THE ENGLAND investors lose £2000mn by criminal gangs fraud each year !!!!

finincial reporter(weastar times/guardian):::An estimated £2000 mn is lost to investment fraud in the THE ENGLAND  every year, with "over-confident" middle-aged men among those most likely to fall victim to scams, according to a government body.

To highlight the problem a nationwide campaign has been launched urging the public to "check before they invest" in a money-making scheme. The campaign is being led by Action Fraud, the UK's national fraud and internet crime reporting centre, which is run by the National Fraud Authority, an executive agency of the Home Office.

Common investment scams include "boiler room" operations where salespeople who are usually based abroad cold-call investors and offer them worthless, overpriced or even non-existent shares, and landbanking scams where people are persuaded to buy agricultural land at vastly inflated prices.

Regulators have also warned of the growing number of scams involving the sale of "carbon credits" supposedly offering impressive returns.

According to Action Fraud, THE ENGLAND investors are losing about more then £2000mn a year. Research for the campaign found that men aged between 36 and 55 were one of the most likely groups to be ripped off by investment fraudsters.

"This group is more likely to take risks through taking part in online deals, promotions and foreign money-making opportunities … The ability to invest large amounts, as well as a tendency to act on impulse, serve to increase the likelihood of these people becoming victims of these scams," a spokesman said. He added that "over-confidence" was a problem.

Research carried out in October for the campaign found that almost half (49%) of those men aged 36 and over who were quizzed admitted to having given out personal details before checking the credentials of the person who contacted them.

Peter Wilson, director at the National Fraud Authority, said: "Our intelligence shows that amounts ranging between £10,000 to over £1m are being handed over to fraudsters by victims.

"This loss is likely to be permanent and will not only deal a life-changing blow to the victims, but possibly their family and their business. Before investing large sums of money, everyone should take a step back and consider that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

Action Fraud has teamed up with industry bodies and regulators, including the Financial Services Authority, to raise awareness among those at greatest risk of falling victim to fraud. The campaign includes an online video.

FETURE:::What's on Stephenie Meyer's ideal bookshelf? The works that made the artists

SPECIAL BOOK FETURE:::I grew up in a university town in Nigeria. I was an early reader and, what I read as a young child, were mostly British and American books. I was also an early writer. And when I began to write, at about the age of seven – stories in pencil with crayon illustrations, which my poor mother was obligated to read – I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading.

All my characters were white and drank ginger beer, because the British characters in the books I read drank a lot of ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. My characters ate apples and played in the snow and talked about the weather, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. This despite the fact that I had never been outside Nigeria; I lived in a world where the people were mostly black and ate mangoes and didn't have snow and never talked about the weather because there was no need to. I loved those books. They stirred my imagination and opened up new worlds for me, but the unintended consequence was that I did not consciously, actively, know that people like me – little girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair did not form ponytails – could also exist in literature.

Then I read Camara Laye and Chinua Achebe, who were a glorious shock of discovery for me. They made me begin to write stories about people who looked like me and did things that I recognised, though a few of my characters continued to drink ginger beer! Achebe's Arrow of God was important to me because it transcended literature and became personal history – I read it as the story of a man who might have been my grandfather.

I came, as an older reader, to love language, and I often reread Derek Walcott and Jamaica Kincaid for that reason. Middlemarchwas difficult for me to finish when I first read it as a teenager, but on reading it more recently, I sometimes thought that George Eliot was a version of my feminist self – her sharp, brilliant insight into gender seemed so contemporary. And Reef is a novel that is so beautiful in its evocation of Sri Lanka, a lost paradise of sorts, that it fills me with nostalgia for something I never even had.

In eighth grade, I read Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!! [by Albert Goldman and Lawrence Schiller] I cut out the photos and made an elaborate book report for extra credit. It was gorgeous. My English teacher, Mr Board, claimed to have lost it, but I know he stole it and cherishes it to this day.

Part of what inspired me to read more was a road trip I took with Owen Wilson in 1997. Owen was so well read – he even knew what The New Yorker was! I was embarrassed that the last book I had probably read was Stephen King's Firestarter, when I was 13. He recommended Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, which I loved so much that I went on a reading tear for a few years. I remember Owen's saying to me: "I'm jealous that you get to read it for the first time." I didn't understand what he meant then, but I do now.

I chose a few books that were important to me when I was a kid dreaming of becoming a comedian. The Last Laugh was the first portrayal of the comedian's life where I wanted in. When I was older, I read Steve Martin's memoir, Born Standing Up. It answered every question I ever wanted to ask him, including: "Why did you stop doing stand-up?" Now I have to wait for him to host the Oscars every few years in order to see him do it.

