Category: news

The sharp rise in extremist websites is making recruitment much easier for al-Qaeda, according to Interpol.

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Tottenham host north London rivals Arsenal, while eight other Premier League sides are involved in 10 Carling Cup third-round ties.

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A man in Weymouth has been filmed on CCTV apparently dumping a dog after taking it for a walk.

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The find is already being hailed as very significant

Workers building a substation in California have discovered 1,500 bone fragments from about 1.4 million years ago.

The fossil haul includes remains from an ancestor of the sabre-toothed tiger, large ground sloths, deer, horses, camels and numerous small rodents.

Plant matter found at the site in the arid San Timoteo Canyon, 85 miles (137km) south-east of Los Angeles, showed it was once much greener.

The bones will go on display next year.

The find is a million years older than the famous haul from the tar pits at Rancho La Brea in Los Angeles, said Rick Greenwood, a microbiologist and also director of corporate environment health and safety for Southern California Edison.

“If you step back, this is just a huge find,” he said. “Everyone talks about the La Brea Tar Pits, but I think this is going to be much larger in terms of its scientific value to the research community.”

The number of skeletons found at the site may be explained by a marsh or lake bed that trapped animals looking for water, leaving them victim to predators, palaeontologists think.

Tom Demere, a San Diego Museum of Natural History palaeontologist, said the find was not directly comparable to La Brea, as it comprised different species from another era.

But he said it would be valuable.

“We have a fuzzy view of what this time period was like in terms of mammal evolution,” Mr Demere said. “A discovery like this – when they’re all found together and in a whole range of sizes – could really be an important contribution.”

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A woman who served as a British spy during World War II has been buried with full honours, after a lifetime of keeping her wartime service a secret.

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Nikolai Alexeyev (left) clutched a puppet of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov

Police in the Russian capital Moscow have broken up a small protest by campaigners against Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s stance on gay rights.

At least eight protesters were arrested when police moved in to disperse the rally outside the mayor’s office.

Among them was Russia’s best-known gay rights campaigner, Nikolai Alexeyev, who accused security agents of abducting him last week.

There was no official comment on his allegations.

He said he had been stopped at a Moscow airport while trying to fly to Switzerland on Wednesday and was held for two days at an unknown address before being released on Saturday.

He said he had been asked to withdraw a case from the European Court of Human Rights, where he complains about Mayor Luzhkov’s refusal to allow gay pride marches in the Russian capital.

Tuesday’s rally was timed to coincide with the 74th birthday of Mr Luzhkov.

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Mrs Smith died after being stabbed by Jenkins outside her home in Airdrie

A man has been jailed for life for the murder of a mother-of-four outside her Lanarkshire home.

John Jenkins, 30, stabbed 41-year-old Jeannie Smith after she left her home in Airdrie, believing her son was involved in a disturbance in the street.

Judge John Beckett QC ordered him to serve at least 20 years in prison for the killing.

He was convicted following a three-week trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

The court heard how Mrs Smith was stabbed on 31 October last year in her driveway.

She had left her home after believing her son Steven had been caught up in trouble near the family home in the town’s Oronsay Road.

Seconds after leaving her house with her husband, Mrs Smith turned to him and said “I’ve been stabbed”.

The mother-of-four fell to the ground before being helped back inside.

She was taken to Monklands District Hospital, but died having been knifed in the heart.

Father-of-three Jenkins had denied the charges or being armed with a blade.

However, he was convicted of murder and charges related to mobbing, rioting and assault.

During the sentencing hearing, it was revealed that Jenkins had a lengthy criminal past, including a conviction for possessing a knife.

Family devastated

It also emerged he was awaiting sentencing for an unrelated assault when he killed Mrs Smith.

Judge Beckett QC described Jenkins as being at the centre of an “outrageous rampage of public disorder” on the day Mrs Smith died.

He said: “You stabbed a woman in the heart, a woman who was doing nothing to harm you.”

The judge added Mrs Smith had gone out that day looking to “protect” her husband and others who were not armed.

The court was told Mrs Smith’s family have been left “devastated, depressed and lost” at her death.

