Barclays to issue £5.8bn new shares
By Anonymous on Jul 30, 2013 03:40 am 30 July 2013 Last updated at 02:08 ET 
Barclays will issue £5.8bn in new shares as part of a move to plug a capital shortfall created by new regulatory demands.
This is more than analysts had been expecting.
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UK 'losing fight' against e-crime
By Anonymous on Jul 30, 2013 03:49 am 29 July 2013 Last updated at 19:01 ET 
MPs say the threats are varied and complex
The UK must do more to stop online fraud and deter state-sponsored cyber-espionage or risk losing the fight against e-crime, MPs have warned.
The Home Affairs Select Committee said much low-level internet-based financial crime was falling into a "black hole" and was not reported to the police.
More officers should be trained in digital crime detection and e-crime specialists protected from cuts.
The Home Office said the authorities must "keep pace" with criminals.
Publishing its first ever report on the subject, the cross-party committee said e-crime took various shapes and forms, did not recognise national borders and could be committed "at almost any time or in any place".
Offences range from attacks on computer networks and the use of viruses to steal data to the use of cyberspace to facilitate traditional crimes such as forgery, sabotage, drug smuggling and people trafficking.
'Off the hook' The committee said it was worried by the evidence it had heard during its inquiry about the UK's e-crime fighting capability.
It said it had been told by Adrian Leppard, deputy assistant commissioner at the City of London Police, that up to a quarter of the UK's 800 specialist internet crime officers could be lost due to budget cuts.
This was despite evidence that the UK is a prime target for many of the 1,300 criminal gangs specialising in fraud.
A quarter of the gangs, many of which are based in eastern Europe and Russia, use the internet as their principal means of deception.
This, MPs said, came on top of proposed 10% cuts to the budget of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).
"At a time when fraud and e-crime is going up, the capability of the country to address it is going down," the report concluded.
"Ministers have acknowledged the increasing threat of e-crime but it is clear that sufficient funding and resources have not been allocated to the law enforcement responsible for tackling it."
The committee has called for a dedicated cyber-espionage team to lead the response to reports of attacks, many of which due to their sophistication are believed to be backed by foreign governments.
Its other recommendations include:
- Requiring banks to report all e-fraud, however small, to the police
- Obliging web firms to explain data security tools to new users
- Prosecutors to review sentencing guidance for e-crimes
- Increased funding for European e-crime co-operation
- Mandatory code of conduct for removal of indecent material
- New body to report on and remove online terrorist content
Keith Vaz, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said the UK's response to e-crime was too "fractured".
"We are not winning the war on online criminal activity," he said.
"We are being too complacent about these e-wars because the victims are hidden in cyberspace."
He added: "You can steal more on the internet than you can by robbing a bank... If we don't have a 21st Century response to this 21st Century crime, we will be letting those involved in these gangs off the hook."
'Relentless cuts' The UK's eavesdropping centre GCHQ suggested earlier this year that 80% of cyber-attacks could be prevented by better management of information online.
Responding to Tuesday's report, the Police Federation of England and Wales said it was further evidence that recent figures showing a 10% fall in recorded crime last year were "misleading".
"Crime is clearly changing, not falling at the rate the figures suggest, and an unknown but extremely high number of offences are going unreported," said Steve Williams, the organisation's chairman.
"It is extremely concerning that relentless cuts to policing are continuing at a time when there is a burgeoning cybercrime industry."
The government announced increased funding for cybersecurity in 2010, while a single National Cyber Crime Unit will be formed later this year as part of the new National Crime Agency.
"Crime is at record low levels and this government is taking action to tackle the cyber-threat, investing more than £850 million through the national cybersecurity programme to develop and maintain cutting-edge capabilities," a Home Office spokesman said.
"The National Crime Agency will include a new elite National Cyber Crime unit to target the most serious offenders and provide enhanced intelligence for CEOP so they can protect even more children from harm.
"But we know we need to keep pace with criminals as they target the web and so we continue to consider ways to ensure the police and security services have access to communications data."
Read in browser » Ashton meets ousted Egypt president
By Anonymous on Jul 30, 2013 03:07 am 30 July 2013 Last updated at 02:49 ET
The European Union's foreign policy chief has met Egypt's ousted President, Mohammed Morsi, her spokeswoman says.
Maja Kocijancic said that Catherine Ashton had visited Mr Morsi on Monday evening and held two hours of "in-depth" discussions.
She did not say where the meeting took place, but Mr Morsi has been detained since he was overthrown by the military on 3 July after days of mass protests.
Ms Ashton also met members of Egypt's new interim government on Monday.
Read in browser » Mid-East peace talks resume in US
By Anonymous on Jul 29, 2013 10:20 pm 28 July 2013 Last updated at 16:20 ET
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will resume peace talks in Washington on Monday, the US State Department has announced.
The talks, stalled since 2010, follow months of shuttle diplomacy by US Secretary of State John Kerry.
The statement was released hours after the Israeli cabinet approved the release of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners.
The release is to take place in stages over several months.
Read in browser » Housing benefit cuts ruling awaited
By Anonymous on Jul 29, 2013 08:50 pm 29 July 2013 Last updated at 20:50 ET 
The changes to housing benefits regulations came into force in April
The High Court is to rule on whether cuts to housing benefit for social housing residents with spare bedrooms discriminates against the disabled.
Lawyers for 10 families brought a judicial review over the lower payments for people in homes deemed too large.
They say the change - called a bedroom tax by critics - breaches their clients' human rights because they need the extra space for health reasons.
Ministers say it helps control welfare costs and frees up social housing.
About 660,000 working-age social housing households judged to have too many bedrooms have lost an average of £14 per week since their benefit was cut at the beginning of April.
