10,000 border arrests due to screening system

 10,000 criminals including rapists and murderers have been held at the UK border thanks to a screening system begun in 2005, a minister has said. Air and sea carriers using UK ports and airports submit passenger and crew details electronically to the e-Borders screening system, prior to travel. It results in about 52 weekly arrests, Immigration Minister Damian Green says. He praised the UK Border Agency and police for the scheme, which covers up to 55% of journeys to and from the UK. "By checking passenger and crew information before travel, law enforcement agencies can apprehend those trying to evade justice," Mr Green said. "From 2013 the new dedicated Border Policing Command, part of the National Crime Agency, will further strengthen security at the border, providing leadership...

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charity worker employed by one of David Cameron’s Big Society gurus has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling cocaine with a street value of £120,000

charity worker employed by one of David Cameron’s Big Society gurus has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling cocaine with a street value of £120,000 into Britain.Former US gang member Derrick ‘Anthony’ Mitchell was held at Heathrow this month after UK Border Agency officers allegedly discovered 3kg of drugs in his luggage. Mitchell, 37, is a duty manager at the South London-based Kids Company founded by charity boss Camila Batmanghelidjh. She set it up in 1996 to care for abused, neglected or  abandoned children in London’s inner-city communities. She has been described as ‘Britain’s most colourful charity leader’ because of...

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Boy, 17, shot in back in Poplar, east London

 teenager has been shot in the back in east London. The 17-year-old boy was wounded in East India Dock Road, Poplar, in the early hours of the morning. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "A 17-year-old male had a gunshot wound to the back and is in hospital in a serious condition." The attack happened just before 01:00 GMT, police said. Any witnesses to the shooting should call the Metropolitan Poli...

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Armed guards are to be deployed on British civilian ships for the first time to protect them from pirates,

Armed guards are to be deployed on British civilian ships for the first time to protect them from pirates, David Cameron announced today.A legal ban on weapon-toting protection staff will be relaxed so that firms can apply for a licence to have them on board in danger zones.The Prime Minister said radical action was required because the increasing ability of sea-borne Somali criminals to hijack and ransom ships had become 'a complete stain on our world'.He unveiled the measure after talks at a Commonwealth summit in Australia with leaders of countries in the Horn of Africa over the escalating problem faced in waters off their shores.Under the...

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Drug That Killed Michael Jackson "Was Self-Injected"

 The jury hear evidence that MJ had also taken a large number of sleeping pills… 08:42, Sunday, 30 October 2011 The last defence witness in the trial of Dr Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s personal physician, has told the courtroom that he believed the star was responsible for his own death.   Dr Paul White told jurors that the most likely cause of death was self-injection of a fatal dose of the anesthetic Propofol, after Murray had already administered a small amount. "With the administration of the additional 25 milligrams that we're speculating was self-injected by Mr Jackson, the level increases rapidly and at the time of death would be almost identical to the level found in the urine at autopsy," Dr White said. He revealed that the superstar also appeared to have taken...

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Brussels is stifling City of London, Cameron claims

 David Cameron signalled new European battles ahead as he pledged to resist alleged attempts by Brussels to shackle the City of London in red tape. The Prime Minister echoed claims that the emergence of a two-tier Europe following the financial crisis could result in a wave of EU directives that would harm the Square Mile. The Government has said it is determined to prevent the 17 members of the eurozone acting as a bloc to thwart the interests of the 10 EU states, including Britain, that have retained their own currenci...

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Qantas grounds all flights

 Australia’s Qantas Airways grounded its entire fleet on Saturday over a bitter labour dispute in an unprecedented move that prompted the government to warn it feared for the airline’s future and would seek action to end the dispute. EDITOR’S CHOICE Strikes cost A$15m-a week in lost sales - Oct-28 US airlines earnings hit by fuel costs - Oct-27 Lufthansa scales back passenger forecasts - Oct-27 Virgin eyes tie-up with Etihad on BMI - Oct-14 Qantas overhauls lossmaking international operations - Aug-16 Qantas said it would lock out all employees from Monday night in a dispute affecting 70,000 passengers and 600 flights on one of the country’s biggest travel weekends. The grounding does not affect Qantas’ budget airline Jetstar or code-share flights on other airlines. Passengers...

