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The ruling Workers’ Party in North Korea has held its first party congress for 30 years, but events in Pyongyang have been shrouded in secrecy.
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The Foreign Office has issued new safety warnings about the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
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Children affected by ADHD may be restless and impulsive The first direct evidence of a genetic link to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has been found, a study says.
Scientists from Cardiff University, writing in The Lancet, said the disorder was a brain problem like autism – not due to bad parenting.
They analysed stretches of DNA from 366 children who had been diagnosed with the disorder.
But one clinical psychologist argued that what happened in children’s early years was more crucial than genetics.
At least 2% of children in the UK are thought to have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Affected children are restless and impulsive. They may also have destructive tendencies, and experience serious problems at school and within family life.
The researchers compared genetic samples from ADHD children, with DNA from 1,047 people without the condition.
“There’s a lot of public misunderstanding about ADHD”
Prof Anita Thapar Cardiff University
They found that 15% of the ADHD group had large and rare variations in their DNA – compared with 7% in the control group.
Professor Anita Thapar said: “We found that, compared with the control group, the children with ADHD have a much higher rate of chunks of DNA that are either duplicated or missing.
“This is really exciting – because it gives us the first direct genetic link to ADHD.
“We have looked at lots of potential risk factors in the environment – such as parenting or what happens before birth – but there isn’t the evidence to say they’re linked to ADHD.
“There’s a lot of public misunderstanding about ADHD. Some people say it’s not a real disorder, or that it’s the result of bad parenting.
“Finding this direct link should address the issue of stigma.”
The researchers stressed that there is no single gene behind ADHD, and the work is at too early a stage to lead to any test for the disorder.
“Genes hardly explain at all why some kids have ADHD and not others”
Oliver James Clinical child psychologist and broadcaster
But they hope the study will help unravel the biological basis of ADHD. This could eventually lead to new treatments.
The work was largely funded by the Wellcome Trust, with extra support from the Medical Research Council.
The chief executive of a charity and support group ADDIS, Andrea Bilbow, said: “We are very excited. We’ve always known there was a genetic link – through studies and anecdotally.
“This paper will help us deal more confidently with the sceptics, who are always so eager to blame parents or teachers. It shows there is a definite genetic anomaly in children with ADHD.”
But the study has been criticised by the clinical child psychologist and broadcaster, Oliver James.
He cited studies which looked at the effect of anxiety among pregnant women, and disturbed early relations between mothers and their babies.
He said: “Only 57 out of the 366 children with ADHD had the genetic variant supposed to be a cause of the illness.
“That would suggest that other factors are the main cause in the vast majority of cases.
“Genes hardly explain at all why some kids have ADHD and not others.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Some banks have already admitted their complaints levels A new list of banks facing the highest number of complaints from UK customers is topped by Lloyds Banking Group.
The state-backed group, which includes a number of different brands, received more than 280,000 gripes in the first half of 2010, the City regulator said.
However, Lloyds said it received the most because it was the largest bank.
Santander was the worst of the major High Street banks at dealing with gripes within eight weeks, said the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
The watchdog is also proposing new rules to improve banks’ complaints procedures.
In April, the FSA criticised the way banks dealt with customers’ complaints.
It blamed a lack of interest by senior bank management, bonus schemes that inhibited staff from paying compensation, and poor decision making, but said that banks had agreed to make big improvements.
It prompted some banks to publish their complaints statistics over the summer, and these have fed into the list compiled and now published by the FSA.
Among the major banks, the list of banking complaints is topped by Lloyds, which received 288,717 complaints in the first six months of the year.
This is followed by Barclays, with 259,266, and Santander with 244,978.
Lloyds said that on average, the complaints came from less than 1% of their 30 million customers.
Source: FSA. Figures from January-June 2010
“Our relationship with our customers is at the heart of our business and we take all feedback very seriously. Like every organisation we know there are areas where we can improve and we are working with our customers to do just that,” said a Lloyds spokeswoman.
“The vast majority are happy with the service we provide and this is reflected in the low number of complaints we receive relative to the high number of accounts our customers hold.”
Among the data published by the FSA is the proportion of complaints dealt with within eight weeks.
Here, Lloyds fared much better, with a completion rate of 97% for Lloyds TSB customers. Barclays dealt with 91% of cases within this timeframe.
However, Santander only closed 46% of complaints within eight weeks.
