Category: news

Everton secure their first top-flight win of the season as they end Birmingham’s club record-equalling run of 18 league games unbeaten at home.

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A van belonging to a charity has been destroyed in an arson attack in Ballymoney, County Antrim.

The £50,000 vehicle was recently bought by the Community Rescue Service, a volunteer service which searches for missing people.

More than half of the money to buy the van was raised by the mother of James Elliott, a 14-year-old who drowned in a river near the town last year.

Margaret Elliott said the van had helped to provide a vital service.

She said the idea behind the vehicle was to have a place where maps and radio communications could be kept to allow rescue workers to do their job more quickly.

“We raised the money because we didn’t want people to go through what we have gone through; we don’t want other mums to have to suffer the same hurt and pain,” she said.

SDLP assembly member Declan O’Loan said it was “a bizarre and shocking incident”.

“The vehicle was parked in a quiet, out of the way spot and there was no reason to expect such an attack,” he said.

Sinn Fein MLA Daithi McKay said: “It is beyond comprehension why anyone would go out in the middle of the night to destroy a vehicle which is specifically built to save people’s lives.

“It is as equally reprehensible an attack as those on other emergency services.”

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Better weather is hoped to let play forge ahead on the second day of the 2010 Ryder Cup.

Golf’s biggest tournament, being held in Wales for the first time, was delayed by torrential rain less than two hours after tee-off on Friday.

A changed schedule sees all 24 European and USA players on the greens as the forecasters predict clearer skies above the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport.

Organisers hope to avoid having to run into an extra day for the first time.

Play resumed at 1700 BST on the first day, leaving the visitors, and defending champions, ahead in two games, but only after both sides were forced back to the clubhouse for more than seven hours.

The venue’s drainage network and teams of greenkeepers allowed the contest to continue shortly after the deluge had finished.

Big crowds turned up on the opening day and up to 45,000 spectators are expected on the site daily over the weekend.

Fans with tickets to Sunday’s play are being asked to present them on Monday if play goes in to a fourth day.

The tournament is not giving refunds on tickets.

The event will have to end at sunset on Monday, whatever the weather.

The captains have an agreement that the matches cannot continue any longer than when the sun goes down on Monday, which is at 1843 BST.

If the 28 matches are not completed by then, the results of all the completed matches will stand. Any match not finished and still on the course would be declared a halve no matter what the score.

If the contest, the 38th biennial event, is forced to carry over to Monday, it will be the first time in its history that the competition has been held over four days.

The heavy rain has already claimed a victim in the US side – the team’s waterproof gear.

A number of players were forced to buy new sets from the club shop after their own sprang leak, meaning they may no longer be in matching outfits when play resumes.

The tournament alternates between Europe and America and has an estimated television audience of 600m homes in 185 countries.

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The fourballs are nearing completion as the Ryder Cup players get going on day two with the United States starting strongly against Europe after a rain-hit Friday.

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The public should be able to challenge council decisions to ban events on grounds of health and safety, a former Conservative minister is urging.

In a report written for David Cameron, Lord Young will call for an end to excessive regulations and checks on the so-called compensation culture.

Advertising by personal injury lawyers and claims firms should be reviewed as it encourages lawsuits, he argues.

Supporters of existing rules say they are proportionate and discourage risk.

The TUC has, in the past, accused the Conservatives of distorting facts about health and safety legislation for political ends.

But Lord Young, trade and industry secretary under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, has described the panoply of current health and safety regulations as a “music hall joke”.

His full report will not be published until after the Conservative Party conference – which begins in Birmingham on Sunday – but is likely to be welcomed by Conservative ministers.

Launching the review in December, Mr Cameron cited cases of children being told to wear goggles to play conkers, restaurants being banned from handing out toothpicks and trainee hairdressers being banned from using scissors as examples of silly practice.

The Young report says local authorities, in future, should explain their decisions to ban events on health and safety grounds in writing.

The public should be able to refer decisions to an ombudsman and, if deemed to be unfair, they should be overturned within two weeks.

If an event cannot be staged as a result, the organiser could be awarded damages, he adds.

The advice given by more than 3,000 local authority inspectors to individuals and low-risk workplaces, such as pubs and shops, is often inconsistent, Lord Young believes.

