Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver have split up, but they’re still in regular contact and love each other very much, the former governor said last night, thanking friends and family for their support since the separation was announced. “I just spoke to Maria an hour ago before I came here,…
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Jeff Hall, who led National Socialist Movement in south-west US, may have involved son in supremacist activities A 10-year-old boy charged with murdering his father at their home in California was being exposed to his father’s extreme neo-Nazi ideology of racism and violence at the time he allegedly turned a gun against him. Evidence is mounting that Jeff Hall, 32, a white supremacist who led the National Socialist Movement in the south-west of the US, was involving his son in neo-Nazi activities before his death on 1 May. A possible link between the group’s violent messages and the shooting – an act exceptionally rare for a child as young as 10 – could be an important factor in the boy’s trial. Police were called to the Halls’ home in Riverside, California, outside Los Angeles, shortly after 4am last Sunday, where they found Hall dead on a sofa. He had been shot with the family handgun. Hall used his home as the headquarters of the NSM, one of America’s largest and most influential neo-Nazi groups. A reporter for the New York Times witnessed Hall preaching race hatred at a meeting in front of the boy, his eldest of five children, a day before the shooting. Hall told the newspaper he was teaching the boy how to use a gun as well as night-vision gear and had given him a belt bearing Nazi SS insignia. According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors extreme right-wing groups, the NSM has a track record of recruiting very young children into its activities that surpasses that of any other organisation in the US. The party has created a children’s wing called Viking Youth Corps, which is open to boys and girls with the proviso that they must be of European descent and the offspring of NSM members, or have their parents’ consent. The boy, unnamed by authorities due to his age, will be tried in a juvenile court. The local paper, the Press-Enterprise, described him as a “shaggy blond-haired, small, skinny, baby-faced boy”. His defence lawyer indicated that he might pursue a plea of not guilty for reasons of insanity. The boy’s parents had been through a bitter divorce, and Hall and his former wife, Leticia Neal, had accused each other of abusing the child. The family has been monitored by social services since 2003. The NSM was founded in 1994 and has grown in prominence over seven years. It now has about 400 members in 32 states. It advocates open race hatred, calling for the expatriation of all non-whites in America, and preaching antisemitism. Until 2007 its members wore Nazi uniforms with swastika armbands, but now wear black battle dress. Hall, a plumber, was a prominent party member, involved in vigilantism along the Mexican border, organising patrols hunting illegal migrants. His house regularly attracted anti-racist protesters and he had put surveillance cameras on the property’s exterior walls to keep guard on them. Hall’s ashes are expected to be scattered along the Mexican border as a final political statement. Jeff Schoep, NSM leader, described the dead man on the movement’s website as a “dedicated father, his children were his life”. He added: “See you in Valhalla!” California Gun crime United States The far right Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
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Muammar Gaddafi’s officials admits unseaworthy migrant ships are being allowed to sail as a protest against Nato air strikes The Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is allowing thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants on to overcrowded, unseaworthy ships in an apparently calculated attempt to use migration as a weapon to pressure Nato and the EU countries backing Libya’s rebels. Libyan officials admit they are not stopping boats teeming with African migrants embarking on perilous journeys to Europe in protest at air strikes, which they say have destroyed the country’s coastguard. Turning a blind eye to people smuggling has had disastrous humanitarian effects, apparently leading to the deaths of hundreds of boat people during unsuccessful attempts to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa, Malta, and other parts of Europe. Officials are still assessing the death toll from the sinking of an unseaworthy and overcrowded ship that is feared to have claimed hundreds of lives when it went down less than two miles off Tripoli last Friday. Officials said they were doing nothing to encourage the journeys to Italy, but could see no reason to stop them, because doing so would serve the interests of Nato member states bombing Libya. “We say to Europe that we can no longer do what we used to do,” said the prime minister, al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi. “And that’s because Nato has ruined our coastal defences.” A senior UN official said there had been reports that some migrants had been ordered at gunpoint to board boats by the Libyan army. Melissa Fleming, chief spokesperson for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, said the agency had received reports that the Libyan army was organising and directing the exodus with scant regard for human life or for