Sir Howard said visiting Libya in an advisory role was a “personal error of judgement”
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The director of the London School of Economics has resigned over its links to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.
Sir Howard Davies said he recognised the university’s reputation had “suffered” and he had to quit.
He said the decision to accept £300,000 for research from a foundation run by Col Gaddafi’s son, Saif, “backfired”.
The LSE council has commissioned an independent inquiry into the university’s relationship with Libya and Saif Gaddafi.
Sir Howard said he regretted visiting Libya to advise its regime about financial reforms, calling it a “personal error of judgement”.
He said: “I have concluded that it would be right for me to step down even though I know that this will cause difficulty for the institution I have come to love.
“The short point is that I am responsible for the school’s reputation, and that has suffered.”
He also said he had advised that it was “reasonable” to accept the money, which turned out to be a “mistake”.
There were risks involved which should have been weighed more heavily in the balance, he concluded in his resignation letter.
Sir Howard is a former head of the Financial Services Authority and deputy governor of the Bank of England.
He will remain as the head of LSE until a successor has been found.
Peter Sutherland, chairman of the LSE’s court of governors, said Sir Howard had been an “outstanding” director over the past eight years.
“We accept his resignation with great regret and reluctance but understand that he has taken an honourable course in the best interests of the school,” he said.
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The West Indies team bus is struck by stones thrown by Bangladesh supporters following their side’s humiliating nine-wicket defeat in Mirpur.
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There have been violent clashes in Abobo for nearly two weeks
Parts of Ivory Coast’s main city of Abidjan resemble a “war zone”, the UN refugee agency head in the West African nation, Jacques Franquin, told the BBC.
The UNCHR has suspended plans to open a camp in the west for those fleeing the violence because of safety concerns.
“The situation is deteriorating rapidly,” Mr Franquin said.
Tensions have been rising since President Laurent Gbagbo refused to hand power to Alassane Ouattara, widely seen as the winner of November’s poll.
Mr Franquin comments come as UN peacekeepers in country say they are overstretched and cannot provide security for all civilians.
On Thursday, security forces shot dead six women marching in support of Mr Ouattara in the northern Abobo neighbourhood of the city.
“We are overstretched in terms of patrolling. We conducted over 865 patrols last week. You can’t be in every corner of the city,” UN spokesman Hamadoun Toure told the BBC.
Ivory Coast
World’s largest cocoa producerOnce hailed as a model of stability, slipped into internal strife several years after death of first President Felix Houphouet-Boigny in 1993An armed rebellion in 2002 split the country between rebel north and government southA power-sharing government took over in 2007 with the ex-rebel leader as prime minister2010: First presidential elections in 10 years -culmination of the peace processCountry profile: Ivory Coast
The pro-Ouattara stronghold of Abobo has seen violent clashes for nearly two weeks and the UN estimates some 200,000 people have fled the area.
“Certain areas of Abidjan are truly in a situation of war with the population fleeing,” Mr Franquin said.
“The situation is making it impossible to reach people who are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance,” he said.
In the west, UNCHR staff had been withdrawn to Abidjan for their safety and the agency was trying to set up networks using local non-governmental organisations to help those displaced, he said.
A camp is being set up in neighbouring Liberia where tens of thousands have also fled.
Meanwhile, Mr Toure said the UN had received two helicopter gunships this week and he hoped the security situation would improve with the arrival of more peacekeepers.
The BBC’s international development correspondent Mark Doyle says the delivery of the helicopter gunships is a measure of the seriousness of the situation.
The idea that these machines might be used, even in a defensive capacity, in a big overcrowded city like Abidjan takes the situation in Ivory Coast to a new level, he says.
African Union heads of state who are attempting to resolve the crisis are due to meet in Mauritania later on Friday.
The presidents of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and South Africa and Tanzania were initially given a month by the AU to do their work.
But this week that time frame was extended until the end of March.
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A man accused of taking part in a £40m jewellery raid at Graff jewellers in central London has been sentenced to 21 years.
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Finance Minister Sammy Wilson gave the document to ministers
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A final budget package is to be presented to a special session of the Assembly later.
