Pregnant duchess taken to hospital
By Anonymous on Jul 22, 2013 03:33 am 22 July 2013 Last updated at 02:41 ET 
The Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted to hospital and is in the early stages of labour, Kensington Palace has said.
The duchess was taken to St Mary's Hospital in London.
The BBC's Nick Witchell said the long wait was over but there was likely to be no more news until the official announcement of the birth.
It will be the duke and duchess's first child and will be third in line to the throne.
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Cameron to unveil online porn curb
By Anonymous on Jul 22, 2013 03:15 am 21 July 2013 Last updated at 23:49 ET 
Every household in the UK is to have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they choose to receive it, David Cameron is to announce.
In addition, the prime minister will say possessing online pornography depicting rape will be illegal.
In a speech, Mr Cameron will warn that access to online pornography is "corroding childhood".
Search engines will be given until October to introduce further measures to block illegal content.
In addition, experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) will be given enhanced powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks, and a secure database of banned child porn images gathered by police across the country will be used to trace illegal content and the paedophiles viewing it.
Under new measures, family-friendly filters will be automatically selected for all new internet customers - though they can choose to switch them off.
And millions of existing computer users will be contacted by their internet providers and told they must decide whether to activate filters to prevent their children accessing unsuitable material.
'Danger to children' Mr Cameron will say: "I want to talk about the internet. The impact it is having on the innocence of our children. How online pornography is corroding childhood.
"And how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children, and that must be stamped out.
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On Sunday, Mr Cameron called on internet companies to do more to block access to material depicting abuse
"I'm not making this speech because I want to moralise or scaremonger, but because I feel profoundly as a politician, and as a father, that the time for action has come. This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence."
Mr Cameron will say that possession of pornography which is so extreme that it cannot even be bought in a licensed sex shop will be made illegal, bringing England and Wales in line with Scotland.
"These images normalise sexual violence against women - and they are quite simply poisonous to the young people who see them," he will say.
"We are closing the loophole - making it a criminal offence to possess internet pornography that depicts rape."
The move has been welcomed by women's groups and academics who had campaigned to have "rape porn" banned.
Holly Dustin, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said the group was "delighted".
"The coalition Government has pledged to prevent abuse of women and girls, so tackling a culture that glorifies abuse is critical for achieving this," she said.
"The next step is working with experts to ensure careful drafting of the law and proper resourcing to ensure the law is enforced fully."
'No safe place' Mr Cameron, who has faced criticism from Labour over cuts to Ceop's funding, will insist that the centre's experts and police will be given the powers needed to keep pace with technological changes on the internet.
"Let me be clear to any offender who might think otherwise: there is no such thing as a safe place on the internet to access child abuse material," he will say.
Search engines, including Google, have a "moral duty" to block illegal content, Mr Cameron will say.
He will also call for warning pages to pop up when people try to search for illegal content.
On Sunday Mr Cameron called on internet companies to block access to material depicting child abuse.
A spokesman from Google said: "We have a zero tolerance attitude to child sexual abuse imagery. Whenever we discover it, we respond quickly to remove and report it.
"We recently donated $5m (£3.3m) to help combat this problem and are committed to continuing the dialogue with the government on these issues."
Read in browser » China's Gansu hit by deadly quakes
By Anonymous on Jul 22, 2013 03:09 am 21 July 2013 Last updated at 23:50 ET 
A powerful earthquake has hit China's north-west Gansu province, killing at least 11 people and seriously injuring at least 81 more, officials say.
The earthquake near Dingxi city had a magnitude of 5.98 and was shallow with a depth of just 9.8 km (6 miles), according to the US Geological Survey.
Dingxi local authorities say several houses have collapsed in the quake.
In 2008, an earthquake in Sichuan province left up to 90,000 people dead and millions homeless.
Officials from the civil affairs, transportation and earthquake departments are visiting local towns to assess the damage, a statement on the Dingxi party website said.
Crews of fire fighters and rescue dogs have already arrived at the scene, the BBC's Celia Hatton in Beijing reports.
