Suspected republican hardliners killed a police officer with a car bomb in Omagh on Saturday afternoon.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but police and politicians blamed Irish Republican Army dissidents who are believed to have been planting bombs underneath off-duty Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers’ private cars.
Until Saturday such booby-trap attacks had badly maimed two PSNI officers but had not killed anyone.
PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott paid tribute to his colleague, who has been named as Ronan Kerr.
“We have lost one of our brave and courageous police recruits, someone who joined this fine service simply to do good, joined to serve the community impartially and to be someone I describe as a modern-day hero,” he said.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams TD condemned those responsible for Saturday’s bomb attack and sent his condolences to Mr Kerr’s family.
Mr Adams said that Sinn Fein was “determined that those responsible will not set back the progress of the peace and political process.”
The first Istanbul shopping festival is under way and will continue until April 26.
Events include street shows, concerts and games, which take place everywhere from the Grand Bazaar to backstreet boutiques and upmarket malls.
There is late shopping for the duration of the festival (until 11pm on many nights).
Turkish Airlines (020 7471 6666; www.turkishairlines.com) flies from Heathrow, Manchester and Birmingham to Istanbul. BA (0844 493 0787; www.ba.com) flies from Heathrow, and easyJet (0870 600 0000; www.easyjet.com) from Gatwick.
* More information: www.istanbulshoppingfest.org; www.visitistanbul.org
via Book now: inspiring short break holidays – Telegraph.
Exclusive: Contact with senior aide believed to be one of a number between Libyan officials and west amid signs regime may be looking for exit strategy
Peter Beaumont , Nicholas Watt and Severin Carrell
Supporters of the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi stage a rally in Tripoli. Photograph: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
Colonel Gaddafi’s regime has sent one of its most trusted envoys to London for confidential talks with British officials, the Guardian can reveal.
Mohammed Ismail, a senior aide to Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, visited London in recent days, British government sources familiar with the meeting have confirmed. The contacts with Ismail are believed to have been one of a number between Libyan officials and the west in the last fortnight, amid signs that the regime may be looking for an exit strategy.
Disclosure of Ismail’s visit comes in the immediate aftermath of the defection to Britain of Moussa Koussa, Libya‘s foreign minister and its former external intelligence head, who has been Britain’s main conduit to the Gaddafi regime since the early 1990s.
A team led by the British ambassador to Libya, Richard Northern, and MI6 officers embarked on a lengthy debriefing of Koussa at a safe house after he flew into Farnborough airport on Wednesday night from Tunisia. Government sources said the questioning would take time because Koussa’s state of mind was “delicate” after he left his family in Libya.
The Foreign Office has declined “to provide a running commentary” on contacts with Ismail or other regime officials. But news of the meeting comes amid mounting speculation that Gaddafi’s sons, foremost among them Saif al-Islam, Saadi and Mutassim, are anxious to talk. “There has been increasing evidence recently that the sons want a way out,” said a western diplomatic source.
Although he has little public profile in Libya or internationally, Ismail is recognised by diplomats as being a key fixer and representative for Saif al-Islam. According to cables published by WikiLeaks, Ismail represented Libya’s government in arms purchase negotiations and as an interlocutor on military and political issues.
“The message that was delivered to him is that Gaddafi has to go, and that there will be accountability for crimes committed at the international criminal court,” a Foreign Office spokesman told the Guardian , declining to elaborate on what else may have been discussed.
Some aides working for Gaddafi’s sons, however, have made it clear that it may be necessary to sideline their father and explore exit strategies to prevent the country descending into anarchy.
One idea the sons have reportedly suggested – which the Guardian has been unable to corroborate – is that Gaddafi give up real power. Mutassim, presently the country’s national security adviser, would become president of an interim national unity government which would include the opposition. It is an idea, however, unlikely to find support among the rebels or the international community who are demanding Gaddafi’s removal.
The revelation that contacts between Britain and a key Gaddafi loyalist had taken place came as David Cameron hailed the defection of Koussa as a sign the regime was crumbling. “It tells a compelling story of the desperation and the fear right at the very top of the crumbling and rotten Gaddafi regime,” he said.
Ministers regard Koussa’s move to abandon his family as a sign of the magnitude of his decision. “Moussa Koussa is very worried about his family,” one source said. “But he did this because he felt it was the best way of bringing down Gaddafi.”
