Category: news

The office of the most senior judge in NI writes to the justice minister to clarify the judgement made in the Donagh child sex abuse scandal.

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Mr Netanyahu greeted Mrs Clinton and Mr Abbas against a backdrop that included a Palestinian flag

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, amid renewed Middle East peace talks in the region.

At the end of two days of negotiations, Mr Abbas again said he would walk out of the talks if a partial Israeli ban on settlement building was not renewed.

Despite the ultimatum, US officials insisted that progress was being made.

Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes conducted two separate raids in Gaza, following Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks.

There has been an upturn in violence since the peace talks, which resumed two weeks ago after a 20-month gap.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders made “progress” on the issue of Jewish West Bank settlements during Wednesday’s talks in Jerusalem, US envoy George Mitchell said, without elaborating.

Israel has so far refused to renew the restrictions, which are due to expire on 26 September.

But Mr Mitchell said the two leaders had tackled the issues at the heart of their decades-old conflict – Israel’s security, the borders of a future Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

“The two leaders are not leaving the tough issues to the end of their discussions,” Mr Mitchell said. “We take this as a strong indicator of their belief that peace is possible.”

Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

They are held to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Mr Mitchell said Mrs Clinton would travel to Jordan later on Thursday for talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, while he meets Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in an effort to revive Syrian-Israeli peace talks.

As the leaders held talks in Jerusalem, Palestinian militants fired a rocket at the southern port city of Ashkelon, along with several rounds of mortar fire along the Gaza-Israel border, the Israeli military said.

In response, the Israeli air force bombed Hamas tunnels in southern Gaza around midday on Wednesday, killing one Palestinian and wounding two.

It followed up with an overnight raid on two suspected weapons caches in the northern and southern Gaza Strip, the military said. Gaza’s governing Hamas movement said one of the sites hit was a soap factory.

The Popular Resistance Committees, a small militant group opposed to the talks, said it was behind the Palestinian militant attacks, which caused no casualties.

Although Hamas militants were not believed to have launched the attacks, Israeli officials accused the group of turning a blind eye to the activities of other factions in the territory that are opposed to the peace talks.

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

Mr Geithner will testify in front of two congressional hearings later

The US has filed two new cases against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO), claiming that Beijing has been breaching global trade rules.

The move comes at a time of rising tensions between Beijing and Washington, notably over the level of the Chinese currency, the yuan.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is to testify at two congressional hearings on the yuan later.

In prepared comments, he expressed concern about the slowness of change.

“We are concerned, as are many of China’s trading partners, that the pace of appreciation has been too slow and the extent of appreciation too limited,” he said.

But a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said: “The appreciation of the renminbi [yuan] can’t solve the trade deficit with China.

“Pressure cannot solve the issue. Rather, it may lead to the contrary.”

China has been accused by the US and others of holding the value of the yuan down, making its exports artificially cheap.

However, in recent months Beijing has taken steps to make its currency more flexible by raising the centre point of the currency’s official trading band.

BBC World Service’s business reporter Theo Leggett says that while trade tensions between Washington and Beijing are not new, they have been escalating in recent weeks, amid complaints from US politicians that China is keeping its currency artificially low against the dollar.

The Obama administration has indicated that it plans to take a tougher stance with China on trade issues, including demanding that Beijing move more quickly to reform its currency system.

The two cases the US has brought at the WTO are a sign of that new approach.

The first case concerns duties imposed by China on imports of specialist steel used in the power generation industry.

China says they were introduced to prevent subsidised shipments from driving local producers out of business, but the US trade representative Ron Kirk has accused Beijing of protectionism.

The second complaint concerns the market for electronic payment systems in China, which is dominated by a single domestic firm, China Union Pay.

The US says its providers are being excluded from the bulk of this market.

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

Huge plumes of smoke can be seen rising from the burning building

About 70 firefighters and 12 appliances are at the scene of a major blaze at a printing factory in West Calder.

Emergency services were called to Amcor Flexibles at Brucefield Industrial Estate just before 1200 BST.