Libya’s international obligations. Fleming said one survivor had told the UN refugee agency that he and others had initially refused to board a ship they believed to be dangerously overcrowded. Libyan soldiers fired their guns into the air to force people to go on board, the survivor said. Others survivors told the UN that some ships were leaving Tripoli only for their captain to disembark once they were at sea and take a pilot boat back to shore. “They [the migrants] are told, ‘here’s the compass, you go that way’,” Fleming said. However, survivors of Friday’s tragedy told the Guardian they did not believe Libyan soldiers or officials had been involved. They said their ordeal started at dawn when smugglers came to their compounds in the capital to collect them. Two Somalis say they were stripped of their valuables by Libyan men who they did not believe were officials. They were then taken to a beach 15 minutes east of the Tripoli port where they were crammed into an 18-metre (59ft) boat. The Guardian also spoke to survivors from Mali and Eritrea, who were among about 200 people who swam to shore or were rescued by the Libyan navy. The nine men said they had not seen Libyan officials until they were rescued. They said they had paid $300-$500 (£180-£305) for the journey, less than half the fee being charged by smugglers a year ago. “There were 885 people on the boat,” said Mohammed Abdul Aziz. “It started swaying and we ran to one side and then we ran to the other. It sunk and broke apart. We did not know where we were going.” Abdulghani Waeis, the chargé d’affairs at the Somali embassy in Tripoli, who is dealing with up to 150 fatalities and about 50 survivors from Friday’s sinking, said: “There were efforts to prevent this last year. But now the Europeans are attacking Libya and you cannot defend those who are attacking you. It is a policy of not defending [the coast] but not pushing them [to sea].” According to UN figures, 12,360 migrants from Libya have arrived in Italy and Malta since March and the figure is rising fast. Five boats carrying a total of 2,400 people, including many women and children, arrived off Lampedusa at the weekend. About 10% of the boat people are believed to have perished during the voyages, either from drowning, exposure or a lack of food and water. Most of the people now leaving Libya are understood to be of sub-Saharan origin, including Somalis and Eritreans who were working in Libya before the war began earlier this year. Under a previous agreement with the EU, Gaddafi prevented them and other economic migrants from countries such as Niger and Chad from trying to travel on to Europe. Italy says about 25,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from Tunisia, have arrived on its territory since the start of the year, while France is leading efforts to suspend the EU’s internal open borders policy to halt migrant flows. Cecilia Malmstrom, EU commissioner for home affairs, has demanded urgent action to address the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Libya. “Reports of men, women and children from sub-Saharan Africa being forced out of the country by the Gaddafi regime are particularly worrying,” she said in a statement. The UN has called on European nations to urgently improve mechanisms for rescue at sea following revelations by the Guardian that 61 African migrants died in March after European military units, including a Nato ship, allegedly ignored their cries for help. Libya Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest Nato Refugees European Union United Nations Italy Europe Martin Chulov Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A suicidal Dubai man’s final act earned him an unfortunate place in the record books. The man killed himself by jumping from the 147th floor of the emirate’s 160-story Burj Khalifa tower, landing on a deck on the 108th floor. It was the first known suicide at the world’s tallest…
Continue reading …Research cuts will force scientists to share laboratories, top academics warn
May 11, 2011 No Comment
Equipment shortages predicted as government pulls funding for four projects considered priorities by research councils Scientists will be forced to share laboratories and find extra money to buy basic equipment as funding cuts hit British research, the Guardian has learned. Senior academics said savage cuts to hardware and facilities budgets would transform scientific research in the UK, with top-end equipment concentrated ever more in elite universities and government centres, and other researchers striking deals to get access to the facilities. The greatest difficulties are expected at cash-strapped, middle-ranking universities, where research and teaching are in danger of decline because there is too little money to replace ageing and broken lab equipment. The full impact of the cuts emerged as the science minister, David Willetts, said the government would not fund four major science projects highlighted as a priority by research councils. They include a national supercomputing service for developing drugs and modelling climate change; an international computer science centre at the Daresbury research and innovation campus in Cheshire; redevelopment of the Institute for Animal Health; and upgrades to facilities at the Rothera research station in Antarctica. The government cut capital budgets at research councils by half last year, a move that will see spending on science infrastructure fall by several hundred million pounds