![Prison population at all-time high]()
The prison population in England and Wales has reached an all-time high for the third week running, new figures have revealed .
The total number of prisoners hit 87,214, 94 higher than last week's record high of 87,120 and about 1,600 short of the usable operational capacity of 88,818, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics showed.
The rising prison population has been fuelled by tough sentences for those involved in last month's riots along with two-thirds of defendants being held on remand, compared with just one in 10 for serious offences last year.
As well as the increase in the proportion of defendants being held on remand over the riots, sentences for those involved in the violence and looting were also tougher - those involved in the riots have been jailed for an average of 10.4 months for violent disorder, compared with an average of 5.3 months last year.
For burglary, the average for those involved in the riots was 14.1 months, compared with 8.8 months last year.
But no prison places are currently activated under Operation Safeguard, which would involve using cells at police stations as accommodation for prisoners, the MoJ said.
Other contingency plans could involve bringing on new accommodation early, using extra places in the public and private estate or reopening mothballed accommodation.
The usable operational capacity is the total number of prisoners that the jails in England and Wales can hold, taking into account control, security and the proper operation of the planned regime, less 2,000 places.
This reflects the constraints imposed by the need to provide separate accommodation for different prisoners, perhaps because of their sex, age, security category, conviction status, or because of a single cell risk assessment. It also reflects the geographical distribution of the places, the MoJ said.
The long-running dispute between Basildon Council and Dale Farm residents is returning to the High Court.
On Monday, the travellers won a last-gasp injunction preventing the authority from clearing the UK's largest illegal site after Mr Justice Edwards-Stuart said there was a fear that measures "may go further" than the terms of the enforcement notices.
He directed that Basildon Council should serve a schedule on the residents specifying what was proposed for the 51 unauthorised plots on a plot-by-plot basis.
The authority has complied with that order and is now set to put its case before the judge in London.
The Dale Farm representatives have accepted that the enforcement notices were valid in themselves and that the council was entitled to proceed in conformity with them.
However, there was concern about "over-enforcement" resulting in total clearance - including structures entitled to be there.
Granting a temporary reprieve, the judge told them: "I appreciate it is a deeply unpleasant situation but unfortunately this is a road which is reaching its end and there is sadly no mileage in prolonging the agony."
Bailiffs working for Basildon Council had planned to start the clearance of the six-acre site on Monday, but the operation - which is estimated to be costing more than £1 million per day - was postponed while the legal wrangling is resolved.
Basildon Council says that, if it is successful, it will be in a position to start the clearance as early as Saturday.
Members of the International Expert Group Meeting on Forced Evictions, meeting at the UN Human Settlements Programme in headquarters in Nairobi, has written to the traveller community of Dale Farm expressing sympathy.
Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that failure to act swiftly over eurozone indebtedness would "lengthen the shadows of uncertainty" looming over the global economy.
In a speech before the Canadian parliament, the premier called on indebted nations to make tough decisions in order to repair their broken balance sheets.
Surplus economies had a role to play too by stimulating demand, and refocusing spending to help deficit countries increase their exports, Mr Cameron suggested.
In Ottawa following a two-day visit to New York, Mr Cameron pressed home the need for quick action to avert the eurozone crisis deepening.
Speaking at the end of a day which saw global markets tank, Mr Cameron called on European nations to show they had the "political will" to "do what is necessary".
He continued: "One way or another, they have to find a fundamental and lasting solution to the heart of the problem - the high level of indebtedness in many euro countries."
High oil and food prices, the Japanese earthquake and stagnating growth in Europe and the US had hampered economic recovery, the PM added. "We are not quite staring down the barrel, but the pattern is clear, the recovery out of the recession for the advanced economies will be difficult," Mr Cameron said.
Reiterating his opposition to Britain ever joining the euro, Mr Cameron said experience had shown that "different countries sometimes need very different economic policies".
But a global response was needed because the size of eurozone problems are now "so big that they have begun to threaten the stability of the world economy," the Prime Minister added.
Mr Cameron has put his name to a letter to G20 president France - also signed by the leaders of Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico and South Korea - warning that the path out of recession will be "difficult" and arguing that the world's biggest economies must agree at the Cannes Summit in November to work together to increase global demand without creating unsustainable imbalances.
