Norwegian police conclude search of waters around island where Anders Behring Breivik killed 68 of his 76 victims Police have ended the search for bodies in the waters surrounding the island where Anders Behring Breivik killed 68 of his 76 victims last week. “The search at Utøya has been completed, ” the police chief-of-staff, Johan Fredriksen, told a press conference on Thursday. The conclusion of the search came the same day as Georgian officials said the body of a young Georgian woman, who was at the youth camp on Utøya, had been found. Tamta Liparteliani’s parents travelled to Norway with Georgian foreign ministry officials to look for her in the hope they might find her alive. But the deputy Georgian foreign minister, Nino Kalandadze, announced on Thursday that Liparteliani’s body had been found on the bottom of the lake with gunshot wounds in the back. On Wednesday afternoon, police sources had suggested that only one person remained unaccounted for. Fredriksen said that the names of those who had died would be released by police at 6pm (5pm BST) each day as their identities were confirmed, with many names expected to be released on Thursday. Before the identification of Liparteliani, police had released the names of 13 people who died in last week’s twin atrocities. A police lawyer, Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby, told the news conference that police would interview Breivik again on Friday, but did not indicate what information they would be seeking from him. Breivik has confessed to the killings but claimed they were justified as part of a “war” and has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. He said he was trying to save the western world from Muslim colonisation, attempting to justify his actions in a 1,500-page anti-immigrant manifesto. Police have interviewed him once so far, in a seven-hour session the day after the attacks. Fredriksen said that Breivik, who is being held in solitary confinement, had had no contact with the outside world aside from meetings with his lawyer and the police. Norway was “getting back to normality” and it was time to end restrictions on security, he added. He said that there had been a number of bomb threats since the attacks but described them as “unspecific”, adding that it was “normal” that some people would seek to create more fear in the aftermath of such a tragedy. A senior EU counterterrorism official also said on Thursday that there was a risk “somebody may actually try to mount a similar attack as a copycat attack”. Fredriksen showed impatience at criticism of the police response to the attacks on Utøya, which has seen questions raised over the time it took officers to reach the island. Referring to the fact that the crew of the sole helicopter available to police was unavailable, he said the police had been asked questions about the helicopter “10 times” and that he did not wish to be asked them again. In response to a question about the police uniform Breivik was wearing, Fredriksen said the indications were that it was bought legally abroad. Although the search for bodies is now complete, police remain on Utøya as the investigation continues. Norway Europe Anders Behring Breivik Haroon Siddique guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Between 2006 and 2009 carrier bag use was down by 40% but in 2010 the downward trend was reversed British consumers are packing away their green credentials along with their weekly shop, as last year an increasing number of us bundled our purchases into single-use plastic carrier bags instead of seeking out environmentally friendly alternatives. Plastic bag use plunged after 2006 , when the government, retailers and green campaigners spearheaded a push to cut down on the 11bn plastic carriers Britons used each year, most of which find their way into landfill or – much more damagingly – into waterways and the sea, where they are a hazard to marine life. By 2009, bag use was down by about 40% to under 6.5bn. But last year, that downward trend was reversed. Perhaps owing to recessionary worries, people forgot their hessian sacks and filled up on plastic again – more than 6.8bn were used, up about 5% on the previous year, according to the government’s Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap). The British Retail Consortium said part of the increase was likely to be down to shoppers making more short trips to stores, rather than a single big weekly shop. But the retail trade body said the small increase should be put in context of the “massive” progress made since 2006, and said plastic bags were only one of the many ways in which retailers were cutting their environmental impact. Bob Gordon, head of environment at the British Retail Consortium, said: “It’s encouraging to see the majority of consumers are continuing to reuse their carrier bags and are taking as few new bags as possible. We urge customers to keep that up, particularly when changing shopping habits, including more trips to stores, present a challenge to maintaining the progress made in recent years.” He rejected calls for a bag ban or charges, which could penalise shoppers at a time of financial hardship. “The overall numbers remain the sort of result other environmental campaigns can only dream of,” he said. “But it’s time to accept bags are not the be-all and end-all of environmental issues.” Plastic bag data is difficult to compare