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| Monday, 14-Dec-2009 09:08 |
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A senior Iranian
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A senior Iranian employee of the British Embassy in Tehran has been given a four-year prison sentence after being found guilty of fomenting violence at the behest of the British Government, The Times has learnt.
Hossein Rassam, 44, the pearl jewelry embassy’s political counsellor, was sentenced in a closed courtroom this week, although the outcome is yet to be publicly announced. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office learnt of his sentence on Tuesday and inflatable summoned the Iranian ambassador in protest. The British ambassador in Tehran has also lodged an official complaint.
Mr Rassam was one of eight Iranian staff at the British Embassy arrested after mass street protests that erupted in cities across Iran following the disputed re-election of President Ahmadinejad on June 12.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed the protests by opposition supporters on a British plot to bring down the regime. Britain denies any involvement. The embassy staff were among hundreds of people rounded up and detained after the disturbances. Seven others were released without charge but Mr Rassam was sent to the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and charged with being the “kingpin” behind a British plot.
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In a statement to The biwa pearl Times, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said that Mr Rassam’s sentence was unacceptable and urged that it be immediately repealed. He dismissed the charges against Mr Rassam as “wholly without foundation”.
He added: “We understand the sentence can be appealed. I urge the authorities to conduct this quickly and overturn this harsh sentence. Such a decision is wholly unjustified and represents further harassment of embassy staff for going about their normal and legitimate duties.”
Mr Rassam is still on bail after his release from Evin prison in August. It is unclear whether he will have to return to jail immediately or remain on bail inflatable bouncer pending his appeal. Last night he was returning from a trip to the north of Tehran to break the news of his sentence to his elderly mother. His wife and son are no longer in the country.
Foreign journalists were barred from attending any of Mr Rassam’s hearings but the state news agency reported that he had told the court that a £300,000 budget had been allocated to establishing contacts with political groups before the election, including Mir Hossein Mousavi, the akoya pearl reformist opposition candidate who claims that he was robbed of victory.
Mr Miliband warned of negative consequences for Iran from countries other than Britain, calling Mr Rassam’s treatment “an attack on the inflatable castles entire diplomatic community”.
He was arrested on June 27 and accused of “acting against national security” — a catch-all charge for any kind of political dissent. He has worked at the embassy since 2004.
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| Monday, 14-Dec-2009 09:06 |
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In one of the most damning official reports published
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The Ministry of Defence and Britain’s largest defence company were officially blamed yesterday for the deaths of 14 servicemen who were killed when an RAF Nimrod surveillance aircraft burst into flames over Afghanistan three years ago.
In one of the most damning official reports published, the pearl jewelry MoD was accused of sacrificing the safety of biwa pearl members of the Armed Forces to cut costs. The ministry was guilty of a “systemic breach of the military covenant” between the nation and the men and women of the Forces, the report said.
“Airworthiness was a casualty of the process of cuts, change, dilution and distraction,” Charles Haddon-Cave, QC, concluded after a 20-month review of the background to the disaster on September 2, 2006, which represented the single biggest loss of life of service personnel in one incident since the Falklands conflict in 1982.
He named ten individuals whom he blamed for playing principal roles in the failure to ensure that Nimrods were safe: five from the MoD, three from BAE Systems, which reviewed Nimrod’s safety, and two from QinetiQ, the company formed from the MoD’s research agency, which monitored its safety in an advisory role.
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Bob Ainsworth, Defence Secretary, told the pearl jewelry wholesale Commons yesterday: “I am sorry for the mistakes that have been made, and that lives have been lost as a result of our failure.”
Two of the named officers involved in the Nimrod integrated project team are still serving — Group Captain George Baber, now promoted to air commodore, and Wing Commander Michael Eagles — although they have been moved to different posts. The RAF said they had switched jobs as part of the normal career structure.
Trish Knight, whose son, Sergeant Ben Knight, was killed, called for resignations “from the very top over the lies they have been telling us since 2006”. “This is disgraceful. It’s what we said all along,” she said. “The MoD tried to tell us everything was fine.” Joe Windall, whose son Marine Joseph Windall also died, said he was “shocked and severely disappointed” by the failures highlighted. “The inefficiencies of someone caused me to lose my son,” he said. The akoya pearl pearl necklace families are seeking compensation.