Unions representing 375,000 teachers across the UK have launched an "historic" partnership aimed at strengthening their links ahead of the "challenges" they face.
The unions - the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO), the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Ulster Teachers' Union (UTU) - agreed to work as partners in future campaigns.
They said that teachers faced the same challenges despite the differing education systems in parts of the country.
Many teachers are involved in a row over public-sector pensions, which will see a huge lobby of Parliament in October and a TUC-organised day of action on November 30.
EIS general secretary Ronnie Smith said: "The agreement strengthens each partner by facilitating both the sharing of information and ideas, and also joint campaigning on issues that cut across the different education systems within the UK."
Sheila Nunan, general secretary of INTO, said: "This agreement will strengthen existing links and co-operation between the four unions, and will be of great benefit to teachers. By working more closely together all of the unions will be better-placed to meet the significant challenges facing teachers."
NUT leader Christine Blower said: "I am pleased that our close ties with sister unions in the UK have been made stronger by this agreement and I am looking forward to working together on the many common challenges we face as unions committed to publicly-funded and publicly-accountable education provision."
Avril Hall-Callaghan, general secretary of the UTU, said: "Many young people from Northern Ireland travel to colleges elsewhere to obtain their third level qualifications. This historic partnership agreement ensures that no matter what career path they choose to follow within teaching they are covered automatically by one of the 'big four' unions."
London's leading shares index is braced for another rocky day after panic over the state of the global economy triggered its biggest fall in nearly three years.
The FTSE 100 Index closed 4.7% or 246.8 points lower at 5041.6 on Thursday - wiping £64 billion from the value of Britain's biggest companies.
The slump - the biggest points fall since November 2008 - came after America's central bank delivered a gloomy view of the economy and failed to inspire traders with its latest emergency measures, which included a process dubbed Operation Twist.
The US Federal Reserve's warning that there were "significant" risks to the world's biggest economy was joined by disappointing manufacturing figures from Asian powerhouse China and the eurozone.
Meanwhile, Britain joined forces with five other G20 countries to call for decisive and co-ordinated action from the world's leading nations to help the global economy recover from recession.
Global markets had surged in previous days on hopes that the Fed might embark on a third package of quantitative easing, but Operation Twist, designed to keep US interest rates lower for longer, was met with world-wide disappointment
The gloom impacted on the Asian markets, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng index falling 2.3% and South Korea's main Kospi index plunging 4.8% in early trading.
Pacific markets were also hit by sharp losses with Australia's Asx shedding 1.4% and New Zealand's NZX 50 index down 1.8. Financial markets in Japan are closed for a national holiday.
The slumps followed similar market drops across Europe and America on Thursday.
The Dax in Germany dropped 5% while France's CAC-40 fell 5.3% as a similarly shocking performance unfolded on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 3.5% lower.
Scientists at the world's largest physics lab say they have clocked subatomic particles travelling faster than light, a feat that - if true - would break a fundamental pillar of science.
The readings have astounded researchers so much that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.
"This would be such a sensational discovery if it were true that one has to treat it extremely carefully," said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or Cern, who was not involved in the experiment.
Nothing is supposed to move faster than light, at least according to Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity: The famous E (equals) mc2 equation. That stands for energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
But neutrinos - one of the strangest well-known particles in physics - have now been observed smashing past this cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second.
Cern said a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles away in Italy travelled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant. But given the enormity of the find, they still spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there were no flaws in the experiment.
The Cern researchers are now looking to the United States and Japan to confirm the results.
A similar neutrino experiment at Fermilab near Chicago would be capable of running the tests, said Stavros Katsanevas, the deputy director of France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research.
Mr Katsanevas, who participated in the Cern experiment, said help could also come from the T2K experiment in Japan, though that is currently on hold after the country's devastating earthquake and tsunami in March.
Scientists agree if the results are confirmed, that it would force a fundamental rethink of the laws of nature, starting with the special theory of relativity proposed by Einstein in 1905.
MPs and their staff are spending a "disproportionate" amount of time on expenses claims under the new system introduced following the scandals of 2009, a parliamentary report has found.
The cost of time spent submitting expenses claims is estimated at £2.4 million a year, with 85% of MPs saying that the bureaucratic burden of the new system has eaten into the time they have available to help constituents, said the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The committee said the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) should consider scaling back checks on expenses, particularly for small items and low-risk claims, to deliver "a more proportionate and cost-effective approach to validation".