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Sanjoy Majumder explains the problems with the athletes’ village

Senior officials in Delhi have insisted that the Indian capital will be ready to host the Commonwealth Games.

The comments come after the athletes’ accommodation was criticised and branded as unfit for human habitation.

International delegates have said the facilities are filthy and unhygienic, just days before athletes arrive.

A senior official said Westerners had “different standards” of hygiene, but that the site was being thoroughly cleaned before the opening.

Delegates who visited the tower blocks where athletes will live during the games had described them as filthy, with rubble lying in doorways, dogs inside the buildings, toilets not working and excrement “in places it shouldn’t be”.

Speaking at a news conference in Delhi, Lalit Bhanot, secretary general of the Delhi organising committee, said the authorities understood the concerns shown by some member countries and the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF).

But he suggested that the complaints could be due to “cultural differences”.

“Everyone has different standards about cleanliness. The Westerners have different standards, we have different standards,” he said.

Mr Bhanot said the situation was “under control” and that he was “sure and confident” that cleaning in the residential areas would be complete by the time teams start arriving on 23 September.

He said he had visited many athletes’ villages over the years and had never known one of such high quality.

“This is a world-class village, probably one of the best ever,” he said.

Mr Bhanot’s strong defence comes after Commonwealth Games Federation President Michael Fennell said he had written to India’s cabinet secretary urging immediate action over the conditions in the village.

Mr Fennell said officials of teams set to take part in the games had been impressed with the international zone and main dining area, but “shocked” by the state of the accommodation itself.

The overhead bridge was to connect the car park with the main stadium

“The village is the cornerstone of any Games and the athletes deserve the best possible environment to prepare for their competition,” he said.

There were also reports in the Indian media that only 18 of 34 residential towers at the village have been completed.

Chris Jenkins, chef de mission for the Welsh Commonwealth team, told the BBC there had been “major snagging issues” in the facilities.

“There was water leaking in many of the bathrooms. They hadn’t been cleaned, it was filthy. There were dogs in the towers. It was terrible.”

He said some of the ground floor rooms had been “effectively flooded” during heavy rain and were covered in mud.

New Zealand chef de mission Dave Currie has suggested the Games might even have to be cancelled.

He told New Zealand commercial radio on Tuesday: “If the village is not ready and athletes can’t come, obviously the implications of that are that it’s not going to happen.

“It’s pretty grim really and certainly disappointing when you consider the amount of time they had to prepare.”

New Zealand, Scotland, Canada and Northern Ireland have demanded their teams be put up in hotels if their accommodation is not ready.

Commonwealth Games England has called for “urgent” work on the facilities, raising concerns about “plumbing, electrical and other operational details”.

To add to the concerns, an elevated walkway at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium collapsed on Tuesday, injuring 23 construction workers, five seriously.

It is not clear what caused the collapse of the walkway, which was being built to link a car park to the arena, where the Games opening ceremony is to take place.

Mr Bhanot said the collapse was unfortunate, but would not affect the Games.

Security concerns surrounding the Games were heightened on the weekend, when gunmen shot and wounded two tourists near Delhi’s Jama Masjid, one of India’s biggest mosques.

It prompted Australia’s world discus champion Dani Samuel to pull out of the Games, with her management saying she was “extremely stressed” by the incident.

“The situation in Delhi has been bothering her for some time… But the events over the weekend made it real,” her manager Hayden Knowles told the Australian Associated Press.

The BBC’s Mark Dummett in Delhi says the Indian government had hoped that hosting the Commonwealth Games would highlight the country’s strengths.

But many Indians now worry that the opposite has happened, says our correspondent, and that the country’s weaknesses have been very publicly exposed by the many problems, delays and allegations of mismanagement in the build up to the Games.

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Michael Roberts said his wife died during a sex game which went wrong

A man has been found guilty of murdering his wife of five months and hiding her body in their garage.

Michael Roberts, from Runcorn, had denied the killing, claiming he had accidentally strangled Vicky, 25, during a sex game.

The 26-year-old, who was having affairs with two other women during their short marriage, went on the run shortly after her death in November, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

He will be sentenced later.

