November 22, 2010, 9:56 pm
![Image]( "Hundreds dead in Cambodia stampede")
The death toll from a stampede at a Cambodian festival has risen to 378 with hundreds more injured.
Rescuers are trawling a muddy river for more bodies after Monday's disaster, when a panic-stricken crowd of thousands tried to flee over a narrow bridge. Many people were crushed underfoot or fell over its sides into the water.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan said total casualties reached over 1,000, with 378 people killed and 755 injured. He said this was not the final count.
The prime minister called it the country's biggest tragedy since the murderous 1970s reign of the Khmer Rouge.
He ordered an investigation into the cause of the stampede and declared Thursday a national day of mourning. Government ministries were ordered to fly the flag at half-mast.
The prime minister said that the government would pay the families of each dead victim £780 for funeral expenses and provide £156 for each injured person. His special adviser Om Yentieng denied some reports that the victims were electrocuted by lighting cables and that the panic was sparked by a mass food poisoning.
Authorities had estimated that more than two million people would descend on Phnom Penh for the three-day water festival, the Bon Om Touk, which marks the end of the rainy season and whose main attraction is traditional boat races along the river.
In this year's event 420 of the long, sleek boats competed, with crews of up to 80 racers each.
The last race ended on Monday evening local time, the last night of the holiday, and the panic started later on Koh Pich - Diamond Island - a long spit of land wedged in a fork in the river where a concert and exhibition were being held.
Soft drink seller So Cheata said the trouble began when about 10 people fell unconscious in the press of the crowd. She said that set off a panic, which then turned into a stampede, with many people caught underfoot.
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November 22, 2010, 10:19 pm
![Image]( "Miliband sets out vision for Labour")
Labour have moved into a two-point opinion poll lead as Ed Miliband sought to quash murmurs about his leadership by outlining policy and party review plans to his MPs and peers.
On his return from two weeks' paternity leave, he set out plans for a policy review which will start with a "blank sheet" on many key issues as well as a fundamental shake-up of the party itself.
Despite another encouraging poll - ICM for the Guardian putting Labour at a three-year high of 38% - he warned it faced a "long haul" to get back into power.
More details are to be unveiled at a high-level party event in Gillingham, Kent, at the weekend, but the influence of trade unions is among areas under review. Shadow cabinet ministers will be asked to lead working groups including outside experts in their relevant fields as part of the policy review.
Mr Miliband's spokeswoman insisted that there was no dissent among those present at the behind-closed-doors gathering in the Commons. Questions about party unity were revived, however, when shadow chancellor Alan Johnson again refused to publicly endorse the leader's call for a permanent 50p tax rate for high earners.
The Labour leader had declared in a newspaper article that it was "about values and fairness and about the kind of society you believe in and it's important to me". But Mr Johnson repeated his view that the measure was needed because of the deficit - and slipped up by calling the leader "Red" instead of "Ed" on television in the process.
In what was said by party sources to have been one of the best-received passages of his address to the PLP, Mr Miliband said: "You see the Tories and the Liberal Democrats doing terrible things and it is frustrating. But opposition is about the long-haul and digging in."
He said rising membership levels and good local by-election results meant Labour should be "optimistic but not complacent" about the future. Initial campaigning should centre on the debate over proving the coalition's deficit reduction strategy is "a gamble" and on the row over tuition fees, he said.
The poll gave Labour its highest rating since Gordon Brown abandoned plans for an early general election in October 2007, gaining two points to 38%. The Conservatives fell three to 36% and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners dropped two to 14% - most of those lost voters switching to smaller parties though, not Labour.
The Tories sought to capitalise further on disagreements between Mr Miliband and Mr Johnson over key tax policies. Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Michael Fallon said: "It is now clear that Ed Miliband has no authority over his shadow cabinet."
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November 22, 2010, 10:19 pm
![Image]( "Cowen defies snap election calls")
The Irish government will put the finishing touches to a drastic 15 billion-euro savings plan after prime minister Brian Cowen defied calls for a snap election.
After a day of political drama that saw the junior coalition Green Party call for a general election, ministers are expected to discuss the four-year rescue package before Wednesday's publication.
An embattled Mr Cowen said he wanted to stay in power to pass the crucial six billion euro (£5.1 billion) savings in next month's budget. But despite opposition demands for an immediate election, he declared the drastic cuts were in the national interest.
The Greens had earlier stunned the prime minister by issuing a January deadline for a general election. In response, Mr Cowen said he planned to dissolve parliament in the new year.
The prime minister was dumped into the political crisis matching the country's economic chaos less than 24 hours after the Cabinet signed off on a multi-billion bailout - unaware his two colleagues in the Green Party, leader John Gormley and Eamon Ryan, spent Saturday plotting an exit strategy.
Mr Cowen denied he felt betrayed. After an emergency meeting with Fianna Fail cabinet members in Government Buildings, the taoiseach dismissed talk of a heave against him or that he had been pushed by the Greens into agreeing to go to the polls, and said all colleagues had given him full support, including Mr Gormley.
He called for solidarity on the 15 billion euro (£13 billion) four-year road map to recovery and the estimated 90 billion euro (£77 billion) bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund and Europe. The 150-page four-year plan, which is being inspected by experts from the IMF and European Commission, will contain significant reforms to the tax system, with new levies in property and water on the cards and cuts to social welfare.
Mr Cowen is coming under intense pressure to step down from within and outside his ruling Fianna Fail party, with the opposition and two independent TDs demanding an immediate poll. Several Fianna Fail backbenchers have also warned that Mr Cowen's time is up.
Speculation is intensifying that the government may not make it to the New Year, with a razor-thin majority to pass the worst budget in the state's history on December 7 and a by-election looming on Thursday.
Monday saw bank shares come under pressure in the UK and America amid the uncertainty over the details of the Irish rescue package. Fears the debt troubles would soon erupt in other embattled eurozone countries, such as Portugal and Spain, also dragged the euro lower against the pound and dollar before the currency rallied ahead of Mr Cowen's statement.
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November 22, 2010, 10:19 pm
![Image]( "North Korea threatens more attacks")
North Korea has threatened to continue launching strikes against South Korea if it violates their disputed sea border.
The warning followed its bombardment of a South Korean island near the western border.
South Korean officials said the barrage set buildings on fire and killed at least two marines after North Korea warned the south to halt military drills in the area.
North Korea's supreme military command said if the border was violated "even 0.001 millimetre" that it would "launch merciless military retaliatory strikes."
South Korea said it had returned fire and scrambled fighter jets in response to the attack from the north, and said bombardment of civilian areas violated the 1953 armistice halting the Korean War. The two sides technically remain at war because a peace treaty was never negotiated.
The skirmish came amid high tension over North Korea's claim that it has a new uranium enrichment facility and just six weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il unveiled his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his heir apparent.
The United States, which has tens of thousands of troops stationed in South Korea, condemned the attack and called on North Korea to "halt its belligerent action."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged Pyongyang to refrain from further attacks, which he described as "unprovoked".
The North's artillery struck the small South Korean-held island of Yeonpyeong, which houses military installations and a small civilian population and which has been the focus of two previous deadly battles between the Koreas.
The firing came amid South Korean military drills in the area. North Korea's military had sent a message to South Korea's armed forces earlier to demand that the drills stop, but the South continued them, a military official said.
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November 22, 2010, 10:36 pm
![Image]( "Child services 'under pressure''")
Children's social services are under enormous pressure as they struggle to cope with increasing workloads, according to Ofsted's annual report.
It found that one in three local councils inspected this year - 10 in total - were failing to keep children and young people safe.
Inadequate authorities were a "real cause for concern", the watchdog said.
The inspectorate warned that social services were facing "significant challenges", with more public scrutiny on what councils were doing to keep children safe than ever before. At the same time there has been a rise in demand for social workers' time.
But many councils are facing staff shortages and heavy caseloads mean children are forced to wait for the help they need.
Between March 2009 and March this year, there was an 11% rise in referrals to children's services. The number of initial assessments increased by 12% and the number of children subject to child protection plans rose by 4.7%. The rise in demand has come after several high-profile child protection cases, including that of Baby P.
