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Malcolm Webster guilty of wife murder
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A man has been found guilty of murdering his first wife in a car fire and attempting to kill his second in another crash to get life insurance.
Former nurse Malcolm Webster, 52, had denied murdering Claire Morris in an Aberdeenshire crash in 1994.
Webster, of Surrey, also denied attempting to kill Felicity Drumm in New Zealand in 1999.
Scotland's longest-lasting single accused criminal trial had begun on 1 February at the High Court in Glasgow.
The brother of Claire Morris, Peter Morris, branded Webster a "monster".
Mr Morris said: "Hopefully now Claire can rest in peace. I feel that she hasn't been able to do that until now."
He said of Webster: "He's a monster. If the police hadn't caught him the killing would have gone on."
The jury of nine women and six men took less than four hours to find Webster guilty of all charges as part of frauds to obtain hundreds of thousands of pounds in life insurance.
The fatal crash in 1994 was originally treated as a tragic accident.
However, it was later reinvestigated after concerns were raised in the wake of the second crash.
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Newcastle scrapyard fire prompts evacuations
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More than 40 firefighters are tackling a major blaze at a scrapyard in Newcastle.
A number of explosions were reported coming from the facility in Albion Row, in the Byker area of the city.
Smoke from the blaze could be seen across the city and as far away as Hartlepool, about 30 miles away.
No-one was reported injured in the incident, which promted a warning for people to keep doors and windows closed because of thick smoke.
Some surrounding roads were closed to traffic to allow emergency crews access to the scene.
Lee Herbert took this video of the fire at a scrapyard in Byker, Newcastle, in its early stages.
Michael Potts, from the Free Trade pub in Byker, said he heard a number of explosions when the fire began.
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Von Trier 'persona non grata' at Cannes after Nazi row
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The Cannes Film Festival has banned director Lars Von Trier after he claimed to be a Nazi and that he sympathised with Adolf Hitler.
In a statement issued on Thursday, organisers said the Danish film-maker was now "persona non grata".
The director issued an apology on Wednesday for comments made at a press conference earlier in the day.
"I am not anti-Semitic or racially prejudiced in any way, nor am I a Nazi," he said in a statement.
The festival's pronouncement came after Wednesday's premiere of Von Trier's new film Melancholia, which remains in competition at this year's event.
The decision was supported by French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand who told reporters in Brussels that "there is a major difference between a film that was chosen in a calm atmosphere and a director who clearly blew a fuse".
He added Von Trier's remarks "did not have a place in the festival, or anywhere else for that matter".
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Tenerife beheading suspect 'treated in Welsh hospital'
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The man accused of beheading a British grandmother in Tenerife had been treated in a psychiatric unit in north Wales, it has emerged.
Deyan Deyanov was reported to be visiting relatives when he was detained for his own safety at Glan Clwyd Hospital's Ablett Unit, Denbighshire.
Last week, Jennifer Mills-Westley, 60, was murdered in Los Cristianos.
Health officials in north Wales said they had had no contact with Mr Deyanov since October 2010.
Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which manages the hospital, said: "The health board can confirm that it provided assistance to North Wales Police in relation to a person detained for his own safety in the summer of 2010.
"The health board has had no further contact with this client since October last year."
It is being reported that Mr Deyanov, 28, was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Health officials have given few details, citing patient confidentiality as the reason.
The statement said: "We are currently reviewing all records relating to the case in line with standard clinical procedures.
"We will be co-operating with other statutory agencies but have a duty to protect patient confidentiality and will therefore not be making further statements regarding the case at this time."
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German insurer Munich Re held orgy for salesmen
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One of the biggest insurance companies in the world held a party for salesmen where they were rewarded with the services of prostitutes.
Munich Re is the world's biggest re-insurer - in other words, the company acts as an insurance company for other insurance companies.
One of its divisions, Ergo, told the BBC that the party had taken place to reward salesmen in 2007.
A spokesman said the people who organised it had since left.
The gathering was held at a thermal baths in the Hungarian capital Budapest as a reward to particularly successful salesmen.
'Whatever they liked'
There were about 100 guests and 20 prostitutes were hired.
A German business newspaper said the prostitutes had worn colour-coded arm-bands designating their availability, and the women had their arms stamped after each service rendered.
According to Handelsblatt, quoting an unnamed participant, guests were able to take the women to four-poster beds at the spa "and do whatever they liked".
