Category: news

Police are questioning the three Pakistan players accused of corruption, while the ICC says that the players implicated have a disciplinary case to answer.

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Seven defendants in a paedophilia trial in Portugal have been found guilty of sexually abusing children in the care of a network of state-run homes.

The six men and one woman include Carlos Cruz, a former TV presenter, and Jorge Ritto, a former ambassador.

Between them they had been accused of hundreds of charges over the rape and abuse of 32 boys in the 1990s.

The boys, now aged between 16 and 22, were all in the resident at the Casa Pia children’s home in Lisbon.

The judges in the case are still reading the full verdict in each of the hundreds of accusations, but the court has ruled that the vast majority of sexual abuse has been proven.

The main suspect was a former driver from Casa Pia, whom the court has found abused boys on hundreds of occasions.

He then began offering them to men, including Cruz, for cash.

The case is one of the longest-running in Portuguese history, lasting more than five years, with testimony from hundreds of people.

During the trial, the 32 victims, now aged between 16 and 22 years old, gave gruesome testimony about being raped by adults in dark cellars, cars and secluded houses.

One of the victims, now in his early 20s, was so seriously abused that he is now incontinent.

Almost all of them identified their abusers by pointing them out in the courtroom.

However, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford in Lisbon says it is thought that there may be many other victims who are still too frightened to speak out.

The alleged abuse at Casa Pia is said to have started in the mid-1970s, but was not discovered until 2002, when the mother of a boy place at one of the state-run homes in Lisbon said he had been abused by staff there.

Casa Pia is 230-year old institution which cares for about 4,500 need children through a network of 10 homes.

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The US economy shed another 54,000 jobs in August, the third month in a row that jobs have been lost, official figures have shown.

The private sector created 67,000 jobs, the Labor Department said, more than analysts had been expecting.

As a result of the overall fall in job numbers, the unemployment rate rose to 9.6%, from 9.5% in July.

Many analysts are concerned that high unemployment is undermining the US economic recovery.

The overall loss of jobs was because of a fall in government employment.

Government jobs fell by 121,000, largely due to the loss of 114,000 temporary employees who had been taken on to compile the US census but finished their work in August.

A drop in government employment had been expected because of the census, but analysts had expected a smaller rise in the number of private sector jobs.

Employment in the healthcare sector rose by 28,000, while the construction and mining sectors also saw healthy gains.

However, manufacturing employment fell by 27,000.

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Rory Cellan-Jones tries out 3D video equipment and looks at the latest ultra thin and bright OLED TVs.

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A former MI6 worker from London has been jailed for 12 months after admitting charges of unlawfully disclosing top secret material.

Daniel Houghton, 25, of Hoxton, east London, pleaded guilty to two offences under the Official Secrets Act.

Houghton, who was arrested in March, worked for the Secret Intelligence Service between 2007 and 2009.

He denied a charge of stealing materials, a plea which was accepted by the prosecution.

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The veteran Liberal Democrat politician Sir Cyril Smith has died at the age of 82, the party has confirmed.

Sir Cyril represented the constituency of Rochdale as an MP, both for the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats, for 20 years. More soon.

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Two police officers have been suspended from driving duties after crashing a high-performance car they had seized from a suspected drink-driver.

The driver of the Mitsubishi Lancer had been arrested and taken into custody after being stopped in Hale Barns, Greater Manchester on Friday morning.

Officers were driving the car away from the scene later when it crashed through two front gardens. One man was injured.

Police said the incident would be “rigorously investigated”.

The officers had stopped the vehicle after watching it being driven erratically on Hale Road at about 0215 BST.

A 23-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of drink driving and his vehicle was authorised for recovery.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said the officers, both men, were driving away from the scene when it crashed into two front gardens at the junction of Hale Road and Rydal Drive.

Two officers were found in the vehicle. One of the officers suffered minor injuries while the other was severely shaken.

No-one else was injured in the incident.

The collision is now being investigated by officers from GMP’s professional standards unit.

Ch Supt Mark Roberts, Trafford divisional commander, said: “I can assure the local community that this incident will be rigorously investigated.

“Thankfully, no members of the public were injured.

“I would like to apologise to residents if this incident has caused any problems or inconvenience.”

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One in four state primary schools in England has no male teacher, statistics show.

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At least 22 people have died in a suicide bombing at a Shia Muslim rally in Quetta city, south-western Pakistan.

More than 40 others were injured in the explosion in the Meezan Chowk area.

The blast at a student-organised Palestinian solidarity march was the second deadly attack on Pakistan’s Shia Muslim minority this week.

Rallies take place across Pakistan every year on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to support the Palestinian demand for a homeland.

Gunfire

“At least 22 dead bodies have been moved to different hospitals. More than 40 people have been injured,” news agency AFP quoted senior police officer Akbar Magsi as saying.

TV pictures showed chaotic street scenes in the aftermath of the explosion. Survivors fired guns in the air in the pandemonium, said police.

Reports said several Pakistani journalists were among those injured.