The FSA, which has published the full list for the first time, has also proposed a series of changes to the way complaints are dealt with.
This is the first time the FSA has published the list They include:
stopping banks sending letters which reject complaints but fail to explain that customers can challenge this and go to the Financial Ombudsman Servicestipulating that banks identify a senior manager responsible for complaints handlingputting in remedies for common complaints.
“Good complaints handling standards should be the rule not the exception,” said Sheila Nicoll, the FSA’s director of conduct policy.
The banking industry trade body said that the latest data from the FSA could be confused with other figures published by the Financial Ombudsman, and could be taken out of context.
“The UK banking industry is committed to its customers and to resolving problems as quickly as possible, that is why a lot of complaints are resolved by close of business the next day,” a spokesman for the British Bankers’ Association said.
“It is extremely important to keep the figures published by the FSA in context: the larger the bank is the more complaints it is statistically likely to receive.
“With more than 140m bank accounts in the UK and billions of transactions a year there will inevitably be instances when things go wrong.
“The banking industry welcomes greater transparency but is concerned that the separate publication of complaints data by the Ombudsman and the regulator could lead to data overload. What should be a useful overall summary could become a complex and confusing exercise.”
“We will also be responding in full to the FSA’s consultation on changing the complaints handling regime. We agree on the need for a clear, transparent complaints process which sets out all the options for customers.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
This year’s vaccine provides protection against three strains of the flu virus All pregnant women will be offered the seasonal flu jab for the first time, under plans unveiled by the government.
The one-off move has been sanctioned as the swine flu virus – which is more risky for pregnant women than others – is likely to be still circulating.
The vaccine will offer protection against that and two other flu strains.
As well as pregnant women, it will be offered to the normal target groups – the over 65s, people with conditions such as diabetes and health workers.
This amounts to more than 14 million people, of which pregnant women account for about 500,000.
The Department of Health said GPs will have already started getting the vaccine and should complete the £100m programme by December.
Evidence
Officials urged all the at-risk groups to come forward – take-up traditionally varies between about 75% for the elderly and 50% for those with health conditions, to just over 10% for health staff.
“To not have the vaccine because of a prejudice about swine flu is putting yourself at unnecessary risk. That attitude is ignoring the realities of the risk”
Professor David Salisbury Director of immunisation
While it is a temporary move because of the swine flu risk, experts are currently reviewing evidence which could lead the government to keep pregnant women in the eligible group in future years.
Other countries, including the US, already offer it to pregnant women and they were included in the UK swine flu vaccination programme.
Some pregnant women in the UK will also have had the seasonal vaccine in the past, as a number would have fallen into the group targeted because of underlying health conditions.
It had long-been anticipated that this winter’s flu jab would include protection against swine flu.
The other two strains are ones that evidence from the southern hemisphere, which has been through its winter season, suggests are in circulation.
However, the move has caused some concern among GPs, as they know some patients refused the swine flu jab last year – despite regulators dismissing any safety fears.
The General Medical Council has urged doctors to be up-front about what is in the vaccine.
Jane O’Brien, the assistant director of standards at the GMC, said: “Doctors must give patients the information they want, or need, so the patient can make a decision about treatment.
“This would include telling a patient this year’s seasonal flu jab contains the swine flu strain if they think the patient may have concerns about it.”
Professor David Salisbury, the government’s director of immunisation, said patients would be “foolhardy” to not have the vaccine because of fears about the swine flu strain.
“To not have the vaccine because of a prejudice about swine flu is putting yourself at unnecessary risk. That attitude is ignoring the realities of the risk.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Eleven people have been charged by police investigating the theft of money from online bank accounts.
The charges of fraud and laundering money, follow the arrest of 19 people across London and the south east by the Met Police Central e-Crime Unit.
They are investigating the theft of at least £6m from online accounts over the last three months allegedly using software to record bank log-in details.
The accused, from eastern Europe, are due before magistrates in London later.
Police have revealed ten people have been charged with fraud and eight of them with a further charge of money laundering.
One man has been charged with offences under the Identity Cards Act 2005.
They are due to appear in custody at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Nine other people, six men and three women, who were arrested in connection with the investigation, have been bailed until next month.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The IMF says ‘sovereign credit ratings have inadvertently contributed to financial instability’ Credit rating agencies should be more tightly supervised, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) half-yearly Financial Stability Report has said.
