Posted In: Inquest told how householder stabbed intruder as he waved knife
householder, who stabbed to death a burglar trying to break into his cannabis factory, told an inquest he did not mean to harm anybody. Barry Day said he remembered grabbing a kitchen knife as the door to his house, in Beckside Road, Lidget Green, Bradford, was being kicked in, sticking the knife through a hole in the door and waving it. Shazad Habib-Ur Rehman, 32, suffered a stab wound to the chest and died in Bradford Royal Infirmary five days after the incident, in October last year. Mr Day, giving evidence yesterday at the inquest into Mr Rehman’s death, said he was not aware he had stabbed someone and did not intend to harm anyone. He said he was in fear. Detective Chief Inspector Simon Atkinson, of West Yorkshire Police’s Homicide and Major Enquiry Team, told the Bradford hearing consideration was given to prosecuting Mr Day, 62, for murder and a file was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, but the CPS decided there was insufficient evidence. He was prosecuted for cultivating cannabis, after 75 plants and a hydroponic cannabis factory were found upstairs at his house, and given a suspended prison sentence. The dead man’s three accomplices, who have all served prison sentences for attempted burglary in connection with the incident, told the inquest they had decided to burgle the house after hearing about the cannabis factory. Gareth Dobson, 23, of Windhill, said he kicked in the bottom panel of the door. He said Mr Rehman said to Mr Day: “We don’t want no trouble, we just want the weed. That’s when Mr Day lashed out and stabbed him with a knife.” The friends drove Mr Rehman to hospital. Mohammed Waqas Khan told the inquest: “We just wanted to take what there was and go. There was no intention to go in there to endanger anyone’s life.”
Posted In: Gaddafi spymaster ‘must face trial over IRA crimes
VICTIMS of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism in the UK have called for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s former spy chief to be tried in the International Criminal Court for his part in republican atrocities. Libya’s interim government reported on Sunday that Abdullah al-Senoussi had been captured. The interim government is keen to try him in Libya but international concerns have been raised about the possibility that he may not receive a fair trial. Representatives from the International Criminal Court are visiting Libya in order to make representations. Former intelligence minister Senoussi was seen as the right-hand man of dictator Gaddafi, who was killed shortly after his capture by rebel forces last month. IRA victims campaigners Willie Frazer and London-based Jonathan Ganesh believe Senoussi was the key link between the Libyan regime and the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland. Libya sent numerous shipments of arms and Semtex to the IRA throughout the Troubles, several of which were intercepted. In a joint statement, they said: “Colonel Abdullah al-Senoussi has been involved in the murder of countless people within Libya and has also been involved in the murder of Irish and UK citizens due to his unprecedented work with the IRA and other international terrorist organisations. “We are now drafting a detailed petition to the International Criminal Court to ensure that Colonel Senoussi will be held accountable for all his crimes against humanity. “Senoussi must be held accountable due to his involvement in the murder of all the innocent people who lost their lives due to the Semtex he supplied to the IRA.” Senoussi was one of the last senior figures from the Gaddafi regime still on the run. Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, was seized on Saturday and both he and Senoussi are wanted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Senoussi, a brother-in-law of Col Gaddafi, is said to have been arrested at his sister’s home in the southern town of Sabha on Sunday. He has been accused of human rights abuses, including his implication in the 1996 massacre of more than 1,000 inmates at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. Mr Frazer and Mr Ganesh added: “We are now calling on the international community to ensure that he must stand trial for his international crimes against humanity within the ICC. “Due to his involvement with IRA terrorism he became a defendant within our civil legal action within the USA judiciary during April 2006 as we desperately tried to bring him to justice. “This is an evil man who we will not allow to escape international justice. He must be immediately handed to the ICC for all his international crimes against humanity.”
Posted In: Don't just book it Posted In: Thomas Cook it. So runs the slogan. Would you
Don't just book it, Thomas Cook it. So runs the slogan. Would you? Here's interim (that's reassuring) chief executive Sam Weihagen doing his safe-as-houses routine: "It's business as usual. We are trading within all our covenants. We have all the protection in place like any other travel company, and customers should not worry at all." Well, not quite like any other travel company. Thomas Cook of course holds an Air Travel Organisers' Licence from the Civil Aviation Authority which means customers should get their money back in the event of calamity. But the simple fear of being stranded a week after passengers of Austria's Comtel Air had to bribe pilots with £20,000 just to return to Birmingham is bound to unsettle would-be customers. There's a circle at work here and it is vicious. Given the choice between a similarly priced holiday with Thomas Cook or, say, Thomson, why would you risk the former? To counteract this, Thomas Cook might have to slash prices. That will eat into margins, cut profits and put banking covenants at risk. It might very quickly find it needs to borrow even more money. The company insists: "This is a robust business that has a strong future". We'll see.