“In some instances, it is clear that officials are giving poor advice to organisations and individuals who are, in turn, prevented from running an event, such as a school fete, when there is no legitimate reason not to on health and safety grounds,” he says.

‘Culture of fear’

Lord Young also says flaws in existing legislation have fuelled the number of personal injury lawsuits and pushed up the fees charged by lawyers.

The growth of claims management firms – which are paid referral fees by solicitors to assess whether there are grounds for a claim – has led to a glut of advertising, he says, and resulted in a market in fees where claimants are directed to firms which pay the most not those which are most suitable.

“Many adverts entice potential claimants with promises of an instant cheque as a non-refundable bonus once their claim is accepted – a high pressure inducement to bring a claim if ever there was one,” his report argues.

A culture has developed in which businesses, the public sector and voluntary organisations “fear litigation for the smallest of accidents and manage risk in accordance with this fear,” he adds.

His report also suggests that a “good samaritan” law may be necessary to make it clear that people will not be sued for voluntary actions – such as clearing snow from a driveway – which may inadvertently contribute to accidents.

There is no liability in existing law unless negligence can be proved, he argues, but fears that people may be implicated are “pernicious” to volunteering, he says.

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Why has Germany taken so long to pay off its WWI debt?

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Latvians have begun voting in elections that are expected to reflect anger at the government’s tough austerity measures in the Baltic state.

The vote could determine the country’s commitment to its international loan agreements and plans to adopt the euro.

Opinion polls show strong support for an opposition party representing the Russian-speaking majority.

But the polls also suggest that the government of Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis could return to power.

Frustration with budged cuts and tax increases could help the pro-Russian party Harmony Centre to win seats in parliament for the first time since Latvia’s independence from the former Soviet Union in 1990.

Presenting itself as a social-democratic alternative, it hopes to benefit from widespread anger at the austerity measures of the centre-right coalition under Mr Dombrovskis.

Since 2008 Latvia has endured one of the worst recessions in the European Union.

Official figures show that unemployment is still 20%, and the BBC’s Damien McGuiness in Riga says the austerity measures have cut wages by up to 50%.

But the government’s policies have impressed international lenders and the economy is more stable, our correspondent says.

Investors see Mr Dombrovskis as the main guarantor of an austerity deal that included a 7.5bn euros ($10bn) bailout led by the International Monetary Fund and the EU.

Mr Dombrovskis, who is also aiming to adopt the euro as the national currency in 2014, took over as prime minister when the crisis was at its worst in 2009.

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The Daily Telegraph reports that police officers could be given the right to strike for the first time in 90 years.

This would be in return for sacrificing their lucrative overtime payments and bonuses, the paper says.

The Guardian reports that so-called “no touch” rules discouraging teachers from restraining or comforting schoolchildren are to be abolished.

Education Secretary Michael Gove says he will also give teachers a right to anonymity over allegations by pupils.

The Times looks ahead to the Conservative Party conference.

It says Tory chiefs are “ratcheting up the rhetoric” as they fear voters are not fully prepared for the scale of the £83bn of cuts soon to be announced.

The Financial Times reports that the UK is set to lose hundreds of millions of pounds in tax revenues every year as top hedge fund managers move overseas.

The paper says an estimated one in four hedge fund employees has left London to move to Switzerland for tax reasons.

The Daily Mail speculates whether new equality laws will lead to the “death of the office joke”.

The paper warns that under the legal concept of “third party harassment”, workers will be able to sue over jokes and banter they find offensive.

That is even if the comments were aimed at someone else and the complainant was not present when they were made.

The paper is concerned that just one incident could be sufficient to trigger legal action.

Images from the virtual washout on the first day of golf’s Ryder Cup in south Wales make it onto the news pages.

Under the headline “Squeegee Ryder”, the Daily Mirror says the Celtic Manor course looked more like Glastonbury.

Some of the world’s top players found their first formidable opponent in the shape of the British weather, it adds.

The Sun has a picture Tweeted by Ian Poulter of team-mate Padraig Harrington having a snooze while waiting for play, calling it “The Ryder Kip”.

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California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers have struck a budget deal aimed at bridging the state’s $19.1bn (£12.1bn) deficit, Mr Schwarzenegger says.

The agreement came as the state entered the fourth month of its fiscal year without a spending plan.

