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Category: UK

  • Is Real James Bond On Facebook?

    Is Real James Bond On Facebook?

    By Sky News SkyNews – Sunday, September 28 01:29 pm

    Spies are using social networking website Facebook to try to recruit real-life James Bonds.

    The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) has begun advertising on it as part of a campaign to find potential MI6 agents.

    The adverts have been launched in an attempt to reach a large and wide variety of people, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

    MI6 began recruiting openly in April 2006, using mainly radio and newspaper advertising campaigns.

    It also recruits through its website, where candidates can fill out application forms online.

    “The Secret Intelligence Service’s open recruitment campaign continues to target wide pools of talent representative of British society today,” the spokeswoman added.

    “A number of channels are used to promote job opportunities in the organisation.

    “Facebook is a recent example” she went on.

    The website, which was launched in 2004, currently has more than 100 million active users worldwide.

    Other popular social networking sites include Bebo and MySpace.

    Source: uk.news.yahoo.com, 28 September 2008

  • Clyde sells systems for Turkish satellites

    Clyde sells systems for Turkish satellites

    MARK SMITH DEPUTY BUSINESS EDITOR mark.smith@theherald.co.uk 

    CLYDE Space, Scotland’s only space industry business, has struck a £150,000 deal to supply two flight model power systems to Turkey’s fledgling satellite programme.

    The deal with the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tubitak) will see Glasgow-based Clyde provide two flight model battery charge regulator systems for the launch of Rasat, the first Earth-observation satellite to be built and developed in Turkey.

    The 120kg spacecraft is to be launched into a “700km sun-synchronous orbit” in late 2009.

    Clyde Space, one of the world’s leading suppliers of small satellite power systems, has been capitalising on the growing demand for so-called nano and miniature satellites.

    Craig Clark, who set up Clyde Space in 2006 with the help of Scottish Enterprise, said: “We were delighted to be part of the Rasat team and to supply our small satellite battery charge regulator to Tubitak.”

    The battery charge regulator is specifically designed for use with lithium ion battery technology, and includes four 85-watt solar panel trackers and digital interface to battery and solar panel telemetry.

    Clark added: “Lithium ion is still a relatively new technology to most spacecraft manufacturers, and our knowledge and experience in this area added significant value to the Rasat engineering team.”

    Clark, who is based at Glasgow Science Park, last month revealed plans to turn his business into a multimillion-pound venture with the world’s first website selling Earth-orbiting satellites.

    The website, which was launched in August, primarily targets the US market and offers credit card sales of satellites for research purposes.

    The satellites, which put a futuristic spin on the notion of Clyde-built engineering, are all designed and manufactured at the Clyde Space base in Maryhill. The miniature satellites – most of them as small as 10cmcubed – known as cubesats and microsatellites, unfold in space like pizza boxes. They are launched into space by a rocket, then fired into orbit, where they unfold and begin gathering information.

    Source: The Herald, 26 Sep 2008

  • Ambassador Brenton: UK expects Russia to reconsider Abkhazia, S. Ossetia recognition

    Ambassador Brenton: UK expects Russia to reconsider Abkhazia, S. Ossetia recognition

    Interfax’s Interview

    British Ambassador to Russia Tony Brenton has said he hopes Russia will reconsider its position on recognizing Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s independence and vowed that the United Kingdom would take part in a European Union mission of military monitors in the South Caucasus.

    “I do not know the exact numbers, but I do know that we are looking for twenty, thirty, or forty participants, and I am assuming that they will be on the ground as the European community gets its people onto the ground over the next few days,” Brenton said in an interview with Interfax.

    Times New Roman;”> “I hope that your readers will note that this will be a fantastic operation. The European community, the European Union from a standing start on the 8th of September has put together a big peacekeeping observer operation in the course of three weeks. That is a strong demonstration of the will of the European Union to contribute to getting the tensions down and to getting peace back in the region,” he said.

    Brenton described Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as “a big mistake, because the effect of it is that it makes it much more complicated for us to find a long-term solution to tensions between Georgia and Russia and between Georgia and Abkhazia and Georgia and South Ossetia.”

    “It is a pity that Russia said it is irreversible,” Brenton said.
    “I hope that, on reflection, Russia will think again, because the precedent we have for this is the president of Turkey recognizing North Cyprus, and it has landed Turkey for a period of thirty years with a small enclave unrecognized anywhere else in the world and placing on Turkey an economic and political burden. It would be very sad to see Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the same situation,” he said.