Executive ministers agreed the budget on Thursday night, although UUP and SDLP ministers voted against it.
It is understood an extra £120m has been allocated to health over the next four years, and £150m extra to education.
The Employment and Learning Department, which is responsible for higher education, is due to get an extra £50m.
However, £70m is being cut from the Social Development Department.
Friday’s session of the Assembly will allow Finance Minister Sammy Wilson to outline the final adjustments to his budget and answer some questions from MLAs.
However, the budget package will not be put to a formal vote until next week.
Some of the exchanges across the Executive table on Thursday night were said to be ill tempered and brutally frank and gave an idea of how the battle lines in the Assembly chamber will be drawn.
The Finance Department has said it has identified more than £450m in extra money to distribute to the Executive departments.
Finance Minister Sammy Wilson said that the new cash is available partly because the Land and Property Service has improved its efficiency in gathering the rates.
Senior Executive sources claim the new cash takes the total of additional revenue generated under the budget to more than £1bn.
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The US space agency’s (Nasa) attempt to launch its latest Earth observation mission has ended in failure.
The Glory satellite lifted off from California on a quest to gather new data on factors that influence the climate.
But about six minutes into the flight, officials became aware of a problem.
It appears the fairing – the part of the rocket which covers the satellite on top of the launcher – did not separate properly.
This would have made the rocket too heavy and therefore too slow to achieve its intended 700km orbit. It would probably have fallen into the Ocean near the Antarctic, but this still has to be confirmed.
It is the exact same failure which befell Nasa’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory in 2009. It too launched on a Taurus XL rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, and again the fairing failed to separate properly.
On that occasion a “Mishap Investigation Board” was established to determine the root cause of the nose cone’s failure and to make recommendations to remedy the malfunction. It noted four hardware problems that needed correction. Friday’s launch was the XL’s return to flight after the OCO loss. Another board will now have to be convened.
The loss of Glory is a huge blow to the Orbital Sciences Corporation. It makes the rocket and assembled the Glory satellite for Nasa.
Glory was carrying two instruments. One of its instruments would have measured the total energy coming from the Sun; the other would have looked at particles in the atmosphere that can trap that energy or scatter it back out into space.
Understanding both is vital to our ability to forecast future change.
The Taurus XL lifted off at 0209 Pacific Standard Time (1009 GMT). A number of sensors on the rocket would have indicated the fairing failure, and the launch director Omar Baez had no choice but to declare a spacecraft contingency.
The Taurus XL is the smallest ground-launched rocket currently in use by the US space agency.
Since its debut in 1994, this type of rocket has flown nine times, with six successes and three failures including this launch. This was the second time Nasa had tried to launch a satellite on the XL.
The OCO mission which failed in 2009 is being rebuilt and is due to be launched on another Taurus XL rocket in 2013.
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The barbed points may even have been arrowheads, moving the earliest known use of arrows back by thousands of years
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Caches of tools and animal remains from around 12,000 years ago, found on islands off the California coast, have given remarkable insight into the lives of the first Americans.
a rich maritime economy existed there.
The tools vary markedly from mainland cultures of the era such as the Clovis.
The finds, reported in Science, also suggest that rather than a land route to South America, early humans may have used coastal routes.
A team studying California’s Channel Islands, off its southern coast, has found that the islands show evidence both of differing technologies and a differing diet, even among the few islands.
“On San Miguel island we found a lot of pretty remarkable tools, but the animal materials there were largely shellfish,” said Torben Rick, an anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.
“Over on Santa Rosa, that site was dominated by bird remains and a few sea mammal and fish remains… and no shellfish at all.
“What’s interesting about that is it shows us not only were these people out there living a coastal life, but they were taking advantage of the full suite of resources available to them; they had a very diversified maritime economy.”
“As more research produces more sites, we will see that the story of the first Americans is not linear and that there will continue to be more surprises”
Tom Dillehay Vanderbilt University
The tools that the team found hold the greatest surprise, however, in that they differ significantly from those of mainland cultures like the Clovis and Folsom.
