Doctor who accidentally killed David Gray on only UK shift as locum GP fails to stop attempts to get him banned in Germany A German doctor who accidentally killed a patient on his only UK shift as a locum GP on out-of-hours duty has failed in the latest round of his legal battle to silence the patient’s sons. A Munich appeal court has dismissed continuing attempts by Daniel Ubani to stop Rory and Stuart Gray trying to get him banned in his own country and questioning EU judicial and medical rules. Ubani killed their father, David Gray, at his Cambridgeshire home with a tenfold overdose of the painkiller diamorphine in February 2008, an act that a coroner ruled unlawful killing and led to him being barred by the General Medical Council from working in Britain. Ubani, whose main work is as a cosmetic surgeon, wanted to stop the brothers continuing to demand the changes to extradition arrangements and to EU rules over the checking of medical qualifications and competence. The doctor was given a suspended prison sentence in Germany and ordered to pay €5,000 in legal costs for killing Gray by negligence just as British authorities were seeking to pursue a possible manslaughter charge. He claimed the brothers were making false statements about him. Last summer the Grays interrupted Ubani’s appearance at a medical conference in Germany to publicise the case. He retaliated by trying to stop them criticising him anywhere in the EU or approaching within 550 metres of him. A court in Kempten, southern Germany, ruled against him and said the brothers could call him a charlatan or killer, but not an animal. Ubani’s appeal on the finding was dismissed this month. The judge said the appeal had “no chance of success” and rejected it because “the matter is of no fundamental importance”. He faces court costs of €15,000 for the initial case and €14,000 for the appeal, in addition to the brothers’ legal costs and expenses. Ubani was recently fined €7,000 by medical authorities over Gray’s death for breaking his country’s code of conduct for doctors, although he is still free to practise there. Rory Gray, a satellite engineer in Germany, said: “Considering he had flown to the UK at the age of 65 to do a weekend shift for £45 pounds an hour, out of which he had to pay his own flights, travel and accommodation, I would imagine this would be quite a significant financial burden.” Doctors Health Germany Europe James Meikle guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Baltimore cops are seeking 16-year-old babysitter and a baby boy in her charge who have been missing for three days. “Put my baby somewhere safe and call somebody. He’s probably hungry,” the baby’s tearful mom pleaded at a support rally yesterday. “It’s a 7-month-old baby—you got to have some…
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People to be asked how content they feel in attempt to measure impact of policies on nation’s wellbeing Datablog: how do you measure happiness? The government will ask people how happy they are in order to measure the nation’s wellbeing for the first time, the chief statistician has revealed. Jill Mathieson, head of the Office for National Statistics, said that since April the Integrated Household Survey (IHS) had asked respondents to rank between one and 10 “how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, how happy did you feel yesterday, how anxious did you feel yesterday and to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”. The results of the survey of 200,000 people will be published next July. Using these and a set of “objective” measurements, such as life expectancy and wealth, the government will devise a scheme to allow civil servants to assess the impact future policies will have on the wellbeing of the population. Mathieson said it was clear that how well-off people feel depends on things, such as their health or whether they have a job, that GDP does not capture. After 10 months of public consultation, she said, the ONS had “highlighted that the things that matter the most are our health, relationships, work and the environment. These are also themes that the majority of respondents agree should be reflected in a measure of national wellbeing, with the addition of education and training.” She argued that it was time to concentrate on household incomes, consumption and wealth rather than just total production. Launching the findings of the wellbeing debate, Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, said he would be publishing a discussion paper on how to revise the civil service “green book”, which issues guidance to mandarins on how ministerial proposals should be appraised before public funds are committed. He wanted a “social cost/benefit analysis” to be offered by civil servants in the future. “[It's] to give people an idea on how to submit to ministers … how can they frame it in the right way.” The question is how to measure well-being. One important facet is how to assess people’s “quality of life”. O’Donnell said he had been surprised by the beneficial effect of “altruism” on people giving their time to volunteer and was looking at releasing civil servants to help in charities on a pro bono basis. David Cameron – who first floated the idea of a “happiness index” in 2005 when he was running for the leadership of the Conservative party – last November asked the ONS how best to capture information that would help Britain re-evaluate its priorities. Since then government policies have tried to focus on wellbeing as a desirable outcome, said O’Donnell. He cited how improving the mental health of the long-term unemployed could help them find work; how protecting parks and green spaces raised people’s wellbeing; and how reducing pressure on families would help increase children’s happiness. In 2007 Unicef placed UK at the bottom of a league table looking at subjective indicators of children’s wellbeing, resulting in a big push by the government to improve the happiness of the young. Although the country’s standing improved by 2010 it remained below those of other wealthy nations. The ONS regularly produces measures of income inequality but said it had only just begun “to look at inequality between generations though its developmental work on the generational accounting approach to public finances in the UK”. Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at the University of Warwick, said recent research from Californian academics had confirmed that when people found out they were being paid “below average” for their work, they “instantly registered a lower job satisfaction and look for jobs elsewhere. There’s nothing intrinsically left or rightwing about wellbeing. But it is important for the government to measure it,” said Oswald. Health Civil service Children Poverty Social trends Unemployment Volunteering Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk
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Norway gunman pleads not guilty to mass killing and tells Oslo hearing he acted to ‘save Europe’ from Islam The man who confessed to killing more than 70 people in a bomb and gun massacre on Friday has claimed he belonged to an organisation with two more cells who remain at large. At a closed hearing in Oslo, Anders Behring Breivik admitted carrying out the attacks but pleaded not guilty to one of the worst mass killings in peacetime Europe, and told the court he had acted to “save Europe” from Islam. Breivik, 32, will be detained in complete isolation for four weeks, with no incoming letters or visitors except for his lawyer, while police investigate his claims to have accomplices. Breivik has previously said he acted alone in the attacks. “The accused has made statements today that require further investigation, including that ‘there are two more cells in our organisation’,” said the judge, Kim Heger, who warned that Breivik could tamper with vital evidence if released. He will be held for at least another month after the court-ordered solitary confinement. Breivik arrived at court on Monday morning to jeering from a crowd of around 400 people. As a police convoy approached the rear of Oslo’s central court, someone shouted then the crowd surged forward. Bystanders screamed “traitor” and banged on the windows of a police car after one man said he’d spotted Breivik in the back seat. A local book editor, Marius Wulfsberg, 54, described one bystander pointing at a man in the crowd as Breivik’s vehicle passed. “That man lost three friends on Nyota Island, what do you have to say now? But the man he was pointing at was just standing there, impassive. “People were angry, shouting, some were hitting the door of the car.” Just after 1.40pm local time, Breivik was hustled into an underground tunnel that led into the basement and then taken up to courtroom 828, on the 8th floor. The hearing was ordered to be held behind closed doors after the judge was informed of last-minute police concerns. Outside the sealed courtroom, reporters waited in vain for a glimpse of Breivik, who had initially requested to appear in court in uniform, and asked for time to explain his actions. Normally such a hearing would be held in open court, but many in Norway had argued that Breivik should not be given a platform to justify the killings. Breivik’s lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said his client had admitted to the attacks but denied any criminal guilt. The court acknowledged the need for transparency in the case, but after a 35-minute hearing, Judge Heger said an open hearing would not be possible “for practical reasons.” “It is clear that there is concrete information that a public hearing with the suspect present could quickly lead to an extraordinary and very difficult situation in terms of the investigation and security,” he said. Police had earlier put the death toll at more than 90 but on Monday they revised the figure for the youth camp massacre down to 68, with at least seven killed in the bombing. Earlier, a minute’s silence brought Oslo to a standstill as thousands flocked to pay tribute outside the cathedral. More than 10 minutes later, thousands were still standing while others converged upon the vast field of flowers that has steadily grown in the heart of Oslo since Breivik struck. The flag on the courthouse remained at half mast. Meanwhile, the search for victims continued. Police have not released the names of the dead, but Norway’s royal court said on Monday that those killed at the island retreat included Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s stepbrother, an off-duty police officer, who was working there as a security guard. In an interview with the Swedish tabloid Expressen, Breivik’s father said he was disgusted by his son’s acts and wished he had committed suicide. “I don’t feel like his father,” said the former diplomat Jens David Breivik. “How could he just stand there and kill so many innocent people and just seem to think that what he did was OK? He should have taken his own life too. That’s what he should have done.” Norway Europe Global terrorism The far right Race issues Gun crime Mark Townsend guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A Chicago commodities broker who disappeared in 1979 and was declared legally dead in 1987 has been found alive in Las Vegas, working as a bookie, reports the Los Angeles Times . Fleeing gambling debts, Arthur Gerald Jones, bounced around the country before relocating to Vegas in the mid-1980s, using the…
