by peasants, by hand.”
Made by peasants – but with a price tag for a lord. At £75,000 the bottle would break the world record for a white wine, and it was easily the most expensive the BBC could track down.
For that price, Google reveals you could be the proud owner of a flat in Beckenham, south London and buy a Petrus ’82 with the change.
The Chateau d’Yquem is worth more than bricks and mortar Stephen Williams said: “Wines from the Napoleonic era are very valuable. This comes from when the Empire was at its peak.
“And Chateau d’Yquem probably has the greatest longevity of vintage wines.”
But how would it taste?
Mr Williams said: “The oldest wine I have personally tasted was from 1865. That was a great vintage and it was a special moment.
“The sugar in the Chateau d’Yquem will probably have caramelised and I would hope there would still be some acidity. This bottle won’t hang about.”
This article considered wine offered for direct sale to the public where prices are intended to reflect a bottle’s true worth.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Harriet Harman, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper are expected to get big roles after the elections Labour will reveal the 19 MPs who will join new leader Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet on Thursday.
In opposition, the party’s top team is voted in by its MPs although the leader gets to allocate specific jobs.
Voting closes on Thursday and ballots will be counted from 1700 BST with an announcement expected hours later.
Forty-nine MPs, including ex-cabinet ministers and former leadership contenders such as Ed Balls and Andy Burnham, are contesting the election.
Ed Miliband – whose brother David decided not put his name forward for election – is expected to wait until Friday to announce who will be given which roles.
Most speculation has surrounded the job of shadow chancellor, with both Mr Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper – leading figures in the last Labour government – seen as strong candidates.
Whoever is given the plum job will lead the opposition’s response to the government’s spending review in two weeks’ time.
Harriet Harman, elected deputy party leader in 2007, is already in the shadow cabinet as is chief whip Rosie Winterton – who was elected unopposed to the position last week.
But 49 MPs are fighting for 19 other places in the first shadow cabinet elections since 1996.
Under rules agreed by Labour MPs last month, at least six places must go to both women and men. Labour’s 258 MPs can vote for a maximum of 19 candidates but must vote for a minimum of 12 people for their ballot to be valid.
The 19 candidates with the most votes will be elected.
Former cabinet ministers Alistair Darling, Jack Straw and Bob Ainsworth are stepping down from the front bench and not contesting the elections.
Lord Adonis and Lord Mandelson resigned in the wake of Labour’s election defeat and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband is also returning to the back benches, having lost the party leadership to his brother.
The departure of these big names means several top jobs are up for grabs, and a mixture of senior figures and backbench MPs have entered the ballot.
Aside from former Education Secretary Mr Balls and former Health Secretary Mr Burnham, ex-Home Secretary Alan Johnson is in contention as are other former cabinet ministers Ben Bradshaw, John Denham, Douglas Alexander, Hilary Benn, Peter Hain and Shaun Woodward.
Aside from Ms Cooper, former Europe minister Caroline Flint, former Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and former leadership contender Diane Abbott are among the 15 women standing.
Mr Balls, who was Gordon Brown’s adviser at the Treasury when he was chancellor, is known to be interested in the role of shadow chancellor but Ms Cooper – a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury – has also been suggested as a candidate.
And there has been speculation Ms Harman may be offered an additional role following her stint as acting leader.
Earlier this month, party members rejected a move to allow the party leader to choose who serves on the shadow cabinet when Labour is in opposition, but elections were limited to every two years as opposed to every year before 1997.
The chief whip is elected separately but Mr Miliband effectively got his choice – Ms Winterton – last week when he asked the incumbent, Nick Brown, to step aside.
The chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, its leader in the House of Lords and its chief whip in the Upper House also sit in the shadow cabinet.