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Birmingham City Council care funding cuts unlawful
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Birmingham City Council acted unlawfully over a decision to reduce its provision of care for disabled people, High Court judges have said.
The judgement has implications for all local authorities in England and Wales.
Thursday's ruling said local councils must abide by existing disability laws to eliminate discrimination.
It said councils must take account of people's disabilities, even where that involves treating disabled persons more favourably than others.
'Climate of cuts'
Across the UK there are 122 councils, as well as Birmingham, that currently only provide care to people with either substantial or critical care needs.
The judges said all public bodies had a duty to follow the disability discrimination law, while acknowledging that placed "significant and onerous" obligations on local authorities.
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Paralysed man can stand and move his legs again
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Mr Summers: ''The moment I stood up, I was in disbelief''
A US man who was paralysed from the chest down after being hit by a car is now able to stand with electrical stimulation of his spinal cord.
Rob Summers, from Oregon, said standing on his own was "the most amazing feeling".
He can voluntarily move his toes, hips, knees and ankles and also walk on a treadmill while being supported, according to research in the Lancet.
However, a UK expert said this should not be interpreted as a cure.
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Rob was a keen baseball player and in 2006 was part of the team which won the College World Series.
But in that summer he was injured in a hit and run accident and his spinal cord was damaged.
Messages from the brain, which used to travel down the spinal cord, were blocked and he was paralysed.
Doctors surgically implanted 16 electrodes into his spine.
Rob trained daily in trying to stand, walk and move his legs, while electrical pulses were sent to the spinal cord.
Within days he was able to stand independently and eventually he could control his legs and step, with assistance, for short periods of time.
"None of us believed it," said Professor Reggie Edgerton, from the University of California. "I was afraid to believe it."
Rob has also regained other functions such as bladder, bowel and blood pressure control.
He said it had been a "long journey of countless hours of training" which had "completely changed my life".
He added: "For someone who for four years was unable to even move a toe, to have the freedom and ability to stand on my own is the most amazing feeling."
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Lance Armstrong used drugs, claims former team-mate
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A former team-mate of cyclist Lance Armstrong has claimed the seven-time Tour de France winner used the performance-enhancing drug EPO.
Tyler Hamilton rode with Armstrong in the US Postal team and says they both used EPO during the 1999 Tour.
Armstrong, who has consistently denied the many such allegations made against him, said on his Twitter page: "Never a failed test. I rest my case."
Hamilton, 40, served a two-year ban for so-called blood-doping from 2005-2007.
"I saw [EPO] in his refrigerator... I saw him inject it more than one time," Hamilton told the CBS programme 60 Minutes, "like we all did. Like I did, many, many times."
Armstrong's spokesman Mark Fabiani said in a statement: "Hamilton is actively seeking to make money by writing a book, and now he has completely changed the story he has always told before so that he could get himself on '60 Minutes' and increase his chances with publishers.
"But greed and a hunger for publicity cannot change the facts: Lance Armstrong is the most tested athlete in the history of sports. He has passed nearly 500 tests over 20 years of competition."
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Australian James McKeen falls off his surfboard while trying to ride an 8-metre wave at Shipstern Bluff near Hobart in Tasmania March 17, 2011. According to local media reports, surfers were towed by a jetski into one of the biggest swells seen at Shipstern Bluff, formerly known as Devil's Point, in 10 years. Picture taken on March 17, 2011.
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A police officer shows a M-26 hand grenade found mixed in a box of tomatoes, during a presentation to the press at the police station in Medellin, Antioquia department, Colombia, on May 19. The Colombian Police seized thirty M-26 hand grenades which were hidden in three boxes of tomatoes that allegedly belonged to the criminal gangs.
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Residents search through a dumping ground for recyclable material in Abbottabad on Thursday, May 19.
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Eight months old baby sloth Camillo yawns at the zoo in Halle, eastern Germany, on Thursday, May 17. In the wild, sloths live mainly in tropical rainforests of Central and South America.
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Floodwaters from the Yazoo river creep across fields of crops near Yazoo City, Miss., on Thursday. The water is expected to crest on Thursday, May 19. For thousands of people forced from their homes by the rising Mississippi River, life has become a tedious waiting game: waiting for meals at shelters, waiting for the latest word on their flooded homes, waiting for the river to fall.