over four years. Universities hope to recoup the costs for some teaching equipment from tuition fees, but are under pressure to form consortiums to share more specialised research tools. Christopher Snowden, the vice chancellor of Surrey University, said the cuts would have a “profound” impact on universities at a time when teaching grants and research funding were under extreme pressure. In evidence given to the Commons science and technology committee, the Royal Astronomical Society warned that bids for small-scale lab equipment and computers were “likely to be seriously affected by the planned cuts”. The committee is expected to criticise the cuts in a report on astronomy and particle physics to be published on Friday. The Medical Research Council has urged scientists to share equipment more, including its PET brain scanner facility at Imperial College, and four high-throughput gene sequencing centres in Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool and Edinburgh. From this month, scientists can apply for only half the cost of lab equipment valued at between £10,000 and £121,588, and must find the rest of the money from other sources. Research councils can choose to cover the full cost of more expensive equipment but will decide where any facilities are based. Researchers fear the shortfall in funds will hamper research as universities struggle to maintain their own equipment and major facilities face extra demand. Mark Downs, the chief executive of the Society of Biology, said: “Capital expenditure is essential for research. Without it we will fail to get the most out of the money spent on the rest of research. Critically it is also the budget for maintenance of expensive equipment. Cutting the budget by half makes no sense. The research councils largely have their hands tied but government must revisit this critical area.” Universities already share equipment, but at many sites time on facilities is over-subscribed. One researcher in London said smaller research groups would band together to bid for equipment but feared ending up in “unequal partnerships”. The eight research-intensive universities in the north of England, including Manchester, Durham and Sheffield, are meeting on Thursday to discuss the sharing of equipment such as microscopes and imaging instruments. A similar strategy has been adopted by chemistry departments in Scotland, which operate an east coast consortium dominated by Edinburgh and St Andrews, and a west coast collaboration centring on Strathclyde and Glasgow. Similar consortiums may be harder to set up in parts of England, including East Anglia and the west country, where research groups are more dispersed. David Phillips, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry and emeritus professor at Imperial College, said more sharing would undoubtedly cause tension within the scientific community. “All the equipment we have is fully used by our own people. If we are then being asked to provide a service for other departments elsewhere, that is going to put a lot of pressure on. It means having to ration the time available to existing users and that will cause some friction,” he said. “The difficulty for even successful departments is that equipment has a finite lifetime. You might be able to keep going with facilities that are five years old, but if they are a decade old, you are out of date. If there is a 50% cut in funding to replace that equipment, people in the UK are going to miss out. “The inevitable outcome is going to be fewer research departments in the UK. There is a lot of pressure on smaller departments who will see their income under threat, and there comes a point where you have to ask whether they will be viable,” he added. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, whose capital budget will fall from £49m in 2010/11 to 25m in 2013/14, said it would reform equipment sharing and might pull out of some facilities to better fund leading centres. “Inevitably there will be some groups who had certain facilities in their labs or on their doorsteps that won’t any more,” said John Fisher, deputy vice-chancellor at Leeds University. “It will be different, but we have to work smarter and more strategically as a country.” The Natural Environment Research Council, a major funder of environmental research, has ringfenced money for three major projects: the Halley Antarctic base, a replacement for the research ship, Discovery, and building work at its Keyworth site. “Aside from these projects, it will be very difficult to support new capital projects in the coming years unless additional funds can be secured,” a spokeswoman said. The extent of the cuts has drawn protests from physicists involved with long-term projects, such as the European Extra-Large Telescope, an observatory to be based in Chile. The Institute of Physics said the lack of capital funds undermined planning and was likely to affect the UK’s ability to take a leading role in the telescope project. The Science and Technology Facilities Council, which funds physics and astronomy, already plans to withdraw from telescopes in the northern hemisphere, a move that will have a damaging effect on UK groups hunting for Earth-like planets beyond our own solar system. Chi Onwurah, the shadow minister for innovation and science, said: “This government does not have a long-term plan to support British science. We are in danger of losing our world beating position in science because of this government’s policies. They