Posted In: Police were in dark over foreign axe killer living in UK
COPS did not know an East European axe murderer was living in the UK until he caused a killer car crash, a court heard yesterday. Intars Pless, 34, hacked through a friend's throat in his native Latvia, then moved to Britain after he got out of jail. But Lincoln Crown Court heard police can only check a foreign national's record if they break the law here. So Pless's horrific crime came to light only after he drove into moped rider Valentina Planciunene, 37, while over twice the limit. Stuart Lody, prosecuting, told the court: "On the night of Valentine's Day he decided it would be a perfectly good idea to drink a very large quantity of whisky. Surprised "He and a friend spent a considerable period of time drinking whisky and driving around. "During the driving he was possibly drinking whisky as well. An empty whisky bottle was found in the boot of the car. "At the time of the collision he was heavily under the influence of alcohol. His ability to drive would have been severely impaired." Pless was convicted of causing death by dangerous driving after the jury heard he left her dead in the road in Wyberton Fen, Lincs. He was told he faces a long jail term. The judge also called for his deportation.
Posted In: Thomas Cook is running low on cash and has begun talks with its banks

Thomas Cook is running low on cash and has begun talks with its banks, in an effort to increase its borrowings to tide it over the slow Christmas season.
Shares in the tour operator fell by more than three quarters on Tuesday morning after it admitted that trading has "deteriorated" in recent months. It is now seeking to borrow more in the short term, and has postponed the publication of its financial results until the talks are concluded.
Shares in the company, which abruptly lost its chief executive three months ago, tumbled by more than 75% to 9.3p at one stage.
Tour operators tend to run low on cash in the slower winter months, but even so, the news stunned the City. Only last month, Thomas Cook said it had agreed a further £100m in short-term funding from its banks explicitly for the winter lull.
A spokeswoman said that discussions with banks were merely a "prudent" and "pro-active" move. Thomas Cook still has cash in the bank, she said, but wants to be prepared for any unexpected shocks over Christmas. All customer orders are protected by the ATOL protection scheme and equivalent programmes, she added. "Thomas Cook still has cash on the balance sheet, but because conditions have deteriorated further [since October], particularly around trading, some of that extra funding has been used up. Thomas Cook feels it needs more headroom to be prudent," she said.
Interim CEO Sam Weihagen added: "It's business as usual. We are trading within all out business, and financial, covenants, we have all the protection in place like any other travel company, and customers should not worry at all."
The company is seeking roughly £100m more in its latest talks. It made the decision to renew talks with banks on financing after realising the scale of the recent downturn in an internal trading update meeting yesterday.
Posted In: Gang targets wealthy diners
Diners at some of the city's most popular restaurants had their credit card details stolen by waiters working for gangs, who targeted customers with American Express black cards, then spent millions of dollars on expensive clothes and vintage wine, it is alleged. The cards of wealthy customers at Smith & Wollensky, the Capital Grille and Wolfgang's Steakhouse restaurants were allegedly "skimmed" and used to buy Rolex watches, Jimmy Choo shoes and Chanel handbags. Almost 30 people have been charged with crimes, including racketeering, conspiracy and grand larceny, after the alleged fraud ring was broken by police in Manhattan. Seven waiters at the restaurants are alleged by prosecutors to have been recruited by Luis Damian "D.J." Jacas, the 41-year-old alleged ringleader, and equipped with card-copying devices. They were instructed to focus on customers with premium credit cards, including the American Express black card, so that expensive purchases would not trigger alerts to customers. "The thieves were very selective, waiting until they were handed cards with extremely high or unlimited credit," said Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance.
Posted In: Alice Walton Posted In: heiress to the Walmart supermarket fortune and the the 10th richest woman in the United States Posted In: opened a spectacular fine art museum in her home town

When Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart supermarket fortune and the the 10th richest woman in the United States, opened a spectacular fine art museum in her home town, she might have expected plaudits and gratitude. It hasn't quite worked out that way.
The long-awaited opening of the Crystal Bridges Museum for American Art in Walton's home town of Bentonville, Arkansas, has provoked mixed reactions. Some have celebrated the unveiling of a significant new private art institution, but many have criticised the decision to spend $1.4bn of company and family foundation money as the retail colossus cuts back its workers' benefits.
Protesters at the museum have informally joined forces with the Occupy Wall Street camps across the US and point to growing ties between the Occupy movement and established trade unions.
The museum, which opened last weekend and features a survey of American art from Benjamin West to Georgia O'Keefe, from Norman Rockwell to Andy Warhol, and from Joan Mitchell to Walton Ford, has also come under criticism from within the art establishment for both inflating values and buying masterpieces from impoverished art institutions without giving local institutions a chance to match Walton's offer.