Here is the full list of MPs standing for election to the shadow cabinet:
Diane Abbott
Douglas Alexander
Ed Balls
Hilary Benn
Roberta Blackman-Woods
Ben Bradshaw
Kevin Brennan
Chris Bryant
Andy Burnham
Liam Byrne
Vernon Coaker
Yvette Cooper
Mary Creagh
Wayne David
John Denham
Angela Eagle
Maria Eagle
Rob Flello
Caroline Flint
Mike Gapes
Barry Gardiner
Helen Goodman
Peter Hain
David Hanson
Tom Harris
John Healey
Meg Hillier
Huw Irranca-Davies
Kevan Jones
Alan Johnson
Tessa Jowell
Eric Joyce
Barbara Keeley
Sadiq Khan
David Lammy
Chris Leslie
Ivan Lewis
Ian Lucas
Fiona Mactaggart
Pat McFadden
Ann McKechin
Alun Michael
Jim Murphy
Gareth Thomas
Emily Thornberry
Stephen Timms
Stephen Twigg
Shaun Woodward
Iain Wright
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Anti-apartheid figurehead Archbishop Desmond Tutu is retiring from public life, as he reaches his 79th birthday.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
England win archery gold on day four in Delhi, which will also see medals won on the athletics track and in the pool.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Anti-apartheid figurehead Archbishop Desmond Tutu is retiring from public life, as he reaches his 79th birthday.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
US First Lady Michelle Obama beat heads of state, chief executives and celebrities to be named the world’s most powerful woman by Forbes magazine.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The future of two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy is uncertain The National Security Council will meet on Thursday to discuss key decisions on the future of the UK’s defence budget.
Uncertainty remains over whether plans for both the UK’s two proposed new aircraft carriers will go ahead.
There are fears the Royal Navy could cut many of its other surface ships if the orders are allowed to continue.
Ahead of the forthcoming Strategic Defence Review, David Cameron told the Conservative Party conference he would “take no risks with British security”.
One of the Navy’s new carriers is currently being built and defence industry sources say scrapping the second would not save money.
To build both will cost some £5.4bn, but thanks to cancellation fees it would cost more – £5.7bn – to build one but scrap the other.
That means building both – even if the second is then kept in port – could prove the most likely option.
However, the planned order for the joint strike fighters to go on board the carriers may have to be scaled down.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned the government against cancelling orders for the carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.
With savings of up to 10% being sought from the Ministry of Defence, Mr Cameron said there would be some big changes needed to the defence budget to modernise the armed forces which he said were “geared up to fight old wars”.
“The press has said it all – a navy the size of Portugal’s”
Jason Alderwick Defence analystUncertain future for amphibious forces
The country had struggled to provide helicopters for troops in Afghanistan while maintaining armoured brigades designed for the Cold War, he said.
Mr Cameron restated his commitment to renew the UK’s Trident-based nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of British combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2015.
He told the conference in Birmingham: “Since becoming prime minister nothing has shocked me more than the catastrophic state of the defence budget.
“So our defence review will match our commitments with the resources we’ve got. This will mean some big changes.
“But I promise you this – I will take no risks with British security.
“That’s why, when more and more countries have or want nuclear weapons, we will always keep our ultimate insurance policy, we will renew our nuclear deterrent based on the Trident missile system.”
BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt says that with only weeks to go before the defence review is unveiled, the bulk of the pain is thought likely to fall on the Royal Navy and the RAF.
If the cuts are major, they will be politically very hard for Defence Secretary Liam Fox – and his party – to defend, our correspondent adds.
In a leaked letter, Dr Fox has warned “draconian” cuts to defence spending would result in “grave consequences”.
In an earlier meeting of the National Security Council, the RAF’s Tornado force, the aircraft carriers and the size of the Army were discussed.
Defence analyst Jason Alderwick told the BBC: “The press has said it all – a navy the size of Portugal’s.
“That is obviously a concern, that the Navy would lose the workhorses of their fleet to compensate for the fact those carriers are going through – which means a reduction in the navy’s footprint in the world.
“They are heavily committed in many parts of the world, and something would have to give.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By Caroline Wyatt
The landing ship HMS Albion played a rescue role during the volcanic ash crisis Amphibious forces have played a major role in British military operations for centuries. Now there are fears the Royal Navy could lose much of that capability, as the National Security Council meets to review the country’s defence strategy.
On a cloudless day on calm seas off the western coast of Scotland, HMS Albion is an imposing sight.
She was last seen rescuing stranded civilians and troops trying to return home from Afghanistan during the volcanic ash crisis.
Now, the landing ship is returning from an exercise in Scotland with young Royal Marine commandos aboard.
They are carrying out amphibious assault training that is as realistic as possible, to ready them for what may lie ahead when they’re finally deployed on operations.
2nd Lieutenant Josh McCreton joined the Royal Marines because “they punch above their weight”.
Today, he is looking a little weary after he and his comrades have been kept up all night on Exercise Wet Raider, leaving the ship under cover of darkness and returning exhausted just as dawn breaks.
“It’s been very good, very challenging training,” he says. “At times, you wonder whether you really want to do this, but that’s the way it works.
“It is arduous in environments like here in the Hebrides or in Wales. But because it’s hard it brings out the right skills.”