Continue reading …Much of the $2.16 billion spent on transportation contracts in Afghanistan went to payoffs for local warlords, including the Taliban, says a new military-led investigation revealed by the Washington Post . With US forces in Afghanistan needing as many as 4,000 trucks per week, and each truck required to…
Continue reading …In a one-two punch, the woman accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape blasts him again—this time in a broadcast interview—just as her account of the attack hits newsstands in Newsweek magazine . “I want justice. I want him to go to jail,” Nafissatou Diallo says in an interview with…
Continue reading …With the $14.3 billion potential default just nine days away, markets are growing increasingly spooked by the rising danger, reports the Telegraph . “We may have a few stressful days coming up—stressful for the markets of the world and the American people,” said White House chief of staff Bill…
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Judge extends injunction brought by ‘world-famous celebrity’ to keep details of sexual relationship with former escort secret The high court has extended a gagging order obtained by a leading actor to prevent reporting of his “sexual relationship” with a former escort girl. The married actor, described by judge Mr Justice King as a “world-famous celebrity”, brought a privacy injunction to stop Helen Wood revealing details of his extramarital affair in April. In a judgment handed down on Friday, King agreed to uphold the gagging order but relaxed rules over how he can be identified. The actor – who has admitted to the affair – can now be identified as a “leading actor” and a “world-famous celebrity”, King said in the judgment. The media can also refer to the affair as a “sexual relationship”. The judgment was published online on Friday but was later withdrawn by the court due to copyright issues, it is understood. The judge added: “It seems to me that this is material to the public debate about the class of person who is seeking these injunctions and the status they are seeking to protect when preventing the publication of private sexual encounters.” No anonymity was sought by Wood, who has previously claimed to have slept with Wayne Rooney. Wood had offered information about her relationship with the actor to the Sun. Granting the injunction, King concluded that the actor was “likely to establish that he has a reasonable expectation that that which he does in his private life by way of sexual encounters, albeit with a prostitute, should be kept private”. The judge also pointed out that neither Wood nor the Sun had argued that publishing details about the affair was in the public interest. The injunction is the latest to be heard in the high court following a huge storm over the controversial gagging orders in May and June. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Privacy & the media Media law Privacy Injunctions Newspapers Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
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Mitch Winehouse greets mourners outside north London home of singer who died in unexplained circumstances on Saturday Amy Winehouse’s father has greeted mourners laying flowers outside her north London home and thanked her fans for their support and love. Mitch Winehouse spoke to people who were leaving handwritten notes and bouquets in memory of the singer, who died on Saturday, telling them: “This means so much to my family.” The 27-year-old singer, who had a well-documented battle with drugs and alcohol for several years, was found dead at her home in Camden Town by her bodyguard. A postmortem is expected on Monday afternoon, and police have said only that her death is “unexplained” and that speculation regarding an overdose is “inappropriate”. Mitch Winehouse, who flew back from New York immediately after hearing the news of his daughter’s death, told her fans: “I can’t tell you what this means to us – it really is making this a lot easier for us. Amy was about one thing and that was love, her whole life was devoted to her family and her friends and to you guys as well. We’re devastated and I’m speechless but thanks for coming.” He appeared also to address reporters, many of whom he has known for several years. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I know a lot of you, we’ve been together for five, six years, I know you’ve got a job to do. I’m glad you’re all here anyway,” he said. The impromptu shrine outside her home features photos as well as cards and notes, including an image of Winehouse posing in a bar. There is also a picture amended by artist Mysterious Al, showing her face with monochrome cartoon eyes and a white lightning strike in her beehive hair. One note read: “Too fragile, too beautiful, too big a talent for this world” and another said: “To an exquisite singer with a beautiful voice.” The singer’s family, speaking for the first time on Sunday, said they had been left “bereft” by her death, describing her as “a wonderful daughter, sister, niece”. In a statement they said: “She leaves a gaping hole in our lives. We are coming together to remember her and we would appreciate some privacy and space at this terrible time.” It is understood that her body was formally identified on Monday morning. Scotland Yard said that later on Monday a postmortem examination will take place and an inquest into her death will be opened and adjourned at St Pancras coroners court. Amy Winehouse London Police Alexandra Topping guardian.co.uk
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