Newpapers Collected

Beenie Man ticket giveaway
Go to Source article
from Voice Online

London is one of the most diverse cities in the world and continues to be the place of choice for many people who want to make their home in the UK.
Go to Source article
from Voice Online

More than 40 per cent of investors refused to back Tesco’s proposed changes to its share option scheme at the grocer’s annual meeting in Glasgow yesterday.

Go to Source article
from The Independent - News RSS Feed

More sickening news for Citigroup

An internal memo from Citigroup HQ in New York reaches our desk. Apparently, a member of staff has contracted swine flu and the bank’s staff have been instructed to watch out for any symptoms they may develop themselves. As if the credit crisis-hit bank doesn’t have enough to worry about.

Go to Source article
from The Independent - News RSS Feed

US Outlook: Perhaps you have heard by now that Goldman Sachs is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money".

Go to Source article
from The Independent - News RSS Feed

Six people died, including a three-week-old baby and two children aged 6 and 7, when fire swept through a block of flats yesterday.

Go to Source article
from Top stories from Times Online

Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One chief, said yesterday that he preferred totalitarian regimes to democracies and praised Adolf Hitler for his ability to “get things done”.

Go to Source article
from Top stories from Times Online

Iranian employees of the British Embassy in Tehran face the prospect of a show trial after the regime said that they had admitted conspiring against the Islamic Republic.

Go to Source article
from Top stories from Times Online

Climate change protesters face community service after judge rejects justification defence

Climate change protesters who ambushed and hijacked a power station coal train failed to convince a jury today that their actions were justified by the “imminent threat” of devastation from global warming.

The 22 men and women, including a senior university lecturer, teachers and film-makers, were convicted - after less than two hours of deliberation - of obstructing the service carrying 42,000 tonnes of coal to Drax in North Yorkshire last June.

Their hopes of repeating the “Kingsnorth Six” judgment last September, when activists who defaced a power station chimney were acquitted by a Kent jury, were dashed by a judge, who refused to admit arguments that the hijack was “necessary and proportionate to prevent the greater crime of carbon pollution“.

Although he eventually allowed an unexpectedly large amount of evidence about climate change to be heard, Judge James Spencer refused to let expert witnesses such as Nasa scientist, Prof James Hansen, address the seven women and five men on the jury at Leeds crown court. In a pre-trial ruling he said that to do so would allow the protesters “to hijack the trial process as surely as they hijacked the coal train“.

He did however compliment the group, who conducted their own defence, on making an “eloquent, sincere, moving and engaging” case to the court. After the verdicts, he said that sentencing in early September would definitely not include jail terms, but was likely to be community service.

The 22, plus a further five protesters who earlier pleaded guilty and two who are ill but expected to submit guilty pleas in due course, will however face hefty financial penalties. The crown is applying for both its costs and £36,000 compensation for cleaning up coal shovelled on to the tracks during a 16-hour standoff with police.

After the verdict, one of the 22, Dr Louise Hemmerman, 31, said: “The judge declared from day one that climate change was irrelevant to the trial, despite the fact that it was the sole reason for doing what we did.”

Another of the group, Jonathan Stevenson, 27, who works for a development charity, said: “This won’t be the last case where climate protesters are in court for taking peaceful direct action, and while some judges may think climate change is irrelevant, they won’t be able to hold back the tide forever.”

Stevenson asked the judge after the verdicts if an order banning the defendants from power stations would apply more widely, to include roads. Judge Spencer replied with a smile: “I would steer clear of demonstrations, all of you, until this case is completely over. Try to find some other activities to do on your holidays.”

Hansen, head of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, whom the defendants had intended to call to the stand to speak about the science of climate change, said: “Civil resistance is not an easy path, but given abdication of responsibility by the government, it is an essential path.”

Hansen was arrested last week for his part in a protest over mountaintop coalmining in West Virginia. He has previously said that direct action is necessary because the democratic process is not bringing about policy change fast enough.

The chief crown prosecutor for North Yorkshire, Rob Turnbull, said: “While the CPS [crown prosecution service] respects the rights of individuals to lawfully protest, it takes a serious view of criminal activity which targets those carrying out lawful activities.” He defended Judge Spencer’s pre-trial ruling on the grounds that no one was in such immediate danger from global warning that hijacking a coal train was “proportionate”.

“The judge said that if the power station contributed to global warming, and all that entailed, it was for the government to attend to and not the protesters. He also said that no reasonable jury could conclude that the crime these defendants allegedly committed was either reasonable or proportionate when there were democratic processes available in this country for political change.”

The 22 were acquitted of actually stopping the train, after evidence that no one knew which of them had donned fake railwaymen’s uniforms and used red flags to bring it to a halt. The ambush stopped the train right on a bridge over the river Aire, whose girders gave protesters the means to clamber up and use 15 shovels to start unloading coal.