Britain learned that Koussa wanted to defect when he made contact from Tunisia. He had made his way out of Libya in a convoy of cars after announcing he was going on a diplomatic mission to visit the new government in Tunis.
It was also reported that Ali Abdussalam Treki, a senior Libyan diplomat, declined to take up his appointment by Gaddafi as UN ambassador, condemning the “spilling of blood”. Officials were checking reports that Tarek Khalid Ibrahim, the deputy head of mission in London, is also defecting.
The prime minister insisted that no deal had been struck with Koussa and that he would not be offered immunity from prosecution. “Let me be clear, Moussa Koussa is not being granted immunity. There is no deal of that kind,” Cameron said. Within hours of his arrival in Britain, Scottish prosecutors asked to interview Koussa about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The Crown Office in Edinburgh has said that it is formally asking for its prosecutors and police detectives to question him.
But government sources indicated that Britain does not believe Koussa was involved. He was at the heart of Britain’s rapprochement with Libya, which started when Tripoli abandoned its support for the IRA in the early 1990s.
He was instrumental in persuading Gaddafi to abandon his weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003. One source said: “Nobody is saying this guy was a saint, because he was a key Gaddafi lieutenant who was kicked out of Britain in 1980 for making threats to kill Libyan dissidents. But this is the guy who persuaded Gaddafi to abandon his WMD programme. He no doubt has useful and interesting things to say about Lockerbie, but it doesn’t seem he said ‘go and do it’.”
However there is unease among Tories about Britain’s involvement in Libya. Underlining those concerns, Boris Johnson, the London mayor, told BBC Question Time that a continued stalemate in Libya could “have terrible consequences”. Johnson said; “I do worry that if we get into a stalemate; and if, frankly, the rebels don’t seem to be making the progress that we would like, we have to be brave, to say to ourselves that our policy is not working, and encourage the Arabs themselves to take leadership in all of this.”
William Hague, the foreign secretary, said he had a sense that Koussa was deeply unhappy with Gaddafi when they spoke last Friday. “One of the things I gathered between the lines in my telephone calls with him, although he of course had to read out the scripts of the regime, was that he was very distressed and dissatisfied by the situation there,” Hague said.
Britain says Moussa Koussa is quitting Colonel Gaddafi's regime
Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa is in Britain and “no longer willing” to work for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, the Foreign Office says.
He flew into an airport near the capital earlier on Wednesday.
He has subsequently spent hours talking to British officials.
His apparent defection comes as rebels in Libya are retreating from former strongholds along the eastern coast as Colonel Gaddafi’s forces advance.
The rebels have now lost the key oil port of Ras Lanuf and the nearby town of Bin Jawad, and are also in full retreat from Brega. In the west, the rebel-held town of Misrata is still reportedly coming under attack from pro-Gaddafi troops, reports say.
‘Own free will’
A British Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Moussa Koussa arrived at Farnborough Airport on 30 March from Tunisia. He travelled here under his own free will.
“He has told us that he is resigning his post. We are discussing this with him and we will release further detail in due course.
“Moussa Koussa is one of the most senior figures in Gaddafi’s government and his role was to represent the regime internationally – something that he is no longer willing to do.
“We encourage those around Gaddafi to abandon him and embrace a better future for Libya that allows political transition and real reform that meets the aspirations of the Libyan people.”
A senior US administration official, speaking to AFP News agency on condition of anonymity, said: “This is a very significant defection and an indication that people around Gaddafi think the writing’s on the wall.”
Earlier, British Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that five Libyan diplomats were being expelled from the country.
He told MPs that the five, who include the military attache, “could pose a threat” to Britain’s security.
About-turn
The BBC’s Ben Brown in the eastern coastal town of Ajdabiya says the rebels simply cannot compete with the discipline and firepower of Col Gaddafi’s forces.
He says the current situation is a dramatic about-turn for the rebels who, over the weekend, had seized a string of towns along the coast and seemed to be making good progress with the help of coalition air strikes.
Most reports suggested the rebels had fled back to Ajdabiya, and some witnesses said civilians had begun to flee further east towards the rebel-held city of Benghazi.
Maj Gen Suleiman Mahmoud, the second-in-command for the rebels, told the BBC that rebels forces needed time, patience and help to organise themselves.