The IMF says agencies have an impact on funding costs for debt issuers, and can affect financial stability.
They can also influence fund managers about which bonds to hold.
The report says that although there are 70 agencies worldwide only three – Moody’s, Fitch, and Standard and Poor’s – have a global scope.
‘Destabilising knock-on’
The IMF has released some analytical chapters from its stability report, to be issued next week.
“Sovereign credit ratings have inadvertently contributed to financial instability,” says the summary.
“This is because ratings are embedded in various rules, regulations and triggers, so that downgrades can lead to destabilising knock-on and spillover effects in financial markets.”
It also said rating agencies should also be discouraged from delaying rating changes.
In addition, policymakers should continue efforts to reduce their reliance on credit ratings, “and wherever possible remove or replace references to ratings in laws and regulations, and in central bank collateral policies”.
‘Fairly accurate’
Credit ratings agencies have been in the spotlight because of downgrades they imposed because of weakened sovereign balance sheets, including Greece’s.
A downgrade can push fund managers into selling government bonds they hold, or refusing to buy newly issued bonds.
That pushes down the price of the bonds and raises borrowing costs in future, which puts further strain on the government’s finances and could – theoretically – lead to further downgrades.
“In general, ratings are fairly accurate in foretelling when a sovereign is likely to default, though more attention to sovereign debt composition and contingent liabilities could help improve their rating,” said the IMF.
The IMF also calls on agencies to ensure their methods are transparent and that there are no conflicts of interest.
.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Ning Li: “What we think is good for the consumer doesn’t matter – it’s what the consumer thinks is good that matters.” “The office building doesn’t look so good from the outside, we don’t need it to, so the rent is lower, but inside it’s really nice.”
Ning Li is Made.com’s 28-year-old CEO, and we are at the company’s London office, on the 11th floor of an unremarkable Notting Hill office block.
Made.com is an online-only furniture retailer, so there’s no danger that customers will drop by. The company is six months old and already approaching profitability, with revenue doubling month on month, despite relying on word of mouth rather than marketing.
“Great ideas come from the edges.”
John Winsor CEO Victors & Spoils
But this is a furniture business with no warehouse – and no inventory.
Instead, products are “crowdsourced”.
This is how it works. Visitors to the website are encouraged to submit their designs. The best of these are worked up into prototypes, and posted on the website. Registered members of the Made.com community vote. The most popular pieces are then available for pre-order – made in China, shipped by container and delivered directly to buyers from the port.
The designers are paid nothing upfront – but receive 5% royalties on successful designs, which Li maintains is above the industry average.
By going directly to manufacturers in Mr Li’s native China, he says the company can offer high-quality furniture at discounts of between 60-70% compared to traditional high street retailers.
“People buy things from very valued brands. They buy from an importer, who buys from an agent, who sources it from elsewhere. Each time a mark-up is added, sometimes it changes hands three to four times.”
“You can sell cheap furniture for a cheap price, but that’s not a bargain for consumers. The only way to create a bargain is to create quality furniture for a good price.
“How do we do that? When you link the consumer to the manufacturer there are huge areas of opportunity.”
Crowdsourcing isn’t new. Wired magazine’s Jeff Howe, who coined the term back in 2006, defines it as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”
Companies who have embraced it include Procter & Gamble. Their Connect + Develop initiative gave birth to the Swiffer range of cleaning products. InnoCentive crowdsources solutions to R&D problems; chipmaker Intel is looking for the home phone of tomorrow; industrial giant GE is offering $100,000 for a green electricity grid, and Crowdspring deals in design.
Crowdsourcing helped mining firm Goldcorp to discover 8m ounces of new gold deposits in 2000.
It’s the internet, of course, that makes crowdsourcing possible – on a global scale.
So is turning your customers into both creative director and chief of research the ideal low-cost model for business?
John Winsor is the author of Spark: Be more Innovative through Co-Creation and chief executive of Victors & Spoils, an ad agency built on crowdsourcing principles: “First of all it’s a lot cheaper, and secondly you get a lot more diversity of ideas, so those are the big advantages, and the speed – you get hundreds of ideas in a matter of four or five days. Great ideas come from the edges.”
But there are pitfalls. “The biggest caveat is the issue of curation. It’s great you opening the gates up to everybody – but all of a sudden you’re going to get a lot more stuff.”