There had been signs before the pearl jewelry disaster that the Nimrod MR2, of which aircraft XV230 was one, had design faults, notably the juxtaposition of fuel pipes with hot-air ducts which presented a “catastrophic fire risk”. Mr Haddon-Cave said new evidence had revealed that fuel had overflowed into a dry tank during air-to-air refuelling. But when BAE Systems carried out a safety review between 2001 and 2005, the flaw was not discovered.
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| Monday, 14-Dec-2009 08:56 |
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The MoD announced in March that any Nimrod
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The Nimrod safety case was a lamentable job from start to finish,” the report said. “It was riddled with errors. It missed the key dangers. Its production is a story of incompetence, complacency and cynicism. The best opportunity to prevent the accident to XV230 was, tragically, lost.” Mr Haddon-Cave said the Nimrod safety review was “fatally undermined by a general malaise: a pearl jewelry pearl jewelry widespread assumption by those involved that the Nimrod was ‘safe anyway’ (because it had flown successfully for 30 years) and the task of drawing up the safety case became essentially a paperwork and ‘tick-box’ exercise”.
The MoD announced in March that any Nimrod that had not had its hot-air duct removed — the perceived design fault identified in the RAF’s board of inquiry report in December 2007 — would not be flown until the work was done. An RAF spokesman said all 11 Nimrod MR2s at RAF Kinloss in Morayshire and three MR1s at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire had now had the air ducts removed. No Nimrod is flying in Afghanistan. Mr Haddon-Cave said of those on the aircraft: “Faced with a life-threatening emergency, every member of the crew of XV230 acted with calmness, bravery and professionalism, and in accordance with their training. They had no chance, however, of controlling the fire. Their fate was already sealed before the first fire warning.”
A “sacred and unbreakable duty of care was owed to the men and women of the Forces” because of the sacrifices they made — “the military covenant”. The loss of XV230 had been an example of a “systemic breach of the military covenant brought about by significant failures on the part of the MoD, BAE Systems and QinetiQ”. “My report identifies manifold pearl jewelry wholesale shortcomings in the UK military airworthiness and in-service support regime and reveals matters which are as surprising as they are disturbing,” he said. “There has been a yawning gap between the appearance and reality of safety.”
If the Nimrod safety case by BAE Systems, monitored by QinetiQ, had been drawn up “with proper skill, care and attention, the catastrophic fire risks dormant within the Nimrod MR2 fleet would have been identified and dealt with, and the loss of XV230 in September 2006 would have been avoided”, Mr Haddon-Cave said.
The fire hazard was one of biwa pearl many items left “open”, to be looked at at some future date. “BAE Systems deliberately did not disclose to its customer the scale of the hazards it had left ‘open’ and ‘unclasssified’ . . . and the MoD and QinetiQ representatives were lulled into a false sense of security,” Mr Haddon-Cave said. Throughout his review, BAE Systems had been “a company in denial”.
The MoD’s integrated project team under the then Group Captain Baber, was “sloppy and complacent”.
The lawyer said organisational causes had also played a major part, beginning with the 1998 Strategic Defence Review. “There was a shift in culture and priorities in the MoD towards ‘business’ and financial targets, at the expense of functiona wholesale pearl jewelryl values such as safety and airworthiness,” he said.
He likened the organisational causes to those of other disasters, in particular the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, the sinking of the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987, the King’s Cross Underground station fire in 1987 and the Marchioness riverboat’s sinking in 1989.
Poor procurement practices had damaging effects. The Nimrod MR2 should have been replaced by the Nimrod MRA4, but the programme had been delayed. “But for the delays in the Nimrod MRA4 replacement programme, XV230 would probably no longer have been flying in September 2006,” Mr Haddon-Cave said.
A former RAF officer had told his inquiry: “There was no doubt that the culture of the time had switched. In the days of the RAF chief engineer in the 1990s, you had to be on top of airworthiness. By 2004 you had to be on top of your budget if you wanted to get ahead.”
Recommendations in the report included the appointment of a new military airworthiness authority with a chief engineer in charge. Mr Ainsworth told the Commons that a chief engineer had already been appointed. “Mr Haddon-Cave states that in our pursuit of financial savings we took our eye off the safety ball,” Mr Ainsworth said. “We accept this with regard to the akoya pearl Nimrod XV230.”