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TOP Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson tried to stop his ex-wife from claiming they had sex after he remarried.

Jeremy Clarkson took out the gagging order against his ex-wife last year. It's not known why he applied to lift it. Picture: Cameron Richardson Source: SuppliedClarkson, who has made a name for himself as a man refuses to be silenced, denies the allegation but took out a gagging order against Alexandra Hall last year.The claim can now be revealed because he asked for the order to be lifted.It is unclear why he decided to withdraw the order, which banned any reporting of "sexual or other intimate acts or dealings" between Clarkson and Ms Hall.Ms Hall married Clarkson in 1989 but their marriage lasted only a year.She claims she had relationship...

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Real IRA terrorist has been jailed for 12 years after being found guilty of buying weapons and explosives which he wanted to use to “kill Brits.

Michael Campbell (Pic: PA)A Real IRA terrorist has been jailed for 12 years after being found guilty of buying weapons and explosives which he wanted to use to “kill Brits.”Irishman Michael Campbell - brother of Omagh bomber Liam - was snared in a six year MI5 sting across three countries with agents pretending to be arms dealers.Yesterday he was finally jailed by a Lithuania court after spending three years awaiting trial and having been snared by an amazing MI5 undercover operation.Campbell, 39, was secretly filmed in a field in Lithuania pointing a high-power Barret sniper rifle which he later bragged he would use to kill British people.Michael...

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The slain Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi secretly spirited out of Libya and invested overseas more than $200 billion

 The slain Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi secretly spirited out of Libya and invested overseas more than $200 billion -- double the amount that Western governments previously had suspected, The Los Angeles Times reported late Friday. Citing unnamed senior Libyan officials, the newspaper said US administration officials were stunned last spring when they found $37 billion in Libyan regime accounts and investments in the United States. They quickly froze the assets before Kadhafi or his aides could move them, the report said. Governments in France, Italy, England and Germany seized control of another $30 billion or so. Earlier, investigators estimated that Kadhafi had stashed perhaps another $30 billion elsewhere in the world, for a total of about $100 billion, the paper noted. ...

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¡Ole! Spain drives legality into mobile services with Sybase 365

 Spain was one of the first countries to start to lay down laws relating to old non-registered pay-as-you-go SIM cards for anti-terrorism reasons i.e. you MUST tell the authorities your name and address and get a new SIM if you had one of the old anonymous ones. Following on from this "mobile legality" theme, news this week bubbles of Sybase subsidiary company Sybase 365 working with Spanish mobile operator Yoigo. The two firms have joined forces to offer registered SMS, a new service allowing companies to send customers confirmation text messages with the same legal standing as registered mail. According to Sybase, "Officially certified by the Spanish Real Casa de la Moneda (The Royal Mint of Spain) the Sybase 365 and Yoigo service recognises an SMS confirmation as legal proof of delivery...

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RBS staff told to pay for their own Christmas party

 Another day, another downgrade. Reduced to surviving on two pints of lager and pack of crisps at recent Christmas parties, misery was heaped on Royal Bank of Scotland's highly-paid investment bankers on Friday as they were told that they would have to fund this year's bash entirely out of their own pock...

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HMRC clamps down on Swiss account holders

 6,000 Britons who hold money in the Swiss arm of HSBC will soon receive a letter telling them that they need to own up to unpaid tax. The bank is acting on information received last year under a tax treaty. This revealed that more than 6,000 individuals, companies, trusts and other bodies held accounts and investments with HSBC Geneva. HMRC has already begun criminal and serious fraud investigations into more than 500 individuals and organisations holding these accounts. HMRC will shortly be writing to those who have not yet come forward, or are not under investigation. They will be offered a chance to contact HMRC and disclose all their tax liabilities, HMRC said. Fines of up to 200 per cent of any tax may, in certain circumstances, be imposed on people not coming forwards during...

