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
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
BBC – US President Barack Obama has warned of a second disaster in Haiti, saying people should be under no illusion that the crisis there is over. Mr Obama said the situation in Haiti remained “dire” almost two months after the earthquake struck. He was speaking after talks with Haitian President Rene Preval in Washington. Read article
The Australian – WEST Australian police may have inappropriately fired a Taser three times at a 49-year-old drug user who later died in police custody, an inquest has heard. Today at the inquest into the death of Mark Lewis Conway it was suggested that a police officer used his Taser as a compliance tool, contrary to police training protocols. Mr Conway’s death in August 2007 was caused by a drug overdose and the inquest has heard there is no suggestion the Taser shots contributed to his death. 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
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
AP — Too many pregnant women who want to avoid a repeat cesarean delivery are being denied the chance, concludes a government panel that urged doctors to rethink litigation-spurred policies that have swung the pendulum back toward the days of “once a C-section, always a C-section.” Fifteen years ago, nearly 3 in 10 women who had a first C-section were able to deliver their next baby vaginally, a trend called VBAC for “vaginal birth after cesarean.” 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
The Australian – POLICE will be given new powers to use people’s secret tax details against them in criminal trials, under legislation that weakens the privacy protection over Australians’ tax returns. For the first time, prosecutors will be able to use private tax information as evidence in court for “serious offences”, including identity theft, money laundering, drug-smuggling, corporate fraud, sexual slavery and terrorism. Read Article
Guardian – The government will attempt today to have a case about torture heard entirely behind closed doors in a move that some lawyers say would extend secrecy to a new area of hearings, overriding ancient principles of English law. This morning a case will come before three appeal judges in London in which seven men are seeking damages against the government for mistreatment during what they say was their “extraordinary rendition” and torture facilitated by the British security services. Read Article
The Independent – Two IT workers at a suburban Philadelphia school district that secretly activated webcams on students’ school-issued laptops are on paid leave amid an FBI wiretap investigation. Lower Merion School District officials insist the move is not meant to suggest wrongdoing by the veteran employees. They have said the webcams were only activated to find missing laptops, and not for any rogue purpose. Read Article
NewScientist – ABU GHRAIB and Guantanamo Bay: two names that have become synonymous in many people’s minds with torture and abuse of human rights by American interrogators. When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, he set out to erase the stain such practices have left on America’s image. The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group established later that year has as one of its stated aims to interrogate without brute force and to employ “scientifically proven” techniques – though without saying what these might be. Read Article
BBC – An American medical charity has warned that thousands of Burmese refugees in Bangladesh are facing starvation. Physicians for Human Rights said government authorities are preventing the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, from receiving adequate care. Read Article
BBC – Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests. The survey – of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries – found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide. Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens. International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access. Read Article
Yahoo! (AFP) – Asia is “missing” about 96 million women — the vast majority in China and India — who died from discriminatory health care and neglect or who were never born at all, the UN estimated on Monday. Female infanticide and sex-selective abortion have caused a severe gender imbalance in Asia, and the problem is worsening despite rapid economic growth in the region, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report said. Read Article
CNN – Sitting at the kitchen table in his small house, Steven Butler has trouble even with a very simple question. He cannot tell you the day of the week or the month, and he has to have the help of a calendar to tell you the year. “Once a moment is gone, it’s gone,” said his brother and caregiver, David Butler says in an interview to air on tonight’s “Campbell Brown”. “He can’t remember any good times, birthday parties, Christmas, any event.” On October 7, 2006, Steven Butler, by his own admission, was drunk and disorderly. He refused an order from a police officer in his hometown to get off a city bus. The officer used his Taser ECD (officially, an “Electronic Control Device”) three times. Read Article
BBC – Human rights organisations in Cambodia have called for the government to tackle the rising incidence of rape. A report by Amnesty International says victims have limited access to justice, medical services and counselling. It claims that rape cases are often settled by cash payments to the victim – or bribes to the authorities. Read article
The Australian – COMMENT: It’s often said that a good society is measured by how fairly it treats the poor, the underprivileged and those facing court. That’s why there are strict limitations in Australian courts on the admissibility of prior offences and evidence showing that an accused has acted similarly in the past. The concern is that such circumstantial material can unfairly prejudice a jury against an accused and lead to wrongful convictions. Read Article
BBC – Thousands of demonstrators have marched through Spanish cities to protest against a bill that will make it easier for women to seek an abortion. In Madrid, families with young children carried banners, flags and balloons and chanted “No to abortion! Yes to life!”.
The bill, already passed by parliament, introduces abortion on demand up to 14 weeks into a pregnancy. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – The European Union is planning to create a new super-prosecutor who would have powers to bring cases against British citizens without the approval of the Crown Prosecution Service or the Government. Read Article
International Business Times – War-torn Afghanistan will set up an Internet filter to block Internet sites with sexual or violent content, a minister said. But the government denied that it was another attempt at censorship or would include the Taliban’s website. Read Article
The Independent – Tomorrow is the 100th International Women’s Day, and women everywhere this weekend are marching, celebrating and protesting. Emily Dugan on the journey of the century: It was in a dingy socialist meeting hall a century ago in Copenhagen that women from 17 countries gathered and launched the idea of a day which would champion the rights of women. All over the world this weekend women are marching, celebrating and protesting, not least in London where last night thousands of people thronged Trafalgar Square to mark the 100th International Women’s Day. Read Article
Daily Tech – Findings could lead to appeals nationwide, if verified. “You’ve got the wrong man! I’m innocent!” Many perfectly guilty criminals insist that, but what if it was true? That indeed could be true in some cases, as a new revelation casts doubt on certain verdicts in the U.S. Justice system delivered since the mid-1990s. It stems from an important finding made by a team co-led by Nickolas Papadopoulos, a Johns Hopkins Universitygeneticist. The team discovered that DNA from tiny symbiotic bacterial-descendants called mitochondria that live in our cells and give them energy varies from tissue to tissue in the human body. Read Article
USA Today – Eleven major airports will begin using body scanners to screen passengers as the Transportation Security Administration launches a plan to buy 1,000 of the machines over the next two years.The scanners can look under passengers’ clothing in order to detect weapons and explosives. Boston Logan International Airport received one new scanner this week and will get two more next week. All will go into the same terminal. Among the other airports getting the scanners are Los Angeles International, Chicago O’Hare and Charlotte Douglas International.The Transportation Security Administration bought 150 scanners in September using $25 million from the federal stimulus package. It plans to buy 300 more this year and 500 next year Read Article