Points found on the islands – which could even be arrow-heads – are thin, serrated, and have barbed points that show striking workmanship for the period.
Inland tools had fluted points, and it is known they were used to hunt large animals including the woolly mammoth. The island points were so delicate as to almost certainly have been used for hunting fish. What is more, many of them do not reappear in the archaeological record.
“These are extremely delicate, finely made tools that don’t occur later in time,” Dr Rick said. “Finding these types of tools at all three of these sites really suggests a similar group of people, in terms of technology and subsistence – and were pretty different from what came later.”
Dr Rick said that the evidence supported the idea that the islands were short-term or seasonal encampments, rather than permanent settlements. The team also found a piece of obsidian on the islands.
“The Coso obsidian source [is] on the mainland a couple hundred miles away, so we know they were participating in long-distance exchange networks,” he said.
A long-standing model of human exploration and settlement of the Americas holds that, after reaching North America through the Bering Straits off Alaska, a concerted push southward led early humans including the Clovis culture across inland parts of the continent to South America.
But anthropologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University said that the Channel Island finds were part of a mounting body of evidence against that simplistic story.
The thin, serrated crescents are a testament to the island inhabitants’ manufacturing capabilities
“What they tell us is that there was widespread cultural diversity at the outset of human entry and dispersion throughout the Americas, and that the old, now-dead Clovis first model often misleads us to believe that there was only one major way of first human expansion throughout the Western Hemisphere,” he told BBC News.
“As today, there are cultural continuities but there also is constant change, which is well evidenced by these and other sites being discovered throughout the Americas. As more research produces more sites, we will see that the story of the first Americans is not linear and that there will continue to be more surprises.
“As I have published and said before, there were probably many different migrations and many different migration routes overland and along the coastal ways, and this evidence is pointing in that direction too.”
However, Dr Rick said that it was too early to upend the larger picture of human migration across the Americas, and that further finds – some of which now lie underwater around the Channel Islands – could shed more light on the story in the future.
“My colleague Jon Erlandson refers to them as ‘postcards from the past’,” Dr Rick said. “They give us just a brief snapshot of ‘hey, we were here and here’s what we were doing for a brief period of time’.
“We have to be a little cautious in our interpretations; we’re trying to put together a puzzle, and the puzzle may have 150 pieces and we’ve got five of them. So it’s really difficult to get the full picture of what they were doing.”
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Sir Alex Ferguson will appeal against a Football Association charge of improper conduct, BBC Sport understands.
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Nasa’s attempt to launch its latest Earth observation mission has ended in failure
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Dutch TV rebroadcast video of the crew with their faces obscured
A Dutch navy helicopter crew have been shown on Libyan state TV after being captured while attempting to evacuate two foreign citizens.
The TV showed the three-strong crew, their Lynx helicopter and weapons, saying they had entered Libyan air space “in breach of international law”.
Dutch officials say the helicopter was captured on Sunday near Sirte while trying to fly out two Europeans.
Talks are under way to free the crew, who are two men and one woman.
They had landed near Sirte, a port city in central Libya under the control of government forces, to carry out a “consular evacuation”, the Dutch defence ministry said.
An armed Libyan unit captured them along with the two evacuees – a Dutch national and another, unidentified European – who were later released by the Libyan authorities and left the country.
The Dutch defence ministry has been in contact with the crew who were “doing well under the circumstances”, a Dutch spokesman said on Thursday.
They had flown into Libya from the Dutch warship Tromp, which is anchored off the coast.
Footage shown by Libyan TV, which cannot be verified, shows the three crew members sitting in an office with Libyans and sipping canned drinks.
A helicopter with Dutch naval markings can be seen parked on sand as gunmen cheer and wave their weapons around it.
When a heavy machine gun and belt of bullets are displayed, an on-screen caption in Arabic says: “According to the [Saudi-backed] broadcaster al-Arabiya, this helicopter was sent to rescue people, but we can see something else here.
“The helicopter flew into Libyan airspace and landed in Sirte without any permission from the authorities and this is in violation of international law.”