BAE Systems said: “We appreciate this must be a difficult time for everyone who was close to those who lost their lives and our thoughts are with them. The circumstances surrounding the tragic loss of this aircraft and its crew whilst on active duty are such that the cause of the accident will never finally be determined.”
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| Monday, 14-Dec-2009 08:49 |
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Both the BBC and sources close to the actress
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Barbara Windsor, the nation’s best-known landlady, is to step down from her role as Peggy Mitchell after 15 years in the BBC soap, EastEnders.
Windsor, 72, regarded as a national treasure after her performances in the Carry On films, said that she was not retiring completely, but that she wanted to freshwater pearl spend more time with her pearl jewelry husband, Scott Mitchell, 47, because “he’s not getting any younger”.
Both the BBC and sources close to the actress said that the decision to quit was Windsor’s. Although no decision has been taken on how her exit will be dramatised, there is speculation that it will coincide with the show’s first live episode in February.
Windsor joined the soap in 1994 as the second actress to play Peggy, the landlady of Albert Square’s famous pub, the Queen Vic. Her role as a matriarch and her catchphrase — “Get outta my pub” — endeared her to millions of fans.
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She said: “EastEnders has been wonderful to me and it’s no secret that it changed my life all those years ago. I’ll be so sad to biwa pearl leave Peggy behind, she’s such a wonderful character to play.
“To have had the honour of showing the Queen around the set is something that will stay with me for ever. I would like to thank the BBC for the incredible opportunity they gave me and above all, I must thank the wonderful viewers for their support. I’m freshwater pearl jewelry looking forward to the future and I suppose when all’s said and done, I should spend a bit more time with my old man, as he’s not getting any younger.”
The BBC’s controller of drama production, John Yorke, said: “To most of the British public Barbara is EastEnders and it’s almost impossible to imagine Albert Square without her.
“For 15 years she’s given her heart and soul to EastEnders — she’s been a consummate professional, a national treasure and a joy to work alongside. We will all miss her hugely, both as a character and as a friend.”
Born Barbara Ann Deeks, Windsor was appointed MBE in 1999. In her time as Peggy the character has been married twice and battled breast cancer. In real life, she has been married three times and was forced to akoya pearl take a two-year break from the soap after suffering from the Epstein-Barr Virus.
Diederick Santer, the executive producer of pearl jewelry wholesale EastEnders, said: “Peggy is a truly iconic character and, along with Steve McFadden and Ross Kemp, Barbara has made the Mitchells the premier family of British soap.”
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| Monday, 14-Dec-2009 08:43 |
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His book details how the US
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Alistair Darling has been accused by Henry Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary, of double-crossing America when he effectively vetoed the acquisition of Lehman Brothers by Barclays Bank in pearl jewelry September last year.
According to an exclusive extract from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book, Too Big To Fail: Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street, published in The Times today, Mr Paulson told bankers that the Chancellor had “grin-f******” the US after London refused to waive legislation that would have allowed Barclays to save the Wall Street bank.
The book — which is published in the pearl jewelry UK today — details the final hours leading to the collapse of one of the world’s biggest banks during one weekend in September last year.
The demise of Lehman Brothers in 2008 was widely seen as a tipping point that triggered the world’s biggest economies’ descent into recession.
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While the US Government had been adamant it would not use American taxpayer money to bail out the Wall Street bank, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic dramatically underestimated the extent to biwa pearl which the bankruptcy of the lender could pull other banks down with it.
According to Mr Sorkin’s book, one banker involved in the talks that could have saved Lehman Brothers said in disbelief of Britain’s behaviour: “Isn’t this our closest ally in the world?”
Mr Sorkin, an award-winning business writer for The New York Times, and columnist, reveals how the proposed rescue deal by Barclays to save Lehman was wholesale pearl jewelry aborted on the afternoon of Sunday, September 14 last year.
The collapse of the proposed acquisition came amid missed transatlantic phone calls and accusations from the Financial Services Authority that America had failed to keep the UK abreast of developments.
His book details how the US discovered that Barclays would need Alistair Darling to waive key legislation for any deal to go ahead only in a tense phone call between Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Callum McCarthy, the former head of the FSA, during the September weekend.
Mr Paulson, the former head of akoya pearl pearl jewelry wholesale Goldman Sachs whose own memoirs covering the collapse of Lehman Brothers will be published in January, had said at the time that he was anxious that the Wall Street bank was rescued because “I don’t want to be left here holding Herman” — a lewd American reference.
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