Threadless designers retain rights to their design for anything other than clothing. To cope, ever more companies offer to help setting up crowdsourcing solutions. Mr Li, though, feels that the technology doesn’t need to be onerous.
“We take very good photos, with a solid, fast website. We have a technical team so everything’s been built in-house. The voting section for instance, this kind of feature is very easy to design.”
Threadless co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart met on an online art forum in 2000, after Nickell won a t-shirt design contest. He started a thread asking people to post designs, the best of which he would print. The designer would get some cash and some free t-shirts. Chicago-based Threadless was born.
Mr Nickell claims that “it wasn’t intended to be a business at all, I never really thought it could get big like this. It was just a fun, creative project.
“We later learned that it was this revolutionary business model. I think the reason it’s so pure like that is the reason it’s worked so well as a crowdsourcing company.”
Ten years on the company is highly profitable, bringing in close to $30m in revenue in 2009.
Around 1,200 designs are submitted a week. The best are posted online, where the community votes. The company then decides which of the most popular designs should go into production.
Winning designers get $2,000 plus $500 in vouchers. Should the t-shirt go to a reprint, they get a further $500.
The crowdsourcing model has critics; companies, they say, are simply getting spec work done for free.
Nickel doesn’t see Threadless that way: “I think that the way companies are seeing crowdsourcing is a lot different from the way we see it. They are looking at it as this new business model, as a way to outsource your work to an anonymous crowd of people. We’re more about giving people something productive to do with their passions.”
“What differentiates Threadless is there’s no spec.”
The technology is also an in-house production. He says “it’s simple to make a website like Threadless, it’s not so much the software that makes the company, it’s the community.”
The ZaZa, Fluevog’s most popular Open Source shoe, from design (left) to finished shoe Canadian shoe design company Fluevog has been around since the 1980’s. In 2002, it started Open Source Footwear, a website where customers – or ‘Fluevogers’ as they’re known – can upload designs. Winning shoes are named after their creator, who also receives a free pair.
So far the company has produced 12 of the designs.
Marketing Director Stephen Bailey says that it has benefits beyond the shoes in terms of customer engagement. “It’s an affordable way to be ahead. You’re able to see what your customers are thinking and what they’re dreaming of, and you’re able to measure that against what you’re doing.”
Fluevog outsources some of the coding of its website, but most of the technology remains in-house. Open source designing has proved so successful,the company has branched out into crowdsourcing print advertising through Fluevog Creative.
Not everyone is so sanguine about the benefits. Jaron Lanier is a US computer scientist, virtual reality pioneer, and author of You Are Not a Gadget. He made Time magazine’s 2010 list of the world’s 100 most influential people.
His concern is that by “mining” the crowd in this way, the wealth that results from the work done remains concentrated in the hands of the people who put out the call – ultimately endangering jobs and the economy. Lanier also believes that crowdsourcing threatens creativity.
“Do you really think that Simon Cowell would have promoted the Beatles through some show where the crowd was voting? Of course not.”
Jaron Lanier
“The wisdom of crowds is what we call in the trade an optimising function, meaning that if you can set up a problem where you just want a simple answer. Crowdsourcing is good at that but for synthetic creation there just aren’t any examples of it being good – it leads to what we call design by committee, dull derivative stuff.
“Do you really think that Simon Cowell would have promoted the Beatles through some show where the crowd was voting? Of course not.”
Despite this, use of crowdsourcing as a low-cost means of innovation seems unlikely to disappear.
Made.com’s Ning Li says, “I can’t imagine any business doing what we’re doing with a lower cost structure. The model’s been proven – we’re selling one container a day of products which for a six-month business is absolutely fantastic.
“I think the features for crowdsourcing are not very complicated to develop. What’s complicated really is to keep your promise. Because consumers can like something but eventually if you don’t do anything about it, it’s frustrating and disappointing for people who trust you with their votes.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Analysts fear there is a risk of the conflict restarting if southerners feel the vote is being delayed Sudan has delayed the registration of voters for January’s referendum on secession for the south until November, raising tensions over the timetable.
The chairman of the referendum commission said this was to allow for staff training and delivery of forms.
Tanzania’s former President Benjamin Mkapa, appointed by the UN to oversee the vote, has told the BBC many challenges lie ahead .
But he said if all parties were willing, the timetable would be met.
