Ryan Donovan faces murder and attempted murder charges after fatal shooting on Royal Navy nuclear sub A Royal Navy serviceman has been charged with the murder of a colleague on board a nuclear submarine on Friday. Able Seaman Ryan Samuel Donovan, 22, was charged on Sunday with the murder of Lieutenant Commander Ian Molyneux, 36, who was fatally shot on board HMS Astute as it was docked in Southampton on a goodwill visit. Hampshire police said that Donovan was also charged with the attempted murder of Petty Officer Christopher Brown, 36, Chief Petty Officer David McCoy, 37, and Lieutenant Commander Christopher Hodge, 45, who remains in hospital after he was shot. Donovan, of Hillside Road, Dartford, Kent, is in custody and will appear at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on Monday. Nick Hawkins, chief prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service in Wessex, said: “I have been working closely with Hampshire Constabulary and now have authorised them to charge Ryan Samuel Donovan with Ian Molyneux’s murder and with the attempted murder of Christopher Brown, David McCoy, and Christopher Hodge. “Having reviewed the evidence, I am satisfied that there is sufficient to charge him, and that it is in the public interest to do so.” Lt Cdr Molyneux’s widow, Gillian, paid tribute to her late husband on Sunday, describing the father of four as “utterly devoted to his family”. She added: “Everything he did was for us. He was very proud to be an officer in the Royal Navy submarine service.” A group of children had just left HMS Astute and a party of dignitaries, including Southampton city council’s mayor, chief executive and leader, was being shown around when the incident happened. The visit to Southampton by HMS Astute was billed as the first chance for members of the public outside Scotland and the north-west of England, where she was built, to see her. Crime Military Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk
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Royal College of Nursing study reveals that most job losses involve frontline staff as patient services are withdrawn Growing numbers of patients are being denied treatment for conditions such as loss of sight, arthritis and infertility as the NHS increasingly rations healthcare in order to save money, research by the Guardian shows. Services for patients with mental health problems and addictions and those who need physiotherapy after accidents are being scaled back, while operations to fix hernias or remove cataracts or varicose veins are either being refused or delayed. The cuts across England cast serious doubt over David Cameron and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s repeated pledges that NHS frontline services will be protected from budget-tightening across the rest of the public sector. There is further fresh evidence of cutbacks in the NHS in a dossier of evidence compiled by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which gathers on Monday for its annual congress in Liverpool. Meanwhile, the British Medical Association claimed that ministers are refusing to acknowledge an “accelerating withdrawal of services” that could weaken patients’ support for the NHS. “While there’s an absolute crisis going on in the NHS in terms of this accelerating withdrawal of services, you have got a government that through the health and social care bill currently going through parliament simply wants to discuss the finer points of the business organisation of the NHS and denies that this crisis is taking place,” said Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the BMA’s hospital consultants committee. “The examples [of cuts] are becoming more and more widespread. The national picture is that every primary care trust is taking steps to reduce access to whole swaths of healthcare, while the government says everything is fine and that its organisational changes to the NHS are what matter,” said Porter. While the cuts do not affect conditions such as cancer, refusing treatment for other conditions meant pain or discomfort for those affected, Porter added. “For the patient waiting for IVF, speech therapy or a new hip or knee, that’s their contact with the NHS. For them to be told that they aren’t a priority for the health service is totally at variance with the government’s mantra that, for patients, ‘No decision will be made about me without me.’” Growing numbers of NHS walk-in centres, intended to relieve overworked GPs surgeries and A&E departments, are closing or having their opening hours cut. In Islington, north London, services for children with speech problems have been reduced and a support group for women with postnatal depression axed altogether. Primary care trusts all over England are having to reduce their services or provide them in new ways, as they struggle to contribute to the £20bn savings drive imposed by the health service chief executive, Sir David Nicholson. Many PCTs are banning, restricting or imposing long waiting times on treatments that until recently were provided routinely by the NHS. More than half of the thousands of job losses in the health service are nurses, doctors