The report says: "Significant challenges face social care services in many local authorities from several sources. Public and media scrutiny of safeguarding issues has never been greater. There is pressure to bring about improvement."
It adds: "Staff shortages are a problem in many areas and the problem of heavy workload emerges again and again. Children can wait too long for the response they need as a result of high caseloads."
According to the national social work survey, 64% of social workers said they did not have enough time to spend with the children and young people assigned to them, Ofsted noted.
Of the 29 local authorities inspected, around one in three was not keeping children and young people safe. The 10 authorities whose children's services were rated inadequate for safeguarding issues this year are Cornwall, Warrington, Leeds, Sandwell, Calderdale, Peterborough, Nottinghamshire, Salford, Birmingham and Essex.
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November 22, 2010, 10:36 pm
![Image]( "Venables child porn review released")
Only 24-hour surveillance could have stopped James Bulger's killer descending into lawlessness and amassing an extensive collection of child pornography, a review is expected to find.
Probation officers will be cleared of any major errors in the supervision of Jon Venables, 27, who was jailed for two years in July after he was caught with sick images of youngsters on his computer.
But the report will say that Venables - who murdered two-year-old James with Robert Thompson when they were just 10 - could have been given more therapy and more help to enhance his employment prospects after being released from jail with a new identity.
He was under supervision by a variety of authorities but built up a stash of indecent pictures. Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation union Napo, said: "Supervision of Jon Venables was extremely difficult because of his notoriety and the need for tight security."
The results of the review, which will be announced by Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, will show that only 24-hour surveillance could have stopped Venables.
"The only way that his drinking, his trips to Liverpool and his accumulation of child pornography could have been prevented would have been through 24-hour surveillance, which would have been extremely expensive and implausible," Mr Fletcher said.
"There are a number of criticisms that are made with the benefit of hindsight. For example, he could have received more therapy and more could have been done to enhance his employment prospects.
"But the same criticism could be made of all people on probation's books and there's no guarantee that additional therapy would have been helpful. He was in full-time work and attempts were made to try to enhance his prospects. But because of the sensitive nature of the case, supervision was always going to be difficult."
It was in February this year that Venables was arrested and recalled over child pornography allegations. Evidence later emerged that he had an "extensive history of searching for and downloading indecent images of children using the internet".
James's mother, Denise Fergus, condemned the two-year sentence as "simply not enough". Mrs Fergus and her spokesman said they were "surprised and concerned" that Venables had not been recalled for breaching his licence.
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November 22, 2010, 10:36 pm
![Image]( "Britain 'can afford Irish bailout'")
The UK can afford a multi-billion bailout of the Irish economy, Chancellor George Osborne insisted as he sought to ease Tory backbench concerns over the move.
Mr Osborne has signalled that the British contribution to an international bailout package for Dublin is likely to be around £7 billion.
MPs will have a vote on a bi-lateral loan to be offered alongside a wider deal being drawn up by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, he confirmed.
But the UK is also tied in to an EU mechanism that would leave it liable to pick up the bill if Ireland defaulted on loans guaranteed against the Brussels budget.
Mr Osborne said that was "highly unlikely" to happen but was warned by MPs of public anger at taxpayers' cash being used to prop up a foreign economy at a time of cuts at home. And the situation has riled Tory eurosceptics who are furious that the country is being forced to help despite not being part of the eurozone.
"This is a loan that we can afford to make and will get back," Mr Osborne said as he made a statement to the Commons to explain the proposals.
The Irish government is meanwhile putting the finishing touches to a drastic 15 billion-euro savings plan after prime minister Brian Cowen defied calls for a snap election.
An embattled Mr Cowen said on Monday he wanted to stay in power to pass the crucial six billion euro (£5.1 billion) savings in next month's budget. He said he planned to dissolve the Dail (parliament) in the new year, despite calls from coalition partners to hold an election before the year is out.
Bank shares came under pressure in the UK and America amid the uncertainty over the details of the Irish rescue package. The FTSE 100 Index ended nearly 1% lower, as investors fretted over the impact of the crisis on other lenders.
Part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland, which is seen as being the most vulnerable in terms of Irish lending through its Ulster Bank subsidiary, fell nearly 5% while shares in fellow taxpayer backed Lloyds Banking Group dropped 4%.
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November 22, 2010, 10:36 pm
![Image]( "Immigration cap plan to be revealed")
The level of the Government's proposed immigration cap is due to be announced by Home Secretary Theresa May.
The number of migrant workers coming to Britain from outside the EU should be cut to between 37,400 and 43,700 next year, down between 13% and 25% compared with 2009, experts on the Migration Advisory Committee (Mac) said last week.
But the Government's advisers warned that students and family visas will also have to be slashed if the Government is to fulfil its pledge to bring net migration down from 196,000 to the tens of thousands by 2015.
The number of students coming to Britain from outside the EU will also need to be cut, perhaps by more than 87,000, as will the number of people travelling to the UK for working holidays and those who come to work as domestic servants or on creative and media visas.
Work-related migration accounts for just 20% of the overall reduction needed for the Government to reach its target, meaning non-EU students must make up 60% of the cut with the final 20% coming from family visas and their dependants, Mac said. Two-thirds of the non-EU migrants who enter the UK come on student visas, with more than half of these studying courses below degree level.
Mrs May said she would crack down on non-EU students coming to privately-funded colleges and to study courses that were below degree level as she seeks to make eligibility criteria for visas more selective. But in a key speech on immigration earlier this month she added that she will do nothing to prevent those coming to study degree-level courses.
The limit proposed by Mac included a cap on intra-company transfers (ICTs), which are used by firms to bring their own people into the country to do specific jobs and account for 22,000 of the 36,000 tier-two visas.
The BBC reported that the cap will be set at 43,000, and will not apply to intra-company transfers involving employees earning more than £40,000.
The director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that an announcement along these lines would be "good news for Britain and good news for business".
Mr Frost added: "Clearly, the Government has a mandate to bring down net immigration, but at a time when we are trying to squeeze every bit of growth out of the economy, changes to migration policy must not harm UK competitiveness."
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November 22, 2010, 10:36 pm
![Image]( "Police on 'tightrope' at protests")
Police are working harder than ever to identify violent activists aiming to disrupt legitimate political protest, the head of a controversial police intelligence unit has said.
Detective Chief Superintendent Adrian Tudway, who took over the role of national co-ordinator for domestic extremism last week, said more resources are being invested in identifying potential flashpoints.
He said investigators must walk a "tightrope" as they target the small minority willing to break the law and damage the ability of everyone else to make their voices heard.
Speaking ahead of a wave of fresh demonstrations against rising student tuition fees, Mr Tudway said his officers focus on the "fringe" where protest "spills over" into violence and disorder. Asked if more work is being done in the wake of the Millbank rioting to identify those suspected of plotting to commit crime during protests, Mr Tudway replied: "Absolutely."
He said: "It is quite right in our role as Acpo (Association of Chief Police Officers) goalkeeper to watch where the social protests are going and how they are developing and to try, where possible, to identify flashpoints."
Mr Tudway oversees the work of three units tasked with monitoring the activities of groups, from animal rights activists to environmental protesters and other single issue militant groups. The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), National Domestic Extremism team and National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU) employ a staff of about 100 with an £8.1 million budget.
The three units will be rebranded and brought under the wing of the Metropolitan Police from their current home at Acpo by next summer. The unit could face a further move to the National Crime Agency (NCA) once it takes over the responsibilities of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and other bodies.
The domestic extremism units have come under fire for using often intrusive surveillance tactics to identify hundreds of people who have attended protests before sharing the information with other forces.
Mr Tudway, who has worked as deputy to his predecessor, Assistant Chief Constable Anton Setchell, since January, said intelligence officials do not examine the work of trade or student unions.
The former Met detective said: "We would not look at organisations like that because constitutionally that would be wrong. But what we are obliged to do is where there are crossovers from protest into extreme behaviour, whether public disorder or criminality. If you compare the English position with that across Europe, in most European countries the domestic security service have the remit for this."