The referendum was part of a 2005 peace deal to end two decades of conflict between the north and oil-rich south in which some 1.5 million people died.
Analysts fear there is a risk of the conflict restarting if southerners feel that Khartoum is trying to delay or disrupt the vote in the oil-rich region – one of the world’s poorest and least developed regions.
Chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, Muhammad Ibrahim Khalil, said the registration had been delayed by three weeks till 15 November.
According to Reuters news agency, registration forms have not yet arrived from the printers in South Africa – and are not due until late October.
Mr Mkapa was appointed last week by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to lead a special monitoring panel to ensure a smooth build up to the polls.
Asked on the BBC’s Network Africa programme if he would dare delay the referendum if preparations did not go to plan, Mr Mkapa said: “We’ll cross that bridge, when we get to it.
“But as of now I feel our obligation is to make sure it happens on the 9th of January.”
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Prosecutors say Shahzad should get life in prison for the attempted attack A man convicted of an attempted bomb attack in New York’s Times Square said he planned to detonate a second bomb two weeks later, prosecutors say.
Faisal Shahzad also said he thought the first bomb, which failed to go off, would kill at least 40 people, prosecutors say in new court documents.
They argue Shahzad, a Pakistani-born US citizen, should be given a life term when he is sentenced, due on 5 October.
Shahzad pleaded guilty in June to 10 weapons and terrorism charges.
In the court documents, prosecutors say Shahzad left the US in 2009 to learn how to build bombs and attack targets in the US.
“I have been trying to join my brothers in jihad since 9/11 happened. I am planning to wage an attack inside America,” Shahzad said in a 40-minute video released by prosecutors on Wednesday.
‘A terrorising strike’
In the video, the 30-year-old fires a machine gun and says he has met members of the Pakistani Taliban and has decided “to raise an attack inside America”.
The government said Shahzad had not shown any remorse when he pleaded guilty after confessing to the attempted bombing.
Prosecutors wrote that the financial analyst “spoke with pride about what he and his co-conspirators had done”.
They argued Shahzad had “every intention of delivering a powerful and terrorising strike to the heart of New York City”.
Shahzad was arrested two days after the attempted 1 May bomb attack in busy Times Square, where the explosives he had packed into the back of a vehicle failed to detonate.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Bobby Moffett was shot dead by two gunmen in May The Progressive Unionist Party has said it will keep its relationship with loyalist paramilitaries, the Ulster Volunteer Force.
The decision comes despite the Independent Monitoring Commission’s report that the UVF sanctioned the murder of loyalist Bobby Moffett.
The IMC said the shooting in May on the Shankill Road could have been prevented by UVF bosses but it was not.
In a report earlier this month, the IMC called it “a public execution”.
However, at a meeting in east Belfast on Wednesday, the PUP said their link with the UVF would be maintained.
So far, no-one has been charged with Mr Moffett’s murder.
While the IMC report blamed the UVF, it did not recommend any sanction.
Instead they expressed the hope that the murder would be a one-off incident.
In June, shortly after the shooting, Dawn Purvis, leader of the PUP at that time, resigned.
She said she was leaving because the PUP was “severely restricted because of its relationship with the Ulster Volunteer Force”.
“I can no longer offer leadership to a political party which is expected to answer for the indefensible actions of others,” she said.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Dr Robert Trossel had consulting rooms in London and Rotterdam A doctor who offered unlicensed stem cell treatments to patients with MS has been struck off by the General Medical Council.
Dr Robert Trossel treated several men and women, who paid around £10,000.
The GMC found that the doctor, who trained in the Netherlands, had breached good medical practice by “exploiting vulnerable patients”.
Dr Trossel, 56, who worked in London and Rotterdam, conceded he had been “too enthusiastic” about the treatment.
At an earlier hearing, the GMC Fitness to Practice panel said that Dr Trossel had exaggerated the benefits of treatment based on “anecdotal and aspirational information”.
His patients, who had an aggressive and disabling type of multiple sclerosis, paid up to £10,000 or more for stem cell injections, with some raising the money through charity events.
However, the stem cells offered were not intended for human use, only for laboratory research.
Tom Kark, for the GMC, spoke of the patients’ “anger and sense of being let down”.
“They were all vulnerable patients who already found themselves failed by the medical profession in this country and as a result were searching, some with desperation, for a cure or relief elsewhere, which is why and how they ended up in Dr Trossel’s hands,” Mr Kark told the GMC.