over the past five years, because of changes in the way the statistics are collected. Between 2008 and 2009, the data was collated on a mid-year basis, from June to May, but from last year Wrap decided to return to presenting it on a calendar year basis. In 2006, nearly 11bn single use carriers were used, but after campaigning this fell to 10bn the following year and was down to just over 7bn by 2008-09 before bottoming out at under 6.5bn by 2009-10. But for the full year of 2010, bag use rose again to 6.8bn. The campaign against disposable plastic bags , which green campaigners have pursued for years but which gained traction from 2006 when Wrap collated its first comprehensive statistics, enjoyed a high profile for several years. In 2007, it received a massive boost from the launch of Sainsbury’s stylish cotton shopping bag from designer Anya Hindmarch, emblazoned with the legend “I’m not a plastic bag”. The product – which sold for £5 in the supermarket – went on to have a lucrative after-life on eBay, reportedly changing hands for as much as £200 a time. But while retailers say they are continuing their efforts to reduce bag use, there is less publicity around the issue. However, in some parts of the UK, legislators are taking an interest. In Wales , shoppers will be charged 5p per bag from this October, and a consultation on charging for bags kicked off in Northern Ireland last week. Scotland shelved its proposals for a charge, but they could yet be revived. In Wales, the imminent charge may have helped to cut bag use – the total was down by 7% last year, compared with the rise in England and Scotland. John Griffiths, Welsh environment minister, said a charge was the best way to drive down carrier use, as voluntary agreements with retailers would not achieve enough. He said: “These figures show a real difference between carrier bag use in Wales and that in other parts of the UK where no mandatory charge is planned. This proves that the carrier bag charge, which is due to be introduced in Wales on 1 October, is the only way to ensure a real and lasting reduction in the use of carrier bags.” Plastic bags Waste Consumer affairs Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Two suicide bombers kill at least 15 people and injure 30 in an attack on a local bank in Saddam’s home town Two suicide bombers have killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 30 in the Iraqi city of Tikrit as police and soldiers were collecting their salaries at a local bank. The attacks were the latest to target local Iraqi security forces as the last US troops prepare to pull out of the country more than eight years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. One suicide bomber detonated his explosives among officers who were gathered outside the Rafidain bank in the centre of Tikrit, 150 km (95 miles) north of Baghdad, and moments later another blew up a car when emergency workers arrived, police said. “Just a few minutes after I entered I heard a huge explosion. We ran outside to see what was happening, I saw bodies and the wounded all over the place,” said Assam Dhiyab, a policeman who was collecting his unit’s wages. A Tikrit hospital official said at least 15 people were killed and more than 30 wounded in the blasts. Most of the casualties were Iraqi soldiers. Television footage showed a column of black smoke rising from the blast site. “Initial indications are that the first explosion was a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest with a large amount of explosive,” said police lieutenant Mohammed Naif. “According to witnesses the bomber was targeting a group of soldiers and officers of the Iraqi army.” Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, is dominated by Sunni Muslims and suspected Sunni Islamists tied to al-Qaida have carried out frequent attacks in the town, including two of the deadliest in the country this year. On 18 January a suicide bomber attacked a police recruiting centre, killing 60 people and wounding more than 100. On 29 March militants took hostages at the provincial council headquarters and fought gunbattles with the security forces. At least 53 people were killed and scores wounded. On 3 June, two blasts in the city, one targeting worshippers in a mosque, killed 21 people and wounded 70. Three days later a suicide bomberblew up a car at the entrance to a complex of palaces once used by Saddam, killing 13 people. Violence in Iraq has dropped sharply from the height of sectarian killing in 2006 and 2007, but insurgents and militias still carry out daily attacks and assassinations in an attempt to undermine the government. Local police and soldiers have been increasingly targeted both by Sunni and Shia armed groups. Insurgents often set off one blast and then detonate another when emergency forces arrive. The remaining 46,000 US troops in Iraq are due to leave by the end of this year. Iraqi forces say they can contain internal threats but acknowledge that they need more training to plug capability gaps. Iraq Middle East guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Win for Hollywood studios as UK high court rules BT must block access to Newzbin2 Hollywood film studios won a landmark UK high court ruling on Thursday forcing BT to block access to an illegal file-sharing website accused of operating “on a grand scale”. The Motion Picture Association, the trade body whose