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The Development Goals aim to improve global health and lift millions out of poverty

World leaders are preparing to meet at the United Nations in New York for the second day of talks on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and Afghan President Hamid Karzai are among those set to address the summit.

The goals, created in 2000, aim to reduce poverty and hunger and improve health standards around the world.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has insisted the goals can be achieved.

In his opening speech on Monday to more than 140 world leaders, Mr Ban said the global economic downturn was no reason to abandon the targets and that they “should not balance budgets on the backs of the poor”.

He said the MDGs had had a “transformative impact” but that there was much more to do if they were to be met by the 2015 deadline.

Late on Monday, the European Union pledged one billion euro ($1.3bn: £0.8bn) towards the goals.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the money would help the UN to “make progress on those goals we are furthest from achieving”.

“We have to produce more effective results because time is running out,” he said.

But the BBC’s Bridget Kendall at the summit says that among the pledges there have also been calls for a reassessment of the MDG strategy.

Britain’s International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said too much time had been spent in the past “putting large amounts of aid on the table” but that the focus should now shift to what the money is achieving.

France and Spain have both repeated calls for the introduction of a global tax on financial transactions, as a way of raising the funds to finance the goals.

“We have no right to shelter behind the economic crisis as supposed grounds for doing less,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“While all developed countries are in deficit, we must find new sources of financing for the struggle against poverty, for education and for the ending of the planet’s big pandemics.”

The MDGs are intended to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty by 2015 and improve health care and education around the world.

The top goal – to halve the number of people living in hunger and abject poverty – is likely to be met, says our correspondent, but progress to tackle disease, illiteracy and infant mortality has been uneven,

In some places the very world’s poorest people have become poorer still as aid has failed to reach them, she adds.

On Tuesday, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said wealthier countries had not done enough to meet their commitments.

Speaking to the BBC in New York, Mr Brown said poorer countries also had a responsibility to invest more resources in education and development.

The Millennium Development Goals aim to tackle global poverty and improve living standards for developing countries. We’ve taken key indicators, broken down by UN-defined regions as shown here, and set the 2015 target as a baseline to reveal the true picture of how each region is faring. Developing nations are on track to meet the poverty target largely because of progress in China. But in Sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia the proportion of hungry people has increased. Globally, the number of hungry people rose from 842 million in 1990-92 to 1.02 billion people in 2009. While countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have seen great improvements by abolishing school fees and offering free school lunches, the target is unlikely to be met. The drop-out rate is high, and although there has been some investment in teachers and classrooms, it is not enough. Gender gaps in education have narrowed, but remain high at university (tertiary) level in some developing countries because of poverty. Employment for women has improved but there are still many more women than men in low-paid jobs. There have been small gains for women in political power. Child deaths are falling but at the current rate are well short of the two-thirds target. They more than halved in Northern Africa, Asia,Latin America and the Caribbean but remain high in parts of Southern Asia. In Sub-Saharan Africa the absolute number of children who have died actually increased. Although in all regions there are advances in providing pregnant women with antenatal care, the maternal mortality rate is unacceptably high, with progress well short of the decline needed to meet the target. Those at most risk are adolescent girls, yet funding on family planning is falling behind. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has stabilised in most regions, but new infections are rising in some areas and antiretroviral treatment has mushroomed. Global funding has helped control malaria but is still far short of what is needed. On current trends tuberculosis will have been halted and started to reverse. The world will meet the drinking water target on current trends but half the population of developing regions still lacks basic sanitation. The 2010 target to slow decline in biodiversity has been missed. Improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers has been achieved but their actual numbers are rising. Levels of aid continue to rise, but major donors are well below target. In terms of volume the USA, France, Germany, UK and Japan are the largest donors. G8 countries have failed to deliver on a promise to double aid to Africa. Debt burdens have been eased for developing countries.

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Eileen Nearne was captured three times by the Nazis in France

Hundreds of mourners are expected at the funeral of a World War II heroine whose work as a British spy only became known after her death.

Eileen Nearne, 89, died in her home in Torquay, Devon, on 2 September, after suffering a heart attack.

