Plans to store information about every phone call, email and internet visit in the United Kingdom have in effect been abandoned by the Government....The data retention proposals have been championed by the intelligence agencies and police as a vital tool for tracking terror plots and international crime syndicates. Under the plans, communications companies would keep a record of phone numbers rung, addresses to which emails are sent, details of internet sites visited and the use of social networking sites such as Facebook – and would be required to surrender details to police when asked. They would not hold records of phone conversations or the contents of emails....But the Association of Chief Police Officers said: "If the Government does not maintain the capability or capacity for the police to determine ... who has communicated with whom and when, the police service will face a fundamental breakdown in our ability to function in the communications age."
read more @ independent
2. 100 rapists are let off with a caution; the serious offenses that never come to court
More than 100 rapists have been let off with a police caution, it was revealed yesterday. The 111 cases included 66 incidents of child rape....The system of fixed-penalty fines and cautions has been introduced over the past six years as a way to deal with minor crime cheaply and effectively. But the disclosure that cautions have been used repeatedly to deal with rapists is the clearest demonstration that the system is now being used to keep the most serious crimes out of the courts....
Between that date and the end of 2007 there were 45 cases of rape of adults in which the rapist admitted guilt but was released with a caution. In a further 66 cases individuals who admitted raping a child under 13 were freed with a caution. The figures from the Home Office gave no indication of why police chose to use cautions to punish a crime which, in the case of adult rape, typically attracts a prison sentence of five years....However no caution can be given in any case except where the suspect admits guilt. Therefore in all 111 cases prosecutors denied the courts an opportunity to examine the evidence and decide on sentencing.
3. one theory of "why" police choose to use cautions for serious crimes
4. Lady Tumim -- off the reservation
Lady Tumim, who died suddenly last Thursday, was a formidable public campaigner for changes in the management of charities and reform of the law respecting charities...Winfred Letitia Borthwick was the eldest of four children of Lt-Col Algernon Malcolm Borthwick, chairman of the family meat-importing business, scion of an ancient Scottish family...At Oxford she met Stephen Tumim, born in 1930 in Oxford, where his father Joseph was a Clerk of Assize of the Oxford Circuit. The Tumims were Sephardic Jews with as long a history in England as the Borthwicks boasted in Scotland....
Owing to health problems, Stephen, though a successful barrister, decided not to apply for silk, but became a part-time judge in 1977, and a year later a full-time circuit judge. They would have carried on in this low-key way but for Douglas Hurd appointing him in 1987 as the third Chief Inspector for Prisons, initially slightly disappointing those who had hoped for a zealous prison reformer to get the post. Whitehall regarded Stephen and Winifred as clubbable members of the establishment, and got quite a shock when the bow-tied, half-moon spectacled, Beefsteak and Garrick member with a passion for Thomas Love Peacock wrote a succession of reports vociferously damning conditions in the prisons he'd inspected, and began his (ultimately victorious) campaign against the practice of "slopping out."
Winifred ably reinforced Stephen during the tenure of three more Conservative Home Secretaries, David Waddington, Kenneth Baker and Kenneth Clarke, until the fifth, Michael Howard decided he could not bear this thorn in his flesh, and not only sacked Stephen in 1995, but refused to recommend him for the usual knighthood.
...This outraged Winifred, who knew all too well what the job had cost them both. Stephen had become the darling of the media, but his frequent appearances on television and on the front pages of the newspapers meant that he was also a high-priority target for the IRA.
... Her entry in Who's Who lists about 20 causes with which she was associated. She had chaired the Forum on Children and Violence, established after the Bulger murder case in 1993 to examine the well springs of child violence against an atmosphere in which the red-top papers were baying for retribution. Another area in which she interceded was the prevailing trend to irrational policy-making about teenage pregnancy, and from 2000 Winifred chaired the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy. In 1996, when the National Lottery Board was slated for making grants to organisations concerned with prostitution, gay rights and deporting immigrants, she wrote a thunderous letter to The Times, saying that the last thing charities needed "is busy ministers deciding which charities get grants.
...What made Winifred so effective as a campaigner was her willingness to challenge authority – always just a little unexpected in someone of her background and circumstances, and something she had in common with her husband....The day before her death she went to the Welsh National Opera's La Traviata in Oxford, and she died at the end of a dinner party at which she'd very much enjoyed arguing politics with her hosts.
5. are these the bones of a legendary Persian army lost in the Sahara 2500 years ago?
The remains of a legendary 50,000-strong army which was swallowed up in a cataclysmic sandstorm in the Sahara Desert 2,500 years ago are believed to have been found. Italian archaeologists Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, twin brothers, have discovered bronze weapons and hundreds of human bones which they reckon are the remains of the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II. According to the Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 BC), Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, sent the soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa in 525BC.
Their mission was to destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimise his claim to Egypt. Oracles were places where divine advice or prophecy was sought and the ancient Egyptians held them to be manifestations of the gods that could see into the future. They were often consulted before big decisions....The Castiglioni brothers are already famous for their discovery 20 years ago of the city of pharaohs the 'city of gold' Berenike Panchrysos which was quoted by Pliny the Elder in his 'Naturalis Historia'.
read more @ daily mail
6. politician caught in teen sex scandal to step down
A high-ranking Stockholm-area politician has been fined for attempting to purchase sex from an underage girl involved in a high-profile teen sex ring. Åke Blomqvist, a member of the local council in Huddinge, south of Stockholm, holds a number of important positions within the municipality, including responsibility for matters relating to children and education.
...“I was put in touch with a man who came to my home with a girl in the middle of the day. I paid 1,500 kronor ($220) for her, but never realized she was underage,” he told the newspaper.
Blomqvist said he came to have second thoughts and that no sex took place....But the girl told police that she had sex with Blomqvist in his home last year.
The case came to light as part of the police’s ongoing investigation into a high-profile group sex ring in which prominent businessmen and other professionals arranged orgies with young girls they recruited over the internet. The mastermind behind the teen sex ring, a 40-year-old businessman, was convicted in September and sentenced to four years in prison for aggravated pimping and other charges.
read more @ thelocal
7. couple makes neighbors' lives hell with nightly sex ritual
A couple's ‘unnaturally’ noisy sex sessions made their neighbours' lives' hell, a court heard today. Caroline and Steve Cartwright's nightly love making was described as ‘murder’ and drowned out their neighbours' televisions. The court was also told the sex sessions would start around midnight and last for up to three hours.
...‘The noise sounds like they are both in inconsiderable pain. Mr Cartwright sounds like he is in inconsiderable pain. ‘I cannot describe the noise. Totally excessive and I have never ever heard anything like it.’ Specialist equipment installed in Miss O'Connor's flat by Sunderland City Council recorded noise levels of between 30 to 40 decibels, with the highest being 47 decibels. ...‘Hysterical, almost continuous, just screaming,’ she said. ‘I noted that I found it very disturbing and I noted that it sounded like she was being murdered.read more @ daily mail
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