    Commenting on Russia’s proposal that an embargo should be imposed on weapon supplies to Georgia, Brenton said, “I do not think that Russia has formally made a proposal to that effect. I think that we would want to see Georgia having the capacity to defend itself in the future and having normal armed forces. I am sure we would not want to see, on the other hand, a sort of military buildup in the region which led to the problems of the 7th and 8th of August,” he said.

    Brenton urged the beginning of a discussion on launching a peace process “with nobody setting too many preconditions.”

    The immediate issue is the implementation of the 8th of September agreement [reached at negotiations between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and French President Nicolas Sarkozy]. Once that agreement is fully implemented, then I hope the political tensions will begin to calm down and we will begin to be able to discuss the resumption of contacts of various sorts,” he said.

    “I know that the French presidency of the EU, for example, has made it clear that on the assumption that the 8th of September agreement is implemented, the European Union will then resume the negotiations on the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Russia,” he said.

    “NATO has not yet reflected on what the conditions have to be for the resumption of NATO-Russia contacts,” he said.

    Source: www.interfax.com

  • PM urges financial responsibility

    PM urges financial responsibility

    Gordon Brown has called for an end to the “age of irresponsibility”, ahead of White House talks with President Bush on the global financial crisis.

    The prime minister told the UN General Assembly that “co-ordinated” solutions to the economic downturn were needed.

    Mr Brown advocated a “new global order, founded on transparency, not opacity”.

    US talks on a $700bn (£380bn) bail-out plan to revive the finance sector have ended in stalemate. Mr Brown is due to meet President Bush at 2120 BST.

    ‘Not just national’

    The prime minister has voiced his support for the proposals put forward by the US government.

    He told the UN: “This cannot just be national anymore. We must have global supervision…

    “The age of irresponsibility must be ended. We must now become that new global order founded on transparency, not opacity.”

    On Thursday, the prime minister urged world leaders not to use the financial crisis as an excuse to abandon efforts against global poverty.

    Desire for stability

    Mr Bush has proposed the US government take on the debts of struggling financial firms in an attempt to keep them afloat and also prevent a recession.

    The prime minister said quick action was needed to stabilise the economic situation and that longer-term reforms to the world’s financial system were also needed.

    “While the problem comes out of America, it has consequences for all of us and every family will want to know that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that there is stability,” he said.

    Other issues on the agenda for the White House meeting are thought to include Iraq, Afghanistan and the situation in Georgia.

    Meanwhile, a survey of 1,012 people for BBC Two’s Daily Politics show suggests 36% trust Mr Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling most to steer the UK’s economy through the downturn.

    Some 30% opted for Conservative leader David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne, while 5% chose Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg and Treasury spokesman Vince Cable.

    The poll, conducted ComRes on 24th and 25 September, suggests that 24% of people do not know which party offers the best option on the economy. 

    To watch Video: 7636165.stm

     

    BBC 26 September 2008

  • Germany says U.S. to lose financial superpower status

    Germany says U.S. to lose financial superpower status

    By Noah Barkin Reuters

    BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany blamed the Anglo-Saxon capitalist model on Thursday for spawning the global financial crisis, saying the United States would lose its financial superpower status and have to accept greater market regulation.

    In unusually stark language, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told parliament the financial crisis would leave “deep marks” and proposed eight measures to address it, including a ban on speculative short-selling and an increase in bank capital requirements to offset credit risks.

    “The world will never be as it was before the crisis,” Steinbrueck, a deputy leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, told the Bundestag lower house.

    “The United States will lose its superpower status in the world financial system. The world financial system will become more multi-polar,” he said.

    Steinbrueck lay the blame for the crisis squarely on the United States and what he called an Anglo-Saxon drive for double-digit profits and massive bonuses for bankers and company executives.

    “Investment bankers and politicians in New York, Washington and London were not willing to give these up,” he said. “Wall Street will never be what it was.”

    The collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers and financial woes of other financial institutions like insurer AIG has prompted the U.S. government to unveil a $700 billion rescue package for the country’s financial sector.

    Steinbrueck said it was neither necessary nor wise for Germany to replicate the U.S. plan for its own institutions.