and midwives rather than managers and administrative staff, the RCN has claimed. It has identified 40,000 jobs that have gone or are due to go in the near future as PCTs, hospitals and other NHS organisations across the UK adjust to flat or reduced budgets after years of big year-on-year increases under Labour and, in England, a series of other financial pressures. In a study of almost 10,000 job losses at 21 trusts, the majority (54%) turned out to be frontline clinical staff, the nurses’ union said. That revelation, and the disappearance of NHS services, expose coalition pledges to be protecting NHS frontline patient care and treatment as a myth, the RCN said. “Clinical staff are the lifeblood of the NHS and it is haemorrhaging at an alarming rate. Cutting thousands of frontline doctors and nurses could have a catastrophic impact on patient safety and care,” said Dr Peter Carter, the RCN’s chief executive and general secretary. Whole areas of patient services are being closed or decommissioned, the RCN added, citing Stockport PCT’s closure of family nurse partnerships and, in Birmingham, “talking therapies” for people with anxiety and depression disappearing. “Patients aren’t getting access to the same care they did a year ago. We know that savings need to be made but cutting frontline staff and services is not the way to do it. We are seeing services that may disappear for ever. We are concerned that the result will be patients left in limbo, fewer services, fewer nurses and a worse NHS,” added Carter. Nicholson and the health department said the NHS’s need to meet the £20bn target was no reason for limiting or abandoning treatment. “There is no excuse to cut back on services that patients need when the NHS will receive an extra £11.5bn of funding,” said Nicholson. “The NHS does need to become more efficient, but savings must not impact adversely on patient care. We are clear that every penny saved from efficiencies will be reinvested in patient services. We also have 2,677 more nurses now than we did in 2009.” The health department added: “The government is getting rid of bureaucracy and clinically unjustified targets so that nurses are freed up to do what they do best – taking care of patients. We are also protecting the NHS, ploughing in an extra £11.5bn of funding.” But senior NHS figures are worried that some PCTs are responding to the need for greater efficiency by scaling back services, sometimes dramatically, for example by using “referral management systems” – panels of doctors and managers examining requests for treatment – to bar many patients from receiving care. There is concern among health ministers that the growing cuts could add to their political difficulties over the NHS. Labour claimed the cuts proved that improvements in the NHS had stalled under the coalition. “The government’s obsession with reorganisation is piling extra pressure on the health service. Patients are starting to see the NHS going backwards again under the Tories with waiting times rising, frontline nursing jobs cut and services cut back,” said John Healey, the shadow health secretary. “This is not what people expected when David Cameron promised to ‘protect’ the NHS. The prime minister made health his most personal pledge, but it’s now becoming his biggest broken promise.” NHS Health Public sector cuts Public services policy Public finance Health policy Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …“Sexy nerd” Peter Orszag left his White House gig as President Obama’s budget director last June, but it turns out he never actually wanted the job. In a New York piece picked up by the Post , Orszag tells the magazine that he feared the “all-consuming” “infighting” that is inevitable in…
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American safety campaigners say the dummies in car crash simulations should be bigger to reflect an increasingly obese population Age: 60 or so. Appearance: Nervous. My favourite Canadian folk-rock group! This must be something to do with last Friday’s cover story. Must it? Of course it must. First G2′s writers talk about the songs that get their tears flowing, then readers chip with their stories, and finally a consensus emerges that nothing sets off the waterworks like the 1990s hit Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm. How does it go again? Ah yes: “Mmm mmm mmm mmm.” You’re thinking Crash Test Dummies with a capital C, T and D. We’re talking about the mannequins that are strapped into cars and driven into walls. Them? Why are they are in the news? Childhood obesity. American safety campaigners are particularly worried that as kids get fatter, the mini-dummies used to test child seats become less and less relevant. There are similar fears about the adult versions. Couldn’t you just shove a few sacks of potatoes up their jumpers? It’s not quite that simple. Dummies have come a long way since “Sierra Sam”, which the US air force used to test its ejection seats in the 50s. They’re now full of electronic kit, plus their bodies are carefully designed to flail around in the same way as a flesh-and-blood human. This might sound tasteless . . . That doesn’t usually stop you. . . . but couldn’t you use corpses instead? Wouldn’t they give more realistic results? It’s been tried – but no two dead bodies react in the same way. Then there’s the fact that by nature they’re already damaged. Animals, then? Live pigs were used for a while. That didn’t go down well with animal welfare groups. I can only see one quick and easy solution to the problem. Stop driving children everywhere so they lose a bit of weight? Actually I was thinking of tying helium balloons to them so they float. The sad thing is, that’s actually much more achievable. Do say: “I’m just off to Weight Watchers . . .” Don’t say: “. . . So can I borrow the