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November 22, 2010, 10:36 pm
![Image]( "Hopes fade for New Zealand miners")
New Zealand's prime minister said hope is fading for two Britons and 27 other coal miners missing for four days underground after an explosion.
John Key said police were now planning for the possible loss of life following the massive blast in the mine, now swirling with toxic gases, and told parliament it was still too dangerous to enter the mine to find what had happened to the men.
He said he shared the families' frustration that a rescue team could not be sent in because of the toxic gas levels in the mine and said the miners were tough, resourceful and stoic men who looked after each other in the same way a father looked out for a son.
Pete Rodger, 40, from Perthshire, and Malcolm Campbell, 25, from St Andrews, Fife, are among the group of 29 miners missing following Friday's blast.
Earlier, Superintendent Gary Knowles said it still remained too dangerous to send rescue teams into the damaged pit, more than three days after the explosion at the Pike River mine in Atarau on South Island.
It is believed that a build-up of methane caused the accident. The ongoing presence of high levels of the gas has so far thwarted attempts to send in rescue workers.
In a further blow, a remote-controlled robot sent into the mine has broken down. Authorities said they were hoping for more advanced equipment to be flown in from outside New Zealand to help the rescue effort.
Meanwhile, workers continued to use a diamond-tipped drill to bore through layers of hard rock to get closer to tunnels where some of the miners are thought to be trapped. Cameras and listening equipment will be lowered into the bore hole in a bid to give experts a clearer picture of conditions, and potentially pick up any signs of life.
Rescuers also released footage of the explosion at the mine entrance. The closed circuit TV footage, which has been seen by the miners' families, showed a wall of white dust and stones surging from the entrance as the underground blast rips through the mine.
Pike River mine chief executive Peter Whittall said dust from the blast blew across a nearby valley and part of the blast wave shot up the mine's ventilation shaft, tearing off vents at the top. He added that footage of the explosion had been "quite sobering" for the families.
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November 25, 2010, 6:55 pm
![Image]( "Fresh attack heard on Korean island")
Artillery fire has been heard on the Yellow Sea island attacked earlier this week by North Korea, South Korea has said.
Military chiefs said the artillery was heard twice on the Yeonpyeong island, as the North warned that US-South Korean military drills planned for the weekend were pushing the peninsula to the brink of war.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said two explosive sounds were heard on Yeonpyeong, while television news reporters also reported a third blast.
In its "brink of war" warning, the Korean Central News Agency added: "Gone are the days when verbal warnings are served only."
North Korea's army and people were "now greatly enraged" and "getting fully ready to give a shower of dreadful fire".
"Escalated confrontation would lead to a war, and he who is fond of playing with fire is bound to perish," the agency said.
North Korea's state news agency said earlier the drills involving South Korean forces and a US nuclear-powered supercarrier south of Tuesday's skirmish between the rival Koreas were a reckless plan by "trigger-happy elements", and the manoeuvres targeted the North.
General Walter Sharp, the US military commander in South Korea, has visited Yeonpyeong island, where four South Koreans - two marines and two civilians - were killed in the hour-long clash when the North unleashed a hail of artillery.
Meanwhile, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak ordered reinforcements for about 4,000 troops on Yeonpyeong and four other Yellow Sea islands, as well as top-level weaponry for the soldiers.
He also upgraded rules of engagement that would create a new category of response when civilian areas were targeted and sacked his defence minister amid the intense criticism over lapses in the country's response to the attack.
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November 25, 2010, 7:07 pm
![Image]( "Cloned cattle meat 'safe to eat'")
Meat and milk from cloned cattle and their offspring is no different to conventional produce and is safe to consume, government advisers have said.
The conclusion could bring food safety authorities a step closer to giving the green light for shops to sell foodstuffs from cloned animals.
The controversial practice of using the embryos of cloned animals to breed livestock came under the spotlight in August when it emerged milk and meat from the offspring of cloned cows had reached shops in the UK.
But the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP) said there was no evidence of any differences between produce from cloned animals and that from conventionally-bred cattle.
Responding to the findings, Andrew Wadge, chief scientist at the Food Standards Agency, said: "In considering this hypothetical application, the ACNFP has confirmed that meat and milk from cloned cattle and their offspring shows no substantial difference to conventionally produced meat and milk and therefore is unlikely to present a food safety risk."
The committee also noted more evidence was needed to show how rearing animals in different environments may affect the meat and milk.
Members concluded any potential differences between cloned animals and conventional animals was unlikely to exist beyond the second generation.
Under European law, foodstuffs - including milk - produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and get approval before they are marketed.
The FSA Board will discuss the issue at its December meeting.
It said the board will consider the opinion of the ACNFP, the recent European Commission proposal to ban meat and milk from clones and their offspring, and any other developments, before giving advice to ministers.
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November 25, 2010, 7:45 pm
![Image]( "Passive smoking death toll revealed")
Passive smoking claims more than 600,000 lives each year around the world - an estimated 1% of all deaths, a major study has found.
Children are the group most heavily exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke and around 165,000 of them die as a result, said researchers.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) study is the first to assess the global impact of inhaling other people's smoke.
Based on 2004 data, the figures show smoking in that year killed almost six million people, either actively or passively by claiming the lives of non-smokers.
Second-hand smoke was believed to have caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma, and 21,400 from lung cancer.
In addition, 10.9 million years of disability-free life were lost globally because of passive smoking.
The findings are published in an early on-line edition of The Lancet medical journal.
Dr Annette Pruss-Ustun, from the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, and her fellow authors wrote: "Exposure to second-hand smoke is still one of the most common indoor pollutants worldwide. On the basis of the proportions of second-hand smoke exposure, as many as 40% of children, 35% of women and 33% of men are regularly exposed to second-hand smoke indoors.
"We have estimated that second-hand smoke caused 603,000 deaths.. worldwide in 2004, corresponding to 1% of all deaths.
"These deaths should be added to the estimated 5.1 million deaths attributable to active smoking to obtain the full effect of both passive and active smoking. Smoking, therefore, was responsible for more than 5.7 million deaths every year in 2004."
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November 25, 2010, 7:45 pm
![Image]( "Passengers evacuated from plane")
Nearly 200 passengers have been evacuated from a plane after it left the runway at Newcastle Airport.
Tyne and Wear Fire Service said the aircraft, a Thomson flight from Lanzarote, "had gone very slightly off the runway" but remained on the asphalt.
No-one was injured in the incident, group manager Keith Carruthers said.
Regular firefighters assisted the dedicated airport fire service with the emergency, which happened to an incoming Boeing 737 shortly after 9pm.
Mr Carruthers said they helped 196 passengers to disembark using the stairs.
"There were no injuries reported from any of the passengers," he said. "They seemed fine in all honesty, it's just they were disembarking in a different position. Most of them did not realise anything was different.
"The plane had gone very slightly off the runway. It's still on the hard-standing Tarmac, it's not on the grass.
"With the icy conditions we are still in attendance assisting the airport fire service get the plane in the correct position."
Airport vehicles with orange lights could be seen around the plane, which had no visible sign of damage.
The Air Accident Investigation Branch will launch an inquiry into what happened.
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November 25, 2010, 7:45 pm
![Image]( "Rising energy profits to be probed")
The accounts of UK energy suppliers are to be investigated after the industry watchdog discovered profit margins soared 38% in the wake of consumer price hikes.
Ofgem said the average margin on a standard dual-fuel tariff had risen from £65 to £90 since September and it wants to ensure providers are not boosting profits at the expense of the consumer.
The move comes shortly after major companies including British Gas, Scottish & Southern and Scottish Power hit households with price hikes.
Ofgem said it would look at the "facts behind the numbers" as companies claimed rising prices in the wholesale market - where suppliers buy their energy - left them with no choice but to lift bills.
Energy firms have claimed wholesale gas prices have risen more than 25% since the spring.
Alistair Buchanan, Ofgem's chief executive, said he wanted to make sure firms were "playing it straight" with customers.