The current scheme is "expensive to run and does not yet demonstrate value-for-money", with some 38% of claims costing more to process than the value of the sums involved, said the report.
While the total paid out for expenses and staff salaries has fallen by 15% to £118 million since Ipsa's creation - with £19.5 million going on expenses and £98.6 million on salaries - the PAC warned that this may not necessarily represent an efficiency saving.
Some 90% of MPs say that they are using their own money to subsidise their work because the administrative effort involved in making an expense claim is not worthwhile for small items, it found.
The report by the parliamentary spending watchdog also found that Ipsa has done "a good job" in introducing the new expenses system on time, making accurate payments and helping improve public confidence.
Some 99.7% of claims made by MPs are within the rules and Ipsa says that rejections are overwhelmingly due to administrative errors rather than attempted abuse.
PAC chairwoman Margaret Hodge said: "Ipsa did a good job in introducing the new system for paying MPs' expenses. It came in on time, expenses have been paid within the rules and MPs have been reimbursed accurately. There is evidence that public confidence is starting to improve.
"However, the current scheme is expensive to run and does not yet demonstrate value for money. It is striking that 38% of claims are for less money than the average cost of administering them. Ipsa needs to get better at distinguishing between high-value and high-risk claims, which require rigorous checks, and those where the risk of error is low."
Britain's top chief executives are to be given a direct line to individual Government ministers to discuss business concerns, it has been reported.
The bosses of the UK's top 50 companies will be allocated "buddies" as a single point of contact at senior levels of Whitehall departments, according to The Times.
Six ministers across three departments will fill the roles, including Business Secretary Vince Cable, who will deal with oil and gas firms Shell, BP and BG, the paper said.
Other ministers involved include Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Enterprise Minister Mark Prisk and Universities and Science Minister David Willetts.
The idea was contained in the UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) White Paper in February and is intended to maximise business potential in the UK and assist with economic recovery.
The initiative is being led by Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, the Trade and Investment Minister and former chairman and chief executive of HSBC.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Business stressed that the project was not yet live and still in its "very, very early stages".
"There is definitely a need for strategically important companies to have a single point of contact in the Government," she said.
"This is something that's been welcomed by business."
Scotland Yard should not be given any additional national policing functions in the wake of the upheaval caused by the phone-hacking scandal, MPs have said.
While a home still needs to be found for critical national services such as the DNA database, the Police National Database and the Police National Missing Persons Bureau, giving them to Britain's biggest force was not the answer, they said.
Such a move would not be helpful "either for it or for the police service as a whole", the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee warned. The MPs added that the scale of the Government's radical reforms to policing was unprecedented and the scope for mistakes "accordingly large".
Home Secretary Theresa May was trying to achieve too much too fast, creating a "climate of uncertainty" in which no-one could perform at their best, a report on the new landscape of policing found.
It said it was "unacceptable" that, with just over six months before the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) was phased out next spring, there were still no definite decisions about the vast majority of functions it currently performs.
But it warned that, given the resignations of the country's most senior police officer and the officer in charge of counter-terrorism operations over the phone-hacking scandal, Scotland Yard should not be given any additional responsibilities.
The MPs said: "Given the recent upheaval and uncertainty at the Metropolitan Police, following the resignation of the Commissioner (Sir) Paul Stephenson, and Assistant Commissioner John Yates, we do not believe that it would be helpful, either for it or for the police service as a whole, for it to take on any additional national functions at this time."
Sir Paul resigned as Met commissioner in July amid growing controversy about links between senior Scotland Yard officers and executives at News International, which published the News of the World, while the Sunday tabloid was being accused of illegally intercepting voicemail messages.
MPs added that the Home Office should also consider moving the UK's counter-terrorism command from Scotland Yard to the new National Crime Agency after next year's Olympic Games.
Keith Vaz, the committee's chairman, said: "The police perform a difficult and dangerous task on behalf of the public and the continuing uncertainty about the future of many of the bodies involved in policing has the potential to be very damaging."
Shell-shocked investors have been given some respite after the City's worst trading session in nearly three years.
An uneasy calm descended on the London market following Thursday's panic-driven slump of 4.7% or 246 points, with the FTSE 100 Index opening 1%, or 60 points, higher.
