Pay deal criticised
Jonathan Ross’s £18 million three-year contract with the BBC came under fire from the former Cabinet minister Lord Fowler, who headed a review of the BBC charter. The Tory peer contrasted it with the £6 million it would cost to extend World Service broadcasting to the Middle East from 12 hours a day to 24.
Second suicide
A man killed himself by jumping off a viaduct from which his father committed suicide two years earlier, an inquest was told. Richard Morris, 26, of Dowlais, South Wales, died of multiple injuries after leaping from the Pont Sarn viaduct on January 29. The Merthyr Coroner recorded a verdict of suicide.
Advertisement
Tired worker killed
A potato company was fined £30,000 for breaching health and safety legislation after one of its workers died in a car crash in 2002 after working 76 hours in four days. The Produce Connection, based in Chittering, Cambridgeshire, admitted two breaches during a hearing at Cambridge Crown Court.
Wreck protected
Relatives of the thousands of soldiers who died in Britain’s worst maritime disaster, the sinking of the Lancastria in 1940, have persuaded the French Government to protect the site of the wreck. Campaigners were concerned that divers had been intruding on the ship, which lies off the coastal town of St Nazaire.
Bank fraud leads to author’s body
Advertisement
Police investigating suspicious transactions in the bank account of a reclusive author are believed to have found his body at his Georgian home in Hampstead, North London.
They are now hunting a fraudster who used the bank cards of Allan Chappelow, 86, to take money from cash machines. The author of Russian Holiday, published in 1955, is said to have reported the theft of post last month.
Bank fraud leads to author’s body
Police investigating suspicious transactions in the bank account of a reclusive author are believed to have found his body at his Georgian home in Hampstead, North London.
They are now hunting a fraudster who used the bank cards of Allan Chappelow, 86, to take money from cash machines. The author of Russian Holiday, published in 1955, is said to have reported the theft of post last month.
Advertisement
Suspect deported
An immigrant cleared of plotting a terror attack on Britain using the chemical weapon ricin was deported to Algeria after dropping claims that his home country was too dangerous.
PC is cleared
PC Daniel Phillips, 43, was formally cleared of any guilt relating to the deaths of two 14-year-old boys who drowned in 2002 in a swimming pool that he was supervising in Hendon, North London.
Advertisement
Bible ‘anti-Semitic’
The Episcopal Church passed a resolution at its convention in Columbus, Ohio, that criticised the Bible as being anti-Semitic. The motion was passed with a majority of 68.3 per cent.
Elderly bikers die in crash
A British couple have been killed in a motorcycle accident near the port of Bilbao, Spain.
Arthur Straughan, 70, and his wife Pearl, 67, from Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire, were with a group of riders from Britain when their motorcycle was involved in an accident with a car.
Advertisement
The Dutch occupants of the car were not injured and none of the other motorcycles was involved. Mr and Mrs Straughan, who had a son and a daughter, were motorbike enthusiasts and took regular trips abroad.
22 years for killer
A man who tormented a friend who had a low IQ and forced him to live in a box in a cupboard until he died must serve at least 22 years in jail, Mr Justice Aitken ruled at the Royal Courts of Justice. Stephen Owen Sullivan, from Essex, was convicted of murdering Justin Chant.
Wealthy cheat
A businessman with a £500,000 home in Knowsley, Merseyside, was found guilty of falsely claiming more than £50,000 in benefits. Terence Pendleton, 45, had claimed he was crippled, depressed and living in a bedsit. He was bailed for sentencing by Liverpool Crown Court.