The closer to the surface an earthquake strikes, the more damage it can cause, our correspondent adds.
"You could see the chandeliers wobble and the windows vibrating and making noise, but there aren't any cracks in the walls," AFP quoted a clerk at Wuyang Hotel, about 40 km (25 miles) from the epicentre, as saying.
"Shop assistants all poured out onto the streets when the shaking began," the clerk said.
Read in browser » Olympic execs get £2.8m goodbye
By Anonymous on Jul 21, 2013 07:44 pm 21 July 2013 Last updated at 19:44 ET 
Chief executive Dennis Hone was hired after his redundancy from his previous job
The financial reports of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) show 144 officials were paid off because they were given permanent contracts despite the authority winding down in 2014.
Exit payments cost £2.8m in 2012-13, the Annual Report and Accounts said.
Chief executive Dennis Hone, made redundant in March, was paid £80,000 and an "immediate pension" of £373,000.
An ODA spokesman said hiring the best people required many to give up secure long-term jobs elsewhere.
'Tough criteria' Stephen Barclay, a Conservative member of the House of Commons public accounts committee called the situation "perverse" because "we knew when the Olympics were going to finish".
The financial reports note that the chief executive was entitled to receive statutory redundancy pay and a terminal bonus equivalent to 60% of his salary.
Continue reading the main story Executive Board Exit Payments
- Dennis Hone £80,000
- Wendy Cartwright £36,000
- Hugh Sumner £73,000
- Simon Wright £72,000
Source: ODA Annual Reports and Accounts
It said: "The Remuneration Committee decided to award a terminal bonus of 49% of his salary and to defer 50% of the bonus until the successful completion of the sale of East Village to QDD."
Mr Hone was hired shortly after his redundancy as chief executive of the London Legacy Development Corporation.
An ODA spokesman said London 2012 had been a "unique and challenging project and a great British success story".
He said: "We needed to recruit and pay for the best talent from the private and public sectors, requiring people in many cases to give up secure long-term jobs elsewhere, with no certainty of the project's success or getting a job after the Games.
"Like other staff, Dennis Hone received performance related pay, but this was far from guaranteed and was measured against tough performance criteria, evaluated personally and in relation to the organisation he successfully led in the critical 18 months up to the Games, during London 2012 and immediately after."
On Friday, a report for the UK Trade and Investment department suggested the Olympics resulted in a £9.9bn boost for the economy.
Read in browser » PM faces new Lynton Crosby questions
By Anonymous on Jul 21, 2013 10:33 pm 21 July 2013 Last updated at 22:33 ET 
Mr Crosby ran the Conservatives' 2005 election campaign
David Cameron faces fresh questions about his election strategist Lynton Crosby after it emerged his lobbying firm advised private health companies at the time of NHS reforms.
Mr Crosby's company told a group of private healthcare providers how to exploit perceived "failings" in the NHS, the Guardian reported.
Labour frontbencher Andy Burnham called it a "shocking conflict of interest".
A Conservative spokesman said Mr Crosby had never lobbied the prime minister.
Labour's Andy Burnham called it a "shocking conflict of interest".
The Guardian said a slideshow presentation was produced for the H5 Private Healthcare Alliance by Mr Crosby's firm Crosby Textor towards the end of 2010, just months before the government's Health and Social Care Bill was given its second reading in the House of Commons in January 2011.
The presentation stated that people believed the NHS provided good health care, but that it was "too bureaucratic with long waiting lists".
Cigarette pack furore Crosby Textor advised its client that 63% of those questioned in a poll conducted for the presentation agreed that "going private frees up the NHS waiting list".
Mr Crosby, who masterminded the Tories' 2005 election campaign, was brought back into Conservative HQ by the Prime Minister in November last year.
The health presentation pre-dates the Australian's hiring by Mr Cameron.
This latest discovery follows Labour leader Ed Miliband's call for an inquiry into whether Mr Crosby was behind the prime minister's decision to shelve plans for plain cigarette packs.
Shadow health secretary Mr Burnham said: "It is more evidence of a shocking conflict of interest that David Cameron has created at the heart of his government.