He said: "The energy retail market can only be fully effective if consumers have confidence that the market is transparent and easy to take part in.
"So we will go beyond our usual quarterly reports on prices and do a comprehensive review of the retail market and our recent reforms from the consumers' perspective.
"We will also carry out a detailed investigation of the newly available retail accounts and the facts behind these numbers. Greater transparency in the market is good for consumers, investors and for the energy industry as a whole."
Mr Buchanan added that as Britain was facing a bill of £200 billion to invest in updating the energy network over the next 10 years, consumers had the right to expect the energy retail market to provide value for money.
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November 25, 2010, 7:50 pm
![Image]( "Labour MPs back 'no AV' campaign")
A group of senior Labour politicians will help spearhead the campaign for a "no" vote in next year's referendum on changing the voting system.
Former cabinet ministers John Prescott, David Blunkett, John Reid and Lord Falconer have signed up as patrons of the "NO to AV" campaign while Margaret Beckett will be its president.
They will join forces with a raft of Tory Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary William Hague, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and Education Secretary Michael Gove.
The heavyweight line-up is a significant boost to efforts to persuade the country to vote against switching from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote (AV) system for general elections.
Allowing a public vote - due to be held on May 5 - was a key concession won by the Liberal Democrats as part of coalition negotiations with the Conservatives.
Labour promised a referendum on AV in its manifesto and the change is supported by new leader Ed Miliband, but MPs have a free vote on the issue and there is significant Labour opposition.
The senior figures will speak publicly for the campaign as well as acting as advisers. Labour former minister and party vice-chair Joan Ryan will be the campaign's deputy director and another former minister Jane Kennedy is national organiser.
Ex-foreign secretary Mrs Beckett said: "This is so important it has to rise above party politics.
"Only three other countries use AV and one, Fiji, is abandoning it. It led to a significant drop in the number of people voting in Australia - that's why they had to make voting compulsory. AV doesn't help democracy, it stands in its way."
Lord Prescott attacked the referendum as a "shoddy little deal that the Lib Dems made with the Tories as their price for power" and Lord Reid said there was "no credible intellectual or political case that can be made for AV".
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November 25, 2010, 7:50 pm
![Image]( "Extra mail deliveries for Christmas")
Royal Mail has announced extra Christmas deliveries to cope with an estimated online shopping sales boom.
The service said it expects to deliver a record 165 million items ordered online in time for Christmas.
Extra delivery rounds will be made on the morning of Sunday December 19 and between 6pm and 9pm on December 22 and 23 to give customers a second chance to accept parcels Royal Mail was unable to deliver during standard deliveries.
It will also extend the opening hours of all Royal Mail's 1,400 delivery offices for two weeks from December 13.
The hours will vary from office to office but the largest and busiest will remain open until 7.30pm during the week and 5.30pm on December 19.
Royal Mail spokesman Mike Brown said: "Royal Mail is prepared for its biggest online Christmas ever and has taken steps to help people get their items as conveniently as possible, even if they are not at home when we first try to deliver.
"The majority of items ordered online are delivered first time but we have put in place a package of measures to help people who are not home to receive the item in cases where it is too big to go through the letterbox or requires a signature."
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November 25, 2010, 7:50 pm
![Image]( "Call for National Insurance rethink")
Government plans for a universal state pension remove the last justification for the National Insurance system, a think-tank has claimed.
The Centre for Policy Studies said the current system was "riddled with anomalies, complexity and a lack of cohesion", and as a result very few people understood how it worked.
The benefits people received from it were often lower than those received by people who had not contributed to it, the group said.
It added that National Insurance, which is currently charged at 11% of earnings of between £5,720 and £43,888 a year, after which it is paid at 1%, created a high marginal tax rate for low earners as well as creating a burden on employers taking on staff.
At the same time, it said the system had also been used to disguise tax increases while money was diverted away from the fund to use for other purposes, such as the NHS and green taxes.
The group said recent plans announced by the Government to introduce a universal state pension of £140 a week, which is likely to be paid to people based on a residency criteria, rather than the number of years they have paid National Insurance, meant the scheme could no longer by justified.
It added that once incapacity benefit was phased out, only 6% of benefits will be paid from the National Insurance Fund.
In a report, written by tax and benefit analyst David Martin, the group argues that National Insurance should instead be merged with income tax to create a simple payroll tax.
Mr Martin said the change should be planned for now, but only introduced once the fiscal situation had improved, as it would require a small overall tax cut, so that the self-employed were not penalised.
Centre for Policy Studies director Jill Kirby said: "The merger of tax and National Insurance would lead to a much higher headline rate of tax. Such a step would provide a simpler, more transparent and more honest approach to taxation. Politicians wishing to raise taxes would no longer be able to hide behind the device of raising National Insurance rates."
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November 25, 2010, 7:50 pm
![Image]( "Snow spreads as cold tightens grip")
Snow has been spreading across Britain as a prolonged blast of wintry weather tightened its grip on the country.
Parts of south-west England were expecting their own snow showers after much of the eastern half of the country was blanketed by up to 6ins (15cm) on Thursday.
The Midlands and London face being dusted, with snow and icy conditions set to deteriorate early next week.
There was a raft of sub-zero temperatures overnight, with the coldest place in the UK recorded as Carterhouse in the Scottish Borders, which touched minus 7.8C. Benson in Oxfordshire recorded minus 7.6C, while the temperature at Kew Gardens in London sunk to minus 3.8C. Cardiff saw the mercury fall to minus 3.2C, and Newcastle minus 4.3C.
Britons have been warned the wintry spell could last for at least 10 days, as biting winds swoop in from the North Sea and night-time temperatures plummet to minus 6C. It is the earliest November snowfall for 17 years.
Parts of Northumberland have seen the heaviest snowfall, with 6ins falling in places. A similar amount fell in Aberdeenshire, 4.7ins (12cm) in the Scottish Borders and 4ins (10cm) in Durham, causing a raft of school closures.
The Met Office issued severe weather warnings for widespread icy roads and heavy snow across the north-east, Yorkshire and Humber, East Midlands, the east and south-west England as well as parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Forecasters warned of snowfall reaching up to 10ins (25cm) over higher ground by Saturday.
Billy Payne, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said: "The weather is staying very cold and icy, and there's a chance snow showers will spread inland, particularly into Saturday. The country faces a more prolonged period of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday next week."
The unusual weather is being caused by a high pressure over Greenland and low pressure in the Baltics, forcing cold winds from the north-east across Europe. It will see daytime temperatures hover between 1C and 3C and generally between minus 2C and minus 4C overnight for the next week and a half.
Motorists have been warned of black ice on the roads. Paul Leather, AA patrol of the year, said: "If possible, people should stick to the gritted main roads and keep their speed down. In case of any problems, at the very least, carry plenty of warm clothing and a fully-charged mobile phone."
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November 25, 2010, 7:50 pm
![Image]( "Labour would help 'squeezed middle'")
Labour leader Ed Miliband has promised to stand up for the "squeezed middle" as he prepared to embark on a thorough review of the party's policy platform.
Apparently signalling a move away from the New Labour focus on economic growth, Mr Miliband acknowledged that the prosperity of the pre-crash period was accompanied by a squeeze on living standards for people who found themselves forced to work harder and longer and have less time with family and friends.
He admitted that during its 13 years in power Labour became "remote from many people's hopes and aspirations". While it celebrated growing prosperity, many families saw "the gap between their lives and their dreams became larger and harder to bridge", he said.
And he promised to put the "squeezed middle" at the heart of the policy review which he will launch at a special party forum in Gillingham, Kent.
In a mark of his determination to make a break from the Blair/Brown era, Mr Miliband said: "Britain has changed. Labour must change. And the change must be as profound as the change undertaken by New Labour in the 1990s."
The meeting of Labour's National Policy Forum will kick off a lengthy reappraisal of the party's agenda headed by shadow cabinet minister Liam Byrne, who Mr Miliband says will start from a "blank page".