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The art schools that trained students from Tracey Emin to MIA are heavily targeted for cuts. What effect
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US accused of protecting a known terrorist after jury clears anti-communist agent of all 11 charges against him Cuba has denounced as a “farce” the acquittal in the United States of Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent who is accused of terrorist attacks against the island. The foreign ministry said Friday’s verdict, which found the 83-year-old not guilty on all 11 counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and immigration fraud, showed the US continued to protect a known terrorist. “This is an additional demonstration of the support and shelter the American authorities have historically given him,” it said in a statement over the weekend. A jury in El Paso, Texas cleared Posada Carriles after deliberating for just three hours, an unexpectedly swift climax to a closely watched 13-week trial which cast fresh light on the octogenarian’s lengthy career as an anti-communist agent. The defendant, a hero to militant anti-Castro exiles, hugged his lawyers and told reporters he was grateful to the US, the court and the jury for what he said was a fair trial. “What happened here should serve as an example for justice in my country, Cuba, which is unfortunately in the hands of a dictator.” Posada Carriles, who as a student came into contact with a young Fidel Castro, opposed the revolutionary government which seized power in 1959 and three years later joined a CIA-backed invasion by Cuban exiles. The attack flopped but he escaped, was trained in sabotage by US handlers and spent the next decades plotting to kill Castro and other leftwing targets in the region. He moved to Venezuela where he was accused of masterminding the 1976 suitcase bombing of a Cubana Airlines jet that killed 73 people, including the national fencing team. Months earlier his links with the CIA were severed, according to declassified US documents. Posada Carriles escaped from a Venezuelan jail in 1985, where he spent eight years awaiting trial for the atrocity, which he denied, and resumed plotting against Castro. In an interview with the New York Times he took responsibility for 1997 bomb attacks against Cuba’s tourist industry, which killed an Italian tourist in a Havana hotel, but later recanted the confession. He was arrested in possession of explosives in Panama in 2000 and charged with plotting to assassinate Castro at a regional summit. He served four years in jail before being pardoned by Panama’s outgoing president, Mireya Moscoso, prompting accusations of political cronyism between Panama, Cuban exiles in Miami and the Bush administration. In 2005 Posada Carriles surfaced in Miami. The US refused Cuban and Venezuelan extradition requests, claiming he would not receive a fair trial in either country. Caracas and Havana accused the US of hypocrisy in allowing the region’s most notorious terrorist to live freely and openly while amid the post 9/11 “war on terror”. Soon afterwards US authorities charged Posada Carriles with the relatively minor offences of lying to immigration officials about how he entered the US and his role in the Havana bombings. More than 20 prosecution witnesses testified in the court. Jurors heard him speaking English in recordings by Ann Bardach, the New York Times journalist to whom he spoke about the bombings, despite later claiming he did not speak the language. Observers expected convictions on at least some of the charges but the jury stunned prosecutors with a swift, unanimous and complete acquittal. “We’re obviously disappointed by the decision,” said a justice department spokesman, Dean Boyd. The head of Cuba’s parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, accused the judge, Kathleen Cardone, of not allowing jurors to see crucial evidence. “The stupid and shameful farce is over,” he told AP. “There were things the jury did not know.” Venezuela’s government denounced the trial and verdict as “theatre” and said Washington continued to shelter a mass murderer. “The US government’s protection of Posada Carriles has become an emblematic case of the US double standard in the international fight against terrorism,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. Posada Carriles’s lawyer said he planned to return to his home and family in Miami. Leaders of Miami’s Cuban exile community said he should be left to live in peace and that it was time to look ahead, not backwards. Cuba United States Venezuela Rory Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Once again, it’s a good time to be a CEO in America. After shrinking during 2008 and 2009, executive pay is back on the rise, with many chief execs at major corporations making as much or more than they were before the recession hit. Last year, the median pay for…