One person was taken to St Johns hospital in Livingston where they are being treated for burns to the arm.

Local residents were being warned to stay indoors and keep their doors and windows closed because of fears over possible toxic fumes from chemicals.

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

The licence fee generates around £3.5bn a year

There will be no increase to the TV licence fee in 2011 after the BBC Trust offered to freeze it at £145.50 for the next two years.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said he was “pleased” with the proposal and that the government had decided to implement it next year.

A decision about 2012/13 will be taken at a later date, he added.

If fully implemented, the two-year freeze will create an estimated £144m shortfall in the BBC’s budget.

Under the terms of the current multi-year settlement, the BBC is entitled to increase the licence fee in 2011 and 2012 but has offered not to.

In a statement, the Trust cited “the exceptional pressures that the current economic climate is placing on licence fee payers” as the cue for the move.

The Trust asked BBC bosses in June to analyse the corporation’s budgets and assess whether short-term savings could be made.

Earlier this month the executive reported back, saying any alterations to the current arrangement would require on-air changes.

Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the Trust, accepted that a freeze in income would “not be pain-free” and that the decision “was not taken lightly”.

However, he said the Trust was satisfied “the BBC can manage the impact while continuing to deliver the range of programmes and services that the public loves”.

Mr Hunt said he had “made it clear that the BBC needs to take proper account of the current economic climate”.

“This move, which comes with the Trust’s assurances that it will not significantly impact on the quality of services provided to licence fee payers, will be welcomed by the public.”

The announcement comes at the end of a turbulent week for the corporation that has seen Sir Michael Lyons announce he will be stepping down and BBC One controller Jay Hunt leave to take a job at Channel 4.

The BBC is also facing strike action from staff over proposed changes to its pension scheme.

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

There has been a sharp rise in the number of Americans who believe the US role as a world leader is on the decline, a survey suggests.

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

The Office of Fair Trading says that its investigation is at a very early stage

The Office of Fair Trading has launched a formal investigation into alleged price fixing in the online sale of hotel rooms.

The investigation has been triggered by a complaint from a discount website called Skoosh.com

It reported that it was being put under pressure to offer rooms at a standard price.

“We were openly discounting and hotels would email, call and threaten legal action,” Skoosh told the BBC.

“Either we’d have to raise prices or take the hotels off our list,” said Dorian Harris from Skoosh.

The sale of hotel rooms over the internet has become a huge business, dominated by the hotels themselves and by global websites which sell the rooms on commission.

Within the travel business the practice of keeping prices at a pre-set level is talked about openly and is called “rate parity”.

The effect is that a customer might look at several websites and see the same prices advertised.

And where there is very little variation in prices, a website can claim, truthfully, that its prices are the “cheapest”.

The OFT is looking at suspected breaches of competition law.

It is understood that the investigation will focus on allegations that there could be agreements and concerted practices resulting in fixed or minimum resale prices.

“I’m very excited because it is going to force the industry to look at what it is doing,” said Dorian Harris.

He maintains that consumers are left confused and misled.

“We’ve all got used to the idea that rate parity is accepted,” he adds.

Hotels sell some of their rooms direct to the customer, but to keep their occupancy rates as high as possible, they use online booking firms and sell any spare capacity through room wholesalers.

The wholesalers can pass the rooms on to travel agents, or offload them to discount websites such as Skoosh.

If the Office of Fair Trading finds that there have been breaches of the Competition Act, it can impose penalties of up to 10% of a company’s turnover.

The British Hospitality Association told the BBC that it had not yet been contacted by the OFT and could not comment.

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

Downing Street says the visit will be “very special” for people of all faiths

The first state visit by a Pope to the UK gets under way later when Benedict XVI flies into Edinburgh.

He will meet the Queen at Holyrood House and parade through the city before an open-air Mass in Glasgow.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to line the streets to catch a glimpse of the Roman Catholic leader.

Some ticketed events during the four-day trip have not sold out and protests are planned over Vatican policies on birth control, gay rights and abortion.

The visit is the first to the UK by a Pontiff since John Paul II in 1982.