| Bomber move 'lowered UK standing' The prime minister says the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber "undermined" the UK's global standing. bbc.co.uk |
Working prisoners to do pay-back time Surfing's in for juries; first fall, next winter; lost treasure lost; age can wither you; woman digs victory; nil by hospital menus; Savoy grills budgetKen Clarke, the justice secretary, has come up with some big, bold ideas for prison reform. He wants prisoners to work for a living, instead of sitting around idly all day. That way, he hopes, inmates will learn the virtues and rewards of regular work, acquire qualifications and experience, and be less likely to reoffend after their release.Prisoners who take up the scheme will be employed inside jail by private-sector companies, and will get paid normal rates. But only part of the wage packet will stay with the prisoner. Of the rest, part will go to the victims of their crimes, and another part to their families, to reduce their dependence on welfare benefits.And it doesn't stop there: ministers are considering docking wages to help cover the cost of prisoners' board and lodging, while officials are looking at ways of creating a contributory fund to which ex-prisoners could have access after staying straight for two years.This imaginative package could have a long term effect on the chronic problem of recidivism, which is a major factor in maintaining Britain's prison population at a grotesque 85,000 or so. But at a time of rising unemployment, it could also be difficult to find enough work for anything approaching that number of prisoners.Surfing's in for juriesIt is a long-standing convention of our justice system that juries do not discuss or research the cases they are hearing, outside the court room. Nor are newspapers and other media supposed to publish anything but the evidence presented in court. But now, according to a former director of public prosecutions, judges are giving up trying to stop jurors from trawling the internet for information on defendants and their alleged offences.Sir Ken Macdonald said the courts had struggled for years to protect juries from material available on sites like Google, Twitter and Facebook. But policing the internet was an unmanageable task."I don't think juries should be allowed to do online research," he said. "But I do think we need to assume this will occasionally happen and that it should not be allowed to invalidate a trial. We have to expect them to follow directions to try the case on the evidence. Otherwise, jury trial will go."First fall, next winterAverage house prices fell by more than £6,000 ($9,500), or 3.6%, in September. In a nation obsessed by property values, that was sensational news. The implications for the coalition government could also be alarming.Ministers are poised to unveil what are universally feared to be the most savage cuts in public spending in living memory. The cuts will inevitably include widespread redundancies, and the knock-on effects on the wider economy could, some observers fear, send us back into deep recession. If, at the same time, we see house prices plummeting, consumer confidence will plunge with them. In short, falling house prices will make lots of people very fearful. And when people feel bad about their lives and prospects, they tend to blame the government.The good longer-term news for property owners is that demand for housing still greatly outstrips supply, and that should prop up prices. But a short-term dip could encourage potential buyers to hang on for even lower prices, thus accelerating the downward spiral.Lost treasure lost A stunningly beautiful Roman ceremonial helmet has been sold by Christie's for £2m – more than six times the highest pre-sale estimate. It was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder, after frenzied bidding lasting all of three minutes.The money will be shared by an unemployed graduate in his 20s who found the cavalry helmet with a metal detector near the Cumbrian hamlet of Crosby Garrett, and the landowner. Both men are now millionaires, which is nice for them.But the sale was not good news for the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle, which was hoping the make the helmet, which dates from the late first or early second century AD, the star item in its collection. Astonishingly for a small museum, donations and promises of grants allowed it to stay in the bidding up to £1.7m. But three more bids at £100,000 a pop snatched the prize from its grasp.Nothing is known about the successful bidder, or whether the helmet will be available for public viewing.Age can wither youThe eating disorders anorexia and bulimia are generally associated with girls and young women desperate to achieve and maintain a stick-thin body. But they are not the only ones: psychiatrists are treating increasing numbers of patients who are developing their crippling disorders into their 30s, 40s, 50s and even occasionally their 60s.Some experts trace the phenomenon to the pressure on older women to emulate age-defying film stars and other celebrities. And the obsessive desire to lose weight is not wholly confined to women: some men too are driven to eat minuscule quantities of food, for appearances' sake.Woman digs victoryElaine Mormon is a Gloucestershire single mother with a unique claim to fame. After years of campaigning and an intervention in the House of Commons, she has won the right to work underground in the Forest of Dean as a free miner. It's a title dating back to an 1838 law protecting local mineral reserves, and is currently bestowed on 4,500 men. And now, one woman.Mormon has been going underground