Thursday's rout was triggered by alarm over the US Federal Reserve's gloomy view of the economy and its failure to inspire traders with new emergency measures, including a process dubbed Operation Twist.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 3.5 of its value in the last two days - while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 1.9 the day before.
Traders warned that any rally may prove short-lived until there is a political consensus on how to solve the problems in the euro-zone and in many of the other developed economies.
Chris Weston, a trader at IG Markets, said: "Unfortunately for the market, a lack of political leadership seems to be one of the biggest reasons as to why we can't make any meaningful inroads into solving this crisis."
Prime Minister David Cameron has joined forces with the leaders of five other G20 countries to call for decisive and co-ordinated action from the world's leading nations to help the global economy recover from recession.
An open letter to French and current G20 president Nicolas Sarkozy urged the eurozone countries to act swiftly to resolve the crisis in the region, where Greece remains teetering on the brink of a debt default.
It followed grim warnings about the health of the global economy from both the heads of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said the global economy is now in a "danger zone".
Global markets had surged in previous days on hopes that the Fed might embark on a third package of quantitative easing, but Operation Twist, designed to keep US interest rates lower for longer, was met with worldwide disappointment.
Three of the UK's big six power companies want a competition inquiry into the gas and electricity market as a way to restore customer confidence.
Having previously opposed any investigation, the change of heart follows an attack this week by Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, who accused the industry of predatory pricing following a big hike in gas and electricity bills this autumn.
According to the Financial Times (FT), npower, part of German group RWE, now believes that mistrust of the industry by the public is such that a formal investigation may be the only way to restore it.
Volker Beckers, chief executive of RWE npower, said what is needed now is clarity and that if a Competition Commission inquiry achieves that clarity then "let's get on with it".
He added: "We have nothing to hide."
Another German owned group, E.ON, is also now said to want an inquiry following Mr Huhne's comments, saying it may be the only option to get out of "this situation of distrust".
French-owned group EDF was the first of the large power suppliers to advocate a referral earlier this month.
Regulator Ofgem stopped short of referring the industry in March when it concluded its last investigation into the retail energy market, but instead proposed a series of reforms that included simplifying bills to give customers greater clarity over how retail prices relate to wholesale energy costs.
An Ofgem spokesman told the FT that its position had not changed and that the firms should back its reforms if they want to restore customer confidence.
Centrica, the owner of British Gas, is still reportedly opposed to any inquiry.
A mother is under arrest on suspicion of murder after her four-year-old daughter was found dead.
The 31-year-old woman walked into Manchester Royal Infirmary at around 7.15pm on Thursday and "expressed concerns" about the welfare of her child to doctors and nurses.
Staff contacted police, who went to a house on Garthorne Close in Moss Side, around two miles from the hospital. At the address, a two-storey council house, officers found the child's body.
It is understood there are no obvious signs of injury to the child and a post-mortem examination will take place to establish cause of death.
Sources said the woman under arrest is the mother of the child and had gone into the hospital and told staff her daughter was dead. It is believed police are not looking for anyone else in relation to the murder.
A source close to the inquiry described the incident as "sad and tragic".
A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said: "Police have launched a murder inquiry after the death of a four-year-old girl. A 31-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of murder and remains in police custody for questioning."
The star of the original Yorkie chocolate bar adverts who killed his terminally-ill wife has walked free from court after a judge showed mercy on him.
Stuart Mungall, 71, ended the life of former actress Joan, 69, at their home in Tooting, south London, last December.
The prosecution accepted his plea in July of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility caused by depression following the strain of caring for her.
Mungall smiled and was given a thumbs-up sign from supporters in the public gallery at the Old Bailey after being given a 12-month sentence suspended for two years.
Zara Phillips and husband Mike Tindall appeared all smiles as they left their New Zealand hotel on Friday in an apparent show of wedded bliss.
The newlyweds, pictured for the first time since the rugby star was caught on CCTV kissing and hugging a woman in a Queenstown bar, were reunited on Thursday amid speculation that she would have stern words for her husband.
However, Ms Phillips appeared happy and relaxed as she followed Tindall from the Southern Cross Hotel in Dunedin where England's rugby World Cup squad is based. With sunglasses perched on her head and wrapped up in a grey poncho, she showed no hint of strain following last week's nightclub controversy.
