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Three men drugged and raped more than a dozen gay victims at sex orgies before injecting them with HIV-contaminated blood, a trial has heard.
Twelve of the victims, who range in age from their 20s to their 40s, are now HIV positive, the court in the Dutch city of Groningen was told.
The three HIV-positive suspects are accused of intentionally spreading the deadly virus at sex parties they promoted on the internet.
They face up to 21 years in jail if convicted of aggravated assault, rape, and the illegal possession of drugs.
The trio, aged 35, 48 and 49, were arrested in May last year after a number of their 14 alleged victims laid charges.
The prosecution alleges they were sedated with a combination of ecstasy and the date rape drug GHB before being raped and injected with a cocktail of their assailants' blood.
"The victims hope that their assailants will be punished," said the victims' lawyer Fred Kappelhof.
"They are hoping the trial will provide an answer to the question of why this happened to them."
If the men are convicted, the victims plan to launch civil proceedings for compensation.
In June 2006, health authorities reported a rapid rise in HIV infections among homosexual men in Groningen, and issued warning pamphlets at gay meeting areas.
The trial is expected to last a week.
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That's awful...
Inflation hit a 16-year high in September but the year-long spiral in the cost of living could soon be over, experts said.
Economists said the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), which hit 5.2% last month because of soaring gas and electricity bills, would decline rapidly as the economy slows.
September's CPI was the highest since the benchmark was introduced in 1997 and the biggest since March 1992 by historic data. A year ago it stood at 1.8%.
After energy price hikes - and an earlier round of increases in January - electricity prices are up 30.3% and gas costs up almost 50% year on year.
Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at Global Insight, said CPI was "almost certainly now at its peak, or very near to it". "Very weak economic activity, rising unemployment and extended tight credit conditions will increasingly dilute underlying inflationary pressures," he said.
The Government also faces paying out billions more in benefits and pensions after the headline Retail Prices Index (RPI) reached 5%.
September's RPI - which was last higher in July 1991 - is used by the Government to calculate pension increases for the coming year. Pensions usually increase by 2.5% or headline RPI, whichever is higher. A 5% rise in the current £47 billion cost of the basic state pension could add more than £2 billion to Government costs.
The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which cut rates by 0.5% last weekonomy weakens. This left some economists warning of inflation undershooting the 2% target as oil and food prices drop back and businesses lower their prices to attract customers as the economy slows.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper said: "Now that oil prices are coming down it's really important that utility companies pass on price decreases to customers as soon as possible."
-Ananova
David and Victoria Beckham's housekeepers are under police investigation after being accused of stealing property from the couple and trying to sell it on eBay.
Eric and June Emmett, who worked at the Beckhams' Hertfordshire mansion, were arrested on Friday on suspicion of theft from a private address. Their son Gareth, 25, was held on Monday night over the same alleged offence. All three were questioned and released on police bail.
Mr Emmett, 55, from Nazeing, near Waltham Abbey, Essex, said the allegations against him were "fabricated nonsense".
Suspicions were raised when memorabilia belonging to the former England captain and his pop star wife apparently appeared on the eBay auction website. Former Spice Girl Victoria's parents, Tony and Jackie Adams, reportedly spotted some of their daughter's designer clothes on offer to bidders, along with the footballer's worn boots, and then discovered the items were missing from the couple's Rowneybury House mansion.
Speaking at his large detached home in a leafy part of the Essex village on the edge of London, Mr Emmett initially said: "No comment", but added: "What is in the papers is fabricated nonsense. Totally fabricated, 99% of it is totally untrue."
Asked how the eBay site could be traced to his address, Mr Emmett said: "It doesn't involve myself, that is for sure."
Mr Emmett said he had run his own company for 30 years and had no need to steal from the Beckhams.
Later, the gate into the couple's driveway was sealed with plastic cable ties - thought to be intended to discourage reporters from knocking on their door.