It was only afterwards that friends and neighbours learned of her secret past.

As a young woman she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive and was captured by the Nazis in France but never talked about it.

Miss Nearne did not appear to have any known relatives when she died and the local council entered her flat a few days later so that funeral arrangements could be made.

A search for documents that might help locate her family instead yielded a treasure trove of medals and papers.

These revealed the life of a woman once known as Agent Rose who defied the Nazis as a wireless operator in occupied France.

The fluent French speaker was captured three times by the Germans and endured spells in concentration camps, managing to escape each time.

She was due to have a council funeral but these plans changed as a result of the publicity about her past.

Military charities donated cash and a local funeral director offered to fund a service more befitting a war heroine.

Representatives of the armed forces will attend the service at Our Lady Help of Christians and St Denis Roman Catholic Church in Torquay, with the last post due to be played by a French bugler.

Later Miss Nearne’s ashes will be scattered at sea.

Miss Nearne’s niece, who has since been traced but said she wished to remain anonymous, said: “I would like to thank everyone for their kind wishes and support at this very sad time.

“My aunt Eileen was a very private and modest person and without doubt she would be astounded by all the public and media attention.

“I hope that in death, she will be remembered along with other SOE Agents with pride and gratitude for the work they did both here and behind enemy lines during the Second World War.”

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Mr Cable said there were “different options” open to deal with bonuses

Vince Cable has told the BBC that ministers are considering “potentially quite tough sanctions” against banks which give out large bonuses.

The business secretary said bankers should not walk away with “outrageously large sums” while others suffered due to a crisis caused by banking.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg also said the government would not “stand idly by” if “offensive” bonuses were handed out.

A bank levy set to raise £8bn over four years is due to start in January.

But Mr Cable and his party leader both suggested on Tuesday that the government could go further if banks paid out unreasonably high bonuses.

The business secretary was speaking during the Liberal Democrats’ conference in Liverpool, at a fringe event organised by BBC Radio 4’s World at One.

He said that, at the modest end of the scale, the government was looking at how to implement the Walker report into the corporate governance of UK banks, and force banks to disclose more information about bonus payments.

“At the other end of the scale, there are potentially quite tough sanctions in terms of tax policy,” he said, suggesting the government could look at a tax targeting high profits or a financial transactions tax.

Earlier he told the BBC it was not just Lib Dem ministers, but also Conservatives who were concerned and banks had to understand the government was serious and would not “stand back” if excessive bonuses were paid out at a time when others were struggling with “austerity”.

He said the government was looking at “different options” to try to change the banks’ behaviour on bonuses and said there was a combination of things that could be done – tougher regulation, forcing the banks to disclose more figures or “different kinds of tax as a disincentive” for banks to pay out big bonuses.

“I think it’s got to be a combination of those things and banks have got to understand… the government has a variety of mechanisms available.”

He said the temporary tax on bonuses brought in under the Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling had raised more than expected – but had not changed banks’ behaviour, which was something the government wanted to tackle.

BBC political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg said that a predicted bumper bankers’ bonus season could be politically very uncomfortable for the coalition partners. But it remained to be seen whether anything would be done, and whether the Treasury was as comfortable with the idea as Mr Cable was at the Lib Dem conference.

Earlier Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the government reserved the right to take “very serious action” on “unjustified bonuses”.

He said: “I think it is very important that the banks understand that you cannot possibly award yourself ludicrous sky-high bonuses in an industry that has been bailed out by the taxpayer when those same taxpayers are now having to make very serious sacrifices in their own lives.”

In his final pre-Budget report last year, Mr Darling unveiled a one-off tax on bank bonuses over £25,000, to be paid by the banks rather than individuals, which he said would raise £550m. In March he revealed it had actually raised £2bn.

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Sarah Brown, wife of former PM Gordon Brown, was one of those affected

Twitter has patched a flaw in its website that was being exploited to pump out pop-up messages and links to porn sites.

Initially, users only had to move their mouse over a message containing a link – not click it – to open it in the browser.

The code was spread by worms, self-replicating, malicious pieces of code.