He is looking forward to being deployed, even if that means being sent to Afghanistan where Royal Marines have provided much of the fighting force in Helmand over the past four years.
The Commandant General of the Royal Marines and Commander Amphibious Forces, Major General Buster Howes, is fiercely proud of their work there, paying tribute as 40 Commando returned to the UK on Wednesday.
Twenty-one in their battle-group were killed, among them 14 Royal Marines.
“We have had amphibious forces for several centuries. Nelson had them on the Victory at Trafalgar, and Royal Marines have figured in every British sea and land campaign engagement,” he says.
“They are sea soldiers, an instrument which the Royal Navy and Royal Marines can project from the sea and the land.”
Although the Royal Marines have been used more on land than at sea in recent years, Major General Howes insists their amphibious role and capabilities remain essential.
“They were used in that role in 1982 in the Falklands, which was soon after a review which concluded they would never be needed again in that guise.
“And they, along with the Parachute brigade and the Gurkhas and others, recaptured the Falkland Islands.”
However, some fear that if the National Security Council decides that the purchase of both of the UK’s proposed two new aircraft carriers should go ahead, the Royal Navy could lose much of its amphibious capability – because something will have to give.
“It is obviously a concern that the Navy would lose their other escort ships, some of the workhorses of their fleet, to pay for or compensate for the fact those carriers are going through, and that obviously would mean a reduction in the Navy’s footprint in the world,” according to independent defence analyst Jason Alderwick.
The stakes for the Royal Navy, the RAF and the Army are high. As the National Security Council considers the options for the strategic defence and security review, Defence Secretary Liam Fox again emphasised at the Conservative party conference that the MoD had been left with a £38bn overspend to deal with.
It will almost certainly have to make cuts on top of that, with the RAF and the Royal Navy likely to bear the brunt of them for now, as the needs of the front line in Afghanistan have been made the government’s priority in this review.
So – in order to keep the aircraft carriers – the Royal Navy may lose some of its surface fleet, including a portion of its amphibious capability, even though it has proved its worth over the past decades from the Falklands to Sierra Leone, Iraq and in numerous humanitarian missions, leaving some questioning if the Navy has not gambled too much on the two carriers at the expense of its other assets.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Soldiers helped round up the police suspects More than 40 Ecuadorean police officers have been detained in connection with last week’s police revolt against President Rafael Correa.
The interior ministry said the detained officers were being investigated to see if they should be charged.
Mr Correa had to be rescued by the Ecuadorean army last Thursday during a violent protest by police officers over cuts to their benefits.
He insists the unrest was a coup attempt.
President Correa said he was determined to “purge” the police force to prevent officers from forming “extreme right-wing paramilitary groups”.
“We will investigate all these things and try to take all precautions so there will not be a repeat,” he said.
But he added that the unrest had only involved a minority of the police force.
“This insubordination was limited to a few hundred officers, from a force of 42,000 national police,” he said.
“We cannot blame the institution for a group of police officers who have denigrated their position.”
Mr Correa has accused opposition politicians, including the former President Lucio Gutierrez, of instigating the unrest.
But Mr Gutierrez has denied involvement, calling the accusations “cowardly and false”.
Speaking in Brazil, where he arrived on Wednesday, he promised to defeat Mr Correa by democratic means.
Lawyers for the detained police officers have expressed concern that they may not get a fair trial.
A state of emergency is in force until Friday, and troops are patrolling the streets of the capital, Quito.
Last week’s violent unrest was the worst challenge Mr Correa has faced since he took office in 2007.
The president had tear gas fired at him and was then trapped inside a hospital surrounded by protesting officers for more than 12 hours before he was rescued by the army.
Several people died in gun battles between troops and police.
Ecuador has a long history of political instability, and has had eight presidents since 1996.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The numbers going to university have doubled in industrialised countries since the mid-1990s Next week Lord Browne is going to deliver his recommendations on funding universities and tuition fees in England.
It’s meant to protect a “world class” higher education system. But how does the UK compare to international competitors?
In Finland, 80% of young women are now going to university. It’s currently the highest proportion of graduates in the world.
All those blue-skies conversations about a “graduate economy” have already arrived in parts of the European continent. In Iceland, 78% of women are getting degrees, in the Slovak Republic it’s 77%.
You can hear taxi drivers howling in irritation. All those pointless courses. More degrees than a protractor factory. Who’s paying for all those courses?
Except there could already be 80% going to university in the UK. It just depends how you count it. Or more specifically where you count it.