A spokeswoman for eBay said they were still trying to establish with Hertfordshire Police which items were involved in the allegations and how they had been obtained. Items auctioned on the website have a clear paper trail back to the seller, she said, making it very difficult to get away with selling stolen goods. "Anyone stupid enough to try to sell anything that is not 100% legitimate makes a big mistake when they try to do it on our site," she added.
A spokesman for the Beckhams said: "There has been an incident and the matter is in the hands of the police."
-Ananova
"Another great plot" is being investigated by the authorities, counter-terrorism minister Lord West warned.
"There is another great (terrorist) plot building up again and we are monitoring this," he told peers during a debate on new security laws.
Lord West, the former head of the Royal Navy, revealed the existence of the plot as the House of Lords continued debating the Counter Terrorism Bill.
He gave no more details of the threat.
His warning came less than 24 hours after peers forced the Government to abandon plans to extend maximum pre-charge detention for terror suspects to 42 days.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith dropped the measure from the Bill after it was defeated in the upper house by 191 votes.
But she warned critics that they were exposing the country to a greater risk.
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve later described Lord West's comments as "reckless in the extreme".
"We are told the police have to strike a balance between early arrest during a developing terrorist conspiracy in order to protect the public, and waiting long enough to ensure there is enough evidence to secure a conviction," Mr Grieve said. "The minister's comments give us the worst of all worlds - cutting across both objectives."
A Home Office spokesman said: "We have always been clear - as has the director general of the Security Service (MI5) - that there are many plots, individuals and groups under investigation. We don't elaborate on specific plots or individuals."
-Ananova
National assessment tests for 14-year-olds have been scrapped by the Government.
Schools Secretary Ed Balls announced that they would be replaced by more frequent classroom assessments by teachers in years 7, 8 and 9.
The Key Stage 3 tests - introduced by the Tories in 1993 - had become "less and less relevant", he said.
Mr Balls said: "We need a more intensive focus in the early years."
He stressed that the compulsory national testing of 11-year-olds at Key Stage 2 were "here to stay".
Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the announcement was an "admission that the current testing system has failed". She said: "For too long, English, mathematics and science teachers in secondary schools have found themselves skewing everything to enable their pupils to jump through a series of unnecessary hoops.
"The marking disaster of this year's tests has clearly been the last straw. A mixture of incompetence and an endemic shortage of markers must surely have propelled Ed Balls to take the view that at least part of the testing system was unsustainable."
Parents welcomed plans to scrap Sats tests. Margaret Morrisey, of parents group Parents Outloud who used to work as an Ofsted lay inspector, said it was the "first sensible thing Mr Balls has done since becoming Schools Secretary". She said: "He should now scrap the whole lot. We are teaching the children to take these tests and supposing that all children are the same."
The school report cards, based on practice in New York, are intended to provide parents with a simpler and more comprehensive snapshot of a school's performance. They will be introduced in addition to existing assessments and Ofsted reports.
An expert group of headteachers and education specialists will be charged with working out the details of the reforms.
-Ananova
Nationalised lender Northern Rock has said that no legal action will be taken against former directors at the centre of the group's collapse last year.
Management said a review by lawyers and accountants into the previous regime, headed up by chief executive Adam Applegarth, had found "insufficient grounds to to proceed with any legal action for negligence".
Northern Rock also said it was "well ahead" of its Government loan repayment target, having paid back more than half the £26 billion owed to leave £11.4 billion outstanding as at September 30.
Before running into funding problems last summer, Northern Rock was one of the UK's biggest and most aggressive mortgage providers, advancing loans worth as much as 125% of home values.
It was forced to turn to the Bank of England for emergency support after the money markets froze, leaving the group facing a funding crisis.
Northern Rock's nationalisation in February led to 1,500 job losses as it scaled back activity to pay back the Government.
The lender has been reducing the size of its mortgage book in order to pay back its Government borrowing, and repaid £15.4 billion during the nine months to September 30.
But the group's mortgage arrears figure jumped by nearly 60% during the last three months, reflecting the fact that it has been left with poorer quality loans. The percentage of its estimated 600,000 mortgage accounts more than three months in arrears was 1.87% at September 30, up from 1.18% at the end of June.