The Queen's granddaughter, 30, had always been expected to fly to New Zealand to support the team but it was suggested she brought her flight forward for showdown talks.
Sources have played down Tindall's encounter with the woman in the Altitude Bar, describing her as an "old friend" of the couple, but the 32-year-old rugby star has faced a barrage of questions about the incident.
At a press conference, he insisted he had spent the past few days concentrating on training as he answered questions ahead of England's next match and the 2003 World Cup-winning centre insisted the last week had not been difficult, telling reporters: "You just get on and train."
The pair married at the end of July in Edinburgh in front of the Queen and the Royal Family, and had been apart for more than three weeks before they met on Thursday.
Since the controversial CCTV footage emerged, much of the coverage of England's efforts to win the World Cup have focused on Tindall's night-out.
In the video, he can be seen wrapping his left arm around the woman before they share a kiss. He then bows his head and she grabs it with both hands, kissing his crown. After the footage was posted online, pictures appeared in newspapers around the world.
Jonathan Dixon, a 40-year-old bouncer, has appeared at Queenstown District Court in connection with the CCTV film. He was charged with accessing a computer system for dishonest purposes and was remanded on bail. He did not enter a plea and is due in court again on October 3.
The public sector pensions dispute has remained deadlocked after a leading union insisted it could not sign up to proposals which would increase contributions and raise the retirement age.
Unison, the biggest public sector union with more than 1.1 million members, attacked new proposals put forward by local authority employers aimed at heading off a wave of strikes later in the year.
National officer Heather Wakefield said the proposals would increase pension contributions, worsen the accrual rate and raise the retirement age in the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).
"We have told the employers that we cannot sign up to these plans which are proposed to raise nothing more than a £900 million tax on LGPS members for the Government in the short term.
"Our members in the LGPS are facing attacks on their pay and conditions everywhere, local government pay has been frozen for two years, and inflation is going through the roof. Increases in pension costs are the final straw."
Several unions, representing a range of public sector employees from council and health workers to teachers and school heads, are preparing to hold ballots for industrial action ahead of a Trades Union Congress (TUC) day of action on November 30, with the aim of co-ordinating stoppages.
The National Association of Head Teachers announced that its members will vote from September 29 on whether to strike for the first time in the union's 114-year history.
Talks between union leaders, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander ended with the two sides still a "long way apart", according to TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.
He said after the two-hour meeting at the Cabinet Office that unions remained committed to continuing with the long-running talks but were pressing ahead with planning for industrial action.
A communities and local government department spokesman said: "This is a genuine consultation to which we are committed in order to try and agree a way forward with the unions, and while the talks are ongoing it is obviously disappointing that some unions have decided to be vocal rather than to engage."
The first of 50 Libyan conflict victims who will be treated by the NHS has arrived in Britain.
Abdul Malek El Hamdi, 15, went into surgery at St Mary's Hospital in London upon arrival on Thursday after suffering wounds to his leg during the North African country's civil war.
Abdul was injured when he and a friend found a grenade among weapons stashed at their school by forces loyal to deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi. His friend was killed and Abdul sustained lower limb injuries to his left leg, which led to infection and the risk of amputation.
Shehan Hettiaratchy, lead clinician for plastic and reconstructive surgery at St Mary's Hospital, described Abdul as "robust" and said he was doing well following the operation.
He said: "When Abdul arrived he had a low temperature and there was malodour coming from his left leg, which we found to be infected. Such infections are potentially life-threatening, so we took the decision to take him straight to the operating theatre to clean up the leg.
"He has responded incredibly well to the operation and was sitting up and had a big grin on his face. Abdul is a very robust little kid and has a strong relationship with his father, who has pushed to get him into the kind of place where he would receive the right treatment."
Some 50 other wounded Libyans are currently being assessed by their country's health department, which will decide who should be sent to hospitals in the UK.
A Department of Health spokesman said: "The Libyan government has asked the NHS to provide care for 50 patients who have been injured as a result of the recent conflict. Their care will be funded by the Libyan government. Careful attention is being paid in planning this treatment to ensure that no NHS patient is adversely affected.
"The patients will be treated in specialist NHS hospitals around the country on the basis of their clinical need and requirements."