Shia leader Allama Abbas Kumaili appealed for calm, telling a Pakistani TV channel: “We understand these are attempts to bring Sunni and Shia sects against each other.”

Shia Muslims make up an estimated one in five of Pakistan’s Sunni-dominated population of 160 million.

The attack comes two days after bomb attacks on a Shia procession in Lahore killed 31 people on Wednesday. At least 170 people were injured when three bombs exploded targeting the procession. At least two of the attacks were suicide bombings, police said.

The Pakistani Taliban said it carried out the attacks in revenge for the killing of a Sunni leader last year.

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A pathologist at the centre of a row over the death of a man during the G20 protests has been suspended from the medical register for three months.

Freddy Patel had been found guilty of misconduct by the General Medical Council over three earlier post-mortem examinations.

He had carried out an examination on the body of Ian Tomlinson who died during G20 protests in April last year.

Dr Patel was already been suspended from a Home Office register.

Handing down the suspension on Friday, the GMC’s disciplinary panel said: “You have offered no expression of regret in relation to those instances where the panel found shortcomings of misconduct and/or deficient professional performance.”

But panel chairman Richard Davies said there could be a “genuine public interest” in Dr Patel returning to practice and “giving dependable and worthwhile service for the future”.

Dr Patel had already been suspended from the Home Office register of forensic pathologists after questions were asked about the autopsy carried out on Mr Tomlinson’s body.

The suspension means he will be allowed to work only on non-suspicious deaths, and be barred from working as an expert witness for the defence in suspicious death cases.

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Welsh MP Chris Bryant says he believes his answer machine messages were intercepted by journalists at a tabloid newspaper.

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Organisers of the Edinburgh Fringe have defended their decision to count customers of free shows in their box office sales.

They claimed on Monday that almost two million tickets had been sold for this year’s event, a 5% increase on the previous record breaking year.

However, it has emerged that some venues offering free and unticketed shows were included in the figures.

An extra 120,000 ticket sales were added to the final total this year.

The extra figure was based on average audiences attending shows staged by Laughing Horse Free Festivals, one of two major promoters running free shows, mainly in pubs.

Peter Buckley Hill, who runs the Free Fringe, refused to give the numbers of people who attended his free shows because he had “no idea”.

But the Fringe said the method of counting ticket sales was consistent with previous years and may be a conservative estimate of the actual numbers attending the overall event.

Fringe spokesman Neil Mackinnon, said: “We’ve been quite consistent with our methodology in adding up figures at the Fringe, and we have no plans to change that.

“If anything, it suggests that our estimate for the actual number of people attending the festival is probably quite conservative.

“The venues have a good idea of how many people are attending shows because of health and safety and fire regulations, and Laughing Horse have given us estimates for the last two years.

“We asked Peter Buckley Hill to provide the same estimates but he has refused and that is why his shows are not included.”

Mr Mackinnon added: “We did say in our announcement on Monday that the box office figure was an estimate.”

Mr Buckley Hill’s Free Fringe operates at 22 venues and the Laughing Horse free festival at 14 sites across the city.

In total there were more than 500 free shows included in the Fringe programme.

Performers do not charge for their shows but often ask for a cash contribution from the audience afterwards.

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Four teenagers deny murdering a 61-year-old man at his home in Conwy.

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Members of the UK Independence Party are set to gather for their autumn conference in Torquay, with the search for a new leader top of the agenda.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch announced last month he would stand down as leader at the conference, saying he was “not much good at party politics”.

Jeffrey Titford was chosen at a meeting on Thursday to run the party until a permanent replacement is elected.

The election for a permanent successor is to be staged later.

UKIP’s former leader, MEP Nigel Farage, has yet to confirm whether he will stand.

Mr Farage suffered serious injuries in a light aircraft crash on 5 May – the day of the general election – and subsequently failed in his attempt to get elected to Westminster, after standing against the Commons Speaker John Bercow in Buckingham.

Although he has not ruled himself out, he told the BBC last month he wanted “to take a bit more time for myself and for my family”.

UKIP failed to make a breakthrough in May’s poll, although it did increase its share of vote to more than 3% – securing more than 900,000 votes.

Lord Pearson – a former Conservative who became UKIP leader last year – announced in August his intention to stand down on 2 September.

He said he did not “enjoy” the cut and thrust of party politics and suggested a “younger leader” was needed to take the party forward.

David Campbell Bannerman, one of the party’s 13 representatives in the European Parliament, is widely seen as a potential interim leader.

In a speech at the conference, he will set out a “detailed prospectus” for how the UK would manage outside the European Union – a move UKIP has long urged.

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Fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir has arrived at the Old Bailey for his first court appearance on fraud and theft charges.

The businessman, who has evaded trial since 1993, flew back from Cyprus to face fraud charges relating to the collapse of his Polly Peck empire.

A provisional trial date is expected to be fixed at the hearing and a bail surety of £250,000 has been paid.

It is alleged Mr Nadir, 69, secretly transferred £34m out of his company, leading to its collapse.

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