While historians point out that this is little different from 19th-century robber barons such as Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie amassing vast collections of European art and bringing it to America, the prospect of hundreds of masterpieces in rural Bentonville, two hours' drive from Tulsa, is still controversial.
Walton, at 62 the youngest of Walmart founder Sam Walton's four children, started buying specifically for the project in 2005. The Moshe Safdie-designed institution, which sits in 120 acres of dogwood trees and trails minutes from downtown Bentonville, already has 440 works on display and 800 in storage.
"We set market records for very few pieces that we purchased," says curator, David Houston. "But there is latent criticism from an east coast elite that bringing a famous painting like Thomas Eakins's [$68m] Gross Clinic to Arkansas is itself an act of cultural vandalism. We're bringing art to the public, but it's a different kind of public, and there are social and political connotations to that."
In the week since Crystal Bridges opened, it has already seen 5,000 registered visitors. "Sheer curiosity and hunger for an institution like this bears out Alice Walton's vision," Houston says.
Ben Waxman, spokesman for the union-affiliated Making Change@Walmart, said: "Opening a huge, opulent museum in the middle of nowhere while the company is cutting health insurance for its employees is troubling. It sends the message Wal-Mart doesn't care about them."
The issues of wealth distribution that have brought art into conflict with the labour movement at Crystal Bridges have also been on display at Sotheby's during the billion-dollar modern, impressionist and contemporary sales earlier this month in New York.
Since August, when Sotheby's dismissed 43 unionised art handlers, its salesrooms have been besieged by Teamsters union members, bearing an inflatable rat and a fat cat banker with a cigar in one hand and throttled worker in the other. "The company is having its most profitable year in 267 years and they locked us out in the middle of our contract," said Teamsters member Phil Cortero. "Sotheby's represents the richest people in the world. When you lose your shirt down on Wall Street you come and hock your stuff here."
Increasingly, the Teamsters are joined by Occupy Museum activists, chanting "We are the 99%!" They protest that the multimillion dollar art handled by auction houses is used to maintain and transfer the wealth of the 1%.
Outside Christie's, which is not involved in the dispute, Los Angeles property developer Eli Broad, one of America's wealthiest men, confirmed as much to the New York Times. "People would rather have art than gold or paper," he said.
OWS Labor Outreach member Mike Friedman said that Occupy had no problem with the art itself. "But at a time when we're seeing cutbacks in health and education spending, we're seeing the transfer of wealth by way of tax cuts and subsidies to an elite who use excesses of that transfer to buy these magnificent works of art."
With the end of the Zuccotti Park sit-in, Occupy says it plans to initiate focused protests against cultural institutions associated with big Wall Street donors. It has singled out Lincoln Center, home to the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and New York fashion week, which is financially supported by Tea Party funder David Koch.
Back at Crystal Bridges, Houston argues that it will take years to see the full effect of how the Walton family has used its wealth. The family foundation is active in a whole variety of charitable activities, many of them educational, he says. "Their intent is not to create a shrine to an individual or even a family. Their goal is to create a tremendous cultural resource in this part of the world."
Posted In: Hollywood star Natalie Wood was screaming for help as she drowned
Hollywood star Natalie Wood was screaming for help as she drowned, according to a witness whose account has never been disclosed.
Retired stockbroker Marilyn Wayne has told The Mail on Sunday she tried to report the star’s ‘last desperate cries for help’ but was ignored.
Los Angeles police last week said ‘substantial new evidence’ has led them to reopen their investigation into the death 30 years ago this week.

Mystery: Natalie drowned after a row while drinking with husband Robert Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken
The West Side Story actress’s drowning off the coast of California was ruled accidental at the time. Now a police source has described Wood’s husband, Hart-To-Hart star Robert Wagner, now 81, as ‘a person of interest’ in the case.
Wagner – who was on his yacht Splendour with his wife and her alleged lover, Oscar-winner Christopher Walken, on the fateful night – has always maintained Wood, 43, accidentally slipped and drowned as she drunkenly tried to tie up a dinghy against the boat.
Wayne, 68, believes new statements from her and Dennis Davern, skipper of the Splendour, had triggered the latest police probe.
She said: ‘I have been waiting for years for them to take my account seriously but they would never listen.’
Wayne was on a nearby boat with a boyfriend called John on the night of November 28, 1981.
In a sworn statement submitted to the LA Sheriff’s department, Wayne said: ‘My cabin window was open. A woman’s voice, crying for help, awakened John and awakened me, “Help me, someone please help me, I’m drowning”, we heard repeatedly.’
Wayne said John turned on their yacht’s beam light but they couldn’t see anything. Wayne claims she called the harbour patrol officer ‘but no one answered’ and the local sheriff’s office, who told her a helicopter would be sent. But it did not come.
She also claims to have heard a man’s slurred voice from the direction of the Splendour saying: ‘Oh, hold on, we’re coming to get you.’