Assault rifles, dollar notes, notebooks, pistols, mobile phones, bullets and ammunition, military-fatigue body armour, inflatable life jackets and a Sony digital camera are also shown off in the video.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports that the Dutch national whose evacuation the crew had been trying to complete was handed over to the Dutch embassy and is now back in the Netherlands.
He had been working for the Dutch engineering company Royal Haskoning.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said news of the crew’s capture had been kept quiet initially to assist the talks on their release.
“It is terrible for the crew of the Lynx helicopter,” he said.
“Everything is being done to make sure the crew get home.”
The Tromp, which was initially to have taken part in an anti-piracy operation off Somalia, headed for the Libyan coast on 24 February.
Initial reports talked of “marines” being captured but an official statement posted later on the defence ministry’s website describes the captives as a naval helicopter crew.
The port city of Sirte is considered the main remaining stronghold of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the centre of the country, as he struggles with a spreading revolt against his rule.
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Unions have described the cuts as “inexcusable”
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Glasgow Caledonian University has confirmed it is to cut up to 95 jobs in a bid to save £5m from its annual running costs.
Management want to merge the university’s six existing departments – or “schools” – into three larger ones.
They hope to make the savings through voluntary redundancy but cannot rule out compulsory job cuts.
Unions have vowed to fight the job losses, which they have described as “inexplicable and inexcusable”.
Glasgow Caledonian currently has six academic departments – built and natural environment; Caledonian business school; engineering and computing; health; life sciences and law and social sciences.
Under new proposals, these would be merged into three larger schools – health and life sciences; engineering, computing and the environment; and business, law and social sciences.
Those jobs most at risk in each department are in senior management, administrative and support services, and marketing and human resources.
“To lose 95 more frontline posts will have a catastrophic effect on staff and students”
Dr Nick McKerrell Combined union committee
The university said it needed to make savings of £12m per year by 2014 due to cuts in funding from central government.
It has already made £5m, with £7m still to find. The latest proposed savings, if achieved by July 2012, would meet £5m of that balance.
In a statement, Glasgow Caledonian said: “The university’s governing body has approved plans to begin a 90-day consultation on proposals to re-profile and restructure its administrative and support services.
“While the university would seek to make changes by voluntary means wherever possible and in consultation with staff and their representatives, the proposals currently being consulted upon could see a reduction of up to 95 administrative and support posts.
“The university’s academic and service-based activities are continuing as normal during this time and final proposals will be submitted to the governing body for consideration. It is hoped that this will take place on 6 June 2011.”
Glasgow Caledonian currently employs 1,613 staff, so the proposed jobs cut would affect about 6% of the workforce.
The university’s combined union committee condemned the proposals and highlighted that they had emerged in the same week that senior management pay levels at the institution had been described by one MSP as “disgraceful”.
Committee convenor, Dr Nick McKerrell, said: “These job losses are both inexplicable and inexcusable at Glasgow Caledonian University.
“Some 300 jobs have already gone in the last four years. To lose 95 more frontline posts will have a catastrophic effect on staff and students.
“The trade unions will hold an emergency summit early this morning (Friday) to plan their next steps and protests. Management will not know what has hit them.”
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Red kites are now a much more common sight
People are used to stories of conservational doom-and-gloom with fragile species threatened by creeping urbanisation, but recent reports suggest some birds of prey are booming in the UK. So why does the prospect of a soaring hawk or eagle leave some people worried?
Birds of prey are admired. Their powerful talons and soaring flight impresses. People relish the suspense that comes from watching them hover before making a kill.
Britain’s biggest, the white-tailed (or sea) eagle – the fourth largest eagle in the world – has a wingspan of eight feet.
But during Victorian times many birds of prey were hunted ruthlessly. Four species – the osprey, white-tailed eagle, goshawk and marsh harrier – were virtually extinct in Britain during most of the 20th Century.
And some of their emotional resonance comes precisely because of their perilous decline during the period of intensive industrialisation in the UK.
“This is not the Serengeti plain, the Amazon or Antarctica – we’re in a highly farmed environment”
Keith McDougall Songbird survival
During the 1950s and 1960s organochlorine pesticides were widely used, seriously inhibiting top predators like the golden eagle’s ability to breed. But at the end of the 1960s these chemicals were banned.
