Guardian story on James Murdoch and the possibility of criminal charges for payments made to investigators for illegal acts. James Murdoch could face criminal charges on both sides of the Atlantic |
As phone hacking scandal leaves News Corp open to prosecution, James Murdoch looks less likely to inherit empire |
The payments could leave News Corp – and possibly James Murdoch himself – facing the possibility of prosecution in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) – legislation designed to stamp out bad corporate behaviour that carries severe penalties for anyone found guilty of breaching it – and in the UK under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 which outlaws the interception of communications. |
Tony Woodcock, a partner at the City law firm Stephenson Harwood, said section 79 of the 2000 Act enabled criminal proceedings to be brought against not only a company, but also a director or similar officer where the offence was committed with their "consent or connivance" or was "attributable to any neglect on their part". Woodcock said: "This could embrace a wide number of people at the highest level within an organisation, such as a chief executive – not just the individual who 'pushed the button' allowing the intercept to take place or someone (perhaps less senior) who encouraged or was otherwise an accessory to the offence, such as an editor." |
James Murdoch and News Corp could face corporate legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic that involve criminal charges, fines and forfeiture of assets as the escalating phone-hacking scandal risks damaging his chances of taking control of Rupert Murdoch's US-based media empire. |
As deputy chief operating officer of News Corp – the US-listed company that is the ultimate owner of News International (NI), which in turn owns the News of the World, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun – the younger Murdoch has admitted he misled parliament over phone hacking, although he has stated he did not have the complete picture at the time. There have also been reports that employees routinely made payments to police officers, believed to total more than £100,000, in return for information. |
Andy Coulson has been arrested and is - according to the best guesses at the moment - a suspected paymaster of hackers and bribers of policemen and bank officials.
He was also friend and advisor of David Cameron, the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile the government is supposed to be pushing through police bail legislation at top speed to counter what a judge has declared the current bail rules mean.
But if Cameron pushes the new legislation through, it will mean that the police can bail Coulson for longer.
What a dilemma.  Andy Coulson, The Coalition Government, and Police Bail |
The Rules About Police Bail |
What a strange web can be woven by the strands of history. |
Two weeks ago a judge declared that the statutory right of the police to bail a suspect for 96 hours meant just that. |
Until the judgement, the police had been interpreting their powers to mean that they could bail a suspect for a total of 96 hours of custody but spread over as long a period as they felt necessary. |
The judge’s decision was taken to a higher court, and the higher court agreed with the judgement. |
At that point the police publicised the fact that their capability to investigate crimes would be severely hampered if the judgement were to stand. |
So the Government started to put together a Bill that if passed would change the rule about police bail and allow the police to continue as before. |
Everyone agreed that things needed to be done quickly to preserve police powers. |
And then comes that news that Andy Coulson – former editor of the tabloid News of the World, and later David Cameron’s director of communications – has been arrested in connection with the phone hacking and bribery of police officers and others that took place when he was editor of the News of the World. |
So now David Cameron’s government are putting together a Bill that would allow the police to bail Mr Coulson for a longer period than they are allowed to under the rules as presently laid down. |
No More Fit Kids
Worrying research which highlighted falling levels of child fitness over the past decade has been followed by a new study which has found that children’s strength is also in decline.
Whilst aerobic fitness/stamina has dropped by about 8 per cent in the past 10 years, new research by scientists at University of Essex and London Metropolitan University shows that measures of strength declined even more dramatically.
The work of finding out what is causing CCD is proving to be a long haul. Here are a few of the 'possible' unusual culprits.
New bee viruses found attacking healthy hives
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The new findings could help rule out suspects in colony collapse disorder
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Bee biome
The researchers watched 70,000 healthy bee hives (from more than 20 colonies) every week for more than 10 months, while the insects made their normal treks from crop to crop across the United States. During this time the bees were exposed to antimicrobial treatments, transportation stress, different food sources in three different geographical locations (Mississippi, South Dakota and California). |
Analyses in the lab using a microchip revealed the hives were infected with several viruses at each time point and none of the hives were chronically infected with any one virus. The various infections would change dramatically within a month's time; common honeybee viruses peaked during the summer months, while others peaked during the winter. |
During the survey of the hives' "microbiome," they discovered four new viruses and a trypasnosome, a type of single-celled parasite, which had never been identified before. One new viruses, the Lake Sinai 2 virus, was found in very high concentrations, up to 1 hundred billion copies of the virus per bee in some hives. [10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites] |
Good for Prescott - let's have the whole shabby thing exposed Prescott wins review of phone hack inquiry |
A legal submission to the court complained that the police had misled the four men into thinking their voicemails had not been intercepted by a private detective contracted by the News of the World. |
To all here who care about endangered species:
Who nowadays doesn't know that all too many species all over the world are threatened with extinction - and that it affects plants, trees, insects, fish, birds, and animals, from the exotic to the commonplace?