The Labour leader said that the party had "lost the humility to listen and learn" from voters while in power, and must regain it in opposition. He said: "We must understand why, despite all that was achieved over the last decade, so many people who work hard and want to get on came to feel squeezed. Why did too many families feel that the gap between their lives and their dreams became larger and harder to bridge?"
"My great fear for Britain is a coalition Government spreading a pessimism about the future - creating a more divided country in which a squeezed middle finds it ever harder to get on," said Mr Miliband. "My great task is to build a changed Labour Party, a force for optimism in British politics, offering those squeezed families the hope of a better future."
Mr Miliband gave a few hints about the shape of the policy platform which may emerge from his review, saying that Labour must back social mobility and fairness and take account of voters' desire for more time with families. The party should support employers who invest in their workforce and create quality jobs and back small businesses who cannot get loans from banks.
The Labour leader indicated that he backed reform of the welfare system, acknowledging that hard-working people were "hacked off" to see neighbours claiming benefits when they could be earning a living.
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The death toll from a stampede at a Cambodian festival has risen to 378 with hundreds more injured.
Rescuers are trawling a muddy river for more bodies after Monday's disaster, when a panic-stricken crowd of thousands tried to flee over a narrow bridge. Many people were crushed underfoot or fell over its sides into the water.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan said total casualties reached over 1,000, with 378 people killed and 755 injured. He said this was not the final count.
The prime minister called it the country's biggest tragedy since the murderous 1970s reign of the Khmer Rouge.
He ordered an investigation into the cause of the stampede and declared Thursday a national day of mourning. Government ministries were ordered to fly the flag at half-mast.
The prime minister said that the government would pay the families of each dead victim £780 for funeral expenses and provide £156 for each injured person. His special adviser Om Yentieng denied some reports that the victims were electrocuted by lighting cables and that the panic was sparked by a mass food poisoning.
Authorities had estimated that more than two million people would descend on Phnom Penh for the three-day water festival, the Bon Om Touk, which marks the end of the rainy season and whose main attraction is traditional boat races along the river.
In this year's event 420 of the long, sleek boats competed, with crews of up to 80 racers each.
The last race ended on Monday evening local time, the last night of the holiday, and the panic started later on Koh Pich - Diamond Island - a long spit of land wedged in a fork in the river where a concert and exhibition were being held.
Soft drink seller So Cheata said the trouble began when about 10 people fell unconscious in the press of the crowd. She said that set off a panic, which then turned into a stampede, with many people caught underfoot.
Labour have moved into a two-point opinion poll lead as Ed Miliband sought to quash murmurs about his leadership by outlining policy and party review plans to his MPs and peers.
On his return from two weeks' paternity leave, he set out plans for a policy review which will start with a "blank sheet" on many key issues as well as a fundamental shake-up of the party itself.
Despite another encouraging poll - ICM for the Guardian putting Labour at a three-year high of 38% - he warned it faced a "long haul" to get back into power.
More details are to be unveiled at a high-level party event in Gillingham, Kent, at the weekend, but the influence of trade unions is among areas under review. Shadow cabinet ministers will be asked to lead working groups including outside experts in their relevant fields as part of the policy review.
Mr Miliband's spokeswoman insisted that there was no dissent among those present at the behind-closed-doors gathering in the Commons. Questions about party unity were revived, however, when shadow chancellor Alan Johnson again refused to publicly endorse the leader's call for a permanent 50p tax rate for high earners.
The Labour leader had declared in a newspaper article that it was "about values and fairness and about the kind of society you believe in and it's important to me". But Mr Johnson repeated his view that the measure was needed because of the deficit - and slipped up by calling the leader "Red" instead of "Ed" on television in the process.
In what was said by party sources to have been one of the best-received passages of his address to the PLP, Mr Miliband said: "You see the Tories and the Liberal Democrats doing terrible things and it is frustrating. But opposition is about the long-haul and digging in."
He said rising membership levels and good local by-election results meant Labour should be "optimistic but not complacent" about the future. Initial campaigning should centre on the debate over proving the coalition's deficit reduction strategy is "a gamble" and on the row over tuition fees, he said.
The poll gave Labour its highest rating since Gordon Brown abandoned plans for an early general election in October 2007, gaining two points to 38%. The Conservatives fell three to 36% and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners dropped two to 14% - most of those lost voters switching to smaller parties though, not Labour.
The Tories sought to capitalise further on disagreements between Mr Miliband and Mr Johnson over key tax policies. Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Michael Fallon said: "It is now clear that Ed Miliband has no authority over his shadow cabinet."
The Irish government will put the finishing touches to a drastic 15 billion-euro savings plan after prime minister Brian Cowen defied calls for a snap election.
After a day of political drama that saw the junior coalition Green Party call for a general election, ministers are expected to discuss the four-year rescue package before Wednesday's publication.
An embattled Mr Cowen said he wanted to stay in power to pass the crucial six billion euro (£5.1 billion) savings in next month's budget. But despite opposition demands for an immediate election, he declared the drastic cuts were in the national interest.
The Greens had earlier stunned the prime minister by issuing a January deadline for a general election. In response, Mr Cowen said he planned to dissolve parliament in the new year.
The prime minister was dumped into the political crisis matching the country's economic chaos less than 24 hours after the Cabinet signed off on a multi-billion bailout - unaware his two colleagues in the Green Party, leader John Gormley and Eamon Ryan, spent Saturday plotting an exit strategy.
Mr Cowen denied he felt betrayed. After an emergency meeting with Fianna Fail cabinet members in Government Buildings, the taoiseach dismissed talk of a heave against him or that he had been pushed by the Greens into agreeing to go to the polls, and said all colleagues had given him full support, including Mr Gormley.
He called for solidarity on the 15 billion euro (£13 billion) four-year road map to recovery and the estimated 90 billion euro (£77 billion) bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund and Europe. The 150-page four-year plan, which is being inspected by experts from the IMF and European Commission, will contain significant reforms to the tax system, with new levies in property and water on the cards and cuts to social welfare.
Mr Cowen is coming under intense pressure to step down from within and outside his ruling Fianna Fail party, with the opposition and two independent TDs demanding an immediate poll. Several Fianna Fail backbenchers have also warned that Mr Cowen's time is up.
Speculation is intensifying that the government may not make it to the New Year, with a razor-thin majority to pass the worst budget in the state's history on December 7 and a by-election looming on Thursday.
Monday saw bank shares come under pressure in the UK and America amid the uncertainty over the details of the Irish rescue package. Fears the debt troubles would soon erupt in other embattled eurozone countries, such as Portugal and Spain, also dragged the euro lower against the pound and dollar before the currency rallied ahead of Mr Cowen's statement.
North Korea has threatened to continue launching strikes against South Korea if it violates their disputed sea border.
The warning followed its bombardment of a South Korean island near the western border.
South Korean officials said the barrage set buildings on fire and killed at least two marines after North Korea warned the south to halt military drills in the area.
North Korea's supreme military command said if the border was violated "even 0.001 millimetre" that it would "launch merciless military retaliatory strikes."
South Korea said it had returned fire and scrambled fighter jets in response to the attack from the north, and said bombardment of civilian areas violated the 1953 armistice halting the Korean War. The two sides technically remain at war because a peace treaty was never negotiated.
The skirmish came amid high tension over North Korea's claim that it has a new uranium enrichment facility and just six weeks after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il unveiled his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his heir apparent.
The United States, which has tens of thousands of troops stationed in South Korea, condemned the attack and called on North Korea to "halt its belligerent action."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged Pyongyang to refrain from further attacks, which he described as "unprovoked".
The North's artillery struck the small South Korean-held island of Yeonpyeong, which houses military installations and a small civilian population and which has been the focus of two previous deadly battles between the Koreas.
The firing came amid South Korean military drills in the area. North Korea's military had sent a message to South Korea's armed forces earlier to demand that the drills stop, but the South continued them, a military official said.
Children's social services are under enormous pressure as they struggle to cope with increasing workloads, according to Ofsted's annual report.
It found that one in three local councils inspected this year - 10 in total - were failing to keep children and young people safe.