claim to recognise the vital part science will play in rebalancing our economy, driving growth and creating jobs. But real terms cuts to research budgets and huge cuts to important capital projects tell a different story.” Science policy Research funding University funding Higher education Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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• Fifa asks FA for report on Lord Triesman’s claims • Governing body expresses ‘extreme concern’ Fifa has expressed “extreme concern” over the allegations of World Cup bidding corruption made by Lord Triesman, and has asked the Football Association to provide a full report. Triesman, the former FA and England 2018 bid chairman, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday of “improper and unethical” behaviour by four Fifa executives, claiming they asked for favours, including money and a knighthood, when he was lobbying for England’s bid. Two other Fifa members were separately alleged to have been paid $1.5m (£912,200) to vote for Qatar’s 2022 bid. Fifa said in a statement: “In his letter to the FA, the Fifa secretary general [Jérôme Valcke] expresses the extreme concern of Fifa and the Fifa president at the latest allegations questioning the integrity of some Fifa executive committee members in connection with the bidding procedure for the 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cups. “He adds that to be in a position to examine the situation thoroughly and with clear-sightedness, Fifa asks the FA to submit a complete report from Lord David Triesman, by means of which the latter would relate his declarations fully and provide any and all documentary evidence at his disposal.” The allegations of bribes paid for votes for Qatar were contained in a submission to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee by the Sunday Times. The Fifa statement went on: “The secretary general has also sent a letter to the Sunday Times to ask the newspaper to provide Fifa with any piece of evidence with regard to the statements made to MP John Whittingdale. “The Sunday Times had already provided world’s football governing body with all of the evidence and documentation at its disposal. Nevertheless, Fifa asks the English newspaper to submit as soon as possible any other piece of evidence that it may be in possession of and which has not yet been sent to Fifa. “In particular, reference is made in the letter to the allegations regarding a ‘whistleblower who had worked with the Qatar bid’, who allegedly made some declarations regarding the matter in question.” Fifa The FA World Cup 2018 Lord Triesman Football politics guardian.co.uk
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The government faces a row as Tory MPs fight to amend the education bill to increase numbers of selective schools Prominent backbench Conservative MPs are pushing to increase the number of academically selective state schools in England. Graham Brady, a former shadow minister for Europe, tabled an amendment to the education bill calling for independent schools to be allowed to select their pupils on ability even if they opted out of the private sector and turned into academies. He later withdrew the amendment, which was signed by 38 MPs, including two from the Labour party – Gisela Stuart and Eric Joyce – during a debate on the bill on Wednesday because the government did not support it. However, he told MPs in the Commons that he would “continue to argue the case”. Selective state schools, or grammars, are a politically fraught topic for the coalition, in particular for the Conservatives. Four years ago, a row broke out after David Willetts, then the Tory’s education spokesman, spoke out against grammar schools, arguing that they entrench disadvantage. David Cameron tried to calm a row that ensued among Conservative MPs in favour of the schools. Cameron argued that the debate was “pointless”. He said history had shown that creating grammar schools was “extremely difficult and … often leads to them being very unpopular, and they are then got rid of”. Brady, Conservative MP for Altrincham and Sale West, resigned from the frontbench over Cameron’s comments. Last year, Brady asked Michael Gove, the education secretary, whether he would allow more selective state schools in areas where parents wantedthem. Gove responded: “My foot is hovering over the pedal. I’ll have to see what my co-driver, Nick Clegg, has to say.” Legislation passed last year in the academies bill allowed grammar schools to become academies and continue to select their pupils on academic ability. Brady told the Commons that this showed that the government had already accepted that selective schools could be academies and that this amendment “merely extended this to independent schools”. He said his amendment would send out “a clear message that what matters in education is quality without dogma getting in the way”. “We would have the same number of selective schools, but they would be able to accept pupils regardless of their parents’ means. This is a simple measure which would open the door to more good schools. It would … welcome [independent schools] into the academy programme and into the state sector.” However, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, said there were no plans to expand the number of selective state schools. Andy Burnham, Labour’s shadow education secretary, described the amendment as an “outrageous expansion of selection”. “This reveals the Tory party’s true instincts on education – an ever more divided and elitist school system,” he said. “We know this is what Michael Gove wants too, but this blatant attempt by his backbenchers reveals that we are in a real battle to protect a fair education system. Labour is fighting for fair admissions for all families, while the Tory party are siding with the few not the many. The Lib Dems need to decide whose side they’re on.” The economic climate has made many parents decide against sending their children to private schools. Seven private schools have so far become academies. The number of private schools considering becoming academies is not known. There are 164 grammar schools in England. Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, said that becoming an academy would not be “the move of choice” for many, but that financially they may have no alternative. Gibb told Brady that he understood his “sentiment that there should be more good school places available in the state sector”. “We will talk to any independent schools – whether they are selective or not – about moving into the state sector to increase the number of good places,” Gibb said. “We have no plans to change the fact that [independent schools] are required to open up their admissions.” The education bill, which will now go to the House of Lords, also gives headteachers greater powers to exclude violent and aggressive pupils and ensures heads have the final say on whether to expel a pupil from their school. At the moment, parents are allowed by law to appeal if their child is excluded and, if successful, can overturn a head’s decision. Other reforms contained in the bill give teachers new rights to search pupils for forbidden items, such as pornography, phones, video cameras or anything they believe might cause harm, and removes the requirement for teachers to give a day’s notice of a detention. Meanwhile, ministers will discourage schools from entering their pupils from taking thousands of practical qualifications on Thursday. An independent review of vocational qualifications, published in March, found that up to 400,000 teenagers were wasting their time on publicly-funded college courses that do not lead to jobs or further training. Michael Gove, the education secretary, will respond to the review in a statement to the House of Commons at lunchtime. He will set out plans to stop teachers being able to include their pupils’ results in many vocational qualifications in school league tables. It comes as the chief executive of McDonald’s attacked snobbery towards jobs at the burger chain. Jill McDonald told a meeting of company directors that the US fast-food giant was creating thousands of jobs and helping young people gain qualifications while in work. “There is a lot of snobbery around our jobs,” she told the annual convention of the Institute of Directors. Schools Education policy Michael Gove Private schools Teaching Liberal-Conservative coalition David Cameron Nick Clegg Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
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Thousands in Italian capital take non-existent earthquake prediction seriously and escape city It may be down to the beatific presence of Pope Benedict XVI, or perhaps Italy’s tectonic plates balked at the idea of destroying the Pantheon, the Colosseum and St Peter’s basilica in one fell swoop – but, as yet, the Eternal City remains untouched by a huge earthquake predicted by a self-taught seismologist . Raffaele Bendandi, the “earthquake prophet” who died more than 30 years ago, forecast a devastating tremor that would tear through Italy’s capital on 11 May. Italy had already felt 22 small earthquakes by midday, a figure that is perfectly normal for the quake-prone country. But Rome’s espresso-drinking, Vespa-driving, hand-waving activities continued as normal. The threat had been taken seriously by thousands of Romans. In Rome’s Chinatown, many storefronts were shuttered, and La Repubblica reported that requests from the capital’s public employees for a day off in order to escape the city were 18% higher than for the same day in 2011. Education officials expected school attendance to be down by a fifth. Bendandi, who was knighted by fascist leader Benito Mussolini, is said to have predicted several disasters, including the Friuli quake of 1976, which claimed almost 1,000 lives. Despite assurance from the head of a foundation set up in Bendandi’s honour in his hometown near Bologna, that the seismologist had never pin-pointed a date for the earthquake, Romans still headed for the country. A survey of farm hotels outside the capital indicated that business was up as the city’s inhabitants made their preemptive escape. “I can state with absolute certainty that in Raffaele Bendandi’s papers, there is no prediction of an earthquake in Rome on 11 May 2011,” Paola Lagorio, the president of the Osservatorio Geoficico Comunale of Faenza, said last month. “The date is not there. The place is not there.” Italy’s Civil Protection department looked to reassure people with an information pack online that stressed that quakes cannot be accurately predicted and that Rome isn’t at particular risk. Italy Natural disasters and extreme weather Geology Europe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The CIA has invited selected senators to view the photos of Osama bin Laden’s death that the White House has decided not to release to the public. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Senate Armed Services committee have been told that they can make an appointment with the intelligence…