“Our problem we need help – communication, radios, we need weapons,” he said, adding that the rebels had a strategy but fighters did not always obey orders.
He also said allied liaison officers were working with the rebels to organise raids.
Human Rights Watch has accused Col Gaddafi’s forces of laying both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines during the current conflict after a discovery of what it said were dozens of mines on the eastern outskirts of Ajdabiya.
Covert action
France and the US say they are sending envoys to Benghazi to meet the interim administration.
And an international conference on Libya in London has agreed to set up a contact group involving Arab governments to co-ordinate help for a post-Gaddafi Libya.
The US and Britain have suggested the UN resolution authorising international action in Libya could also permit the supply of weapons.
This message was reinforced by British Prime Minister David Cameron in Parliament on Wednesday.
“UN [Security Council Resolution] 1973 allows all necessary measures to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas, and our view is this would not necessarily rule out the provision of assistance to those protecting civilians in certain circumstances,” he said. “We do not rule it out, but we have not taken the decision to do so.”
Meanwhile, US media reports say President Barack Obama has authorised covert support for the Libyan rebels. The CIA and White House have both declined to comment on the reports.
Several thousand people have been killed and thousands wounded since the uprising against Col Gaddafi’s rule began more than six weeks ago.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12915959, 31 March 2011
Britain has fewer high-tech medical machines than Estonia and Turkey
Hospitals in Britain have fewer high-tech medical machines than those in poorer countries such as Estonia and Turkey, according to the public spending watchdog.
By Martin Beckford, Health Correspondent 12:01AM BST 30 Mar 2011
Even those units that do have MRI and CT scanners often leave them to “lie idle” for much of the time despite rising demand, the National Audit Office said.
It claims the NHS is not getting value for money out of the technology, particularly as trusts do not collaborate to buy them or try to get the best prices.
Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, said: “At a time when the NHS is undergoing radical reform and has the additional challenge of making billions in savings, it is even more important that it focuses on getting the best value for money from all of its assets.”
She said the NAO report, published on Wednesday, “suggests that the NHS is not making the most of what it has got”.
“It is not getting best value from this vital, but expensive, equipment.”
The watchdog – which recently claimed that hospital consultants’ productivity had fallen even as their pay had risen – looked at hospitals’ use CT and MRI scanners that check patients for cancer and heart problems as well as Linear Accelerator (Linac) machines that deliver radiotherapy.
It found that 426 CT scanners (costing £579,000 each), 304 MRI scanners (£895,000) and 246 Linac machines (£1.4million) are now in use across the NHS in England, most of them installed in the past decade.
Yet the report added: “The UK still has fewer machines than other countries.”
The NHS in England had 6 MRI machines per million population in 2010, with figures across Britain putting the country below the Slovak Republic, Turkey, Estonia and Ireland in a league table of provision.
For CT scanners, there were 8.4 per million population, with Britain again trailing far poorer countries such as Greece (about 30) and the Czech Republic (about 15).
There were 4.8 Linac machines per million population last year in the NHS, compared with about 13 in the Slovak Republic.
About half of the machines in the NHS will need replacing over the next three years, which could cost up to £460m.
The NAO said the number of diagnostic scans carried out using these machines has risen almost threefold over the past decade, but although the workforce has also increased “shortfalls remain in capability to deliver services”.
Some units operating the machines are open for 40 hours a week and others as much as 100, but services that just open from 9 to 5 “are not always sufficient to cope with demand, and expensive equipment can lie idle for much of the week”.
As a result, in some areas patients are having to wait longer than the recommended two weeks from referral for the scans to be carried out.
Hospitals reported wide variations in the cost per scan, from £84 to £472 in MRI and from £54 to £268 in CT scans.
As a result of a lack of comparable data and collaboration between hospitals, the study said: “NHS trusts do not have the means to know if they are making best use or getting best value out of their high value equipment.
“Equally, they do not have the means to determine if they are getting value for money from purchasing or maintenance.
via Britain has fewer high-tech medical machines than Estonia and Turkey – Telegraph.
Protesters and Police clashed at Trafalgar square at the end of today’s series of march, rally and protests. This evening there were planned protests at Picadilly and Trafalgar Square. The number of people who attended today’s march, rally and protests were more than 250,000. Most of the today’s protests were peace-full, except minor incidents were caused by a minority group.