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Laborers work at the construction site of a commercial complex in the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar, India on Thursday, May 19
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'Reborn babies' adopted by grieving mothers
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Plastic heads and limbs of 'reborn babies', dolls which will be made to look just like real babies, are displayed at the reborn babies fair in Brentwood, England
"She reminds me of my daughter when she was a child," says Eve Hasty . Weighing around 11 pounds, with perfectly combed hair and her eyes closed in sleep, Abby looks like a baby girl. But she is a doll, adopted by a grieving mother to help her come to terms with the loss of a child.
"She brings me peace of mind when I take her in my arms, when I change her clothes," says the 57-year-old retiree from Oklahoma, who had a daughter who died from leukemia at the age of 7.
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Finished 'reborn babies', dolls which are made to look just like real babies, on sale at the reborn babies fair in Brentwood, England
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Australia legend Shane Warne set for last cricket match
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Legendary Australia leg-spinner Shane Warne is preparing to play his last professional cricket match on Friday.
The 41-year-old, who captains and coaches the Rajasthan Royals, will lead them against Mumbai in their final game of the Indian Premier League season.
He recently wrote on Twitter: "I'll miss the IPL, it's been fun. I've had a great time - it's time to say goodbye."
Warne took 708 wickets in 145 Tests for Australia before retiring from international cricket in 2007.
At the time, the figure was a world record, although it was broken by Muttiah Muralitharan less than a year later, and the Sri Lanka spinner eventually finished with 800.
Warne also captured 293 wickets in 184 one-day internationals for his country, and hung up his boots from the first-class game in 2008 after a spell captaining English county side Hampshire.
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Tel Aviv, Israel: Illusionist Hezi Dean stands on top of a tower where he intends to remain for 35 hours
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Juarez, Mexico: Mennonite girls stand outside their school
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Louisiana, US: Houses under floodwater from the Mississippi river
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Montevideo, Uruguay: A dog stands in front of a military band during an event marking the bicentennial of the battle of Las Piedras
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Barcelona, Spain: A demonstrator shouts slogans during a protest against the youth unemployment rate of 40% and austerity measures taken to end the country's debt crisis
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Manila, Philippines: A man looks at damage to his house after a fire that gutted a residential area
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Hefei, China: Insects fly around labourers sorting and collecting rubbish at a dump for recycling
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AFC Wimbledon preparing for the Conference play-off final
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The ground at Kingsmeadow. Even though AFC Wimbledon own the ground, only one terrace has the yellow and blue colours. The rest of the ground is red and white, the colours of previous owner, now tenant, Kingstonian
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The trophy cabinet at Kingsmeadow, with a message and FA Cup winner's medal from Vinnie Jones and a road sign from the old ground at Plough Lane
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The honours board at Kingsmeadow showing how the original club was promoted to the old First Division, became FA Cup winner and Premiership member, then the present club started in the Combined Counties League
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A frame showing four pictures of former Wimbledon teams including the FA Cup winners (bottom right)
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Manager Terry Brown watches training
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A stray ball is returned from the nearby bowling club
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As the players stretch, Brown chats with chief executive Erik Samuelson
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Cannes 2011, day nine
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Director Pedro Almodóvar attempts to regain the limelight after Lars von Trier got banned from the festival
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The Skin I Live In star Antonio Banderas gets high
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Elena Anaya, owner of the eponymous skin of Almodóvar's film
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John Hurt at the photocall for Lars von Trier's Melancholia
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Free Men star Tahar Rahim is very happy to be here
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Anger as Cameron invites Bahrain crown prince to No 10
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David Cameron faced criticism for inviting Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, crown prince of Bahrain, to Downing Street, amid an ongoing crackdown in Bahrain against protesters.
David Cameron provoked a storm of protest after he welcomed the crown prince of Bahrain to Britain in a high-profile photo call on the steps of 10 Downing Street.
Denis MacShane, Labour's former Europe minister, criticised the prime minister for "rolling out the red carpet".
MacShane spoke out after the prime minister welcomed Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa to Downing Street amid a continuing crackdown against democracy protesters in Bahrain.
Downing Street felt the crown prince had to be given a high-profile welcome after he declined an invitation to the royal wedding last month amid fears that his presence could spark protests.
Bahrain has said that on 1 June it will lift martial law imposed in March after pro-democracy protests resulted in at least 29 deaths. Downing Street said that the prime minister had urged the crown prince to pursue a policy of reform and not repression.
But the timing of the visit was unfortunate for Downing Street. The crown prince arrived in Downing Street shortly after Barack Obama had praised the Arab spring during a speech in which he was highly critical of Bahrain.