Passenger and freight services in the area were disrupted for two days, but Drax generated power normally throughout.

Those convicted were: Theo Bard, 24, Amy Clancy, 24, Brian Farelly, 32, Grainne Gannon, 26, Bryn Hoskins, 24, Jasmin Karalis, 25, Ellen Potts, 33, Bertie Russell, 24, Alison Stratford,26, Jonathan Stevenson, 27 and Felix Wight, all of London, Melanie Evans,25, Matthew Fawcette, 34, Robin Gillett, 23, Kristina Jones 22, Oliver Rodker, 40 and Thomas Spencer,23, all of Manchester, Paul Chatterton, 36, and Louise Hemmerman, 31, of Leeds, Melanie Evans, 25, of Stockport, Paul Morozzo, 42, of Hebden Bridge, Christopher Ward, 38, of Newport Pagnell and Elizabeth Whelan of Glasgow.

The five who pleaded guilty earlier were: Theo Brown, 22 and Clemmie James, 24, of London, Malcolm Carroll, 53, of Stafford, Thomas Johnstone, 25, of Liverpool and Paul Mellett, 29, of Colerne, Wiltshire. The two have indicated they will plead guilty when well are Caroline Williams, 25, of London and Sam Martingell, 24, of Leeds.

Go to Source article
from guardian.co.uk Environment

After success with China, US targets Russia in strategy to reach separate agreements with world’s biggest polluters

Barack Obama will move to seal a deal with Russia for joint action on climate change during his summit in Moscow next week, the Guardian has learned. 

Obama arrives in Moscow on Monday at the start of a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana that will focus heavily on energy and climate change. From Moscow, Obama travels on to Italy for a meeting of the G8 and a gathering of the major polluting countries.

Administration officials are still working out the broad outlines of an agreement that would see the US offer its expertise and technical support to Russian efforts to make its industries more energy efficient. In return Moscow would sign on to international efforts to scale back the emissions that cause global warming at a crucial UN summit in Copenhagen in December.

The overture to Russia — the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after America and China — furthers the strategy adopted by the Obama administration to enter into separate deals for action on climate change with each of the world’s biggest polluters. 

The administration sees such deals as crucial groundwork ahead of the Copenhagen meeting. They dismiss suggestions that the US is trying to undermine the UN process.

The separate negotiations policy began taking shape in May, as the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, pursued a deal with China, the world’s biggest polluter.

Next on the list is Russa. After that, it could well be Japan or Brazil. “You can definitely say we are looking for other partners,” an administration official said.

In the case of China, as well as Russia, US officials have steered clear of trying to press for binding targets for emissions reductions.

Major environmental organisations support the Obama administration approach. David Doniger, the director of climate policy at the Natural Resources Defence Council, argues that Obama and other high-level members of his team have far greater flexibility to try to reach a deal in such bilateral talks than officials working through routine diplomatic channels.

“If you are trying to put together a baseball team you have to sign contracts with 30 players. You don’t work them out in one big meeting,” he said. “It’s very difficult in the multilateral setting. It is just not the place where it is very easy to get countries to make new moves.”

It is uncertain whether Obama will make a formal announcement of a new energy pact between the US and Russia. Instead, the president is expected to set out his ideas for a partnership with Russia on climate change and energy in a speech at the end of the summit. “They won’t have the full road map for what they are going to do but want to launch a stepped up partnership,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate change director of the NRDC.

Another scenario envisaged is the establishment of a separate US-Russian working group on global warming to be overseen by Todd Stern, the State Department envoy on climate change.

The US and Russia have long-standing co-operation on energy, but the Obama administration would like to ratchet up that involvement.

There have also been recent signs of movement from Russia, which is beginning to engage with climate change far more seriously than before, said Andrew Kuchins of the Russia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. In April, Moscow unveiled a new doctrine on climate change. “I think there is a much more realistic appraisal about the potential pros and cons of climate change. It is hard for them to ignore what is happening in the Arctic [which is warming rapidly],” said Kuchins.

In recent weeks, the White House, State Department and National Security Council have also been studying a report from the Centre for American Progress, an influential think tank, that called for looking at climate change as an economic issue, and for demonstrating clear benefits to Russia of action. “What is most crucial is engaging them on energy efficiency. We think that it is important to frame climate change as an economic issue and one where Russia stands to benefit by first undergoing significant energy efficiency [improvements].”

Russian industry is very inefficient, using three times more energy per unit of gross domestic product as the European Union and twice as much as the US, Light notes in the paper. He argues there would be great interest in Russia in collaborating with US experts on technologies to improve its use of energy.

The economic potential is huge. A World Bank report last year found that Russia, with reasonable investment, would be able to cut its energy consumption by about 50%or the equivalent of 60 biliion barrels a day of oil over the next three years.

Go to Source article
from guardian.co.uk Environment