Inadequate authorities were a "real cause for concern", the watchdog said.
The inspectorate warned that social services were facing "significant challenges", with more public scrutiny on what councils were doing to keep children safe than ever before. At the same time there has been a rise in demand for social workers' time.
But many councils are facing staff shortages and heavy caseloads mean children are forced to wait for the help they need.
Between March 2009 and March this year, there was an 11% rise in referrals to children's services. The number of initial assessments increased by 12% and the number of children subject to child protection plans rose by 4.7%. The rise in demand has come after several high-profile child protection cases, including that of Baby P.
The report says: "Significant challenges face social care services in many local authorities from several sources. Public and media scrutiny of safeguarding issues has never been greater. There is pressure to bring about improvement."
It adds: "Staff shortages are a problem in many areas and the problem of heavy workload emerges again and again. Children can wait too long for the response they need as a result of high caseloads."
According to the national social work survey, 64% of social workers said they did not have enough time to spend with the children and young people assigned to them, Ofsted noted.
Of the 29 local authorities inspected, around one in three was not keeping children and young people safe. The 10 authorities whose children's services were rated inadequate for safeguarding issues this year are Cornwall, Warrington, Leeds, Sandwell, Calderdale, Peterborough, Nottinghamshire, Salford, Birmingham and Essex.
Only 24-hour surveillance could have stopped James Bulger's killer descending into lawlessness and amassing an extensive collection of child pornography, a review is expected to find.
Probation officers will be cleared of any major errors in the supervision of Jon Venables, 27, who was jailed for two years in July after he was caught with sick images of youngsters on his computer.
But the report will say that Venables - who murdered two-year-old James with Robert Thompson when they were just 10 - could have been given more therapy and more help to enhance his employment prospects after being released from jail with a new identity.
He was under supervision by a variety of authorities but built up a stash of indecent pictures. Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation union Napo, said: "Supervision of Jon Venables was extremely difficult because of his notoriety and the need for tight security."
The results of the review, which will be announced by Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, will show that only 24-hour surveillance could have stopped Venables.
"The only way that his drinking, his trips to Liverpool and his accumulation of child pornography could have been prevented would have been through 24-hour surveillance, which would have been extremely expensive and implausible," Mr Fletcher said.
"There are a number of criticisms that are made with the benefit of hindsight. For example, he could have received more therapy and more could have been done to enhance his employment prospects.
"But the same criticism could be made of all people on probation's books and there's no guarantee that additional therapy would have been helpful. He was in full-time work and attempts were made to try to enhance his prospects. But because of the sensitive nature of the case, supervision was always going to be difficult."
It was in February this year that Venables was arrested and recalled over child pornography allegations. Evidence later emerged that he had an "extensive history of searching for and downloading indecent images of children using the internet".
James's mother, Denise Fergus, condemned the two-year sentence as "simply not enough". Mrs Fergus and her spokesman said they were "surprised and concerned" that Venables had not been recalled for breaching his licence.
The UK can afford a multi-billion bailout of the Irish economy, Chancellor George Osborne insisted as he sought to ease Tory backbench concerns over the move.
Mr Osborne has signalled that the British contribution to an international bailout package for Dublin is likely to be around £7 billion.
MPs will have a vote on a bi-lateral loan to be offered alongside a wider deal being drawn up by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, he confirmed.
But the UK is also tied in to an EU mechanism that would leave it liable to pick up the bill if Ireland defaulted on loans guaranteed against the Brussels budget.
Mr Osborne said that was "highly unlikely" to happen but was warned by MPs of public anger at taxpayers' cash being used to prop up a foreign economy at a time of cuts at home. And the situation has riled Tory eurosceptics who are furious that the country is being forced to help despite not being part of the eurozone.
"This is a loan that we can afford to make and will get back," Mr Osborne said as he made a statement to the Commons to explain the proposals.
The Irish government is meanwhile putting the finishing touches to a drastic 15 billion-euro savings plan after prime minister Brian Cowen defied calls for a snap election.
An embattled Mr Cowen said on Monday he wanted to stay in power to pass the crucial six billion euro (£5.1 billion) savings in next month's budget. He said he planned to dissolve the Dail (parliament) in the new year, despite calls from coalition partners to hold an election before the year is out.
Bank shares came under pressure in the UK and America amid the uncertainty over the details of the Irish rescue package. The FTSE 100 Index ended nearly 1% lower, as investors fretted over the impact of the crisis on other lenders.
Part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland, which is seen as being the most vulnerable in terms of Irish lending through its Ulster Bank subsidiary, fell nearly 5% while shares in fellow taxpayer backed Lloyds Banking Group dropped 4%.
The level of the Government's proposed immigration cap is due to be announced by Home Secretary Theresa May.
The number of migrant workers coming to Britain from outside the EU should be cut to between 37,400 and 43,700 next year, down between 13% and 25% compared with 2009, experts on the Migration Advisory Committee (Mac) said last week.
But the Government's advisers warned that students and family visas will also have to be slashed if the Government is to fulfil its pledge to bring net migration down from 196,000 to the tens of thousands by 2015.
The number of students coming to Britain from outside the EU will also need to be cut, perhaps by more than 87,000, as will the number of people travelling to the UK for working holidays and those who come to work as domestic servants or on creative and media visas.
Work-related migration accounts for just 20% of the overall reduction needed for the Government to reach its target, meaning non-EU students must make up 60% of the cut with the final 20% coming from family visas and their dependants, Mac said. Two-thirds of the non-EU migrants who enter the UK come on student visas, with more than half of these studying courses below degree level.
Mrs May said she would crack down on non-EU students coming to privately-funded colleges and to study courses that were below degree level as she seeks to make eligibility criteria for visas more selective. But in a key speech on immigration earlier this month she added that she will do nothing to prevent those coming to study degree-level courses.
The limit proposed by Mac included a cap on intra-company transfers (ICTs), which are used by firms to bring their own people into the country to do specific jobs and account for 22,000 of the 36,000 tier-two visas.
The BBC reported that the cap will be set at 43,000, and will not apply to intra-company transfers involving employees earning more than £40,000.
The director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that an announcement along these lines would be "good news for Britain and good news for business".
Mr Frost added: "Clearly, the Government has a mandate to bring down net immigration, but at a time when we are trying to squeeze every bit of growth out of the economy, changes to migration policy must not harm UK competitiveness."
Police are working harder than ever to identify violent activists aiming to disrupt legitimate political protest, the head of a controversial police intelligence unit has said.
Detective Chief Superintendent Adrian Tudway, who took over the role of national co-ordinator for domestic extremism last week, said more resources are being invested in identifying potential flashpoints.
He said investigators must walk a "tightrope" as they target the small minority willing to break the law and damage the ability of everyone else to make their voices heard.
Speaking ahead of a wave of fresh demonstrations against rising student tuition fees, Mr Tudway said his officers focus on the "fringe" where protest "spills over" into violence and disorder. Asked if more work is being done in the wake of the Millbank rioting to identify those suspected of plotting to commit crime during protests, Mr Tudway replied: "Absolutely."
He said: "It is quite right in our role as Acpo (Association of Chief Police Officers) goalkeeper to watch where the social protests are going and how they are developing and to try, where possible, to identify flashpoints."
Mr Tudway oversees the work of three units tasked with monitoring the activities of groups, from animal rights activists to environmental protesters and other single issue militant groups. The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), National Domestic Extremism team and National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU) employ a staff of about 100 with an £8.1 million budget.
The three units will be rebranded and brought under the wing of the Metropolitan Police from their current home at Acpo by next summer. The unit could face a further move to the National Crime Agency (NCA) once it takes over the responsibilities of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and other bodies.
The domestic extremism units have come under fire for using often intrusive surveillance tactics to identify hundreds of people who have attended protests before sharing the information with other forces.
Mr Tudway, who has worked as deputy to his predecessor, Assistant Chief Constable Anton Setchell, since January, said intelligence officials do not examine the work of trade or student unions.