Yet this was brought home to us very forcibly when we watching a BBC TV series Birds Britannia recently and learned about the catastrophic drop in the population of many British birds over the past 50 years.
This is tragic and terrible - and it highlights one of the problems with the threats to species, which is that we only tend to notice the big events.
We all notice the big events like the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But it is not only big events that kill species.
Small declines day in, day out - due to pesticides, habitat encroachment, changing farming methods, and urbanization - are silent killers because no one notices they are happening.
Unless records are kept of the decline of species, no one can make a case for halting their decline.
And unless people push for an understanding of what is happening and how to prevent the decline and extinction of species, then nothing is done.
The tools we have are knowledge, information, public awareness, and public pressure. These are the greatest tools we have to prevent species decline.
Endangered Species Day is Friday May 20th this year.
It was started by the U.S. Senate as a day for teaching and informing about threats to endangered species around the world.
The Endangered Species Coalition comprises a network of many organizations working to protect disappearing wildlife and the last remaining wild places.
It is promoting events and contests nationwide in the U.S. as well as spreading the word with ecards designed by us.
As a writer, my wife Tamara volunteered and wrote several articles for http://stopextinction.org/ about specific animals and birds under threat - see http://oilspillwildlife.org/
As a result, http://stopextinction.org/esd.html asked us to design and produce five ecards to help spread the word about Endangered Species Day.
So from now through May 20th - for Endangered Species Day 2011 - my personal request is for you to please go here to http://quillcards.com/ecards/free/ and send many, many ecards.
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Clear exposition of what might happen if the ICC prosecutor gets the go-ahead to issue a warrant against Ghaddafi. Gaddafi arrest likely to get go-ahead as UN looks to war crimes trial |
The next step along the road to war crimes prosecutions in Libya will come in about a fortnight's time, when prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will submit his request for three arrest warrants to one of the International Criminal Court's two pre-trial chambers for approval. |
Legal observers said in the Gaddafi case, they expected the judges to uphold the central charges outlined in Moreno-Ocampo's report. |
The question then arises as to which organisation should carry out the arrest. Under the 1998 Rome Statute on which the ICC was built, that duty falls first to the national government in question, and there is at least a faint hope among western governments that the issuing of ICC arrest warrants would provide a trigger and a legal justification for any remaining waverers in the Gaddafi camp to move against him. |
If not, the UN security council has to decide what to do. The job could be passed to Nato, but that would require a resolution, which Russia and China could well object to. They already believe that the February resolution allowing "all necessary measures" to protect Libyan civilians has been exploited by Nato to wage war on the side of the rebels. |
Endangered Species Day is Friday May 20th this year.
It was started by the U.S. Senate as a day for teaching and informing about threats to endangered species around the world.
The Endangered Species Coalition comprises a network of many organizations working to protect disappearing wildlife and the last remaining wild places.
It is promoting events and contests nationwide in the U.S. as well as spreading the word with ecards designed by us.
As a writer, my wife Tamara volunteered and wrote several articles for http://stopextinction.org/ about specific animals and birds under threat - see http://oilspillwildlife.org/
As a result, http://stopextinction.org/esd.html asked us to design and produce five ecards to help spread the word about Endangered Species Day.
So from now through May 20th - for Endangered Species Day 2011 - my personal request is for you to please go here to http://quillcards.com/ecards/free/ and send many, many ecards.
It's probably the way the photo was taken, but look at the officer near the back of the group - doesn't he or she look very, very short?
Not that there is anything wrong with being short, but when the impression is one of force, it strikes me as a little bit humorous - but then I don't agree with Christiana being closed down, so I am biased.
Some of the most inspiring and attractive houses I have ever had the pleasure to see were built by the inhabitants of Christiana in the heart of Denmark's capital in an abandoned army base they took over in the 1970s.
If it goes, I will be sad - and the best experiment in alternative living in Europe will have been shut down by a relentless bureaucracy and big business. Christiania, one of Europe's most famous communes, faces last stand |
Residents form barricade in freetown that Danish government wants to 'normalise' |
In what residents see as the final attack by the right-of-centre government, and property developers eager to get their hands on the valuable real estate, they have been given until 2 May to decide whether to take up an offer to buy the properties – collectively or as individuals – for 150m kroner (£18m). Many argue that, for residents who have renounced materialism, this is impossible. |
The other deal tabled by the government is to turn the freetown into a public housing association. |
For many, the battle has already been lost. In February the government won a legal tussle over the rights of use after the supreme court upheld a 2009 ruling which handed the state control of the area. |
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