Northern Rock also saw the number of properties in its possession jump 491 during the period to 4,201. Most of the repossessions were for properties secured with a "Together" mortgage, which allowed buyers to borrow up to 125% of the property's value.
Chairman Ron Sandler has warned that the bank, which racked up a near £600 million first-half loss to June 30, would be "significantly" loss-making this year.
-Ananova
House prices dived by 2.7% during August as the number of first-time buyers getting on to the property ladder slumped to a record low, figures have showed.
The average cost of a home dropped to £211,410 during the month, driven down by a 5.1% fall in the value of flats and a 3% slide in the cost of terrace houses, according to Communities and Local Government.
The figures came as the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said just 15,600 people bought their first home during the month, the lowest level since it began to collect data in 2002 and less than half the 34,800 who bought a property in August last year.
The drop was accompanied by a further tightening in lending criteria, with first-time buyers now putting down average deposits of 16%, the highest level recorded by the CML, and borrowing just 3.18 times their income - the lowest multiple since March 2006.
Across all buyers, a total of just 42,200 mortgages worth £6 billion were advanced for house purchase during August, both new record lows. Gross lending for the month, which includes all types of mortgages, totalled £19.7 billion, a 20% fall compared with July's figure and 42% below the sum advanced in August 2007. It was also the lowest monthly level since February 2005.
The mortgage squeeze is continuing to have an impact on the housing market, with estate agents now struggling to sell even one property a week. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said its members had sold an average of just 11.5 homes during the three months to the end of September, the lowest level since its survey first began in 1978.
At the same time, the number of surveyors reporting house price falls during September also increased for the first time since April. Overall, 84.2% more chartered surveyors reported seeing further price slides during the month compared with those who saw price rises, up on the figure of 81.8% more who reported falls in August.
Figures from CLG showed that house prices lost 3.4% of their value during the year to the end of August, after the annual rate of house price inflation fell for the 10th month in a row. The fall is far less severe than the drop of 12.4% recorded by both Halifax and Nationwide for the year to the end of September, but the CLG figures tend to lag other indexes, and further steep falls are expected in the months ahead.
Meanwhile, an economist told MPs that house prices could fall by a further 5% to 10% before the bottom of the market was reached.
Appearing before the Treasury Select Committee, David Miles, Professor of Finance at Imperial College London, said further falls of this level, which would leave homes around 20% cheaper than they were at their peak, could mean the housing market would stabilise.
-Ananova
Two track workers arrested 11 months ago over the Grayrigg rail crash, in which a woman died and 22 passengers were injured, have been cleared and will not face any action, their union announced.
The Rail Maritime and Transport union hit out at the arrests, saying the two men had been living under a "shadow of suspicion" for the best part of a year following the accident in Cumbria in February 2007.
The union said at the time it was "mystified" that the two men had been arrested, adding that they now deserved an apology.
RMT general secretary Bob Crow said neither of the men was directly involved in maintenance on points in the area of the accident and neither had faced any disciplinary action.
"Both the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) interim report and Network Rail's own report have pointed clearly to management failings and lack of resources, and it is those structural failings that still need to be addressed.
"NR's spending targets have been slashed by 30% over the last five years and we have raised concerns about the workloads placed on individuals on a number of occasions. NR is still dogged by inappropriate practices brought in by private contractors and there is still too much emphasis on getting things done quickly and cheaply rather than properly and safely."
The union said there should be a joint public inquiry into the Grayrigg incident and the 2002 Potters Bar rail accident, with a remit to study the fragmentation of the industry.
Mr Crow added: "Our two members have been living under the shadow of suspicion for the best part of a year and the very least they deserve is an apology for arrests that should never have been made."
An 84-year-old woman from Glasgow died when a Virgin train from London to Glasgow derailed at a speed of around 95mph at Grayrigg.
An initial report by the RAIB blamed a faulty set of points for the crash. A later inquiry by NR released in September last year, found systematic failures in track patrolling and management.
-Ananova