The former Met detective said: "We would not look at organisations like that because constitutionally that would be wrong. But what we are obliged to do is where there are crossovers from protest into extreme behaviour, whether public disorder or criminality. If you compare the English position with that across Europe, in most European countries the domestic security service have the remit for this."
New Zealand's prime minister said hope is fading for two Britons and 27 other coal miners missing for four days underground after an explosion.
John Key said police were now planning for the possible loss of life following the massive blast in the mine, now swirling with toxic gases, and told parliament it was still too dangerous to enter the mine to find what had happened to the men.
He said he shared the families' frustration that a rescue team could not be sent in because of the toxic gas levels in the mine and said the miners were tough, resourceful and stoic men who looked after each other in the same way a father looked out for a son.
Pete Rodger, 40, from Perthshire, and Malcolm Campbell, 25, from St Andrews, Fife, are among the group of 29 miners missing following Friday's blast.
Earlier, Superintendent Gary Knowles said it still remained too dangerous to send rescue teams into the damaged pit, more than three days after the explosion at the Pike River mine in Atarau on South Island.
It is believed that a build-up of methane caused the accident. The ongoing presence of high levels of the gas has so far thwarted attempts to send in rescue workers.
In a further blow, a remote-controlled robot sent into the mine has broken down. Authorities said they were hoping for more advanced equipment to be flown in from outside New Zealand to help the rescue effort.
Meanwhile, workers continued to use a diamond-tipped drill to bore through layers of hard rock to get closer to tunnels where some of the miners are thought to be trapped. Cameras and listening equipment will be lowered into the bore hole in a bid to give experts a clearer picture of conditions, and potentially pick up any signs of life.
Rescuers also released footage of the explosion at the mine entrance. The closed circuit TV footage, which has been seen by the miners' families, showed a wall of white dust and stones surging from the entrance as the underground blast rips through the mine.
Pike River mine chief executive Peter Whittall said dust from the blast blew across a nearby valley and part of the blast wave shot up the mine's ventilation shaft, tearing off vents at the top. He added that footage of the explosion had been "quite sobering" for the families.
Artillery fire has been heard on the Yellow Sea island attacked earlier this week by North Korea, South Korea has said.
Military chiefs said the artillery was heard twice on the Yeonpyeong island, as the North warned that US-South Korean military drills planned for the weekend were pushing the peninsula to the brink of war.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said two explosive sounds were heard on Yeonpyeong, while television news reporters also reported a third blast.
In its "brink of war" warning, the Korean Central News Agency added: "Gone are the days when verbal warnings are served only."
North Korea's army and people were "now greatly enraged" and "getting fully ready to give a shower of dreadful fire".
"Escalated confrontation would lead to a war, and he who is fond of playing with fire is bound to perish," the agency said.
North Korea's state news agency said earlier the drills involving South Korean forces and a US nuclear-powered supercarrier south of Tuesday's skirmish between the rival Koreas were a reckless plan by "trigger-happy elements", and the manoeuvres targeted the North.
General Walter Sharp, the US military commander in South Korea, has visited Yeonpyeong island, where four South Koreans - two marines and two civilians - were killed in the hour-long clash when the North unleashed a hail of artillery.
Meanwhile, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak ordered reinforcements for about 4,000 troops on Yeonpyeong and four other Yellow Sea islands, as well as top-level weaponry for the soldiers.
He also upgraded rules of engagement that would create a new category of response when civilian areas were targeted and sacked his defence minister amid the intense criticism over lapses in the country's response to the attack.
Meat and milk from cloned cattle and their offspring is no different to conventional produce and is safe to consume, government advisers have said.
The conclusion could bring food safety authorities a step closer to giving the green light for shops to sell foodstuffs from cloned animals.
The controversial practice of using the embryos of cloned animals to breed livestock came under the spotlight in August when it emerged milk and meat from the offspring of cloned cows had reached shops in the UK.
But the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP) said there was no evidence of any differences between produce from cloned animals and that from conventionally-bred cattle.
Responding to the findings, Andrew Wadge, chief scientist at the Food Standards Agency, said: "In considering this hypothetical application, the ACNFP has confirmed that meat and milk from cloned cattle and their offspring shows no substantial difference to conventionally produced meat and milk and therefore is unlikely to present a food safety risk."
The committee also noted more evidence was needed to show how rearing animals in different environments may affect the meat and milk.
Members concluded any potential differences between cloned animals and conventional animals was unlikely to exist beyond the second generation.
Under European law, foodstuffs - including milk - produced from cloned animals must pass a safety evaluation and get approval before they are marketed.
The FSA Board will discuss the issue at its December meeting.
It said the board will consider the opinion of the ACNFP, the recent European Commission proposal to ban meat and milk from clones and their offspring, and any other developments, before giving advice to ministers.
Passive smoking claims more than 600,000 lives each year around the world - an estimated 1% of all deaths, a major study has found.
Children are the group most heavily exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke and around 165,000 of them die as a result, said researchers.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) study is the first to assess the global impact of inhaling other people's smoke.
Based on 2004 data, the figures show smoking in that year killed almost six million people, either actively or passively by claiming the lives of non-smokers.
Second-hand smoke was believed to have caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma, and 21,400 from lung cancer.
In addition, 10.9 million years of disability-free life were lost globally because of passive smoking.
The findings are published in an early on-line edition of The Lancet medical journal.
Dr Annette Pruss-Ustun, from the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, and her fellow authors wrote: "Exposure to second-hand smoke is still one of the most common indoor pollutants worldwide. On the basis of the proportions of second-hand smoke exposure, as many as 40% of children, 35% of women and 33% of men are regularly exposed to second-hand smoke indoors.
"We have estimated that second-hand smoke caused 603,000 deaths.. worldwide in 2004, corresponding to 1% of all deaths.
"These deaths should be added to the estimated 5.1 million deaths attributable to active smoking to obtain the full effect of both passive and active smoking. Smoking, therefore, was responsible for more than 5.7 million deaths every year in 2004."
Nearly 200 passengers have been evacuated from a plane after it left the runway at Newcastle Airport.
Tyne and Wear Fire Service said the aircraft, a Thomson flight from Lanzarote, "had gone very slightly off the runway" but remained on the asphalt.
No-one was injured in the incident, group manager Keith Carruthers said.
Regular firefighters assisted the dedicated airport fire service with the emergency, which happened to an incoming Boeing 737 shortly after 9pm.
Mr Carruthers said they helped 196 passengers to disembark using the stairs.
"There were no injuries reported from any of the passengers," he said. "They seemed fine in all honesty, it's just they were disembarking in a different position. Most of them did not realise anything was different.
"The plane had gone very slightly off the runway. It's still on the hard-standing Tarmac, it's not on the grass.
"With the icy conditions we are still in attendance assisting the airport fire service get the plane in the correct position."
Airport vehicles with orange lights could be seen around the plane, which had no visible sign of damage.
The Air Accident Investigation Branch will launch an inquiry into what happened.
The accounts of UK energy suppliers are to be investigated after the industry watchdog discovered profit margins soared 38% in the wake of consumer price hikes.
Ofgem said the average margin on a standard dual-fuel tariff had risen from £65 to £90 since September and it wants to ensure providers are not boosting profits at the expense of the consumer.
The move comes shortly after major companies including British Gas, Scottish & Southern and Scottish Power hit households with price hikes.
Ofgem said it would look at the "facts behind the numbers" as companies claimed rising prices in the wholesale market - where suppliers buy their energy - left them with no choice but to lift bills.
Energy firms have claimed wholesale gas prices have risen more than 25% since the spring.
Alistair Buchanan, Ofgem's chief executive, said he wanted to make sure firms were "playing it straight" with customers.
He said: "The energy retail market can only be fully effective if consumers have confidence that the market is transparent and easy to take part in.
"So we will go beyond our usual quarterly reports on prices and do a comprehensive review of the retail market and our recent reforms from the consumers' perspective.
"We will also carry out a detailed investigation of the newly available retail accounts and the facts behind these numbers. Greater transparency in the market is good for consumers, investors and for the energy industry as a whole."