That together with reintroduction schemes and a new ethos of protecting birds of prey – culminating in the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act – has turned the tide, says Grahame Madge, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ conservation spokesman.
The white tailed eagle, after a successful reintroduction scheme during the 1970s on the island of Rum is now well established in the west coast of Scotland.
The red kite is now up to 1,800 breeding pairs – a “staggering turn around”, says Madge – while there are thought to be around 40,000 buzzards soaring over the UK. Everyone from hikers to motorway drivers can now expect to see birds of prey regularly.
But, it’s neither a story of unbridled success or acceptance.
“It’s a sweeping generalisation to say that birds of prey have bounced back,” says Madge. “It may be fitting for some of the 15 species but not all.”
Some farmers are worried by the spread of reintroduced eagles
Several species – notably the hen harrier, golden eagle and goshawk – are still at risk. In England there is only one breeding pair of golden eagles and 12 pairs of hen harriers when there should be many more, Madge says. There’s plenty of food and territory, the problem is persecution, particularly poisoned bait, he says.
“Persecution was rife during the reign of Victoria. And we still see that mindset now with birds of prey being illegally persecuted in upland areas where you have grouse shooting, such as the Pennines and southern Scotland. “
A newspaper ran a spectacular photograph earlier this week of a golden eagle plucking a lamb from a field. Local farmers claimed the photograph was evidence that eagles – which have been reintroduced back into parts of Scotland – are now out of control.
The Scottish Crofting Federation is complaining that the reintroduction of the white-tailed eagle has been too successful. Donald Murdie, a crofter on the Isle of Skye and SCF consultant, says the bird has spread from its initial reintroduction to the west of the mainland, and the islands of Skye, Lewis and Harris.
What is a bird of prey?Bird of prey is a loose term often applied to the eagle, kite, hawk and even sometimes the owlTypically have curved beak, curved talons and good eyesight for finding preyRaptor is sometimes used specifically to describe birds that seize warm-blooded animals during the day
Debating animals“They’re magnificent to behold. But whereas people were initially happy to see them, these birds are now causing serious problems to sheep producers.”
Murdie says that the most seriously affected crofters complain they are losing 10 lambs a year. It’s now time for a rethink, he argues.
“It would be fine if the reintroduction was kept to one discreet area but the fact is they’re continuing to reintroduce in other areas like the East Coast and potentially Suffolk.”
Others even allege that birds of prey are hoovering up the UK’s songbirds. Keith McDougall, policy director of pressure group Songbird Survival, reels off a long list of species whose numbers are declining – the skylark down 51%, the song thrush down 48%, the tree sparrow down 89%. The reason is threefold, he says – intensive farming, a drier climate and an increasing number of predators.
There is only one breeding pair of golden eagles in England
This last category includes cats, crows, foxes but also birds of prey.
“In this country we’re in the business of species balance – this is not the Serengeti plain, the Amazon or Antarctica. We’re in a highly farmed environment so Songbird Survival believes that the management of species is important,” says McDougall.
In the future that might mean extending its experimental cull of crows to birds of prey, he argues, a move that would require a change in the law.
“If things are going wrong for some birds it’s the duty of those in charge to help species that are in trouble,” he says.
But the RSPB says there is no evidence that birds of prey are to blame. And the idea of a cull appals journalist Rod Liddle, who presented a radio programme this week on birds of prey.
He believes that opponents oversimplify the relationship between predator and prey. The answer for all birds is not culls or more reintroduction schemes but to work on improving the biodiversity of farmland, he argues. “There’s no point putting the eagle back if the environment is ‘too clean’ for them. The answer might be to pay farmers more to leave one or two weeds in the fields,” he says.
And the awe that birds of prey inspire will continue to be a driver for conservation efforts.
“The golden eagle is pretty beautiful, the hen harrier stunning,” says Liddle. “But my favourite memory is seeing an osprey at six o’clock in the morning one summer in Wiltshire. It was flying south, a big, black, white and brown bird. It was a magnificent sight.”
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