members include Warner Bros, Fox, Disney and Paramount Pictures, has been granted an order requiring BT — the UK’s biggest internet service provider — to block its customers’ access to the website Newzbin2. Thursday’s verdict will be viewed by the creative industries as a landmark that could set a precedent for the widespread blocking of illegal filesharing websites by ISPs, helping to stem the flow of digital piracy in the UK. “In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes,” said Justice Arnold in his ruling at the high court in London. “[BT] knows that the users of Newzbin2 include BT subscribers, and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin2,” Arnold added. BT had argued that forcing it to ban its 6 million UK customers from accessing a website would usher in a new wave of online censorship. However, the creative industries claim website blocking could save them hundreds of millions of pounds in illegal downloads. The MPA said that Newzbin2 makes unlawful copies of television programmes and films, and receives in excess of £1m a year from its 700,000 users. “This ruling from Justice Arnold is a victory for millions of people working in the UK creative industries and demonstrates that the law of the land must apply online,” said Chris Marcich, MPA managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “This court action was never an attack on ISPs, but we do need their cooperation to deal with the Newzbin site, which continually tries to evade the law and judicial sanction.” The film industry’s fight to block Newzbin stretches back to March last year, when the high court ordered the site to take down all of its pirated material and pay damages to the studios. The three men behind Newzbin Ltd – Chris Elsworth, Thomas Hurst and Lee Skillen – sold all of their shares in the company to David Harris shortly before the trial. Newzbin Ltd went into administration soon after the ruling and avoided the huge payouts. Months later a clone site appeared operating anonymously from Sweden. Rights holders said they had no choice but to force BT to block UK users’ access to the website, saying all other legal avenues had been exhausted. Simon Milner, director of group industry policy at BT, said the latest judgment means rights holders will now have to prove in court that a website infringes copyright before it is blocked. Milner added that the judgment puts the Digital Economy Act voluntary blocking scheme, drawn up at industry roundtable meetings earlier this year with Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, in an uncertain position. “[The judgment] is actually helpful and we welcome it because it clarifies a complex area of law and shows that rights holders can use the copyright laws in this country. It means they have to prove a site is infringing before [a] court and get a court order,” he said. Milner did not reveal how much it will cost ISPs such as BT to block infringing websites. Other internet providers, including TalkTalk and Virgin Media, declined to join BT’s battle against the film studios, the court was told in June. Speaking after Thursday’s judgment, a spokeswoman for TalkTalk said the ruling had “no direct or immediate” impact on the ISP, the second largest in the UK, but that it would consider any similar court orders brought by film studios against it. The Internet Service Providers’ association, which represents Britain’s ISPs, said: “Concerns about over-blocking, ease of circumvention and increased encryption are widely recognised which means that blocking is not a silver bullet to stop online copyright infringement.” Filesharing Internet Computing Piracy Piracy Digital media BT Telecommunications industry Online TV Josh Halliday Mark Sweney guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Judge appointed by David Cameron to look into phone-hacking scandal says terms of inquiry have expanded considerably Lord Justice Leveson, appointed by David Cameron to look into the fall-out from the phone-hacking scandal, has warned that the expansion of the terms of reference of his inquiry has been so broadened that he may not be able to complete the first part of the inquiry within the planned timescale of a year. He was speaking as his inquiry team met for the first time in London to discuss how it would proceed. He said “in the first instance the inquiry will focus primarily on what I am calling the relationship between the press and the public and the related issue of press regulation”. He said he would have powers to compel named witnesses to attend and would be discussing with the DPP the extent to which he will be able to look at the scale of specific media wrongdoing before the criminal inquiries have been completed. In a prepared statement, he said: “It may be tempting for a number of people to close ranks and suggest that the problem is or was local to a group of journalists then operating at the News of the World but I would encourage all to take a wider picture of the public good and help grapple with the width and depth of the problem.” He said it was critical that the inquiry concentrated on “the central and most important issue”, adding the “focus of the inquiry is the culture practices and ethics of the press in the context of the latter’s relationship with the public, the police and politicians.” He said in September he would be holding in the first instance “a series of seminars