Armed drones operating from Britain
By Anonymous on Apr 27, 2013 03:36 am 26 April 2013 Last updated at 22:24 ET 
The 10 Reaper aircraft are all based in Afghanistan, to support UK and coalition forces
Armed drone aircraft have been operated remotely from Britain for the first time, the Ministry of Defence has said.
It said Reaper drones had flown missions controlled from RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, where campaign groups are expected to protest against the practice later.
The MoD said it respected people's rights to protest peacefully.
The drones are mainly used for surveillance, but could use weapons if commanded to by their pilots in the UK.
The MoD has defended its use of drones in Afghanistan, which it says have saved the lives of countless military personnel and civilians.
The 10 Reaper aircraft are all based in Afghanistan to support UK and coalition forces and can carry 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles for strikes on insurgents.
They are piloted remotely, but launched and landed with human help at Kandahar airbase.
BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt says British drones are not being used for targeted assassinations, unlike America's use of drones in places such as Pakistan.
The MoD says that when weapons are used, the same rules of engagement are followed that govern the use of weapons on manned aircraft.
Previously RAF personnel would control the drones from Creech Air Force Base, in Nevada, US.
In October last year, the RAF created 13 Squadron based at RAF Waddington south of Lincoln, where about 100 personnel include pilots, systems operators and engineers and control missions over Afghanistan from Lincolnshire.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the RAF said it had commenced supporting the International Security Assistance Force and Afghan ground troops with "armed intelligence and surveillance missions" remotely piloted from RAF Waddington.
'Critical expansion' Several anti-war groups including CND, War on Want, the drone campaign network, and the Stop the War coalition have planned a march and rally outside RAF Waddington on Saturday.
Campaigners say the switching of control of flights to the UK marks a "critical expansion in the nation's drones programme".
They are calling on the Government to abandon the use of drones, claiming they make it easier for politicians to launch military interventions, and have increased civilian casualties.
The route of the march from South Common along the A15 to the peace camp site opposite RAF Waddington will see the road closed in phases to limit inconvenience to motorists.
An MoD spokesman said: "We fully respect people's right to protest peacefully and within the law and would do nothing to prevent members of the public exercising their right to peaceful protest.
"Nevertheless, we have a duty to protect public property, and to ensure that we meet our operational needs.
"The MOD has a duty to maintain security at all defence installations and uses all lawful means to do so, including the right to seek injunctions against any person who persists in trespassing on MOD property."
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Arrests over Dhaka building collapse
By Anonymous on Apr 27, 2013 03:43 am 26 April 2013 Last updated at 23:41 ET 
Most of the victims are believed to be garment factory workers
Two owners of garment factories in the building that collapsed on the outskirts of Bangladesh's capital Dhaka have surrendered to police.
Mahbubur Rahman Tapas and Balzul Samad Adnan are suspected of forcing their staff to work in the building, ignoring warnings about cracks.
At least 323 people died after the eight-storey Rana Plaza building in the suburb of Savar collapsed on Wednesday.
On Saturday morning, 15 more people were rescued from the rubble.
This came after rescuers said they had located as many as 50 people still alive at various places on the third floor of the building.
The rescuers had also managed to pass oxygen cylinders and water to those who remained trapped in the rubble.
More than 3,000 people are believed to have been working in the building at the time of the collapse.
Although some 2,200 people have since been rescued, hundreds are still missing.
Violent protests Mr Tapas and Mr Adnan, the owners of the New Wave Buttons and New Wave Style factories, turned themselves in to the police in the early hours of Saturday.
Deputy chief of Dhaka police Shyami Mukherjee said the two are accused of causing "death due to negligence", according the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The owners reportedly told their employees to return to work on Wednesday, even though cracks were visible in the building a day earlier.
Three other clothing factories were reportedly operating in the building.
The owner of Rana Plaza is believed to have gone in hiding.
"Those who're involved, especially the owner who forced the workers to work there, will be punished," Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told lawmakers on Friday.
"Wherever he is, he will be found and brought to justice," the prime minister added.
On Friday, at least 10,000 people joined protests calling for the arrest of the building's owner and for the government to improve conditions for garment workers.
Police used tear-gas and rubber bullets to break up the crowds, who had blocked roads, torched buses and attacked textile factories.
Billion-dollar companies Bangladesh has one of the largest garment industries in the world, providing cheap clothing for major Western retailers which benefit from its widespread low-cost labour.