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Barack Obama throws full US support behind Middle East uprisings
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Barack Obama delivers his speech on the Middle East at the US state department in Washington on Thursday.
Barack Obama has sought to realign American policy on the Middle East, pledging to shift from decades of support for autocratic regimes to backing for pro-democracy movements, and setting out the shape of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
Facing criticism that the US has repeatedly been behind the curve in response to the Arab spring, Obama promised a "new chapter" in US diplomacy. He placed Washington on the side of popular uprisings not only in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya but also in Syria and, for the first time, in Bahrain – a longtime American ally.
"The status quo is not sustainable," Obama said, referring to Arab autocracies and to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.
On the eve of a visit by the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to the White House, Obama showed frustration with the lack of any progress towards peace by setting out broadly what a future Palestinian state may look like, based on the border that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
"The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation," he said.
While his speech might be seen to tilt the US marginally towards the Palestinians, he tempered this by rejecting a Palestinian attempt to seek de facto independence at the UN in September, dismissing it as merely a "symbolic" move.
Netanyahu said he appreciated Obama's peace message but rejected the "indefensible" 1967 borders, expressing his unhappiness at the prospect of Israel not having control of security extending over the West Bank to Jordan. A Palestinian state should not be established at the "expense of Israel's existence", he said.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, welcomed Obama's effort to instigate fresh negotiations with Israel. Elsewhere in the Arab world, the reaction was mixed, with some commentators saying Obama had gone beyond his Cairo speech and others judging it uninspired.
Conservatives in the US denounced it, with Mitt Romney, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination to take on Obama for the White House next year, saying the president "has thrown Israel under the bus".
The tone of the speech at the state department in Washington, the first major one on the Middle East since Cairo in 2009, was intended to suggest that the US is turning its back on its long-term policy of supporting dictatorships in the Middle East to guarantee oil supplies and instead will embrace democracy and commitment to human rights.
Obama spoke of the extraordinary changes in the Middle East over the past six months and lined the US up behind the popular movements that began with the death of a Tunisian street vendor.
"So we face an historic opportunity. We have embraced the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator ... After decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be," he said.
But there is a limit to how much the US is prepared to shift, with not a single line about Saudi Arabia, an autocracy that has made no significant attempt at reform but which is one of America's main oil suppliers. The speech was timed so that it could be watched live in the Middle East, with the state department offering simultaneous translations in Arabic and Farsi.
"For six months, we have witnessed an extraordinary change take place in the Middle East and North Africa," Obama said. "Square by square, town by town, country by country, the people have risen up to demand their basic human rights. Two leaders have stepped aside. More may follow."
One of these could be Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad. The day after the US imposed sanctions directly on Assad, Obama stopped short of calling on him to leave office, as he has done with the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.
He did, however, increase pressure on him. "The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy. President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition, or get out of the way," Obama said.
The US president has been accused of inconsistency in engaging in military action in Libya but standing back in Syria. Accusations of inconsistency were also applied over Bahrain, where the US has a big naval base and which Washington has largely refrained from criticising, in spite of a bloody crackdown on protesters.
"We have insisted publicly and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain's citizens, and will not make legitimate calls for reform go away," Obama said.
On the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Obama set out the parameters of a possible peace settlement. The White House has been waiting for the Israelis and Palestinians to come forward with a deal but, frustrated at the lack of movement, Obama proposed the outline of an agreement.
"The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine," he said. "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states," he said.
The mention of the border with Jordan is significant. Israel has long argued that any peace deal must include it having military control up to the Jordan border.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, the Washington-based liberal lobbying group, said: "J Street wholeheartedly endorses the approach to resolving the conflict outlined today by the president, namely, to address borders and security first."
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Afghan policemen carry a body away from the site of a suicide attack in Jalalabad May 18, 2011.
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Refugees of the Guere ethnic group mourn the death of a relative, inside a temporary camp set up at a Catholic church in Duekoue May 18, 2011
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Albanian police stand guard at the entrance of the Central Election Commission after clashes with supporters of the Socialist Party who were protesting over the delay in releasing the results from the May 8 local elections, in which they claim their leader Edi Rama won re-election as mayor of the capital, Tirana May 18, 2011.
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Vice speaker of the Ukrainian Vekhovnaya Rada, Adam Martynyuk (R), scuffles with deputy Oleg Lyashko during a session in the chamber of the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev May 18, 2011.
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Rebel fighters take up a position in the western entrance of Ajdabiyah May 18, 2011.