Thousands of users were caught out by the flaw, including Sarah Brown, the wife of the UK’s former Prime Minister.

“The exploit is fully patched,” Twitter said on its status blog.

People using third-party Twitter software – such as Tweetdeck – were unaffected by the problem.

‘No regrets’

The code exploited what is known as a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, a flaw in a website that can be exploited by relatively simple code.

In the case of the most recent flaw, the command – written in a programming language called Javascript – automatically directed users to another website, some of which contained pornography.

The malicious links looked like a random URL and contained the code “onmouseover”, which triggered when the cursor hovered over the link.

“There is no legitimate reason to tweet Javascript,” Graham Cluley, a researcher at security firm Sophos, told BBC News.

The first message to contain the code seemed to have been sent by a developer called Magnus Holm.

“I wrote the first worm that has been spreading,” he told BBC News.

“I simply wanted to exploit the hole without doing any ‘real’ harm,” he said. “It started off as ‘ha, no way this is going to work’.”

He said the flaw had been identified by others and had already been used for other means.

“There were several other tiny hacks using the exploit – I only created the worm,” he said.

So far, said Mr Holm, he had seen his worm passed around in at least 200,000 messages.

But he warned there were now several other variants spreading that used “other nasty or smart tricks”.

“It was only a matter of time before more serious worms started.”

However, he said he had no regrets and was “not sure” whether he would receive a call from Twitter.

It is not the first time the service has suffered an attack.

In April 2009, another worm spread links to a rival site, again showing unwanted messages on infected user accounts.

Mr Cluley said that Twitter needs “much tighter control” over what users can contain in a tweet to prevent similar problems in the future.

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Mark Saunders had been battling a long-term drink problem

A barrister had been drinking heavily in the hours before he was shot dead by police during a stand-off, Westminster Coroner’s Court has heard.

Mark Saunders, 32, was three times over the drink-drive limit when he was hit in the head and chest by five police bullets at his Chelsea home in 2008.

Dr Stephen Morley told the inquest the level of alcohol would have had a “significant” effect on his behaviour.

He had regularly taken cocaine in the last months of his life, tests showed.

The court heard Mr Saunders had been battling a binge drinking problem for several years.

Toxicology tests revealed he had up to 225mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood. The legal limit for driving in 80mg.

Colleague and close friend Michael Bradley described hearing the first shot fired while having a “meandering” telephone conversation with Mr Saunders.

He said it was difficult to understand Mr Saunders who was “deep in drink” and slurring his words.

“The phrase I remember was ‘shooting out the window’,” Mr Bradley told the inquest.

“Very shortly after that there was a bang and immediately after the bang the phone went dead.

Mark Saunders’ family say he had posed no risk to the public

“There was not even a second. It was almost instantaneous.”

Concerned for his friend’s safety he called him back but it went to answer phone.

Mr Bradley then sent a text saying ‘Call me now. If you do not call me immediately or in the next five minutes I will call the police’.

After dialling 999, Mr Bradley went to Chelsea where he met Mr Saunders’ wife Elizabeth.

As the police operation unfolded, Mr Bradley said that despite repeatedly asking if they could go to the house and speak to Mr Saunders they were told they could not for their own safety.

He said the response from one officer was “instant and negative” and there was no discussion as police were in charge and they were “not being given an option”.

Dr Morley, who carried out toxicology tests on Mr Saunders, told the inquest the level of alcohol in Mr Saunders’ blood compared to that of a “Saturday drunk”.

When asked how someone who had consumed that amount of alcohol would act he said: “They are likely to be very drunk and may not have complete control of all their faculties.”

Tests on his hair and urine showed he had repeatedly taken cocaine in the six months leading up to his death but not within 12 hours of the shooting.

Police were called to his home in Markham Square after neighbours saw him firing a shotgun into a neighbouring flat.

The officers maintain they were firing in self-defence, or to protect others.

None of them is to be prosecuted, the Crown Prosecution Service has said.

Mr Saunders’ family maintain he presented no risk to the public.

The hearing continues.

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The BBC Radio 1 DJ receives a Guinness World Record for having the longest career as a female radio presenter.

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