But the industry has been widely criticised for its low pay and limited rights given to workers and for the often dangerous working conditions in garment factories.
Primark, a clothes retailer with a large presence in Britain, confirmed that one of its suppliers was on the second floor of the Rana Plaza, and said it would work with other retailers to review standards.
Labour rights groups say the companies have a moral duty to ensure their suppliers are providing safe conditions for their employees.
"These are billion-dollar companies. They have a huge amount of power to change the way that building safety is accepted here," Gareth Price-Jones, Oxfam's country director for Bangladesh, told Reuters.
Read in browser » Welby raps City 'entitlement' ethos
By Anonymous on Apr 27, 2013 03:26 am 26 April 2013 Last updated at 20:39 ET 
Archbishop Welby defended his description of the UK's economic situation as a depression
The City of London has been affected by a "culture of entitlement" at variance with what others think reasonable, the new Archbishop of Canterbury has said.
But Justin Welby told the BBC that business morality was in many ways much better than in the past.
He also defended his description of the UK's economic situation as a depression rather than a recession.
Asked if this had upset Number 10, the archbishop said: "Sometimes feathers get ruffled. I mean - that's life."
Archbishop Welby told BBC Radio 4's the Week in Westminster that there should be exams for those who want to work in the banking industry and suggested employees could be overseen by a professional body.
'Finger pointing' He said: "I think in banking, in particular, and in the City of London, a culture of entitlement has affected a number of areas, not universally by any means, in which it seemed to disconnect from what people saw as reasonable in the rest of the world."
Archbishop Welby has proposed recapitalising a major bank and breaking it up to create regional banks.
But he declined in the radio interview with Financial Times political editor George Parker to name which institution he had in mind.
Archbishop Welby noted that economic activity had been "significantly below" the levels of 2007 for "quite a long time".
He said he did not know whether his use of the term "depression" had annoyed "people in Number 10".
"Historically, depressions have been recognised as lengthy periods in which the economy did not get back to its previous level of activity before a recession set in," he said.
"So 1929 to 1932 is the great example. There was a big one towards the end of the 19th Century.
"We are still significantly below where we were in 2007 in terms of economic activity, of GDP, and that's quite a long time of being below.
"Now, I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone in particular and saying it's so and so's fault or so and so's fault, it's simply a measurable fact coming from the national statistics."
'Social implications' The archbishop acknowledged that part of his mission may be to inject "more morality" into the City of London.
He said: "My key mission is to lead the Church in worshipping Jesus Christ and encouraging people to believe in him and follow him. That's my mission.
"The Christian gospel has always had strong social implications and one of them is around the common good and it's one of the key areas in which the Church of England focuses.
"So issues of how the City of London, which is so important and so full of very gifted people, how that behaves in relation to the common good is very key, not to the whole thing that I'm about or the Church is about, but to how we express the implications of that in day to day life."
BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins says the cities of London and Westminster are growing used to an archbishop who produces plans for restructuring financial services and a regular commentary on economic growth.
The archbishop - a former oil industry executive - is a member of the cross-party Banking Standards Commission which also includes former Conservative Chancellor Lord Lawson.
The interview can be heard on the Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 BST on Saturday 27 April
Read in browser » North Korea to indict US citizen
By Anonymous on Apr 27, 2013 12:19 am 26 April 2013 Last updated at 23:48 ET 
A US citizen is soon to go on trial on charges including attempting to overthrow North Korea's government, the North's official agency says.
The KCNA says that Pae Jun-Ho has admitted to the charges, without specifying when the trial will start.
Pae Jun Ho, who is known in the US as Kenneth Bae, was held last year after entering North Korea as a tourist.
His indictment comes amid growing tension in relations between Pyongyang and Washington.
Read in browser » New MMR jab clinic in measles fight
By Anonymous on Apr 26, 2013 11:38 pm 26 April 2013 Last updated at 23:38 ET 
A million school children are to be offered the MMR jab in England
A second health board is opening a drop-in measles vaccination clinic in south Wales later, amid warnings of a likely outbreak in north Wales.
It comes as a million pupils in England who missed MMR jabs are targeted in a catch-up campaign to curb the threat.
A drop-in clinic opens in Llanelli on Saturday, the centre of 65 cases since the beginning of the year.
Four hospitals in and around Swansea are hosting MMR drop-in vaccination clinics for a fourth weekend.
The number of cases in the Swansea-based epidemic could pass 1,000 over the weekend if current trends continue.