The families, all disabled or the parents of disabled children, challenged the changes during a three-day hearing in May.
The claimants are represented by three law firms and are from various places including London, Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester and Birmingham.
Their lawyers argued the benefit cut violated the Human Rights Act and Equality Act.
Continue reading the main story Who are the claimants?
There are 10 claimants represented by three law firms. They are from various places including London, Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester and Birmingham. Here are the arguments of four of them:
Case one
Lawyers for one London family say they live in a damp, one-bedroom flat infested with mice. One son has autism, the other has Down's Syndrome.
The child with autism sleeps in the bedroom while his mother, father and brother sleep on the floor in the living room.
Due to the changes, they say they cannot afford to move to the larger property authorities say they need.
Case two
Jacqueline Carmichael has spina bifida and sleeps in a hospital bed which, she argues, her husband and full-time carer cannot share.
He sleeps in their spare room as there is not enough space in hers for a second bed.
Case three
In 2011, six-year-old Isaac was assaulted by the then partner of his mother, leaving him traumatised. He and his mother were made homeless and assessed as needing three bedrooms because, solicitors say, of Isaac's behavioural and mental issues.
His mother lost £15.52 a week on 1 April when the council judged they were under-occupying.
Case four
A wheelchair user living in a three-bedroom bungalow shared with his stepdaughter who has a rare form of muscular dystrophy says he needs a third bedroom to store equipment including a hoist for lifting him.
He contends there are no suitable two bedroom homes in the social sector.
Ugo Hayter from Leigh Day, which is representing two of the claimants said the legislation was "unfair" and had "disproportionate negative consequences on disabled people and is therefore discriminatory".
The lawyers also said the £25m the government has made available to councils to make discretionary payments to help disabled people affected by the benefit cuts is insufficient.
There has been fierce political argument about the new housing benefit rules, which supporters of the change say withdraws a "spare room subsidy".
The government says the benefit changes were intended to reduce a £21bn annual housing benefit bill and encourage greater mobility in the social rented sector.
The Department of Work and Pensions said it was confident the measures were lawful and do not discriminate against disabled claimants or those with shared care of children.
At the time of the High Court case, a DWP spokesman said it was "only right" to bring back fairness to the system and pointed out there were "two million households on the social housing waiting list and over a quarter of a million tenants... living in overcrowded homes".
The DWP added that an extra £150m in total has been made available to councils' funding for vulnerable claimants.
However, the National Housing Federation said earlier this month that the consequences of the change were worse than feared,
Rent arrears have soared in some areas while larger houses are lying empty as people refuse to move into them, it claimed.
Read in browser » 'Nearly 100 war crimes suspects' in UK
By Anonymous on Jul 30, 2013 02:47 am 30 July 2013 Last updated at 01:00 ET By Tom Bateman Today programme 
Ninety-nine war crimes suspects identified have applied for British citizenship, asylum or leave to remain
The Home Office last year identified nearly 100 suspected war criminals who had asked for UK citizenship, figures released to the BBC suggest.
The majority of cases involved people already likely to have been living in Britain for a number of years.
Suspects originated from countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Rwanda, Serbia and Sri Lanka.
The Home Office says it is determined the UK doesn't become a "refuge for war criminals".
Human rights groups are calling for more criminal prosecutions in Britain as the courts commonly block deportation on human rights grounds if suspects face torture or death in their home country.
The figures emerged from a Freedom of Information request made by the BBC.
They show that, in the 15 months from January 2012, the Home Office researched nearly 800 cases where individuals were suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It made "adverse recommendations" against 99 people who had applied for British citizenship, asylum or leave to remain in the UK. A further 16 war crimes suspects had applied to enter the UK.
It follows earlier figures suggesting more than 700 suspected war criminals were identified by UK immigration officials between 2005 and 2012.
'Basket case' Michael McCann MP, chairman of a cross-party parliamentary group to prevent genocide, says the figures reveal the need for greater transparency from the government in cases where war crimes suspects are in the UK.
It is suggested that hundreds of war criminals have been identified by UK immigration officials since 2005
"The organisation in the Home Office that used to deal with this - the UKBA (UK Border Agency) - was a basket case. It had failed on so many different levels I've lost count," he said.
"I have deep concerns that the Home Office isn't being as forthright as it could be and I think we should be drilling down into these cases in order to give the public of our country that security."
Of the 99 suspects, three were deported last year, 20 were refused asylum and 46 had their citizenship bids turned down but are likely to have remained in the UK. The fate of the remaining suspects is unknown.
In May 2013, five Rwandan men were arrested in Britain suspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide that led to the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people.
Some of them have been in Britain for more than a decade, with one having worked in a care home in Essex.
Three are still in custody and two have been released on bail. The men deny any involvement in the Rwandan genocide.
In 2009, an extradition attempt against four of the men failed after High Court judges ruled there was "a real risk" they would not get a fair trial in Rwanda.
Human rights campaigners say the case demonstrates the challenges faced in dealing with international war crimes suspects in Britain, pointing to a lack of successful criminal convictions.
"The police need more resources to investigate these crimes because it's difficult to investigate them," says Kevin Laue, a legal adviser with Redress, a charity which campaigns to prevent genocide.
"That, in turn, requires more political will and commitment at the higher level for them to be given the resources to properly investigate."
The Metropolitan Police says 56 people in the UK are currently subject to war crimes inquiries, although only nine cases were passed on to them by the Home Office.
Mr McCann says the "disparity" between the Home Office and police figures raises a question over whether immigration officials are wrongly identifying people as war crimes suspects.
A Home Office spokesman said: "Anyone accused of these crimes should be put on trial in their home country and we will always seek to return them to face justice."
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