World News joined 0010

[DUKE NUKEM]

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[DUKE NUKEM]

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[JohnCenaFan28]

Gordon Brown claimed victory in his bid to get Gulf states to pump more money into struggling economies.

After talks in Saudi Arabia, the Prime Minister said he believed the kingdom and other oil-rich countries would agree to up their contribution to the IMF.

Mr Brown has insisted that the fund's emergency reserves need to be expanded by hundreds of billions of dollars.

There are fears that its current level of 250bn dollars (£156bn) will not be enough to help states threatened by the global economic downturn. Iceland, Hungary and Ukraine have already been allocated some 30bn dollars (£18.6bn), with Pakistan expected to follow suit by requesting aid.

In a round of interviews, Mr Brown was asked whether he thought the Gulf states would now hand over some of the one trillion dollar windfall they have reaped from soaring oil prices.

He replied: "Yes, I think people want to invest both in helping the world get through this very difficult period of time but also I think people want to work with us so we are less dependent on oil and have more stability in oil prices."

He went on: "The Saudis will, I think, contribute, so we can have a bigger fund worldwide."

The PM said countries such as Saudi Arabia and China should be given more say on international bodies, and welcomed news that Saudi ruler King Abdullah would be attending a summit in Washington later this month to discuss reform of the global financial system.

Mr Brown also struck a more upbeat tone than previously on the prospects for the UK economy, claiming the "building blocks" for recovery were in place.

He said borrowing could be allowed to rise because the Government had relatively low debt, and added: "Of course we have also got low interest rates compared to previous world downturns so the building blocks for a recovery are in place. The important thing is to get banks now lending to small businesses and families."

-Nova

[JohnCenaFan28]

Gordon Brown has warned that the world must not allow a repeat of the Rwandan genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Prime Minister spoke out amid mounting fears of a humanitarian catastrophe in the central African state.

The current conflict in the Congo has its roots in the genocide 14 years ago in neighbouring Rwanda where up to a million people were killed when Hutu extremists turned on their Tutsi neighbours.

"I am very concerned by the situation in the Congo," Mr Brown said. "Thousands have been displaced. We must not allow Congo to become another Rwanda."

But despite Mr Brown's strong words, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has played down the prospect of British troops being sent to the DRC to bolster the United Nations' peacekeeping force.

Mr Miliband flew into the Congo on Saturday with French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner in a joint attempt to help find a diplomatic solution to renewed conflict between rebel and government forces.

Earlier, however, Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown had disclosed that contingency plans were being drawn up for the deployment of a European Union force - including UK troops - to support the UN.

However, with UK forces already stretched by fighting on two fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr Miliband was quick to pour cold water on the suggestion that British troops could soon be caught up in a new overseas entanglement.

"We are not at the moment looking at sending British troops to join the UN force," he told reporters during a visit to a refugee camp in eastern DRC.

"Seventeen thousand are in the country at the moment. What we do need to do is make sure that those troops are properly deployed in the regions that are under the greatest stress so that the humanitarian aid can get in."

-Ananova

[JohnCenaFan28]

A Cabinet minister has apologised after leaving confidential ministerial correspondence on a train.

The Sunday Mirror reported that Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell had been working on papers from his ministerial "red box" during a journey from Macclesfield to London's Euston Station on October 4 when he lost the documents.

The missing papers - correspondence from MP Sir Gerald Kaufman relating to the case of one of his constituents - were returned three days later after they were picked up by fellow passengers.

A spokeswoman for Mr Purnell said: "It was one letter from an MP with the attached correspondence and was returned safely within three days. Obviously, James is very sorry for the mistake."

The embarrassing disclosure comes just days after senior civil servant Richard Jackson was fined £2,500 for a breach of the Official Secrets Act after he left classified papers relating to al Qaida and Iraq on a train.

Mr Purnell's spokeswoman said that the Cabinet Office had confirmed that he had not broken any rules in taking his red box on a train.

-Ananova

[JohnCenaFan28]

An inquiry is under way after a memory stick with user names and passwords for a key Government computer system was discovered in a pub car park.

The Mail on Sunday said ministers had ordered an emergency shutdown of the Gateway website, which covers anything from tax returns to parking tickets, while experts checked to ensure people's private details were not compromised.

The loss of the memory stick is another embarrassment for the Government in a long series of data mishandling incidents which began with the loss of the entire child benefit database.

Members of the public can register on Gateway to access hundreds of Government services including self-assessment tax returns, pension entitlements and child benefits.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said the memory stick contained user names and passwords for testing an old version of the system and was not thought to hold details of members of the public. All the information was encrypted.

"We are taking this issue extremely seriously and a full and urgent investigation is under way," the spokeswoman said.

"We have moved immediately to make sure there is no conceivable risk to users of the Government Gateway, and are convinced the integrity has not been compromised.

"On the basis of an initial examination of the contents of the memory stick, it is our experts' opinion that the contents would not allow anyone to breach the very strong security safeguards protecting the website."

The memory stick was lost by an employee of Atos Origin which manages the Gateway system for the Government. It was found in the car park of the Orbital Pub in Cannock, Staffordshire - the town where the firm is based.

Atos said in a statement that it was clear that the employee had removed the memory stick from the company's premises in "direct breach" of its operating procedures.

