Friday’s strike sees Robert Peston and Laura Kuenssberg missing from TV and radio news, as Newsnight goes off air The strike by BBC journalists on Friday leaves the corporation’s TV and radio services without star reporters including Nick Robinson, Robert Peston and Laura Kuenssberg on one of the biggest days so far in the phone-hacking story following the resignation of Rebekah Brooks. BBC2′s Newsnight, which has enjoyed a ratings boost in the past two weeks as viewers have tuned in to catch up with comment and analysis of the latest twists and turns in the phone-hacking saga, is also off air on Friday night because of the 24-hour strike by members of the National Union of Journalists. The current affairs show, which was to have been presented by Gavin Esler, is being replaced by a 2010 repeat of Have I Got News For You. However, BBC1′s main news bulletin at 1pm went out as normal and the 6pm and 10pm bulletins are due to go ahead as planned. Robinson, the BBC political editor, and Kuenssberg, the chief political correspondent about to join ITV News as business editor, have been regular fixtures on TV and radio bulletins and the BBC News channel as key elements in coverage of the News International scandal played out at Westminster. Peston has also delivered several scoops about the unfolding story, leading rival media organisations to accuse News International of leaking stories to the BBC journalist. Viewers and listeners tuning in to BBC News programmes on Friday morning found disruption to the breakfast shows on BBC1 and Radio 5 Live and Radio 4′s Today . BBC1′s Breakfast was off air, replaced by a BBC News channel simulcast, while the regular 5 Live Breakfast hosts Nicky Campbell and Rachel Burden were replaced by Ian Payne and Julia Bradbury. Listeners to Radio 4′s Today were treated to a repeated documentary about the Russian communist revolution in the runup to 7am. However, from 7am the BBC’s flagship radio news programme ran pretty much as normal with regular presenters Sarah Montague and Justin Webb, who is in Japan reporting on the aftermath of the tsunami that struck earlier this year. The World at One and PM, Radio 4′s flagship evening news programme at 5pm, are also off air. The 1pm World at One news programme was replaced by a 15-minute bulletin, with the rest of the hour-long show taken up by a repeat of an edition of The Prime Ministers on 19th-century statesman Robert Peel. In place of PM will be a repeated of the contemporary history show Document, about the Polaris missile, with an edition of Soul Music at 5.30pm. Radio 4′s 8pm political discussion show Any Questions has also been taken off air. Replacing the scheduled broadcast of the panel programme which usually hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby will be an omnibus edition of Radio 4′s series exploring Winston’s Churchill’s life outside politics, Churchill’s Other Lives. Saturday’s edition of the follow-up call-in programme Any Answers will be replaced by an edition of My Teenage Diary, according to the BBC. The late night Radio 4 news programme The World Tonight is giving way to an edition of Meeting Myself Coming Back just after the 10pm news bulletin. Radio 5 Live is running a slightly slimmed-down news service with short news bulletins on the hour and half hour, with 15-minute bulletins planned for 1pm, 5pm and 6pm. The BBC World Service’s English-language service will be running five-minute news at the top of the hour and two minutes on the half hour. Picket lines were mounted from midnight on Friday outside BBC premises across the country, with the NUJ predicting a “solid response” to the walkout. The BBC admitted it expected widespread disruption to services and said it was disappointed by the industrial action and apologised to viewers and listeners. Negotiations with the NUJ over compulsory redundancies at BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring continued until the eve of the strike, but no agreement was reached. The NUJ general secretary, Michelle Stanistreet, accused the BBC of “provoking” a strike over a handful of job losses, but the corporation said there were 100 posts for which compulsory redundancy was “regrettably unavoidable”. Stanistreet said the union offered a number of solutions to the dispute, adding that an offer from the conciliation service Acas for peace talks had not been taken up by BBC management. “There are so many people who want to leave the BBC that this could be resolved through negotiations. The NUJ has a longstanding policy of no compulsory redundancies, and it is clear that our members at the BBC are fully prepared to stand up for their colleagues under threat,” she said. “Jobs are being saved and created at management level, but journalists are losing theirs. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that BBC management wants thousands of its journalists to go on strike rather than settle the dispute.” A BBC spokesman said: “We are disappointed that the NUJ is intending to strike and apologise to our audience for any disruption to services this may cause. “We have had to reduce the number of posts in World Service and BBC Monitoring by 387, following significant cuts to the central government grants that support these services. In a significant majority of cases we have been able to reach this through voluntary redundancy or redeployment. “However, there are in excess of 100 BBC posts for which compulsory redundancy is regrettably unavoidable, and this is our focus, regardless of whether staff are members of unions.” A further 24-hour strike is due to take place on 29 July. •
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A tumultuous week for the eurozone ends with the results from the European Banking Authority’s annual banks healthcheck 3.34pm: German bonds are rising as Spanish and Italian government debt comes under pressure 3.20pm: But Sony Kapoor, MD of Re-Define, an economic think tank, says the unprecedented level of detail contained in the stress tests will be a “real punch” that’ll lead to a roller coaster few days. “The EBA has done everyone a big favour by shining the light of transparency on opaque risks in the European banking system.” “The next few days are likely to deliver a roller coaster ride as the new information contained in the stress tests is digested and everyone waits for EU policy makers to make up their mind on Greece.” “The bank-sovereign links that the stress tests reveal means that the pressure to sort out the Euro crisis and put in place a good bank resolution framework will increase sharply.” 3.06pm: Germany’s bankers have complained that the stress tests are going to provide so much detail that they might actually “exacerbate” the sovereign-debt crisis. “Given the tense situation which already exists in money and capital markets, we believe publishing the results with the present level of detail would exacerbate the sovereign-debt crisis,” the ZKA Central Credit Committee, representing Germany’s banking associations, wrote in a letter obtained by Bloomberg News. “To avoid further capital market turmoil, which would fly totally in the face of what the stress test was actually intended to achieve, we believe the level of detail needs to be significantly reduced.” More detail from Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil here 2.38pm: If you’re wondering why you should care about whether or not some banks you’ve never heard of go bust or not, Larry Elliott just chipped in to remind us that the collapse of Austrian bank Credit-Anstalt in 1931 led to the Great Depression . 2.28pm: Still confused about how it all works? Read Jill Treanor’s dummy’s guide 2.08pm: Here’s a good little Bloomberg video in which Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Jean-Pierre Lambert says he expects nine of the banks to fail. We says the results have already started leaking out and Spanish, Greek and German banks will all fail to make the grade. 1.45pm: Feeling stressed today? You ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s judgment day for Europe’s banks as EU regulator, the EBA, will publish the results of their stress tests at 5pm. About 10 of the 91 banks are expected to fail the test, which requires them to hold enough capital to protect against a collapse. The benchmark is 5% core tier one capital. Those expected to fall short include six small Spanish banks, three Greek banks and perhaps some German banks, with Germany’s Helaba pulling out of the test earlier this week. UK banks are expected to pass the test, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everything is A-OK – last year Ireland’s banks collapsed four months after being given a clean bill of heath. However, the tests have seen been toughened. The test results will presented as PDFs on the EBA website European banks European debt crisis Europe Europe Banking European Union Rupert Neate guardian.co.uk
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A tumultuous week for the eurozone ends with the results from the European Banking Authority’s annual banks healthcheck 3.34pm: German bonds are rising as Spanish and Italian government debt comes under pressure 3.20pm: But Sony Kapoor, MD of Re-Define, an economic think tank, says the unprecedented level of detail contained in the stress tests will be a “real punch” that’ll lead to a roller coaster few days. “The EBA has done everyone a big favour by shining the light of transparency on opaque risks in the European banking system.” “The next few days are likely to deliver a roller coaster ride as the new information contained in the stress tests is digested and everyone waits for EU policy makers to make up their mind on Greece.” “The bank-sovereign links that the stress tests reveal means that the pressure to sort out the Euro crisis and put in place a good bank resolution framework will increase sharply.” 3.06pm: Germany’s bankers have complained that the stress tests are going to provide so much detail that they might actually “exacerbate” the sovereign-debt crisis. “Given the tense situation which already exists in money and capital markets, we believe publishing the results with the present level of detail would exacerbate the sovereign-debt crisis,” the ZKA Central Credit Committee, representing Germany’s banking associations, wrote in a letter obtained by Bloomberg News. “To avoid further capital market turmoil, which would fly totally in the face of what the stress test was actually intended to achieve, we believe the level of detail needs to be significantly reduced.” More detail from Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil here 2.38pm: If you’re wondering why you should care about whether or not some banks you’ve never heard of go bust or not, Larry Elliott just chipped in to remind us that the collapse of Austrian bank Credit-Anstalt in 1931 led to the Great Depression . 2.28pm: Still confused about how it all works? Read Jill Treanor’s dummy’s guide 2.08pm: Here’s a good little Bloomberg video in which Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analyst Jean-Pierre Lambert says he expects nine of the banks to fail. We says the results have already started leaking out and Spanish, Greek and German banks will all fail to make the grade. 1.45pm: Feeling stressed today? You ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s judgment day for Europe’s banks as EU regulator, the EBA, will publish the results of their stress tests at 5pm. About 10 of the 91 banks are expected to fail the test, which requires them to hold enough capital to protect against a collapse. The benchmark is 5% core tier one capital. Those expected to fall short include six small Spanish banks, three Greek banks and perhaps some German banks, with Germany’s Helaba pulling out of the test earlier this week. UK banks are expected to pass the test, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everything is A-OK – last year Ireland’s banks collapsed four months after being given a clean bill of heath. However, the tests have seen been toughened. The test results will presented as PDFs on the EBA website European banks European debt crisis Europe Europe Banking European Union Rupert Neate guardian.co.uk
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Rebekah Brooks, a loyal lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch, resigned Friday as chief executive of his embattled British newspapers and became the biggest casualty so far in the phone hacking scandal at a Sunday tabloid. (July 15)
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Rebekah Brooks, a loyal lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch, resigned Friday as chief executive of his embattled British newspapers and became the biggest casualty so far in the phone hacking scandal at a Sunday tabloid. (July 15)
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Will “Carmageddon,” the shutdown of a 10-mile stretch of one of the busiest highways in the United States bring the City of the Angels to its knees? The AP’s John Mone reports on how Los Angeles will cope with the closure of Interstate 405. (July 14)
Continue reading …Will “Carmageddon,” the shutdown of a 10-mile stretch of one of the busiest highways in the United States bring the City of the Angels to its knees? The AP’s John Mone reports on how Los Angeles will cope with the closure of Interstate 405. (July 14)
Continue reading …Blue Dog Rep. Jim Cooper Chides Republicans For Rudeness And Partisan Attacks On Elizabeth Warren
July 15, 2011 No CommentI only got to see a few minutes of the Elizabeth Warren [net worth unknown] testimony at the House Oversight and Government Reform committee hearing yesterday morning, but apparently Republicans did their usual routine and treated her like a partisan punching bag . Blue Dog Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) [Ed. note: Worth between $3M and $10M ] finally had enough and spoke out: COOPER: Thank you Mr Chairman, I don’t have a question for the witness I do have a comment and primarily aimed at the junior members of the committee on both sides of the isle. I think all of us realize that this Congress is viewed as dysfunctional. And I would submit this Committee is also viewed as dysfunctional, and this alleged hearing is one of the reasons why. It too easily degenerates into a partisan food fight, and it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, just a few years ago in Congress, it was not this way. So I would urge the junior members of the committee to resist the partisan talking points that enable people on both sides of the aisle to walk in here, read a question, make a partisan hit, look like we’re smart and then leave. That’s not good governance regardless of which party’s in charge. I didn’t vote for Dodd-Frank. It had many good features; it had some less good features. But I do not want to be part of a committee, at least at the subcommittee level, that treated Miss Warren with more rudeness and disrespect than I have ever seen a committee witness treated. That is not the American way. Now, some of us come here and we get so used to the food fight that we want it to continue. And you’ll probably score brownie points if you make your partisan hit. You might even get on a better committee. Well, congratulations. You will not have solved a problem. I would suggest to the Chairman and the ranking member that often times a seminar format is much more instructive, is much more educational than the sort of partisan charade we seem to continue to engage in with hearings like this . I would urge members to read Ms Warren’s, one of her books. I’ve only read the Two Income Trap, it’s outstanding. Your constituents back home should read this book. Your bankers back home should read this book. Then there’d be a lot less hatred, a lot less discord, a lot less anger because this lady’s trying to do the right thing. And we all recognize that consumers often times get the short end of the stick. I’ve tried to refinance my home mortgage several times to take advantage of today’s record low interest rates and the paperwork is a blizzard. I went to a very good law school and it’s almost impossible for lawyers to understand this stuff. Ms Warren has pointed out that the existing regulatory agencies have taken over a decade to try to simplify a couple of the forms and they have failed. What has this committee done to simplify some of the forms? Nothing. So, isn’t it time for a new approach? Isn’t it time for fresh thinking to give the consumers a break? And let us also acknowledge that Congress is sometimes captured by vested interests. Sometimes that happens. And we need to resist that. So, I would urge the members of the committee, particularly the junior members who are not so entrenched in bad habits, consider a new and fresher approaches to solve some of these problems so that we can protect consumers and also give legitimate industries a fair shake, because all bankers aren’t bad people. But I’m afraid that we’re falling into a rut here that is going to be to the detriment not only of this committee and this Congress but of the nation. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can be civil to each other. We can be informed. We can resist the partisan talking points. But I’m not seeing that sort of behavior, at least so far. So, let’s try to do better and let’s try to be civil to witnesses like Ms Warren. Let’s try to focus on the substance, because I’ve actually heard very little substance here today. And there are better ways to solve our problems and I hope that this committee will be part of those. So, I thank the Chairman .
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Can’t wait until next Christmas, when The Hobbit hits movie theaters? We’ve got something to hold you over.
Continue reading …Troubled Actress Lindsay Lohan discussed her sobriety while drinking wine, then complained bitterly that she deserved the starring role in Black Swan , reports a Miami journalist. Lohan pointed out that she “took ballet until she was 19 and was indignant that she was not considered for Black Swan ,” writes reporter…
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