    The German Bundesbank said earlier this week that the financial market turbulence would hit the earnings of Germany’s big commercial lenders, its publicly-owned Landesbanks and its cooperative banks.

    Tighter credit in the wake of the crisis could also constrain household consumption and corporate investment, increasing the likelihood the German economy will fall into recession this year.

    But Steinbrueck said German regulator Bafin believed German banks could cope with losses and ensure the safety of private savings.

    He said the crisis showed the need for a greater state role in setting the rules for markets and called the turmoil primarily an American problem.

    “The financial crisis is above all an American problem. The other G7 financial ministers in continental Europe share this opinion,” he said.

    “This system, which is to a large degree insufficiently regulated, is now collapsing — with far-reaching consequences for the U.S. financial market and considerable contagion effects for the rest of the world,” Steinbrueck added.

    (Reporting by Noah Barkin and Kerstin Gehmlich)

    Source: uk.news.yahoo.com, 24 September 2008

  • Detective Richard de Cadenet jailed for fraud using Scotland Yard card

    Detective Richard de Cadenet jailed for fraud using Scotland Yard card

    Officer took wife and mistress on holidays

    A leading antiterrorist police officer has been jailed for ten months after admitting using his Scotland Yard credit card to take his wife and mistress on luxury holidays.

    Detective Sergeant Richard de Cadenet is the first officer to be jailed as part of an investigation that led to the cancellation of more than 1,400 Metropolitan Police credit cards.

    The officer, who worked on a number of high-profile operations including the 7/7 attacks on London, was jailed yesterday by Southwark Crown Court. He admitted illicitly spending more than £73,000 on his corporate credit card during a 15-month period.

    The court heard that the 39-year-old officer, the son of Alain de Cadenet, the former racing driver, and the brother of Amanda de Cadenet, the television presenter, used the credit card in an attempt to buy “affection”.

    David Levy, for the prosecution, said that the exact amount of illicit expenditure by de Cadenet amounted to £73,669.18.

    He spent £6,452 on a holiday in Thailand and a further £9,000 on a trip to Mexico. The card was also used to pay for a box at a Premier League football ground in which de Cadenet’s estranged father had been entertained, along with others.

    A further £5,910 was spent in supermarkets, £3,500 on clothes, £3,000 on electrical goods and cash withdrawals of more than £18,000 were made. Only 28 of the 415 payments made by the card were legitimate, the court was told.

    Mr Levy said the policy that obtained at the time in the Metropolitan force had been for the cards to allow officers to pay for legitimate expenses such as hotel bills and travelling while working outside London.

    He said that officers were supposed to submit a monthly “reconciliation” of their expenditure to the Metropolitan Police Authority but that this had not taken place in the case of de Cadenet.

    Neil Saunders, for the defence, said that de Cadenet had joined the Metropolitan Police in 1996 after serving in the RAF. At police training in Hendon, North London, he had emerged as a “class leader”, he said, and had subsequently received glowing reports for his work as a police officer.

    But he said de Cadenet, who served with the RAF in Bosnia and during the Gulf War, had begun experiencing marital difficulties, developed a drink problem and fell seriously into debt before he obtained the card.

    Mr Saunders said it appeared that de Cadenet had been attempting to “buy the affections” of those who were closest to him in the misuse of the card. “He was buying what he thought was attention and affection. He was, as I have been trying to suggest, a man who was simply unable to cope,” Mr Saunders said.

    De Cadenet admitted one count of misfeasance in public office.

    The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said de Cadenet’s actions were a serious misuse of public money. Deborah Glass, London commissioner for the IPCC, said: “The taxpayers of London will rightly be concerned. I hope [the] sentence reassures them that abuse of the system will not be tolerated.”

    Scotland Yard is completing checks on expenditure on 3,500 corporate charge cards in use since 2006. The Directorate of Professional Standards has referred 25 cases to the IPCC and the Metropolitan Police Authority has referred two cases.

    Detective Sergeant John Gallagher, 52, who worked for the Met’s child abuse investigation unit, pleaded guilty to a £9,622 expenses scam earlier this month and was warned that he could be jailed.

    Detective Constable Matthew Washington, 36, a former antiterrorism officer, has been charged with using his corporate card to spend £12,500 for personal use and is due to stand trial at Southwark Crown Court in December.

    The Times

    David Brown

    23 September 2008