"Shortly after Lynton Crosby started work for the Conservative Party, the government shifted its position in favour of private health companies by trying to sneak NHS regulations through the House forcing services out to the market.
"At the time, experts expressed surprise at the sudden shift in position. Now we can guess why."
But a Conservative spokesman denied that Mr Crosby had any influence on Mr Cameron's policy decisions.
"The prime minister has been clear that Lynton Crosby has never lobbied him on anything. Lynton Crosby is an adviser to the Conservative party. He does not advise on government policy."
Read in browser » Welby warns of bankers 'lynch mob'
By Anonymous on Jul 21, 2013 07:00 pm 21 July 2013 Last updated at 19:00 ET By Rosie Dawson Producer, BBC Religion and Ethics 
Archbishop Welby admitted feeling sympathy for bankers
The Archbishop of Canterbury has described the naming and shaming of bankers in the wake of the financial crisis as "lynch mobbish".
The Most Reverend Justin Welby admitted sympathy for former bankers when hearing evidence as a member of the Banking Standards Commission.
He admitted "thinking, 'I'm not sure I would have been very different,' rather than thinking how bad they were".
But he also said some senior bankers had tried to avoid accountability.
"Certainly one of the trends that has been very unfortunate, to put it mildly, is that in some financial services companies there was a clear policy of not telling the top people - they made sure they weren't told things - because then they could plead ignorance, and that's just unacceptable.
"But this business of somehow saying that one individual bears the whole blame as opposed to simply the accountability - it feels lynch mobbish," he said.
Archbishop Welby was an oil executive before becoming a priest.
He was speaking to the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Reverend James Jones, as part of the BBC Radio 4 series The Bishop and the Bankers, in his first public comments since the commission published its report on banking standards last month.
'Edgy' The commission heard evidence from current and former senior bankers involved in the financial crisis.
Its report recommended that bankers found guilty of reckless conduct should be jailed, and warned that bankers at senior levels had "operated in an environment with insufficient personal responsibility".
When asked about the naming and shaming of bankers, Archbishop Welby told the BBC he felt "very edgy indeed", and referred back to his experience as an oil trader.
He described the buzz and fun of closing a deal as well as the tensions he experienced around the values of the business world.
"What I remember is the sense that the culture and values of the financial world enveloped you and began to shape one into a new ethical shape," he said.
"You were aware that you were struggling with this and often rather frightened by what was going on."
In contrast, the Church, he said, had been "the mould that was shaping me correctly and strengthening me not to be reshaped by the culture I was working in".
'Power of context' Johnny Cameron was head of the investment banking division at Royal Bank of Scotland when the bank had to be rescued by the government in 2008.
In 2010 he was barred from working in the City again after the Financial Services Authority ruled that he did not meet the required standards for a senior banker.
Barclays chief Antony Jenkins says the biggest driver of change needs to come from the banks
Mr Cameron told Bishop Jones: "People underestimate the power of the context in which one sits. I certainly felt this can't go on forever, but I never thought it would end in the crisis it ended in.
"The people in the bank weren't different from the people sitting next to them on the train as they commuted in - everyone thought it was onwards and upwards, and what fun this is.
"And it's incredibly difficult if you are at the front line to see the excesses at the time."
The chief executive of Barclays, Antony Jenkins, spoke to Bishop Jones just before the Banking Standards Commission's report was published, but says his comments still stand.
He argued that many people in the banking industry had already paid a price for their failures.
"While I understand the sentiment that people should be sent to prison for what's happened, the question is, what is the offence?" he asked.
"The biggest driver of change in the behaviours of banks has to come from within the banks themselves - they have to come to a realisation that they will be better businesses commercially and ethically if they change their behaviour.
"If we want to create a criminal offence of negligence within the financial services industry that is a question for society. I am not convinced that that would solve the problem.
"I think the biggest solution is the way that banks are led and the culture that exists within them."
The first episode of the three-part series, The Bishop and The Bankers, will be broadcast on Monday, 22 July at 20:00 BST on BBC Radio 4. You can listen again via the BBC iPlayer.
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