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Michael Jackson's heartbroken daughter lashed out at Dr Conrad Murray for failing to save her father's life, jurors heard today as they again saw a photo of the pop stars dead body.

The King of Pop's three children 'cried and cried and cried' after being told their father was dead.His daughter, Paris, now 13, told Murray, her father's personal doctor: 'I will wake up in the morning and I won't be able to see my daddy.'On Tuesday a court in Los Angeles heard recordings of Conrad Murray saying Michael Jackson's children sobbed when they learned their father died and saw a photo of the singer's dead bodyAccording to the 58-year-old cardiologist, she said: 'Dr Murray, you said you save a lot of patients. You know, you save people with heart attacks, and you couldn't save my dad.'Paris's anguish was revealed in an interview Murray...

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Mystery files cast doubt over verdict on Robert Magill gangland killing

 Duncan Campbell outlines the compelling reasons to reopen the Kevin Lane case  It was a notorious killing carried out one morning in a Hertfordshire backwater. Two men had approached Robert Magill as he walked his dog close to his home in Chorleywood on 13 October 1994. One of them was seen by several witnesses to pull out a shotgun and shoot Magill five times at point blank range. The final shot was delivered to the head as Magill lay prostrate. As of today, Kevin Lane will have served 16 years and 255 days of a minimum 18-year sentence for carrying out what was seen as a classic contract killing. Lane was raised in the criminal underworld, but has always claimed he was innocent of this crime. Many aspects of the case remain troubling and new evidence now threatens to blow apart...

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Kelly Hoppen accepts £60,000 damages in hacking case

 Interior designer Kelly Hoppen has accepted £60,000 in damages over the News of the World phone-hacking case. Her lawyer told the High Court the settlement was for "misuse of private information and breach of confidence". Ms Hoppen is the former stepmother of Sienna Miller, whose relationship with fellow actor Jude Law was of huge interest to the now defunct tabloid. News International and News Group Newspapers agreed to pay the money as well as her costs. Numerous articles published in the News of the World between 2004 and 2006 contained "intrusive and private information" relating to Ms Hoppen, her lawyer Mark Thomson told the court. "The claimant did not know the source of this information at the time of publication and often could not understand how it was possible for the...

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Scottish couple who went on the run in Spain to escape fraud charges are to have almost £1m seized under proceeds of crime legislation.

  Anthony Kearney, 46, and 44-year-old Donna McCafferty admitted claiming housing benefit when they had more than £330,000 in offshore accounts. Kearney was jailed for two years in 2008 and McCafferty was given 250 hours community service. At Glasgow Sheriff Court, confiscation orders totalling £943,366 were granted. Kearney and McCafferty were tracked down in the Costa Blanca town of Benissa in November 2008 after being featured in a Crimestoppers appeal to catch on-the-run British suspects. Fraud probe Kearney was later jailed for two years and McCafferty was given 250 hours community service. The couple, who have a son together, admitted committing benefit fraud by claiming housing benefit when they had more than £330,000 in offshore accounts. Continue reading the main story...

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Self-styled ‘Lord’ Davenport - known as 'Fast Eddie' - masterminded an ‘advanced fee fraud’ scheme that ripped off scores of businesses.

 Davenport set up Gresham Ltd in 2005 and pretended it was a respectable business with 50 years of sourcing huge commercial loans. He charged companies advance fees for loans of up to £157million but the money never materialised.The scam conned at least 51 victims and from 2007 to 2009 Gresham Ltd received more than £4.5million from unsuspecting clients, the court heard.‘To outward appearances it was long-established, wealthy and prestigious,’ said Simon Mayo QC, for the prosecution. ‘It was essentially worthless. Its only business was fraud.’The businessman had many high-profile friends including socialite Tamara Beckwith (right)...

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