“They were given false hope by him and the experience not only cost them financially but for the most part it caused them personal and emotional loss when they realised that the treatment provided to them was not only expensive but pointless.”
The treatment also contained bovine brain and spinal cord, and the GMC panel ruled he had abused his position as a doctor by failing to warn patients about potential risks of vCJD.
The doctor’s own lawyer had told the hearing how patients were informed about the experimental nature of the injections, and that he had stopped using them when the nature of the stem cells became clear following a BBC Newsnight investigation.
He said that the doctor was “compassionate”, and had not acted dishonestly.
Despite Dr Trossel’s apparent “change of heart”, panel chairman Professor Brian Gomes da Costa said he had shown “little insight” into the seriousness of what he had done, and how it might have affected his patients.
The GMC heard that the patients involved had yet to be refunded the thousands of pounds they paid for their treatment.
Karen Galley, 45, from Essex, visited Trossel’s clinic in August 2006, and was charged around £10,500 for the treatment, receiving one injection in the arm and six in the neck.
“It makes me feel sick that somebody could exploit vulnerable people in this way”
Karen Galley Patient of Dr Trossel
Friends and colleagues of Ms Galley had helped her raise the money, with one running a mini-marathon and another undertaking a sponsored diet.
She said she was “angry and scared” after finding out that the injections contained bovine spinal tissue.
“His QC has described him as a compassionate doctor – but that is rubbish, no compassionate person treats people like that.”
She said that she now lived in fear of diseases such as vCJD, for which there is no test or treatment.
She said: “It makes me feel sick that somebody could exploit vulnerable people in this way.”
Another MS patient, accountant Malcolm Pear, from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, visited the Rotterdam clinic in January 2006.
After paying £8,000, the treatment was delivered in a “coffee lounge” rather than a private treatment room.
“I suppose alarm bells should have started ringing then,” said his wife Lesley.
She said they were led to believe that the treatment was composed simply of umbilical cells, but found out later that bovine tissue was involved.
After a fleeting improvement, Mr Pear’s condition has now deteriorated significantly.
Mrs Pear said: “When you are sitting in front of a neurologist who is saying ‘look, there is nothing you can do’, you clutch at straws.”
“I am not saying we are the most intelligent people on God’s earth, but we certainly are not completely stupid.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Lotus’ new models will cost much more than its current cars as it targets wealthier customers UK-based Lotus has revealed details about five new sportscars ahead of their unveiling in Paris on Thursday.
The cars, which will hit the road over a five-year period, mark a new start for the carmaker, Lotus says.
“This is not just about the cars, it’s about the complete remake of the brand,” boss Dany Bahar told BBC News.
And its engineering division will unveil a tiny city car with an electric motor and a petrol engine that extends its range as a technical demonstrator.
New models
The cars, which will be formally unveiled on Thursday, include a four door car, Mr Bahar said during a pre-show event in Paris.
“This is probably the car that no one had expected Lotus to ever make,” he said, predicting it to become a popular chauffeur-driven car in some markets.
Lotus, which is owned by the Malaysian carmaker Proton, will also make a four-seater sportscar for the “gentleman driver”, with a 600 horse power V8 engine, named Elite, he continued.
The ancient Esprit two-seater supercar will be updated with a 620 horse-power V8 engine as an attempt to challenge carmakers such as Porsche and Ferrari.
Mr Bahar wants to double the number of cars sold There will also be a new Elan coming, positioned above a relaunched Elise that will be both bigger and heavier than the old one.
The Elise completes the Lotus line-up to “keep our current customers happy”, Mr Bahar said.
The five new models will come in addition to its recently launched Evora sportscar.
Fewer dealers
The new product line-up will enable Lotus to target much wealthier customers who will be spending up to £135,000 on a car, compared with prices in the region of £30,000 at the moment.
Mr Bahar, who joined Lotus about a year ago, expects sales to more than double from about 3,000 to between 6,000 and 8,000 cars per year.
And, as the cars are more expensive, the turnover could triple from £200m currently.
Lotus Cars Mr Prillman says Lotus has too many dealerships Wealthy customers tend to expect more from their dealers than the current network of dealerships will be able to deliver, chief commercial officer Andreas Prillmann told BBC News.
