Daily Mail – Princess Diana died after attempts to frighten her into dumping Dodi al Fayed and ending her anti-establishment activities went horribly wrong, a leading lawyer has claimed. Michael Mansfield claimed he was sure Diana’s ‘killers’ had no intention of ending her life in a Paris tunnel in August 1997 and simply wanted to scare her. But he claimed the operation to torpedo her relationship with Dodi, and silence her planned criticism of the British government over foreign arms sales, backfired spectacularly. Read article
Telegraph – Thousands of veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to develop mental health problems, General Sir Richard Dannatt said. The news came as the Prince of Wales launched an appeal by the charity Combat Stress to raise £30million to pay for better mental health services for veterans across the UK. So far 180,000 British troops have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. General Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, said that as many as 8,500 former servicemen of these will develop mental health problems. Read article
Times – Northern Rock, the state-owned bank bailed out with £26 billion in taxpayers’ funds, will share a £14.9 million bonus among its staff despite running up a loss over 2009. The lender’s 4,500 staff will receive rewards, including its 32 top managers, who will benefit from a £3 million bonus specifically for senior staff, to be paid in three instalments and subject to the Government’s 50 per cent tax on awards in excess of £25,000. Read Article
BBC – Turkey has withdrawn its ambassador to Sweden after the parliament voted narrowly to describe as genocide the killing of Armenians in World War I. The Turkish government condemned the resolution, saying it was “based upon major errors and without foundation”. The Swedish government opposed the opposition resolution but it passed by one vote after some MPs voted against party lines. It comes days after a US congressional panel passed a similar resolution. Read article
Times Online – The Soviet Union is gradually being rebuilt as Vladimir Putin eyes a return to the Kremlin. The man who declared the collapse of the Communist state to be the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” appears determined to forge a new empire. The latest evidence emerged in a suggestion by Igor Shuvalov, First Deputy Prime Minister in Mr Putin’s Government, that Russia may abolish the rouble and create a common currency with Kazakhstan and Belarus. Read article
Sky news – Youngsters at Grace Academy in Chelmsley Wood claim they returned from half-term to find staff had installed the cameras without notifying them or their parents. Some parents are furious at what they say is a “total invasion of privacy” and claim some pupils are so anxious about being watched they are refusing to use the facilities. One mother whose teenage daughter attends the school is concerned the footage could fall into the wrong hands. Read Article
Mail Online – TV crime shows may have created the myth that DNA can solve almost every grisly crime – but the reality is very different. As few as one in every 1,300 crimes reported to the police is solved by the national DNA database, according to a report released by MPs yesterday. The research shows that – despite the massive expansion in the Government database – only 3,666 crimes are detected every year with links to an existing DNA profile. Questions have been raised over the effectiveness of the Government’s DNA database. Read Article
Times Online – If you lived on a street where a neighbour frequently and flagrantly broke the law, you would want something done about it, especially if that neighbour took part of your garden, replaced the fence with a 30ft wall, cut down your trees and redirected your water supply. Suppose the authorities to whom you complained merely denounced the illegalities and took no action? You might think that this situation is inconceivable. But that is precisely what has been happening to the Palestinians for the best part of 60 years. Read article
Telegraph – But doctors have accused the Government of rushing the project through, meaning that patients have had their details uploaded to the database before they have had a chance to object. The scheme, one of the largest of its kind in the world, will eventually hold the private records of more than 50 million patients. But it has been dogged by accusations that the private information held on it will not be safe from hackers. Read Article
Daily Mail – Assisted suicide for anyone over 70 who has simply had enough of life is being considered in Holland. Non-doctors would be trained to administer a lethal potion to elderly people who ‘consider their lives complete’. Read Article
Guardian – The official equalities watchdog will threaten to brand as racist police forces which are deemed to have used stop and search powers excessively against people from ethnic minorities, the Guardian has learned. Police forces will be told they face enforcement action unless they give meaningful promises to change, says a report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission expected to be released later this month. It presents a prima facie case that the police are still failing in their duties under racial equality laws and finds that an officer’s power to stop and search, based on having a reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminality, is disproportionately used against Afro-Caribbean and Asian Britons. Read Article
Reuters – Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Wednesday he believed Britain would maintain its coveted top credit rating and announced a pay freeze for senior civil servants and military officers to help tame a record deficit. Setting out his economic plans weeks before an election, Brown said recovery remained fragile and that to change course now would risk plunging Britain back into recession. He drew on his experience last year when he chaired the group of 20 leading and developing nations during the global financial crisis. Read Article