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Prosecution says Levi Bellfield made early hours visit to flat near where Milly disappeared and later stripped the bedding A former nightclub bouncer accused of the kidnap and murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler paid a visit in the middle of the night to his rented flat near where she was last seen, stripped the bedding and removed the mattress, a court heard. Just hours after the 13-year-old vanished, Levi Bellfield, 43, who was house-sitting with his girlfriend in west London, returned to their empty rented flat in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, which overlooked the road where Milly was last seen alive, a jury was told. His girlfriend awoke between 3am and 4am to find him getting dressed, and he said he was going to the flat in Collingwood Place because he “wanted a lie-in”, said prosecutor Britain Altman QC. “So why return to Collingwood Place in the dead of night? To walk the dog? To lie in? “If the prosecution is right – that he abducted and killed Milly Dowler – then he had to dispose of her body and clean up,” Altman told the Old Bailey trial. Milly vanished shortly after 4pm on 21 March 2002, while walking home from Walton station. Her naked and badly decomposed body was found six months later in undergrowth in Yateley Heath Wood, Hampshire, 25 miles away. Phone records showed that during his late night visit Bellfield had switched off his mobile, the court heard. “His phone records show that his phone fell silent or was unreachable for almost nine-and-a-half hours between 23.02 that Thursday night and 08.26 on the Friday morning, ample time to make the journey from Walton to the deposition site in Yateley Heath Wood and to begin the clean-up,” said Altman. Bellfield, who was convicted in 2008 of the murders of two women and the attempted murder of a third, denies the kidnap and murder of Milly, whose real name was Amanda. He also denies the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, then 11, the previous day, on 20 March, 2002. The jury has heard that Bellfield, his girlfriend Emma Mills, and their two children, were renting the ground-floor flat in Collingwood Place, which had views of Station Avenue, where Milly was last seen, but at the time of her disappearance the couple were house-sitting for a friend, and the flat was empty. On the day Milly vanished, Mills had been unable to contact Bellfield because his phone was switched off and he returned to the house they were staying in West Drayton, between 10.30pm and 11pm. She noticed he had changed his clothes, and thought he must have returned to the flat in Walton, where his clothes were kept, said Altman. She could tell he had been drinking, but he was not drunk, and she was suspicious he had been with another woman, the jury heard. At about 3am-4am, Mills awoke to find Bellfield getting dressed. “She asked him what he was doing. He answered ‘I’m going back to the flat , ’cause I’m going to have a lay-in’,” said Altman. He left, taking the couple’s staffordshire bull terrier with him. Altman said the jury might ask themselves “What it was that was so important that in the middle of the night he decided to get up and drive over to Walton” – a distance of 13.7 miles, taking around 27 minutes. “You can be sure that it was no lie-in.” Milly’s uncle, Brian Gilbertson, was out in the early hours and was searching for his niece in the area of the Collingwood Place flats when saw a man with a dog not on a lead. He described the man as “thick set, stocky build”, white, aged between 30 and 40, who “walked with an air of confidence”. The jury could conclude that was Bellfield, said Altman. The next day Malcolm Ward, who knew Bellfield, agreed to help him move a king-size mattress from the flat, for which he was paid £15. “According to Ward, that day Bellfield was not his usual self and was quieter than normal,” the jury heard. When Mills returned to the flat after Milly’s disappearance, she found the bed stripped, with “no duvet cover, sheet or pillowcases”, with Bellfield claiming their pet staffordshire bull terrier had had an “accident” and he had “chucked it all”, said Altman. The court heard CCTV images showed no trace of Milly walking down Station Avenue, although a fellow pupil had seen her shortly after 4pm. The fact she was not on CCTV meant that she vanished within a very short time, and just yards from Collingwood Place. “If that evidence is accurate and reliable, then it means that Milly had to have been taken from that part of Station Avenue, right outside Collingwood Place, and right on the defendant’s doorstep,” said Brian Altman, QC, prosecuting. Milly, a pupil at Heathside School, Weybridge, where her mother, Sally, taught maths, had boarded her train at Weybridge, but got off at Walton to buy chips at a cafe with friends, instead of continuing on to Hersham station, her usual route, the jury was told. The jury has been told that within two years of Milly’s murder, Bellfield murdered Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amelie Delagrange, 22, by striking them over the head with a blunt instrument, and attempted to murder Kate Sheedy, then 18, by deliberately running her over in a car. The trial continues. Milly Dowler Crime Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk
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