If the cab was driving through the well-heeled streets of Kensington and Chelsea in London more than 80% of young people are already going to university.
And based on the last detailed local figures, in places in south west London such as Richmond and Wimbledon, about two in three youngsters will be getting university places.
But what has this got to do with the arguments over student fees?
It’s because a driving force behind Lord Browne’s review into university funding has been the need to keep up with global rivals.
Compared with international competitors the UK has been slipping back in the numbers of people going to university.
The UK has fallen from third to fifteenth in the international league of graduate numbers between 2000 and 2008, according to OECD figures.
According to this measure, there are now 30% of men and 40% of women in each year group in the UK leaving with degrees.
It’s not that the UK has fewer graduates, the number has risen year after year – it’s that the number has not increased as rapidly as other industrial nations.
The UK has been overtaken by countries such as Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Denmark.
Across the OECD, between 1995 and 2008, the proportion of young people going to university doubled – from 20% to almost 40%. It has been a huge and largely unheralded social change.
Parents of new students sleep on a gym floor at the start of the university term at Wuhan in China It’s moved from a minority activity to a mainstream expectation – a gateway to middle-income employment. There are now more people getting degrees in the UK than would have had A-levels a generation ago.
But what’s particularly distinctive about the numbers going to university in the UK is the polarisation of local differences.
Youngsters in affluent areas are five times more likely to go to university than their counterparts in the poorest areas.
At the extremes, the range is even wider. The last detailed local figures, gathered almost a decade ago, showed that only 8% went from Sheffield Brightside and 9% in Nottingham North.
Even though the numbers will have risen – and girls will be more likely to get places than boys – it’s a massive divide.
What does that mean for international comparisons? It would put south west London shoulder to shoulder with the Scandinavian countries and parts of Sheffield and Nottingham alongside Mexico and Turkey.
There is another unacknowledged watershed in Lord Browne’s review – in that almost no one is calling for fewer students.
The challenge is to get more students through the doors, at a cost that is affordable to the student and the taxpayer.
Both partners in the coalition government and the opposition accept the broad principle that the economy is going to require more graduates – and that more families will expect their children to get university places.
But what’s this going to cost? And how does spending compare now?
As a percentage of national wealth, the UK is below the OECD average for spending on higher education. The amount has risen, but not as rapidly as elsewhere.
The UK spends 1.3% of GDP on higher education – lagging behind 3.1% in the US, 2.4% in South Korea and 2.6% in Canada. Within Europe, the UK is behind countries including France, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Portugal and the Netherlands.
But there’s another way of measuring this.
In cash terms, in dollars spent per student, the UK has a much more positive outlook. It’s above average for industrial countries and higher than countries such as France, Japan, Germany, Italy and Finland.
For example, in the UK the average amount spent per student, including fees, is $15,000 (£9,400) per year – in Italy it is less than $9,000 (£5,700).
But there are big differences in how this income can be delivered.
Higher education in the US receives the highest proportion of GDP in the world – but two thirds of this is from the private sector. Leading universities in the US now charge students $50,000 (£31,400) per year.
In Finland, there are no fees for home students, and about 94% of spending on higher education comes from the public sector.
In this spectrum, the English system of fees and taxpayer support falls somewhere in the middle ground, between the US free market and the Scandinavian state-funded approach.
A key issue – and a big concern for universities – is whether the current funding review will be about putting extra money into higher education – or whether it will replace public funding with increased fees. Will it switch the balance rather than increase the overall amount?
Students at English universities will also be looking at international comparisons in terms of the current level of tuition fees. England is already in the top five for fees – alongside the US, South Korea, Japan and Australia.
The charging of fees is spreading – with English-speaking and Asian countries at the forefront. The most striking difference is in Scandinavia, which remains resistant to such charges.
But fees have to be set against the availability of bursaries and loans, particularly for low-income families. In this respect, in terms of the proportion of the higher education budget spent on student support, England spends similar levels to Norway and Denmark.
There have been relentlessly upward international trends in the past decade – more students, more graduate jobs, more applicants for places, more money pumped into universities.
This appetite for university shows no sign of diminishing. But the next big question, from New York to Nottingham, is going to be who pays for it?
Estimated percentages of 2008 age cohort which will complete first-time academic degrees, out of 26 OECD countries, plus Australia figure for 2007. This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The report says the government’s response “seemed to lag” in the early stages of the disaster A commission investigating the response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has strongly criticised the White House in a number of areas.