on the ethics of journalism and the practices and pressures of investigative journalism”. He added: “At some stage there needs to be a discussion of what amounts to the public good, to what extent the public interest should be taken into account and by whom”. He added he would later hold seminars on press relationships with the police, politicians and the political process. In one of his few specific commitments he said one aspect of the inquiry may look into why “no action was taken in 2006 following a report by the information commissioner” into the use of private detectives and eavesdropping. He stressed the 2005 Inquiries Act under which he is operating gave him powers to require witnesses to attend and provide documentation. He said he would not at this stage be seeking to invite editors or proprietors to provide files on which they had based stories into “the utterly inappropriate behaviour of small sections of the press”. Leveson’s aides stressed that the Lord Justice of Appeal’s repeated references to the press in his statement should not be taken to mean that he would be ignoring the role of broadcasters or social media. The terms of reference were widened by a group of select committee chairmen determined to look at the role of the BBC in seeking to dominate the broadcasting and websites . Leveson also addressed concerns that he may be seen as close to News International due to the fact that he has attended two parties at the home of Matthew Freud, the publicist and husband of Elisabeth Murdoch, the daughter of News Corps chairman, Rupert Murdoch. He said he had met Freud by chance at a dinner in February 2010 when Freud had offered to do some work free of charge on the issue of public confidence in sentencing. Leveson is chair of the Sentencing Council. With the knowledge of the Lord Chief Justice, Leveson attended two large evening events at Freud’s London home in London in July 2010 and January 2011 to discuss these issues. He said he had not spoken with anyone from Freud Communications since January 2011. Another inquiry member Lord Currie said although he was a past chairman of Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, that did not mean he favoured statutory regulation. In a statement he said: “That is not the case. I believe self regulation with good governance in place, can be superior. Each case needs to be judged on it merits.” Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines David Cameron National newspapers Newspapers Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Vince Cable’s efforts to curb high executive pay undermined by Tory director of strategy’s comments on maternity rights Startling divisions inside the coaltion have been exposed after Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s strategy guru, proposed the temporary abolition of all maternity rights while Vince Cable, the business secretary, was preparing to meet policy experts on salaries to prepare the ground for new controls on excessive executive pay. The degree to which senior figures in the coalition are pushing in entirely opposite ideological directions underlines the growing sense that the coalition is now struggling to retain a set of coherent ideas. Hilton has always been regarded as a source of originality as much as pragmatic Whitehall-ready policy, but his opposition to any form of employment protection for mothers will alarm centrists in the coalition. He has also suggested the abolition of all consumer rights as part of an initiative to inject life into Britain’s sluggish economy. Cable, responsible for growth policy, yesterday presented limited proposals to abolish outdated shopping legislation. Demands for ever-more urgent deregulation has grown inside the government in the face of evidence that the economy is not growing as fast as the prime minister hoped a year ago, At one point Hilton, a euro-sceptic, advocated Britain ignoring a directive on EU temporary and agency workers’ rights, even though the government had committed itself to implementing the directive. Hilton would always defend himself as willing to advance iconoclastic thinking, but some civil servants are now hitting back claiming he is a diversion from serious policy. Cable is to meet members of the independent High Pay Commisison, a body that is looking at mainly non-legislative ways of curbing undeserved high pay to
Continue reading …Utility giant and its residential arm British Gas likely to face criticism for £1.3bn half-year profits with price rise imminent Britain’s largest energy supplier, Centrica, faced more public outrage today after reporting £1.3bn in its half-year profits – including £270m for its residential arm British Gas – just weeks after announcing a price hike . But Centrica said adjusted operating profits at British Gas for the six months to 30 June fell by 54% compared with the same period last year, as it battled with a 30% increase in wholesale gas prices and lower consumption. Centrica, which also operates an upstream gas exploration business and a US residential arm, posted a 19% decline in adjusted operating profits from £1.6bn in the same period last year. British Gas plans to lift gas and electricity prices by an average of 18% and 16% respectively from 18 August . Some 9 million customers will be hit when British Gas raises the average dual fuel bill by £190 a year to £1,219, pushing the average monthly bill to £101.58. The price rise comes at a time when household incomes are becoming increasingly squeezed by high inflation and muted wage growth. But Centrica said British Gas saw an 18% year-on-year decline in gas usage in the period, as well as a 3% drop in electricity consumption. The FTSE 100-listed company said British Gas profits were made in the first quarter of the year – with energy being sold at a loss since April. Centrica said without the pending price rise in August, it would make a loss in the second half of the year. However, British Gas did record an increase in customers in the period – up 159,000 to 16.1 million accounts. The upstream gas operations, which include assets in the North Sea and Trinidad and Tobago, saw profits increase 14% to £414m. Centrica Utilities Gas Commodities Energy industry Household bills Consumer affairs guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Chatshow host made remarks about tabloid journalism practices on Desert Island Discs and in 2007 interview Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror, has for the second time in a week denied that he printed stories obtained through phone hacking. CNN, which now employs him in New York as a chatshow host, issued the latest denial over comments Morgan made in a Radio 4 Desert Island Discs interview , which threatened to drag him into the scandal. In another interview, Morgan expressed sympathy with the News of the World royal reporter, Clive Goodman, who had been jailed for phone hacking, saying he was merely a “fall guy for an investigative practice that everyone knows was going on”. The 2007 Press Gazette interview was tweeted by MP Louise Mensch. Last week she locked horns with Morgan on a CNN show, when he robustly denied any involvement saying he had “never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone”. Hours earlier, CNN issued a statement saying Morgan’s 2009 Desert Island Discs interview did not contradict that statement. In the interview, presenter Kirsty Young asked: “What about this nice middle-class boy, who would have to be dealing with, I mean essentially people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people’s phones, people who take secret photographs, who do all that nasty down-in-the-gutter stuff. How do you feel about that?” Morgan replied: “Well, to be honest, let’s put that into perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties, rather than the staff themselves.” He continued: “That’s not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work. I’m quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to, and I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do. “I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide and a lot encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market.” In the CNN statement, Morgan said there was “no contradiction between my comments on Kirsty Young’s Desert Island Discs show and my unequivocal statements with regard to phone hacking”. “Millions of people heard these comments when I first made them in 2009 on one of the BBC’s longest-running radio shows, and none deduced that I was admitting to, or condoning illegal reporting activity.” “Kirsty asked me a fairly lengthy question about how I felt dealing with people operating at the sharp end of investigative journalism. “My answer was not specific to any of the numerous examples she gave but a general observation about tabloid newspaper reporters and private investigators.” But the emergence of the tape shows how sensitive the issue of phone hacking has become for all newspapers. Morgan, who is a Twitter enthusiast, has been conspicuously quiet on the issue of phone hacking since the scandal blew up three weeks ago. Phone hacking Piers Morgan CNN Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers TV news Television industry United States Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Price of NHS reforms soaring out of control says Labour as new total put at £1.49bn – up £160m in six months The cost of the government’s plans to restructure the NHS is rising at almost £1m a day, the Guardian has learned. Buried in a spreadsheet put out by the Department of Health as part of its revised business plan last week, officials admitted that the cost of transition was now £1.49bn. This figure is £160m more than the previous estimate, issued six months ago, when the reforms bill was first published. In January the department estimated the total cost of the structural change to be £1.33bn. The health bill was amended after suggestions by a committee set up by David Cameron, the Future Forum, to head off criticism over the wide-ranging reforms. But the effect appears to have been to increase significantly the cost of the upheaval to the taxpayer. A new impact assessment will now be completed by the Department of Health following the forum’s recommendations. Analysis by the Health Service Journal has shown that the transition to placing health budgets in the hands of GPs had already cost £228m since July last year. The size, scale and cost of the reforms have long troubled MPs and health service professionals, who point out that cutting staff also costs huge sums in redundancy payments. Trade unions claim that three-quarters of the estimated cost of the transition will go towards redundancy payments to 20,000 staff, suggesting average settlements of more than £45,000. John Healey, the shadow health secretary, said: “People will be shocked at the scale of wasted cost due to David Cameron’s NHS upheaval. These new figures, slipped out by the Department of Health, show that the costs of this unnecessary reorganisation are spiralling out of control.” Alan Maynard, professor of health economics at York University, said: “The delays and time taken for the reforms have really begun to affect morale and work ethic. People just won’t work if they don’t know where they will be next year or whether they have a job.” The department said the benefits of the changes will “far outweigh” the costs. The Co-operation and Competition Panel (CCP), the government body that investigates competition issues in the NHS, says that patients are losing out as a result of restrictions on their choice of provider of NHS care. An investigation found that nearly half of the NHS’s primary care trusts were blocking competition by guaranteeing NHS providers set amounts of work before patients can be sent to the private sector, or restricting the number of services that private hospitals can offer. The panel said that the expected benefits of patient choice – to patients and taxpayers – will not be fully realised. Trusts are also rationing procedures to cut costs. A freedom of information request by the health service GP magazine has found that, out of a survey of 111 PCTs, two-thirds are rationing “non-urgent” treatments such as tonsillectomies, cataract surgery and hip replacements. The issue of competition in the NHS is explosive. A controversial study by academics at the London School of Economics claims almost 1,000 lives were saved by the NHS being subject to competition. But Allyson Pollock, professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary, University of London, said the study was “fundamentally flawed”. The paper, written by Zack Cooper, of the London School of Economics, and quoted by the prime minister last month, showed patients with more choice of hospitals had lower death rates. Cooper found that mortality rates of patients with heart disease fell faster in the more “competitive areas of England”. Thus the academics estimate that the reforms led to relative reduction of about 900, or around 7%, in heart attack deaths in the English NHS between 2006 and 2008. NHS Health Public finance Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Officials estimate that there are 38,000 organised criminals active in Britain working in 6,000 groups A record £161m worth of assets, including sports cars, watches, diamond earrings, designer clothing and fine china was recovered from criminals in Britain last year. The Home Office disclosed the figure, the highest since the introduction of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, as ministers prepared to publish their new strategy to tackle organised crime. They said a further £49m of assets was returned to victims, while £831m of cash and ill-gotten gains such as seized illicit drugs were denied to criminals during 2010-11. It is officially estimated that there are 38,000 organised criminals active in Britain working in 6,000 groups involved in the drugs trade, human trafficking, child exploitation and cybercrime as well as more traditional areas such as armed robbery and organised vehicle theft. Ministers have complained that too many of them regard themselves as “untouchables”. It is also estimated that organised crime costs the UK £20-£40bn a year in social and economic costs. The organised crime strategy, to be published on Thursday, promises to make a difference by “ensuring a co-ordinated national approach across government, law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies”. It will also pave the way for the establishment in 2013 of the National Crime Agency (NCA), which will set the “national operational agenda” for fighting serious and complex crime. The NCA will for the first time have the power to direct other police forces and law enforcement agencies in ensuring that appropriate action is taken at the right level against organised crime. It will have the power to link local to national and cross-border efforts to tackle organised crime. The agency has already suffered an early setback, however, in that the senior chief constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe, who was frontrunner for the head of the shadow NCA to be set up this year, has already been drafted in as temporary deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police in the aftermath of Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation. “Organised crime has a local impact but a global reach. To tackle it effectively we need a strategic, co-ordinated response at every level from community policing through to international partnership,” said Home Office minister James Brokenshire. “The organised crime strategy will bring a new emphasis on the prevention of organised crime alongside a greater push to ensure that more prosecution and disruption activity takes place against more organised criminals, at a reduced cost,” said Brokenshire. “This, alongside the launch of the new National Crime Agency, means that we will ensure that those who commit serious and organised crime are tracked down, pursued, brought to justice and their ill-gotten gains are stripped away.” Crime Police Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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