Natalie Wood and husband Robert Wagner (left) on their boat Splendour, with captain Dennis Davern (right), just weeks before she died
‘Not long after that the cries for help subsided,’ she recalled.
It was only when Wayne gave an account of her story to a U.S. TV crew for a programme scheduled to air next week, that she was asked to give a statement to police.
Wayne’s account matches that of Davern who says he was ‘coerced’ by Wagner’s lawyer into backing Wagner’s story of an accidental drowning after the death.
Davern’s police statement describes a night of heavy drinking that ended in a furious row between Wagner and Wood after Walken had retired to bed.

Emotional: In a television interview, Lana Wood said her sister was terrified of water
Wood's sister has claimed the actress was so scared of water that she would never have tried to get into a dinghy voluntarily before she drowned.
The coroner's ruling, based on accounts from the actress's husband Robert Wagner, outlined how she had fallen into the sea after attempting to secure the small boat, but that finding should not be believed, Lana Wood said.
Wood had developed a deep-rooted fear of water ever since her mother warned her as a child that she would meet her death by drowning in 'dark water', Lana Wood told TMZ.
She said: 'It gave Natalie a great fear. She hated the water, she wouldn't even go into her own pool at home.'
Coroner's officials at the time wrote that Ms Wood was 'possibly attempting to board the dinghy and had fallen into the water, striking her face.'
Lana Wood, also an actress best known for her part in Diamonds Are Forever, had never believed that her sister would have tried to sail herself at night, even after drinking for several hours.
The 65-year-old also claimed that the actress's husband left her to drown on the night of her tragic death.
In an emotional interview Lana Wood said that when Natalie was in the water, Wagner, who she calls RJ, had forbidden the captain from helping her and said: 'Leave her there, teach her a lesson'.
Speaking to TMZ, she claimed Dennis Davern, captain of the Splendour yacht from which Ms Wood fell and drowned in 1981, told her what Wagner had said.
Lana told TMZ: 'He (Dennis) said that everyone was quite drunk and that a fight broke out and that Natalie was in the water and he and RJ did nothing to pull her out.
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Mystery: The yacht 'Splendour' was pictured today moored in a harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii after investigators reopened the case into the mysterious death of Natalie Wood


Seeking the truth: Lana Wood, right, said she never believed Wagner's story about how her sister Natalie, far left, died and believes only Wagner can give her the truth
'He said, and this is a direct quote from what Dennis told me: 'Leave her there, teach her a lesson'.'
In her interview she also claimed that the captain told her Wagner called his attorney before he alerted the Coastguard to the incident.
The revelations come as the police confirmed today that they will reopen the investigation into the death and said they may use new DNA technology after receiving 'credible and substantial information'.
They said, until they find evidence to say otherwise, Natalie Wood's death will still be ruled as an accidental drowning.
The sheriff said at this point her actor-husband Wagner is not a suspect.
One of the key witnesses in the reopening of the investigation is Mr Davern, who police confirmed they would interview.
Mr Davern has blamed Ms Wood's husband for the death, claiming that - at the behest of Wagner - they did not do enough to find Ms Wood, after he advised against calling coastguards for four hours.
When asked if he thought Wagner was responsible for Ms Wood's death, he said: 'Yes, I would say so.'
Posted In: Bee Gee Robin Gibb Fighting Liver Cancer
Bee Gee Robin Gibb, who has been increasingly frail in recent months, has been diagnosed as suffering from liver cancer. The 61-year-old learned he had the disease several months ago, but the news only emerged this week when he was rushed to hospital. He is reported to have spent five hours in hospital in Oxford on Tuesday before being allowed home, and his brother and bandmate Barry is reported to have flown to see him - along with his 91-year-old mother Barbara. A source told The Mirror: "Robin is not good and there is a lot of concern for him. You can use your wealth to call in the best experts but sometimes no amount of fame, prestige and money can change things when it comes to cancer. "But Robin is a strong character, he is a fighter and has been encouraged by all the online messages from his fans. Dwina is doing everything possible and hasn’t left his side. "There will be difficult times ahead but Robin will never give up and his loving family will make sure he has everything he needs. There is frustration because Robin has always looked after himself. He doesn’t drink, eats well and exercises daily."
Posted In: British bonds win 'safe haven' tag in eurozone debt storm
British government bonds are attracting strong support, in sharp contrast to their troubled eurozone peers as investors seek a safehaven from a debt crisis now spreading to Italy, Spain and even France. British government bonds, or gilts as they are known, are in huge demand largely because the Bank of England is buying them up with newly-created money that it hopes can in turn be used to stimulate an anaemic economic recovery, analysts say. But investors are also reassured by the British coalition government's determined efforts to slash state debt and avoid the severe troubles that have snared the crisis-hit eurozone trio of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.