The Obama administration blocked government scientists’ efforts to inform the public of worst case scenarios, a draft report said.
Officials were said to have been too optimistic about handling the disaster, one of the worst in US history.
The White House disputes this, saying officials “were clear with the public”.
But the BBC’s Steve Kingstone, in Washington, says the accusations will embarrass the White House, coming as they do from a commission appointed by President Barack Obama.
The report by the National Oil Spill Commission says the White House was directly involved in controlling information from the spill that began after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on 20 April.
The report says that during the crucial first 10 days of the oil spill the government’s response “seemed to lag” – and that coastguard officials were “overly-optimistic” in believing BP could handle the incident.
Government scientists are accused of first underestimating the amount of oil pouring into the Gulf and then overestimating the quantity which had evaporated or otherwise been removed from the sea.
The report says the president’s adviser on energy policy, Carol Browner, stated wrongly on American television that three-quarters of the oil had “gone”, and that the White House blocked a request by officials to make public a worst case scenario for the scale of the leak.
Worst-case scenario
The panel, which cited interviews with government officials, said in late April or early May, the White House budget office denied a request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to make public its worst-case estimate of how much oil could leak from the Macondo well.
But the White House said in a statement Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral in charge of the response, told the public the worst-case scenario could be more than 4.2 million gallons per day.
BP’s drilling permit for the well said 6.8 million gallons could pour from the well during the worst-case scenario.
NOAA and the Coast Guard later received an updated worst-case scenario just after the spill began, putting the estimate at 2.7 million to 4.6 million gallons per day.
The National Oil Spill Commission report says those numbers, which were used as the basis for the administration’s spill response, were never made public – though they appeared on an internal Coast Guard situation report.
The report also says the federal government used too much boom to stop the oil from spreading – especially in the US state of Louisiana, where directions went out to “keep the parishes happy”.
The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers, polluted hundreds of kilometres of shoreline and disrupted tourism and local fishing industries before the leaking well was capped on 15 July.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The Gambia introduces the death penalty for anyone found with more than 250g of cocaine or heroin in a bid to curb drug trafficking.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Mr Sheridan is alleged to have admitted attending a swingers club The Tommy Sheridan perjury trial has heard an ex-colleague compare the former MSP to a Conservative peer who was jailed for lying in court.
Allan Green, 53, told the High Court in Glasgow he was appalled a man known for his honesty would follow the path of Lord Jeffrey Archer.
Mr Sheridan and his wife Gail, both 46, are on trial accused of perjury.
They are accused of lying to help him successfully sue the News of the World in 2006. They deny the charges.
Mr Sheridan won £200,000 in damages after the newspaper printed allegations about his private life, claiming that he was an adulterer who had visited a swingers club.
“He was very effective at getting socialist ideas across in the media”
Allan Green Witness
After a police investigation, Mr and Mrs Sheridan were charged with perjury.
Giving evidence on the third day of Mr Sheridan’s trial, Mr Green said that he first met Mr Sheridan in the mid-1990s as the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) came into being.
The supply teacher said he was pleased when Mr Sheridan was elected as convener of the party.
He told the court: “Tommy used to be a tremendous ambassador for socialism. He was very effective at getting socialist ideas across in the media.”
Mr Green said he was the SSP’s national secretary when he called a meeting in November 2004 to discuss rumours about Tommy Sheridan’s sex life.
He told the court the former MSP admitted visiting a swingers club but then shocked the gathering saying he would deny it publicly and take legal action to clear his name.
Mr Green said he was appalled a man known for his honesty would follow the path of Conservative Lord Jeffrey Archer, who was famously jailed for perjury.
He insisted that everyone knew what he called “the sordid and sad truth”.
It is alleged that Mr Sheridan made false statements as a witness in his defamation action against the News of the World on 21 July 2006.
He also denies another charge of attempting to persuade a witness to commit perjury shortly before the 23-day legal action got under way.
Mrs Sheridan denies making false statements on 31 July 2006, after being sworn in as a witness in the civil jury trial at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
The trial, before judge Lord Bracadale, is due to last between two and three months and is expected to become the longest perjury case in Scottish legal history.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The US envoy to Pakistan has apologised for a recent Nato helicopter attack that killed at least two Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border.
Anne Patterson said the US extended its “deepest apology to Pakistan and the families of the Frontier Scouts who were killed and injured”.
A Nato inquiry found that the aircraft flew from Afghanistan into Pakistan.
Nato helicopters then opened fire on the border guards mistakenly believing they were militants.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.