Mr Buchanan added that as Britain was facing a bill of £200 billion to invest in updating the energy network over the next 10 years, consumers had the right to expect the energy retail market to provide value for money.
A group of senior Labour politicians will help spearhead the campaign for a "no" vote in next year's referendum on changing the voting system.
Former cabinet ministers John Prescott, David Blunkett, John Reid and Lord Falconer have signed up as patrons of the "NO to AV" campaign while Margaret Beckett will be its president.
They will join forces with a raft of Tory Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary William Hague, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke and Education Secretary Michael Gove.
The heavyweight line-up is a significant boost to efforts to persuade the country to vote against switching from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote (AV) system for general elections.
Allowing a public vote - due to be held on May 5 - was a key concession won by the Liberal Democrats as part of coalition negotiations with the Conservatives.
Labour promised a referendum on AV in its manifesto and the change is supported by new leader Ed Miliband, but MPs have a free vote on the issue and there is significant Labour opposition.
The senior figures will speak publicly for the campaign as well as acting as advisers. Labour former minister and party vice-chair Joan Ryan will be the campaign's deputy director and another former minister Jane Kennedy is national organiser.
Ex-foreign secretary Mrs Beckett said: "This is so important it has to rise above party politics.
"Only three other countries use AV and one, Fiji, is abandoning it. It led to a significant drop in the number of people voting in Australia - that's why they had to make voting compulsory. AV doesn't help democracy, it stands in its way."
Lord Prescott attacked the referendum as a "shoddy little deal that the Lib Dems made with the Tories as their price for power" and Lord Reid said there was "no credible intellectual or political case that can be made for AV".
Royal Mail has announced extra Christmas deliveries to cope with an estimated online shopping sales boom.
The service said it expects to deliver a record 165 million items ordered online in time for Christmas.
Extra delivery rounds will be made on the morning of Sunday December 19 and between 6pm and 9pm on December 22 and 23 to give customers a second chance to accept parcels Royal Mail was unable to deliver during standard deliveries.
It will also extend the opening hours of all Royal Mail's 1,400 delivery offices for two weeks from December 13.
The hours will vary from office to office but the largest and busiest will remain open until 7.30pm during the week and 5.30pm on December 19.
Royal Mail spokesman Mike Brown said: "Royal Mail is prepared for its biggest online Christmas ever and has taken steps to help people get their items as conveniently as possible, even if they are not at home when we first try to deliver.
"The majority of items ordered online are delivered first time but we have put in place a package of measures to help people who are not home to receive the item in cases where it is too big to go through the letterbox or requires a signature."
Government plans for a universal state pension remove the last justification for the National Insurance system, a think-tank has claimed.
The Centre for Policy Studies said the current system was "riddled with anomalies, complexity and a lack of cohesion", and as a result very few people understood how it worked.
The benefits people received from it were often lower than those received by people who had not contributed to it, the group said.
It added that National Insurance, which is currently charged at 11% of earnings of between £5,720 and £43,888 a year, after which it is paid at 1%, created a high marginal tax rate for low earners as well as creating a burden on employers taking on staff.
At the same time, it said the system had also been used to disguise tax increases while money was diverted away from the fund to use for other purposes, such as the NHS and green taxes.
The group said recent plans announced by the Government to introduce a universal state pension of £140 a week, which is likely to be paid to people based on a residency criteria, rather than the number of years they have paid National Insurance, meant the scheme could no longer by justified.
It added that once incapacity benefit was phased out, only 6% of benefits will be paid from the National Insurance Fund.
In a report, written by tax and benefit analyst David Martin, the group argues that National Insurance should instead be merged with income tax to create a simple payroll tax.
Mr Martin said the change should be planned for now, but only introduced once the fiscal situation had improved, as it would require a small overall tax cut, so that the self-employed were not penalised.
Centre for Policy Studies director Jill Kirby said: "The merger of tax and National Insurance would lead to a much higher headline rate of tax. Such a step would provide a simpler, more transparent and more honest approach to taxation. Politicians wishing to raise taxes would no longer be able to hide behind the device of raising National Insurance rates."
Snow has been spreading across Britain as a prolonged blast of wintry weather tightened its grip on the country.
Parts of south-west England were expecting their own snow showers after much of the eastern half of the country was blanketed by up to 6ins (15cm) on Thursday.
The Midlands and London face being dusted, with snow and icy conditions set to deteriorate early next week.
There was a raft of sub-zero temperatures overnight, with the coldest place in the UK recorded as Carterhouse in the Scottish Borders, which touched minus 7.8C. Benson in Oxfordshire recorded minus 7.6C, while the temperature at Kew Gardens in London sunk to minus 3.8C. Cardiff saw the mercury fall to minus 3.2C, and Newcastle minus 4.3C.
Britons have been warned the wintry spell could last for at least 10 days, as biting winds swoop in from the North Sea and night-time temperatures plummet to minus 6C. It is the earliest November snowfall for 17 years.
Parts of Northumberland have seen the heaviest snowfall, with 6ins falling in places. A similar amount fell in Aberdeenshire, 4.7ins (12cm) in the Scottish Borders and 4ins (10cm) in Durham, causing a raft of school closures.
The Met Office issued severe weather warnings for widespread icy roads and heavy snow across the north-east, Yorkshire and Humber, East Midlands, the east and south-west England as well as parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Forecasters warned of snowfall reaching up to 10ins (25cm) over higher ground by Saturday.
Billy Payne, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said: "The weather is staying very cold and icy, and there's a chance snow showers will spread inland, particularly into Saturday. The country faces a more prolonged period of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday next week."
The unusual weather is being caused by a high pressure over Greenland and low pressure in the Baltics, forcing cold winds from the north-east across Europe. It will see daytime temperatures hover between 1C and 3C and generally between minus 2C and minus 4C overnight for the next week and a half.
Motorists have been warned of black ice on the roads. Paul Leather, AA patrol of the year, said: "If possible, people should stick to the gritted main roads and keep their speed down. In case of any problems, at the very least, carry plenty of warm clothing and a fully-charged mobile phone."
Labour leader Ed Miliband has promised to stand up for the "squeezed middle" as he prepared to embark on a thorough review of the party's policy platform.
Apparently signalling a move away from the New Labour focus on economic growth, Mr Miliband acknowledged that the prosperity of the pre-crash period was accompanied by a squeeze on living standards for people who found themselves forced to work harder and longer and have less time with family and friends.
He admitted that during its 13 years in power Labour became "remote from many people's hopes and aspirations". While it celebrated growing prosperity, many families saw "the gap between their lives and their dreams became larger and harder to bridge", he said.
And he promised to put the "squeezed middle" at the heart of the policy review which he will launch at a special party forum in Gillingham, Kent.
In a mark of his determination to make a break from the Blair/Brown era, Mr Miliband said: "Britain has changed. Labour must change. And the change must be as profound as the change undertaken by New Labour in the 1990s."
The meeting of Labour's National Policy Forum will kick off a lengthy reappraisal of the party's agenda headed by shadow cabinet minister Liam Byrne, who Mr Miliband says will start from a "blank page".
The Labour leader said that the party had "lost the humility to listen and learn" from voters while in power, and must regain it in opposition. He said: "We must understand why, despite all that was achieved over the last decade, so many people who work hard and want to get on came to feel squeezed. Why did too many families feel that the gap between their lives and their dreams became larger and harder to bridge?"
"My great fear for Britain is a coalition Government spreading a pessimism about the future - creating a more divided country in which a squeezed middle finds it ever harder to get on," said Mr Miliband. "My great task is to build a changed Labour Party, a force for optimism in British politics, offering those squeezed families the hope of a better future."
Mr Miliband gave a few hints about the shape of the policy platform which may emerge from his review, saying that Labour must back social mobility and fairness and take account of voters' desire for more time with families. The party should support employers who invest in their workforce and create quality jobs and back small businesses who cannot get loans from banks.
The Labour leader indicated that he backed reform of the welfare system, acknowledging that hard-working people were "hacked off" to see neighbours claiming benefits when they could be earning a living.