for years to extract ochre, an iron oxide used for artists' paints and for mixing cosmetic colours. She started her campaign when her application to work in the family business as a free miner was turned down by the wonderfully named Deputy Gaveller, the forestry officer responsible.Nil by hospital menusChildren undergoing hospital treatment are being given meals containing "shocking" amounts of sugar, salt and saturated fat, new research has found.Concerned doctors are now calling for minimum nutritional standards to be applied to hospital food, similar to those that already apply in schools.The researchers found one meal, a chicken tikka masala with rice, which included 14 times more salt than an equivalent school meal. Another meal, a lasagne, had six times the level of salt as in a school version. In all, 451 meals were analysed, almost half of which contained so much salt or saturated fat that they would be deemed unhealthy if served in schools.Savoy grills budget At the other end of the catering scale, there is good news for those seeking up-market board and lodging in the capital. The Savoy Hotel is about to reopen, after a £220m refit lasting two years.The makeover should have been shorter and a lot cheaper, but when the work started, the grand old lady of London hotels was found to be horribly tainted with asbestos, dodgy electric wiring and plumbing, and a myriad other aches and pains. So extensive were the necessary repairs that at one stage more than 1,000 people were working on the hotel.Happily, the hotel is owned by a billionaire Saudi royal, Prince al-Waleel bin Talal, who has very deep pockets. Just like the Savoy's target customers.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Saudi prince guilty of servant's murder Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud convicted by Old Bailey jury of killing Bandar Abdulaziz at five-star London hotelA Saudi prince who beat and strangled his servant to death at the culmination of a campaign of "sadistic" abuse is facing a life sentence after being convicted of murder.Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud, a grandson of the billionaire king of Saudi Arabia, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of killing Bandar Abdulaziz at their five-star hotel suite in central London.Saud had been drinking champagne and cocktails when he bit the 32-year-old hard on both cheeks during the attack in February. The pair had just returned from a Valentine's night out.The 34-year-old prince was found guilty of murder today after the jury had deliberated for an hour and 35 minutes. He showed no reaction as the verdict was returned.The court had heard that the murder of Abdulaziz was the final act in a "deeply abusive" master-servant relationship in which the prince carried out frequent attacks on his aide "for his own personal gratification".Jurors were told that by the early hours of 15 February, Abdulaziz was so worn down and injured – having suffered a "cauliflower" ear and swollen eye from previous assaults – that he let Saud kill him without a fight.The prince then spent hours on the phone to a mysterious contact in Saudi Arabia trying to decide how to cover up what he had done.He ordered two glasses of milk and bottled water on room service as he set about dragging the body into the bed and trying to clean up the blood.It was only about 12 hours later, after a chauffeur had received a call from Saudi Arabia telling him to go to the £259-a-night Landmark hotel, that the body was discovered in room 312.The prince claimed he had woken in the afternoon to find he could not revive his friend – by then stiff with rigor mortis – and explained his injuries by saying he had been attacked and robbed of €3,000 in London's Edgware Road a few weeks before.Detectives took him to the area to try to retrace the route, but as they did so, other officers who were reviewing CCTV at the hotel found footage of Saud mercilessly attacking his aide in a lift on 22 January.When he was then taken to Paddington Green police station and arrested, Saudi officials tried to claim he had diplomatic immunity, but this was scotched by a check of Foreign Office records.Saud tried to cover up the true nature of his relationship with his servant, claiming they were "friends and equals", but a porter at the Marylebone hotel where they had stayed said Abdulaziz was treated "like a slave".The prince also claimed he was heterosexual and had a girlfriend in Saudi Arabia, but he had booked appointments with at least two male escorts and one gay masseur, and looked at hundreds of images of men on gay websites.Photographs of Abdulaziz in "compromising" positions were found on his phone.Saud had denied killing his servant until shortly before the trial, before finally admitting that he had caused his death. Jurors rejected a claim by his barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC, that Saud was guilty only of manslaughter.The prince was convicted of murder and a second count of grievous bodily harm with intent relating to the attack in the lift.Sources said detectives in the case had received little help after requests for information were sent through Interpol to their Saudi colleagues.Saud's lawyers also failed in a last-ditch attempt to stop details of his encounters with male escorts being revealed during the trial. In a sign of the anxiety about his sexuality becoming public, the prince's lawyers had initially argued that the legal argument about the escorts should be held behind closed doors.Kelsey-Fry said Saud had already faced abuse from Islamic fundamentalists being held alongside him at Belmarsh prison. The court heard that