Lawmakers could vote on the deal on Thursday, said Democrat Darrel Steinberg, who heads the Senate.

Mr Schwarzenegger had declared a fiscal state of emergency in July.

Mr Schwarzeneggers’s spokesperson Aaron McLear said details of the agreement would not be released until Wednesday.

But Mr McLear added that the budget plan would not include tax increases.

Democrats, who control the California legislature, had urged some tax increases and demanded the delay of corporate tax breaks to raise revenue.

Mr Schwarzenegger and Republicans had ruled out tax increases and instead advocated steep spending cuts to balance the state’s books.

Pension reform was also a sticking point, with Mr Schwarzenegger wanting to role back public employee benefits. Democrats said the administration should work towards an agreement with unions through collective bargaining.

Both chambers of the legislature have to pass the deal before Mr Schwarzenegger can sign it.

The governor had declared a fiscal state of emergency in July and ordered most state employees to take three days unpaid leave a month because of the budget delay.

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Druidry is to become the first pagan practice to be given official recognition as a religion.

The Charity Commission has accepted that druids’ worship of spirits arising from the natural world could be seen as a religious activity.

The commission will give the Druid Network charitable status, saying that its work in promoting druidry as a religion is in the public interest.

The move comes thousands of years after the first druids worshipped in Britain.

Druidry was one the first known spiritual practices in Britain, and druids existed in Celtic societies elsewhere in Europe as well.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says that with concern for the environment growing and the influence of mainstream faiths waning, druidry is flourishing more now than at any time since the arrival of Christianity.

Druidry’s followers are not restricted to one god or creator, but worship the spirit they believe inhabits the earth and forces of nature such as thunder.

Druids also worship the spirits of places, such as mountains and rivers, with rituals focused particularly on the turning of the seasons.

After a four-year inquiry, the Charity Commission decided that druidry offered coherent practices for the worship of a supreme being, and provided a beneficial moral framework.

The decision to grant the Druid Network charitable status will give druidry valuable tax breaks, as well as the position of a genuine faith.

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“No touch” rules discouraging teachers from restraining and comforting children are to be scrapped, Education Secretary Michael Gove has said.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Gove said the move was part of a “new deal” for teachers.

They would also be given the right to anonymity when faced by allegations from pupils.

Mr Gove promised to change the rules on school discipline, saying the current system was too complicated.

He said: “At the moment if you want to become au fait with what this department thinks on how to keep order in class you have to read the equivalent of War and Peace.

“There is about 500 pages of guidance on discipline and another 500 pages on bullying. We will clarify and shrink that.”

Mr Gove added: “Teachers worry that if they assert a degree of discipline, one determined maverick pupil will say ‘I know my rights’ and so teachers become reticent about asserting themselves.

“There are a number of schools that have ‘no touch’ policies and we are going to make clear this rule does not apply.”

The education secretary said he did not believe staff should be able to hit children.

But he added: “I do believe that teachers need to know they can physically restrain children, they can interpose themselves between two children that may be causing trouble, and they can remove them from the classroom.”

Teachers should be able to console all victims of bullying, he said.

They would also be given the right to search pupils for “anything that is banned by the school rules”.

Mr Gove vowed to reduce the timescale in which allegations against teachers have to be either investigated or dropped.

And he wants voluntary groups and city academies to take over pupil referral units for excluded children from local authority control.

“It is striking that there are people who want to play a greater role in this market,” he said.

The coalition’s pupil premium – extra cash for schools taking poorer children – would be safe from the spending review, Mr Gove confirmed.

“The commitment from the Treasury is to deliver a proper pupil premium,” he said.

The interview comes ahead of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, which starts on Sunday.

Mr Gove announce that Geoffrey Canada, described as Barack Obama’s favourite educationalist, will address conference.

Mr Canada has been credited with eliminating educational under-achievement among black students in New York.

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“No touch” rules discouraging teachers from restraining and comforting children are to be scrapped, Education Secretary Michael Gove says.

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Chancellor George Osborne has described the UK’s defence budget as “chaotic and disorganised”.

In a Daily Telegraph interview, Mr Osborne blames the previous Labour government for what he calls the “horrendous” situation at the MoD.

The remarks follow a disagreement between Prime Minister David Cameron and Defence Secretary Liam Fox over plans to cut defence spending.