The network will therefore undergo dramatic restructuring, with the number of dealerships worldwide being reduced from about 160 to 135.
“For a premium brand, we have far too many dealers,” Mr Prillmann said.
In the UK, its network of 23 dealerships will be sharply reduced, perhaps to as few as three, while in Japan the number of Lotus dealerships will be cut from 27 to just six, he said.
Further details about the new models will be revealed when they are unveiled on Thursday.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Dame Shirley Bassey tops the bill at the Welcome to Wales concert for the Ryder Cup Prince Charles is to give the royal seal of approval to the Ryder Cup teeing off in Wales, with a visit to Celtic Manor Resort in Newport.
Later the prince will attend a gala dinner at Cardiff Castle with the tournament’s European and US teams.
He is also the guest at a Milliennium Stadium concert with Hollywood star Catherine Zeta Jones and singer Dame Shirley Bassey and Katherine Jenkins.
Organisers say the concert is almost sold out.
The Ryder Cup, between Europe and the United States, begins on Friday.
The three-day event is golf’s biggest tournament and the third largest event on the world’s sporting calendar.
Source: LD Communications
Both the US and European golf teams arrived at Celtic Manor on Monday.
Wednesday is the second official practice day and players will take a break from the fairways to for the visit by the prince, who will meet the Europe and US team captains, Colin Montgomerie and Corey Pavin.
In the evening he will attend an official dinner at Cardiff Castle where he will meet all 24 golfers competing in the international tournament.
Prince Charles, who is a fan of Dame Shirley, will also be a guest at the Welcome to Wales concert at the Millennium Stadium where the Cardiff-born singer is to headline.
Organisers have arranged the 90-minute concert to mark Wales hosting the tournament for the first time.
Swansea-born actress Catherine Zeta Jones returns to Wales to give the official opening at the event which will see the both the golf teams introduced to the audience of around 13,000.
The evening is hosted by Rhondda-born TV presenter, Steve Jones.
Performers include Katherine Jenkins, Cardiff-based choir Only Men Aloud, Lostprophets and teenage singer Shaheen Jafargholi from Swansea.
A spokeswoman for the organisers said the 10,000 public tickets for the concerts had all but sold out.
She said: “It is pretty much full. We’ve only got a few single tickets left.”
Stifyn Parri, of events agency Mr Producer, said: “It will be a major medley of Welsh talent saluting the Ryder Cup – we’re ticking every box.”
Before the concert begins, the stadium will also host a VIP dinner for 1,500 people.
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Ed Miliband can pick which roles the successful candidates are given Defeated leadership candidates Andy Burnham, Ed Balls and Diane Abbott are among 49 MPs standing for elections to Labour’s shadow cabinet.
Former cabinet ministers Alan Johnson, Tessa Jowell and Yvette Cooper have also entered the ballot for 19 posts – elected by Labour MPs.
Rosie Winterton is the only name entered for the ballot for chief whip.
Earlier David Miliband said he would return to the backbenches, having lost the leadership to his brother Ed.
The former foreign secretary told the BBC his brother needed a “clean field” to lead as he saw fit.
Another face from the previous government who will not be part of the new team is the current chief whip, Nick Brown.
He had intended to stand again but decided against entering his name into the separate chief whip ballot after Ed Miliband told him he wanted a “fresh start” for his leadership.
Among those standing are the remaining defeated leadership candidates and other former cabinet ministers; Hilary Benn, Ben Bradshaw, Liam Byrne, John Denham, Peter Hain, Stephen Timms, Shaun Woodward and Jim Murphy.
Sadiq Khan, who ran Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign, is also standing, as is Caroline Flint, who quit as Europe minister in Gordon Brown’s cabinet accusing him of treating women like “window dressing”.
Labour’s shadow cabinet is elected by MPs when the party is in opposition – elections will be held every two years. The leader and deputy leader are elected separately. The chief whip is also elected separately to serve a full parliament.
Nominations for the shadow cabinet elections closed at 1700 BST and voting will take place between 4 and 7 October.
Earlier this month Labour MPs rejected a move to change the rules to allow the party leader to choose who serves on the shadow cabinet but elections were limited to every two years – before 1997 it used to be every year.
However Mr Miliband will be able to pick which roles the successful candidates are given.
Under new rules agreed earlier this month, there must be a minimum of six female MPs in Labour’s shadow cabinet.
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