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Commission’s plans unlikely to include breaking up institutions, but banks ‘may still quit UK’ A government commission is to unveil measures aimed at ensuring taxpayers will never again need to bail out Britain’s banks, with recommendations that risk splitting the coalition and infuriating the banking sector. Amid warnings from large banks such as Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered that they will leave London if the proposals by Sir John Vickers are too radical, the commission will seek to ringfence savers from riskier banking operations. The commission has considered the potential impact of its proposals on the City and is expected to counter suggestions that they would encourage banks to move to New York or Hong Kong. The report, thought to run to 200 pages, was handed to ministers late on Friday to be presented to the banks at 6am on Monday – an hour before its official release. It is expected to back away from proposals such as “narrow banks”, which only take savings, and splitting high street banks from their investment banking divisions, which Vince Cable, the business secretary, previously alluded to as “casinos”. But it sets out a handful of ideas to avoid another taxpayer bailout and bolster competition on the high street in the wake of the rescue of HBOS by Lloyds, which was only permitted because Labour overrode competition concerns. Crucially, Vickers and his four commissioners have looked at ways banks can bolster their capital through new types of loss-absorbing financial instruments. They are concerned that the capital held by banks before the crisis – largely equity – was too brittle and lacked the flexibility of other types of instruments that might be more effective incushioning the blow of multibillion-pound losses. Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem chief secretary to the Treasury, told the BBC : “Our priority as a government is to make sure that those people who recklessly gambled with our economy are no longer able to be bailed out by taxpayers. “That’s why this commission is looking at separation issues within the banking system to make sure that the bits that are valuable to us as an economy, retail banking and so on, could be protected, whereas those people who engage in that sort of casino banking take responsibility for themselves.” Sources close to Cable, the business secretary, and the chancellor, George Osborne, were this weekend trying to stifle suggestions of a rift between them over banking reform, which was the first item on the coalition agreement. Government sources noted that the combined balance sheet of Britain’s banks is still five times that of the British economy. “We have to get this right,” one said, pointing out that both Ireland and Iceland had economies dwarfed by the size of their banks. Although the commission is thought to have concluded that any suggestion of a full-break up the banks is not necessary, some of the ideas could have a similar impact. Vickers is known to have considered so-called subsidiarisation, which requires major banks to ringfence funds inside individual parts of the group. There are three main options: geographic, where business activities are segregated based on their domicile; functional, where business activities are segregated based on nature of business and client; and operational, where critical operations such as cash are segregated. RBS is the only bank to have made a public estimate about the cost of being a universal bank – putting it at between £3.5bn and £4.8bn annually – and analysts at Goldman Sachs believe Barclays has most to lose. Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat peer who resigned as party spokesman over the lax treatment of banks, said: “It’s in the whole City’s interest – not just the banks’ – that real bank reform makes London the world’s most trusted financial centre, instead of a British version of Las Vegas. Calling the banks’ bluff would be best business decision our government could make.” Although the interim report is being closely watched by the banks, any overhaul is unlikely to take place until 2012. A final report is due in September and will be considered by a cabinet committee chaired by Osborne. The presence of the former HSBC chairman Stephen Green, now a trade minister, on this cabinet committee has caused some controversy. Financial crisis Global recession Banking Financial sector Barclays HSBC London Danny Alexander Vince Cable George Osborne Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk
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France continues attacks on Gbagbo military forces as UN says it is investigating reports of killings in west Two charred corpses lay in a pile of ash on the road, their blackened skulls and rib cages reflecting off the window of a luxury car showroom. Nearby, young men in T-shirts taunted a French military patrol at a makeshift roadblock, jabbing their fingers and shouting: “Gbagbo! Gbagbo!” Abidjan remained on a knife edge on Sunday, with no end in sight to Ivory Coast’s civil war. There is growing evidence of atrocities being committed on both sides, with the UN’s 9,000 peacekeepers unable to make a significant intervention. What had seemed to be a morally simple contest between democrat and dictator is turning altogether murkier. The reputation of Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognised winner of last November’s election, has taken a battering in recent days. A Human Rights Watch report – detailed on Saturday in the Guardian – said forces loyal to Ouattara killed hundreds of civilians, raped his rival’s supporters and burned villages in the country’s west. Survivors described how the soldiers “summarily executed and raped perceived Gbagbo supporters in their homes, as they worked in the fields, as they fled, or as they tried to hide in the bush”. Such claims have the potential to embarrass the UN, EU and African Union, all of whom have endorsed Ouattara as the legitimate president,and most of all France, which launched air strikes against Gbagbo’s military a week ago – attacks which continued last night – and appears more deeply mired in the conflict by the day. But as yet there are no signs of remorse. Ouattara had long tried to distance himself from the northern-based rebels who fought a brief civil war almost a decade ago that split the country in two. Those fighters were accused of many atrocities at the time. But he appeared to change tack as the rebels, which he renamed the “Republican Forces”, began their lightning assault against Gbagbo. Ouattara has promised that any human rights violations will be investigated and the culprits punished, irrespective of their allegiance. Apollinaire Yapi, a spokesman for Ouattara’s military commander Guillaume Soro, said “There are accusations of abuses here and there. Mr Ouattara has said they have to be condemned, whoever did them. “It has been reported in the west that there was a massacre. There will be an investigation into who did what, be it a group close to Ouattara’s forces or Gbagbo’s forces. Before this investigation, no conclusions can be drawn.” Yapi defended the conduct of Ouattara’s troops. “Our forces are not engaged in any abuses. It might be individuals who did this or that. It is of great concern to Mr Ouattara. He doesn’t want his term of office to be spoiled by these abuses. Whoever is responsible will be punished.” Human Rights Watch has been leading calls for Ouattara to take a firm stand on the issue. Its Ivory Coast researcher, Matt Wells, said he should still be given the benefit of the doubt. “For us, the question of his legitimacy depends on whether he fulfils his promise to open a credible investigation into atrocities on both sides,” he said. “It has to include prosecution of those who have committed atrocities and commanders who have overseen them. Since he has been saying the right things, he deserves the first chance to show that there will be a credible investigation. If not, then international justice mechanisms take over.” Hamadoun Toure, a spokesman for the UN mission in Ivory Coast, said: “We are still investigating the level of the atrocities committed during the four last months. A comprehensive report will be published at the end of the exercise.” Gbagbo’s forces have been implicated in abuses since the post-election crisis began, Wells added, whereas Ouattara’s are more directly linked to the military campaign in the west. “You wouldn’t necessarily equate the two but the abuses by Ouattara’s troops are racking up. It’s an impossible exercise to work out the numbers on each side.” Wells did not blame the UN for failing to intervene. “It’s a very difficult situation for the UN. They are targets themselves. They have been quite pro-active in investigating these cases – they sent a team to the west straight away. There’s very little to criticise harshly on the UN side. Hopefully their newest peacekeepers will be deployed to the most vulnerable areas.” The US has also praised Ouattara’s stance so far. “We salute President Ouattara’s affirmation of the need for credible investigations of abuses perpetrated by any party, and welcome his commitment to govern for all Ivorians,” said Mark Toner, acting deputy spokesman for the state separtment. The UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, Ivan Simonovic, raised the issue of civilian deaths with Ouattara and a senior aide to Gbagbo when he was in Ivory Coast last week. Ouattara subsequently appeared on national television and urged his supporters, as well as all other Ivorians, to refrain from committing crimes or acts of vengeance, and said that those who had done so would be punished. But Antony Goldman, a west Africa analyst at London-based PM Consulting, said the situation might now be beyond the control of both protagonists. “The main regret has to be from all those who allowed this crisis to