-Nova

[JohnCenaFan28]

A doubling in the cases of the potentially fatal bug listeria has prompted a warning about chilled, ready to eat food.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said the latest figures show 400 cases a year, double the number seen in 2001 and a rise of a fifth in the past 12 months.

Most of those have been in people aged 60 plus, one of the vulnerable groups for whom the bacteria can be life-threatening.

An FSA spokeswoman said: "Although 400 cases each year is still quite small, a lot of them get hospitalised and there is a high proportion of deaths."

She said similar rises had been seen in other countries and it was thought to be linked to the consumption of pre-packed, chilled food.

The spokeswoman said the greatest risk comes from eating pre-prepared food which is eaten cold, like sandwiches, salads, cooked meats, soft cheeses and pates.

There should be no problem if they are stored correctly in a fridge at a temperature below 5C and eaten before their use by date.

But the FSA fears fridges which are too warm and people's reluctance to throw away food which looks safe to the naked eye could be contributing to the rise in cases of listeriosis.

"The best before date is about quality but the use by date is about safety," the spokeswoman said.

Heating pre-packed food like ready meals usually kills any bacteria present, she added, making it less of a concern.

-Ananova

[JohnCenaFan28]

Riot police kept apart rival loyalist and republican factions in Belfast as thousands of supporters packed the city centre for a tense homecoming parade by members of the armed forces.

In one of the biggest security operations ever mounted in the city, soldiers and other military personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan gathered to march past City Hall to a civic reception and later a church service in St Anne's Cathedral.

The parade passed off peacefully.

Earlier political representatives on all sides appealed for the parade to pass off without any trouble. An RAF flypast was cancelled as part of moves to ease tensions.

Sinn Fein supporters and dissident republicans opposed to the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness held separate demonstrations, one not far from City Hall where several thousand people, nearly all of them wearing Poppies cheered and applauded as 250 soldiers and representatives of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force passed by.

Security was especially tight at Great Victoria Street where loyalists on one side and Sinn Fein supporters who marched from Dunville Park, off the Falls Road, came to within 50 yards of each other close to the junction with Grosvenor Road.

Before the parade started insults were shouted and a number of bottles and fireworks thrown towards the republicans.

About 200 dissident republicans, among them Brendan McKenna and Colin Duffy from Craigavon, Co Armagh were held back by police near the West Link, and well away from the city centre.

This demonstration also passed off without incident.

Loyalist paramilitaries, among them Jackie McDonald, a leader of the Ulster Defence Association, were also on the streets, and outside City Hall Peter Robinson, First Minister at the Northern Ireland Assembly was applauded as he walked to take his place on the VIP platform.

-Ananova

[JohnCenaFan28]

A helicopter that crashed in heavy mist, killing three people, is being removed from the scene of the accident.

Two men and a woman died when the ex-military Gazelle helicopter came down near Langley Hill Farm in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, on Saturday.

Their bodies have now been taken to Cheltenham General Hospital where post-mortem examinations will be held in the coming days.

A Gloucestershire Police spokeswoman said: "Officers are unable to confirm the identity of those involved in this incident until the post-mortems have been completed. Police at the scene are in the process of looking to recover the helicopter with the help of Air Traffic Investigation."

Crash investigators have been examining the helicopter in the field where it fell.

Emergency services said all those on board were killed in a "wreck of mangled metal". They were all from the Midlands, police said. The helicopter was co-owned and based in Baxterley, near Tamworth, Warwickshire.

Previous part-owner of the Gazelle, Christopher Evans, had recently sold his share in the aircraft, but it was still based at a paddock near his home. He was not available for comment, but spoke to friend and fellow aircraft enthusiast Ken Broomfield after the crash.

Mr Broomfield said: "He said he had a call from the East Midlands police helicopter department because when an aircraft goes missing a search and rescue situation is instigated. He just said that the aircraft had crashed."

Kevin Dickens, spokesman for Great Western Ambulance Service, said no mayday call was received before the crash. "It was just a wreck of mangled metal. It was obviously a tragic scene. People's loved ones have been killed," he said. He added that parts of the helicopter were scattered "over some distance".

The Air Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) said the helicopter was flying from Stratford-on-Avon and was due to land at Yeovilton, Somerset.

-Ananova

[JohnCenaFan28]

Support for an independent Scotland has slumped in the wake of the global financial crisis, a new poll shows.

Just over a third of voters now back the SNP's key policy, according to the survey in the Sunday Herald newspaper.

As the UK slips into recession, support for breaking up the Union has fallen 4% in three months.

In July, support was 39% and had averaged 40% over the past nine months, according to the quarterly survey by pollster TNS System Three.

But this month, backing had dropped to 35%, with 43% of those quizzed opposed to independence, up 2% on July. The number of those undecided had also risen by 2%, to 22%, the paper said.

The gap between support and opposition for independence has increased four-fold, from 2% to 8%.

The pollster interviewed 978 adults face-to-face, in 43 constituencies across Scotland between October 22 and 29.

Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray told the paper: "The last few weeks have shown the SNP's argument for separatism has been undermined by the global banking crisis and the plummeting price of oil.

"Scotland's best prospect lies in partnership with the UK."

An SNP spokesman told the paper: "This is a very encouraging poll, which confirms that support for independence and equality for Scotland is extremely strong."

-Ananova