The outbreak is centred on the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board area - which covers Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend, southern parts of Powys and eastern parts of Carmarthenshire.
High rates of the disease have also been seen in Neath Port Talbot and north Powys.
Eighty-three of the 942 confirmed cases have needed hospital care since the outbreak began in November.
Further tests will be carried out on a 25-year-old Swansea man who died at his flat in the city while suffering from measles after post-mortem examination results were inconclusive.
Special measures to tackle the disease are also in place in Llanelli on Saturday with a drop-in centre at the town's Elizabeth Williams Clinic.
It follows a drive launched on Friday to vaccinate an estimated 4,000 schoolchildren across the three counties of neighbouring Hywel Dda Health Board area.
Health board director Teresa Owen said youngsters in all secondary schools in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire will be offered the MMR jab.
Further tests will be carried out to find the cause of Gareth Colfer-Williams' death
She said: "Due to Llanelli's close proximity to the outbreak centred in Swansea the programme will begin in the east of Carmarthenshire and is due to be completed across all three counties within four weeks."
Meanwhile, Public Health Wales has warned that is is "was only a matter of time" before the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board area in north Wales sees measles cases unless more children and young adults are vaccinated against the disease.
The health board has arranged vaccination sessions at all secondary schools in north Wales. Primary schools that have a vaccination rate of less than 90% are also being targeted.
Andrew Jones, director of public health for north Wales, said: "I'm worried that 10% of our young people are at risk of catching this potentially fatal disease.
"Whilst I understand why people have historically had reservations about immunising their children we now have a very different situation.
We are very vulnerable and if we wait until cases start to appear here it will be too late to prevent the spread across the north.
Epidemics "The vaccine is safe, the needles are tiny and the jab takes seconds; it is never too late to catch up on missed jabs.''
Health officials have warned epidemics similar to the one in Swansea could occur anywhere.
A £20m catch-up campaign in England already has 1.2 million vaccines ready to go amid concerns that that a generation of children have low levels of protection against measles after the MMR scare more than a decade ago.
The campaign aims to vaccinate children yet to be protected with the MMR - measles, mumps and rubella - jab by September.
Run through GPs, schools and community groups, it will focus on children aged 10 to 16.
Read in browser » Boeing Dreamliner returns to service
By Anonymous on Apr 26, 2013 05:01 pm 26 April 2013 Last updated at 17:01 ET 
All 50 Dreamliners in service around the world were grounded back in January
An Ethiopian Airlines 787 Dreamliner is due to take off from Addis Ababa on Saturday morning, the first commercial flight by the Boeing aircraft since all 787s were grounded in January.
The 50 planes around the world were grounded due to battery malfunctions that saw one 787 catch fire in the US.
Over the past week teams of Boeing engineers have been fitting new batteries to the aircraft.
This was after aviation authorities approved the revamped battery design.
The Ethiopian Airlines flight is travelling to Nairobi in Kenya.
Engineering team Each 787 has two of the lithium-ion batteries in question.
In addition to new versions of the batteries which run at a much cooler temperature, the batteries are now enclosed in stainless steel boxes.
These boxes have a ventilation pipe that directly goes to the outside of the plane. Boeing says this means than in the unlikely event of any future fire or smoke, it would not affect the rest of the aircraft.
Continue reading the main story Analysis
Richard Westcott BBC transport correspondent
On Saturday I will board a simple, two-hour flight from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Nairobi in Kenya.
It's not normally a flight that would make headline news around the world.
But this journey is special, because it should mark the end of an incredibly damaging chapter for Boeing's flagship airliner.
I'll be talking to passengers on board the flight, and it'll be fascinating to see how they feel about flying on a plane that was grounded across the globe only last January after one battery caught fire and another overheated, forcing an emergency landing.
Boeing and its customers, who include British Airways, Virgin and Thomson, will be desperate to put the whole episode behind them.
Boeing said it put 200,000 engineer hours into fixing the problem, with staff working round the clock.
A total of 300 Boeing engineers, pooled into 10 teams, have in the past week been fitting the new batteries and their containment systems around the world.
In addition to the 50 Dreamliners in service with airlines, Boeing has upgraded the 787s it has continued to make at its factory in Seattle since January.
The Dreamliner entered service in 2011. Half of the plane is made from lightweight composite materials, making it more fuel efficient than other planes of the same size.
The two lithium-ion batteries are not used when the 787 is in flight.
Instead they are operational when the plane is on the ground and its engines are not turned on, and are used to power the aircraft's brakes and lights.
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