The Times – The Roman Catholic Church in Germany ordered two separate investigations yesterday into allegations of widespread sexual abuse in its institutions, specifically at the Bavarian boarding school where the Pope’s brother served as choirmaster.With nearly two thirds of dioceses caught up in the widening scandal, the German Bishops’ Conference said that it would examine all 170 allegations made so far. A spokesman said that the investigation would take a close look at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys’ choir, led by Georg Ratzinger for 30 years until 1994. Read Article
The Independent – A former head of MI5 has accused intelligence services in the US of deliberately hiding the mistreatment of terror suspects from their British allies. Baroness Manningham-Buller, giving a lecture in London last night, said the US was “very keen” to prevent Britain discovering how they were getting vital intelligence. She cited the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident, who was held at Guantanamo Bay after the 9/11 attacks and provided his captors with useful intelligence which was passed on the the UK security services. She was unaware until 2007, she said, that he had been subjected to waterboarding. Read Article
Guardian – All dogs are to be compulsorily microchipped so that their owners can be more easily traced under a crackdown on dangerous dogs to be unveiled today. The package will include extending the dangerous dogs law to cover attacks by dogs on private property to protect postmen, and making third-party insurance compulsory so that victims can be financially compensated. Read Article
Reuters – The Dutch government wants to sell 21 million unused H1N1 flu vaccine doses back to their manufacturers after they proved unnecessary and no other country wanted to buy them, the Health Ministry said on Saturday. Read article
Associated Press – WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama stood with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Tuesday and pledged that the United States would work with its ally, even as Greece’s enormous debts sparked frenzied trading. Papandreou said he outlined European proposals in his White House meeting and Obama reacted positively to European ideas about cracking down on currency speculation. He also said the issue would be discussed at the next meeting of the Group of 20 summit of leading and emerging economies in June. Read Article
Telegraph – A far-Right candidate for Austria’s presidential election has brought the country’s dark past to the surface again, by denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial. Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional leader of the Freedom Party (FPOe), looks likely to be the only candidate to run against the incumbent, President Heinz Fischer, on April 25. But her comments supporting the scrapping of the tough prohibition law have renewed the debate about a heritage with which the country, which was under Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, has never fully come to terms. Austrian leaders and the press already fear for the country’s image abroad. Under the 1947 Verbotsgesetz law, anyone who seeks to set up a Nazi organisation, propagates Nazi ideology or denies Nazi crimes can be jailed for up to 20 years. Read article
Ed – is it democratic to suppress or ban political ideologies, no matter how repulsive they might be to the majority? Surely a healthy democracy will ensure good debate and the election of those fit to represent their constituents.
Reuters – Britain will on Wednesday propose to force banks to reveal how many of their staff earn top wages, in steps that go further than previous proposals, financial services minister Paul Myners said. The government’s Walker review on bankers’ pay had previously laid out proposals for such moves. “This will include proposals for narrower disclosure bands than Walker proposed, starting with salary packages below the one million pound floor that he suggested,” Myners said in a speech in London. Read Article
The Times – Germany has blamed a “wall of silence” created by the Vatican for hampering investigations into decades of abuse of schoolchildren by Catholic clergy. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the Justice Minister, said that Vatican secrecy rules, including a 2001 directive requiring even the most serious cases to be investigated first by Church officials, were complicating efforts to shed light on claims of abuse at some of Germany’s most highly regarded schools. Read Article
Guardian – The digital economy bill will become law before Parliament is dissolved at the beginning of April ahead of a likely general election in May, senior media industry figures believe. That will usher in controversial laws enabling rights owners to cut off or restrict internet access for users who download films and music illegally. The bill contains measures designed to combat piracy. If it becomes law it will compel internet service providers including Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media to pass on information about persistent offenders to rights holders. Read Article
Nature – Temperature records gleaned from clamshells reveal accuracy of Norse sagas. Oxygen isotopes in clamshells may provide the most detailed record yet of global climate change, according to a team of scientists who studied a haul of ancient Icelandic molluscs. Most measures of palaeoclimate provide data on only average annual temperatures,… Read Article
Mail Online – A commuter in a diabetic coma, an 89-year-old man and children as young as 12 – just some of the targets of British police armed with skin-piercing 50,000-volt Taser guns. As the Home Office investigates bringing an even more powerful rifle version to Britain, Jason Benetto reports on the slow creep of arms onto our streets. Read Article
BBC – Former priest Bill Carney was named as one of the worst cases in Dublin’s Catholic diocese in the Murphy report into clerical abuse there. However, for the last 10 years he has been free to live quietly in Britain. Newsnight’s Olenka Frenkiel has investigated his case and tracked him down in the Canary Islands. Read Article
Reuters – Portugal became the latest euro zone country to announce austerity measures to rein in a ballooning budget deficit on Monday as debt-stricken Greece urged global action to curb speculation in credit default swaps. The European Commission said it was prepared to propose the creation of an IMF-style European Monetary Fund to cope with future debt crises in the euro single currency zone. Read Article