The Department of Health is working in co-ordination with the London Ambulance Service and other ambulance services around the country, the UK Border Agency and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to assist the wounded Libyans.
The prison population in England and Wales has reached an all-time high for the third week running, new figures have revealed .
The total number of prisoners hit 87,214, 94 higher than last week's record high of 87,120 and about 1,600 short of the usable operational capacity of 88,818, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics showed.
The rising prison population has been fuelled by tough sentences for those involved in last month's riots along with two-thirds of defendants being held on remand, compared with just one in 10 for serious offences last year.
As well as the increase in the proportion of defendants being held on remand over the riots, sentences for those involved in the violence and looting were also tougher - those involved in the riots have been jailed for an average of 10.4 months for violent disorder, compared with an average of 5.3 months last year.
For burglary, the average for those involved in the riots was 14.1 months, compared with 8.8 months last year.
But no prison places are currently activated under Operation Safeguard, which would involve using cells at police stations as accommodation for prisoners, the MoJ said.
Other contingency plans could involve bringing on new accommodation early, using extra places in the public and private estate or reopening mothballed accommodation.
The usable operational capacity is the total number of prisoners that the jails in England and Wales can hold, taking into account control, security and the proper operation of the planned regime, less 2,000 places.
This reflects the constraints imposed by the need to provide separate accommodation for different prisoners, perhaps because of their sex, age, security category, conviction status, or because of a single cell risk assessment. It also reflects the geographical distribution of the places, the MoJ said.
Murdered British student Meredith Kercher has been "completely forgotten" in the four years since her death, her grieving family has said.
The 21-year-old's sister, Stephanie Kercher, expressed regret that the media coverage of the case had become focused solely on Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, who were convicted of the killing in the Italian town of Perugia in 2007.
Speaking on Italian television show Porta a Porta, she said: "In these four years, Meredith has been completely forgotten. But we need to find justice for her, we need to find the truth for her.
"There's not much of Meredith in the media. There aren't photos of her in the media. The focus has completely moved away from Meredith to Amanda and Raffaele.
"And Meredith was so lovely - an intelligent, kind, caring person."
Her mother, Arline Kercher, described her daughter as a "very loving child, a very sweet girl".
She said: "She was always ready to help you. I will never, ever forget her."
The family, who rarely give interviews to the media, were speaking just before American Knox, 24, and Italian Sollecito, 26, learn whether they will be freed from prison or have their convictions upheld.
They are due to return to court in Perugia for the start of the closing arguments in their appeal process. The verdict is expected to come some time around the end of the month or the start of October.
Knox's family hope that a review of the DNA evidence used in the original trial - which indicated it may have been flawed - will help persuade the court that her conviction should be overturned.
An American businessman who drunkenly launched a foul-mouthed rant at staff on a British Airways (BA) flight has been jailed for three months.
Mortgage consultant Timothy Bradley was told by a judge at London's Isleworth Crown Court that his behaviour on the aircraft had been "foul".
He flew into a rage after staff on a BA flight from Phoenix to London refused to serve him more alcohol.
Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson said: "You were thoroughly abusive, threatening, making foul remarks to a number of people and Mr (John) Manson (head of cabin crew) quite plainly thought that he was about to be attacked."
The court heard that Bradley had been drinking with friends before boarding the flight in Phoenix, Arizona. He had beers and bourbon cocktails, and continued to drink alcohol once aboard the flight to Heathrow.
Bradley began chatting up a female cabin crew member in the business class section of the plane, Charlotte Howell, who felt uneasy and was replaced by a male colleague, Stuart Williams.
When Mr Williams refused to serve the businessman any more alcoholic drinks, Bradley said: "Who the f*** are you to judge me? You don't f****** know me, how old are you?"
Mr Manson was brought in to try to calm the situation, but said Bradley was immediately aggressive and the American was so close to him that spit ended up on his clothes.
He asked the crew manager: "Do you think I'm going to stab the pilot?" He was arrested when the plane landed on August 20 and was jailed for three months for being drunk on a plane and one month to run concurrently for common assault. Bradley had previously admitted both offences.
A spokesman for British Airways said: "We will not tolerate abusive behaviour towards our staff or customers. Although our crew are highly trained to deal with such situations on board, we will always look to support prosecutions where appropriate. We are pleased that the court has recognised the seriousness of this incident."