homosexuality remains a capital offence in Saudi Arabia, and the country in which the acts take place has little relevance to prosecution under the country's sharia law.Outside court, Detective Chief Inspector John McFarlane said: "The defendant used his position of power, money and authority over his victim Bandar to abuse him over an extended period of time."CCTV recovered clearly shows Bandar was subjected to assaults in the hotel. The injuries which were noted by the pathologist clearly show Bandar was the victim of many more assaults over an extended period of time. This verdict clearly shows no-one, regardless of their position, is above the law."Saud was remanded in custody to be sentenced tomorrow.CrimeLondonSaudi ArabiaSam Jonesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Nurse 'switched off life support' An agency nurse working for the NHS switched off a Wiltshire patient's life support machine in error causing brain damage, it is revealed. bbc.co.uk |
Industrial farming puts ecosystems at risk of collapse, warns Prince Charles Farming methods must be low-impact, organic and low-carbon to protect natural resources for the long termPrince Charles has warned that the world's ecosystems face collapse because of a dangerous over-reliance on industrial farming systems that work against nature rather than with it.In a speech to launch a new sustainable farming project with the supermarket chain Morrisons, the Prince of Wales said farming needed to shift quickly to low-impact, organic and low-carbon methods to survive into the long term. The prince directly attacked farms that "treat animals like machines by using industrial rearing systems". Although he did not mention it directly, his criticisms echo fears about the UK's first diary "super farm" planned for Lincolnshire, where 8,000 cows will produce milk 24 hours a day and will be housed in four open-sided barns. He also criticised the increasing use of "green" labelling and award schemes which failed to protect natural resources in the long term and which "contributes to the failure of the entire system upon which it depends."He said experts predicted that demand for food will rise by 50% by 2030, while humanity will also need 30% more water and 45% more energy. Fresh water supplies were finite and oil close to its peak. For every nine barrels of oil used today, only one barrel of readily exploitable oil was being found. "The mathematics do not exactly add up," he said. "We have to come up with a better way of producing our food that maintains the health of the earth's natural systems so that we work much more closely with them rather than so carelessly to spite them. And because we will have to do so in a commercial environment hounded by the spiralling cost of the diminishing oil supply it would pay us perhaps to do so quickly, now rather than later when it may be too late." He added: "So far we have enjoyed the considerable luxury of ignoring these things. We've tended to believe many of nature's services are free."Morrisons, which says it is the UK's second largest producer of fresh food and has about 12 million customers, is investing £2m on a new model farm at Dumfries House, the Palladian country house near Kilmarnock rescued for the nation when Prince Charles took out a £20m personal loan in 2007 to prevent its sale and its unique collection of furniture broken up. The farm will attempt to find new ways of being commercially viable and competitive as well as simultaneously sustainable, testing new low-energy farming techniques with minimal use of chemicals and improved, welfare-friendly breeding methods. It is expected to make a profit by 2014.Dalton Philips, the chief executive of Morrisons, said before the prince spoke that solely organic farming was not realistic, as it cost up to 40% more and was largely unaffordable for most consumers. Tax rises would increase the pressure on consumers, Philips said, yet he agreed with the Prince of Wales, that keeping food prices down was no longer realistic. "The long decline in food prices is at an end and we're already beginning to see it," he said. It was therefore essential that British agriculture became more sustainable and resilient.Prince Charles cited a "remarkable" report published by the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations in 2008 called The international assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development. Its conclusions, accepted by the UK government and 57 other countries, said the world had to change its farming techniques or face "social and economic collapse", he said. It encouraged low-impact and organic farming, and farms which were much less reliant on fossil fuels. It stated: "Business as usual is no longer an option."The prince added: "Let me just point out what sustainable farming is not. It is not dependent upon the use of chemical pesticides, fungicides and insectides. Sustainable farming does not rely upon artificial fertilisers and growth promoters, nor the prophilactic use of antibiotics. It does not create vast monocultures and treat animals like machines by using industrial rearing systems. It does not drink the earth dry, deplete the soil or drown streams in oxygen-sucking run-off. "On the contrary, sustainable farming maintains the resilience of the entire ecosystem by encouraging a rich level of biodiversity in the soil, in its water supply and in the wildlife: the birds, insects and bees that maintain the health of the whole system."FarmingFoodCarbon emissionsClimate changePesticidesOrganicsEthical and green livingConservationPrince CharlesSeverin Carrellguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |