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Boy, 15, dies after south London stabbing

Police have launched a murder hunt after boy was attacked in Camberwell and died six hours after he was taken to hospital A teenage schoolboy who as stabbed in a south London street has died. Police say the 15-year-old who was set upon in Camberwell, south London, was pronounced dead at 10.30pm on Wednesday – six hours after he was taken to hospital. His family has been informed. Police sources confirmed a murder hunt had been launched. Emergency services arrived at Cormont Road on Wednesday afternoon and found the teenager with stab wounds to his body. Police are investigating the death and are understood to have made several arrests overnight. Detectives are still trying to establish a motive for the attack and it is not yet known if the murder was gang-related. Formal identification of the victim has yet to take place. The victim is the fifth teenager to be stabbed to death in the capital this year, Scotland Yard said. The Guardian is interested in covering this story in more depth. Please contact matthew.taylor@guardian.co.uk if you have any information about this case. Knife crime Crime London Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk

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Third body found on Bradford outskirts

Corpse found near site where two badly beaten bodies were discovered on Tuesday A third body has been found in a country lane close to where two others were discovered by a passing motorist. Firefighters were called to a fire in Holme Lane, near Tong, Bradford, where they found the corpse at about 6.40am. A spokesman for West Yorkshire police said detectives would examine any links between the death and the ongoing investigation into the murders of two men whose badly beaten bodies were found in nearby New Lane on Tuesday night. It is not yet known whether the body discovered on Thursday is male or female. West Yorkshire police said the bodies of two men in their mid-20s to 30s were discovered by a motorist in New Lane, near the junction with Raikes Lane on the outskirts of Bradford, at about 10.20pm on Tuesday. Neither victim has been identified. The area where the bodies were found is open countryside, a mile or two from the suburbs of south Bradford. It is thought that the first two murders may be gang-related. Crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk

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Third body found on Bradford outskirts

Corpse found near site where two badly beaten bodies were discovered on Tuesday A third body has been found in a country lane close to where two others were discovered by a passing motorist. Firefighters were called to a fire in Holme Lane, near Tong, Bradford, where they found the corpse at about 6.40am. A spokesman for West Yorkshire police said detectives would examine any links between the death and the ongoing investigation into the murders of two men whose badly beaten bodies were found in nearby New Lane on Tuesday night. It is not yet known whether the body discovered on Thursday is male or female. West Yorkshire police said the bodies of two men in their mid-20s to 30s were discovered by a motorist in New Lane, near the junction with Raikes Lane on the outskirts of Bradford, at about 10.20pm on Tuesday. Neither victim has been identified. The area where the bodies were found is open countryside, a mile or two from the suburbs of south Bradford. It is thought that the first two murders may be gang-related. Crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk

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Spain earthquake havoc leads to questions

Concerns over how relatively minor tremors caused serious damage to buildings in Lorca, where eight people died Residents of the Spanish town of Lorca have begun sifting through the rubble left by two earthquakes as the death toll was reduced to eight and questions were asked about how such apparently minor tremors could cause such havoc. Authorities put the number of injured at 120 and said three people were still in a serious condition. Two pregnant women and a child were among those who died in the two quakes. Up to 20,000 people spent the night in squares, parks and nearby countryside amid fears of aftershocks. People slept in tents and cardboard boxes, while hundreds more bedded down on the ground with nothing more than their clothes and blankets. “Today will be even longer than yesterday,” warned mayor Francisco Jódar, who vowed to get people under cover for Thursday night and proclaimed three days of mourning. Rescue teams, military personnel and bulldozers moved into the city on Thursday morning to clear away rubble, which included one three-storey building that collapsed across a city street. At least two of the dead were killed by falling masonry which crashed to the ground from an apartment building in one of the town’s poorer neighbourhoods. Some of those who began returning to their homes on Thursday morning reported serious damage, raising concerns about the quality of building work in an area known for normally low-level earthquakes. Engineers, architects and surveyors began the task of checking buildings for structural damage. Roger Musson, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey, said the town had been unlucky because the quake had happened two miles (3km) underground. “It’s only really caused such damage because it was so shallow and the epicentre was so close to the town of Lorca,” he said. “A magnitude 5.2 is not that big – it’s not considered a large earthquake.” Earthquakes normally strike at a depth of between six and 12 miles, and the shocks are more dispersed. “On average there are probably about 1,000 magnitude 5 earthquakes every year, which is around three per day,” he said. “They mostly happen in the sea, or in remote places. It’s only when you get one in a place like this where you get significant damage,” he added. “It’s certainly unlucky for the people of Lorca to get one so close and shallow.” The town is in an area of Spain were quakes are not uncommon, but where they mostly cause little damage. This was the deadliest quake in Spain since 1956, when 12 people died and some 70 were injured in the southern Granada region. Spain Natural disasters and extreme weather Europe Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk

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Spain earthquake havoc leads to questions

Concerns over how relatively minor tremors caused serious damage to buildings in Lorca, where eight people died Residents of the Spanish town of Lorca have begun sifting through the rubble left by two earthquakes as the death toll was reduced to eight and questions were asked about how such apparently minor tremors could cause such havoc. Authorities put the number of injured at 120 and said three people were still in a serious condition. Two pregnant women and a child were among those who died in the two quakes. Up to 20,000 people spent the night in squares, parks and nearby countryside amid fears of aftershocks. People slept in tents and cardboard boxes, while hundreds more bedded down on the ground with nothing more than their clothes and blankets. “Today will be even longer than yesterday,” warned mayor Francisco Jódar, who vowed to get people under cover for Thursday night and proclaimed three days of mourning. Rescue teams, military personnel and bulldozers moved into the city on Thursday morning to clear away rubble, which included one three-storey building that collapsed across a city street. At least two of the dead were killed by falling masonry which crashed to the ground from an apartment building in one of the town’s poorer neighbourhoods. Some of those who began returning to their homes on Thursday morning reported serious damage, raising concerns about the quality of building work in an area known for normally low-level earthquakes. Engineers, architects and surveyors began the task of checking buildings for structural damage. Roger Musson, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey, said the town had been unlucky because the quake had happened two miles (3km) underground. “It’s only really caused such damage because it was so shallow and the epicentre was so close to the town of Lorca,” he said. “A magnitude 5.2 is not that big – it’s not considered a large earthquake.” Earthquakes normally strike at a depth of between six and 12 miles, and the shocks are more dispersed. “On average there are probably about 1,000 magnitude 5 earthquakes every year, which is around three per day,” he said. “They mostly happen in the sea, or in remote places. It’s only when you get one in a place like this where you get significant damage,” he added. “It’s certainly unlucky for the people of Lorca to get one so close and shallow.” The town is in an area of Spain were quakes are not uncommon, but where they mostly cause little damage. This was the deadliest quake in Spain since 1956, when 12 people died and some 70 were injured in the southern Granada region. Spain Natural disasters and extreme weather Europe Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk

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Politics live blog – Thursday 12 April

Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 10.13am: Andrew Turner asks when the government will set up a commission to investigate the West Lothian question, as it has promised to do. Clegg said the government decided to set out its plans for Lords reform first, because these will have a bearing on the West Lothian question. Q: Are you saying that one version of Lords reform would mean that you would not have to address the West Lothian question? No, says Clegg. It’s just that the two issues overlap. “This is a pragmatic issue of chronology and interaction between those two questions,” he says. Mark Harper says that if the Lords is wholly or largely elected, that will raise the same questions about Scotland’s representation as those thrown up by the West Lothian question. 10.09am: Andrew Turner, a Conservative, is asking questions now. Q: How many hours do you spend on constituency work? On ministerial work? And in cabinet? Clegg says it varies enormously. He cannot give a precise answer. Some weeks he finds himself “immersed” in constitutional reform. Some weeks he focuses on his duties as deputy prime minister. “It comes and goes really,” he says. Q: How much time do you spend on party work? Clegg says it is an intriguing question, but not one he can answer. “I don’t keep a timesheet in that sense.” Mark Harper, the Conservative constitutional reform minister, is giving evidence alongside Clegg. He says his workload varies too. 10.04am: Graham Allen, the chairman, asks if the result of the referendum has dealt a blow to the case for reform. Clegg says the need for constitutional reform remains. He says he is not “undimmed or discouraged” about the need to get on with reform. Q: It has been said that the arguments weren’t presented well during the campaign. Are there lessons to be learnt about how the case for constitutional reform can be made? Is there a case for parliament having a more serious role? Clegg says he agrees with Allen’s characterisation of the campaign as one that was “disfigured” by party politics. It reinforced his view that, where politicians can develop ideas together, that should be encourged. As chair of the group looking at Lords reform, he tried to get people to move forward on a consensual basis. 10.01am: Nick Clegg has just started giving evidence now. He is talking about the AV referendum result. He says that, as far as the actual result is concerned, “the less said, the better”. But it won’t affect other aspects of the government’s reform programme. 9.56am: Nick Clegg will be giving evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee shortly. You can watch it here on the parliamentary website. I’ll be covering it in detail until about 11am, when I will focus instead on the David Laws report. 9.31am: Lady Hamwee, one of the Lib Dem peers who abstained last night instead of voting with the government over elected police commissioners, told the Today programme that the vote was not a deliberate display of “muscular liberalism”. It just reflected the strength of feeling on the matter, she said. She also insisted that the vote against the government was consistent with what is set out in the coalition agreement. It was not planned to be muscular or assertive but it was pretty kind of truthful. We are not so far from the Conservatives. Both parties want more democracy in the governance of policing. But what the coalition agreement said was that the new model should be subject to “strict” checks and balances. There was certainly no confidence that what is in the bill at present amounts to that. I hope what has happened is going to allow a rethink which will reflect better the coalition agreement. 9.28am: For the record, here are t he latest YouGov GB polling figures. Labour: 42% (up 12 points since the general election) Conservatives: 36% (down 1) Lib Dems: 8% (down 16) Labour lead: 6 points Government approval: -23 9.04am: Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, was on the Today programme this morning just before 8am. As usual, PoliticsHome was monitoring. Duncan Smith did not have much to say about the youth employment initiative coming later today, but he did have some interesting things to say about welfare in general. Here are the main points. • Duncan Smith strongly attacked Labour’s record on jobs and wage equality. “Labour, for all the money that they threw at these things, left us with a record level of youth unemployment and wage inequality that is at record levels, the worst in my lifetime,” he said. • He claimed Labour’s Future Jobs Fund was ineffective. “The Future Jobs Fund was six times more expensive than anything else that they were doing and actually created jobs only in the public sector, which, once the money ended, those poor people, young people, crashed out of work straight away and then start carrying a wage scar,” he said. I didn’t know the phrase “wage scar”, but I’ve just been consulting Professor Google. It means the long-term impact of unemployment, caused by the fact that young people who are unemployed tend to lose out later in life when they do get into work because their average earnings are lower than they otherwise would have been. • He said nearly 50,000 firms had offered to create work experience places for young people. “What we’re trying to do is give young people a chance to get some experience of the working world in the private sector, for the most part, and then see with the private sector how we develop that,” he said. “That’s the key area of developing private sector jobs.” • He defended the decision to scrap the education maintenance allowance. I spent many, many months talking to young kids who are at school and large numbers of those I talked to would readily admit that the maintenance allowance wasn’t a vital and critical area for them, but for poorer children it was,” he said. 8.50am: William Hague, the foreign secretary, has put out a statement about the meeting he and David Cameron are having today with Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who, as chair of the Libyan National Transitional Council is leader of the Libyan rebels. I am very pleased to welcome Mr Abdul Jalil to the UK. The NTC is a legitimate representative of the Libyan people. The situation in Libya remains of very serious concern, and this visit provides a welcome opportunity to discuss with Mr Abdul Jalil the latest situation on the ground and to look at how the UK and international community can continue to support the Libyan people. We will discuss a range of issues, including the establishment of a permanent NTC office in London and the provision of further non-lethal equipment and support to the NTC. We will explore in more detail the measures agreed at last week’s Contact Group meeting in Rome, including the operation of a Transitional Financial Mechanism, which was driven by the UK. The Transitional Financial Mechanism comes into operation today and will allow the NTC to provide essential services to the people of Libya. We will also share views on the situation in Western Libya, which remains deeply troubling. Colonel Gaddafi continues to brutalise his own people. The British government urges him to stand down immediately and initiate a real ceasefire, so that the legitimate needs of Libya’s people can be met. Abdul Jalil is holding a press conference at 3pm. 8.34am: When Nick Clegg promised “muscular liberalism” yesterday, we didn’t think that was going to involve voting down flagship proposals in the coalition agreement. But the defeat in the Lords over elected police commissioner s suggests relations in the coalition really have changed. It wasn’t an official rebellion – technically, only 13 Lib Dem peers rebelled – but if you look at the Lords analysis of the division list you will see that only 36 of the 92 Lib Dems in the Lords voted with the government, suggesting that Clegg didn’t try very hard to get his troops out. Clegg is sharing a platform with David Cameron later today, and with luck they will have something to say about this. Otherwise, it’s a reasonably busy day. Here’s a full list of what’s coming up. 9am: David Cameron meets Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the chair of the Libyan National Transitional Council, at Number 10. It’s the first time the two men have met. 9.30am: The Department for Work and Pensions releases its annual poverty statistics . 10am: Nick Clegg gives evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee. He’s expected to be asked about Lords reform, the alternative vote referendum and the fixed-term parliaments bill . 11am: The Commons standards and privileges committee publishes its report about David Laws . It is expected to recommend that Laws should be suspended from the Commons for seven days . 12.15pm: Michael Gove , the education secretary, announces the government’s response to the Wolf review on vocational qualifications in a statement to the Commons. 12.30pm: Cameron and Clegg share a platform at an event to promote a government initiative on youth employment. Around 3pm: MPs will debate on a backbench motion tabled by the Tory MP Adam Afriyie calling for a shake-up of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority . As usual, I’ll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm and an afternoon one at about 4pm. House of Commons House of Lords Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk

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10-year-old climbed into a container beneath transport truck thinking it would take him from Andean highlands to Cochabamba, where his mother was jailed Franklin Villca Huanaco ran away from home to be reunited with his mother but hid in a truck going the wrong way and wound up in a foreign country lost, frozen, ragged – and apparently successful. The 10-year-old clambered into a metal container beneath a transport truck thinking it would take him from Oruro in Bolivia’s Andean highlands to the city of Cochabamba, where his mother was jailed for three and a half years for transporting chemicals to make cocaine. Instead he emerged two days and 620 miles later on Chile’s Pacific coast. Famished and disoriented, wearing only trousers, a pullover shirt and battered shoes, Huanaco wandered the streets of Alto Hospicio, a poor community just outside the city of Iquique. Three strokes of luck then supplied the story with a happy ending. The boy was taken in by a local woman, Margarita Valencia, who fed and looked after him along with her other children. Chilean state TV picked up on the tale and broadcast his heartfelt plea: “I wanted to see my mother.” Word reached his mother, Zenobia Huanaco, who it turned out had been released from jail a month ago and was working as a farm labourer near Cochabamba. Bolivia’s foreign ministry said she will be flown to Iquique where the Bolivian consul is waiting to help. “I’ve never been separated from my son until I went to jail,” she told the ATB television station. An emotional reunion awaits. “Franklin, my child, I’m here crying for you. Where have you gone, little one? I love you. You know that I was in prison and then in the fields and you told me ‘I am content with my papa,’” she said. The boy told Chilean TV he had been beaten at home by a 14-year-old brother. Chile’s National Service for Minors said Huanaco would remain with his adoptive family until being handed over to his mother. A final piece of luck may be in the offing: with the story streaking across the internet mother and son could, if well advised, milk the media. Bolivia Chile Rory Carroll guardian.co.uk

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Florida is poised to become what the Huffington Post calls the “stingiest state” in America on unemployment benefits. A bill waiting for the governor’s signature would cut the maximum number of weeks people could get benefits from the state from 26 to 23. It would also put into place an…

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Gitmo prisoners may soon get a long-sought privilege: family visits. The Washington Post reports that the Pentagon and the international Red Cross are in hush-hush negotiations to make it happen. Some of the 172 detainees at Guantanamo Bay are currently allowed to take part in monitored video chats with their…

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Punishments for burglars tightened up by sentencing body

Judges and magistrates told to impose severe sentences on criminals who inflict anguish or trauma on victims Burglars who target homes will normally be expected to be sent to jail, under new sentencing guidelines for judges and magistrates. But the Sentencing Council concedes that community orders may be appropriate for the lowest level of offenders, such as those who reach through an open window before taking goods of little or no value. The council says the guidelines, which will apply in crown and magistrates courts, place a renewed emphasis on imposing more severe sentences on those who inflict anguish or trauma on their victims. But it believes that the impact of the new guidelines is unlikely to change the number of burglars sent to prison each year or the average length of their sentences. Instead, it is being introduced to improve the consistency of sentencing and to encourage judges to focus on the harm of the victim, as well as the culpability of the offender. It suggests that in the most serious cases of aggravated burglary, where an intruder is carrying a weapon, an offender should expect to be sentenced to up to 13 years in prison on conviction. In ‘standard’ cases of domestic burglary, the guideline increases the current four-year maximum sentence to six years and it takes a fresh approach to non-domestic, burglary asking judges to look at the harm to the victims beyond the economic implications alone. But the Sentencing Council also recognises that current sentencing practice in cases involving the lowest level of offenders does lead to community penalties being imposed rather prison sentences. It says the sentencing advisory panel “consulted specifically on whether a community order starting point, where no factors indicating greater culpability or harm are present, was appropriate”. “There was broad agreement with the approach, though some responses expressed grave concerns that any sentence for domestic burglary should be non-custodial,” the council said. “However, the panel identified that even those responding in this way seemed to be content for a non-custodial sentence to result following consideration of mitigating factors applying either to the offence or to the offender. “Existing sentencing practice also demonstrates the use of community sentences in some circumstances.” Lord Justice Leveson, the Sentencing Council chairman, said: “Burglary can have a very serious impact on victims. It is very far from being only a crime against property. As a result, we have ensured that the impact on victims is at the centre of considerations about what sentence should be passed on a burglar.” Sentencing Prisons and probation Crime Police UK criminal justice Alan Travis guardian.co.uk

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