become a catastrophe. There was an absence of any intervention after the election to resolve this, particularly from the African Union. “The absence of leadership in the first three months of this year in Ivory Coast has created all the conditions for this kind of violence. It’s gone beyond Gbagbo and Ouattara. The violence is so polarising and there’s no sense on either side of any middle ground.” A recurrent aspect of the violence has been the use of mercenaries from Liberia, believed to have been recruited by both sides in the conflict. The two presidential rivals are now in a standoff from their respective headquarters in Abidjan: Gbagbo in his bunker at the presidential residence defended by around 1,000 men, Ouattara in the Golf Hotel under UN protection. The hotel came under attack late on Saturday and one peacekeeper was injured. UN spokesman Hamadoun Toure said rockets and mortars landed in the hotel grounds shortly after UN forces were attacked nearby. One peacekeeper was evacuated to hospital with serious injuries. Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara Laurent Gbagbo United Nations European Union France United States African Union David Smith guardian.co.uk
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Norman Lamb, a government whip, says Lib Dem MPs and peers will not support reform bill unless their demands are met David Cameron has been warned that he will have to endorse sweeping changes to the government’s planned NHS reforms when a senior adviser to Nick Clegg threatened to resign unless a series of demands are met. Norman Lamb, a government whip who is the Liberal Democrat leader’s senior parliamentary adviser, warned that his party’s MPs and peers would be unable to support the health and social care bill if their concerns are ignored. Lamb’s warning came as the British Medical Association claimed the tight NHS settlement, which will raise its budget in line with inflation, is leading to an “accelerating withdrawal of services”. Growing numbers of patients are being denied treatment for conditions such as infertility. Lib Dem sources stressed that Lamb, who briefed Clegg ahead of his intervention on the BBC’s Politics Show, was not speaking on behalf of the deputy prime minister, who is not pressing any demands during a two-month “listening exercise” on the NHS reforms launched last week. But the Guardian understands that Lamb’s four demands will need to be met if Lib Dem MPs and peers are to vote in favour of the bill when it is revived in June after the “listening exercise”. Lamb, the former Lib Dem health spokesman, demanded changes to the bill that would abolish primary care trusts and hand 60% of the NHS budget to GP-led consortiums by 2013. They include: • Abandoning the 2013 deadline and adopting an “evolution, not revolution” approach. • Following the school reforms and allowing GPs to opt into consortiums. • Keeping “clusters” of PCTs to observe the “performance management” of GPs. Lamb told the BBC that he accepted reform of the NHS was vital and agreed with handing greater powers to GPs. But he warned that rushed reforms would pose a “financial risk” to the NHS. “My real concern is the financial risk of doing it too quickly, because then you lose services, patient care suffers,” he said. “The financial risk is that at the moment the plan is to transfer responsibility to GP consortiums, new organisations. There’s no evidence about how these organisations will work but they’re supposed to be up and running by April 2013.” Lamb indicated that unless his demands were met the bill would be blocked by Lib Dems. “Let’s stick to the principle, which is really good, but let’s not destroy it by getting the process wrong,” he said. “This package is not going to work unless we can get people on board and that includes addressing the concerns that I’ve raised.” He made it clear that he would resign if he is not happy: “I’ve said that if it’s impossible for me to carry on in my position I will step down. I don’t want to cause embarrassment but I feel very strongly about this issue.” Andrew Lansley, the health secretary who fell out with Lamb before the election during a row over the imposition of a so-called “death tax”, vetoed his appointment as a minister. Lansley will struggle to meet Lamb’s demands because he is likely to feel that allowing GPs to opt into the reforms, in the way that schools can choose to become academies, would risk creating a two-tier health service. Lansley will embark on the latest stage of his listening exercise when he hears from nurses at the Royal College of Nursing annual congress. Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the RCN, expressed support for Lamb’s criticisms: “Norman Lamb is a man that knows his way round the health service. He has got a huge amount of credibility. The government would do well to be cognisant of what Norman Lamb is saying.” Health policy Health NHS Public sector cuts Public services policy Public finance Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Liberal-Conservative coalition Nicholas Watt Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
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