As a teenager, I was really unfunny. I think I thought I was funny, but when I read what I wrote, it's really bad. I was not a great-looking kid, either. I wasn't terrible-looking. I was just good-looking enough that if I'd had a decent personality, it would've put me over the top with girls. I don't think I ever got to decent. But I knew I wanted to find a way into the world of comedy.

In high school I realised that if I interviewed comedians for my radio station, they would have to answer all of my questions. Howard Stern, Harold Ramis, Garry Shandling, Henny Youngman, John Candy – I hounded them all into talking to me for an hour. I didn't broadcast most of these interviews. I just wanted to know how to "do it". I interrogated Jerry Seinfeld once about how to write a joke, and he actually told me. Much of my success probably comes from what I learned when I was 16, when I tricked all those nice people into talking to me. Everyone should read this bookshelf. You will reap untold benefits: money, fame, women, and a level of insecurity that cannot be measured by modern technology.

Why doesn't that go away? I'm still looking for the book that will answer that question.

I was the reader. That was my identity in my family: I was that girl who was always in a corner reading; I read my whole life away. I skipped children's books. My dad would read to us at night, and I first began to read on my own by reading ahead in those books. I was seven when I read Little Women for the first time, and it became nearly as real to me as the rest of my life.

I always identified with Jo; I was the tomboy. My big sister was Meg, the pretty one, the sweet one. We didn't have a Beth, but my younger sister was definitely Amy, the frivolous one who liked nice things. I was like Jo in every way except for her passion for writing; I was perfectly content just to read. It wasn't until much later, after I had published three books, that I went back to Little Women and realised that I had become even more like Jo. Now I was a writer, too.

Of all the heroines I was invested in throughout my childhood,Jane Eyre was the one I most identified with, despite my having a happy and supportive family. I liked heroines who weren't perfectly beautiful. I liked that everyone wasn't swept away and captivated by her. Jane Eyre has this huge stubborn streak, which I have, too. I have my ideals, and I really don't diverge from them – it's probably off-putting to a lot of people. Jane is like that, too; she sticks to things even when she's uncomfortable and unhappy and making other people feel the same way. Of course, she's pushed to deeper extremes than I've ever been forced to go to, but I always felt we would see eye to eye. When I think about the books that were formative to me as a writer, I can see how much I was influenced by Anne of Green Gables. When the series starts, Anne is a young girl, and we follow her as she becomes a teenager, an adult, a mother, and finally almost a grandmother. It's so rare that we get to grow up with a character. When I was first imagining my novels, I skipped fromTwilight to Breaking Dawn because I was eager to see Bella as an adult.

My editor encouraged me to slow down and show more of her in high school. I don't enjoy a character as much when he or she stays the same age. I want to see what comes next. These books contain threads of what I like to write about: the way people interact, how we relate to one another when life is both beautiful and horrible. But these books are greater than anything I could ever aspire to create. I'll never love what I've done as much as I love what these authors have done. However, for me, just getting to create is its own reward.

I was not a big reader in school. It wasn't until I'd dropped out of my second college and was living by myself in a trailer in a very small town in Oregon – I had a lot of time on my hands and nobody to talk to – that I got a library card and started reading. I remember reading Babbitt, because it had been on a list in high school. And I realised that if I didn't have to write a paper, reading was pretty fantastic. I really think you can't progress as a writer unless you read, and the ideal time to read is when you can read generously. It didn't even occur to me that I could have a book of my own in the library someday. That's how you should read.

Tobias Wolff is America's greatest living short-story writer. Sometimes I meet ministers, and I always say to them: "If I had a church, I'd read a Tobias Wolff story every week, and then I'd say to people, 'go home'." There's nothing else you would need to say. Every story is a manual on how to be a good person, but without ever being preachy. They're deeply moral stories; the best of them read like parables.

Raymond Carver makes writing look so easy. Every sentence has 17 syllables and starts with the word 'He'. How hard could that be? And then you realise it's pretty hard. But when I try to read a Raymond Carver story out loud, good luck. The prose is so tone-deaf. It needs more rhythm. So for me as a grown-up, there's not a lot of Carver that appeals to me anymore. When I was much younger, he made writing seem so possible to me. Flannery O'Connor didn't. It does not look easy, what she comes up with. It does not look like anything that someone could sit down and come up with in an afternoon. It's always something to aspire to. If I can ever write anything as decent as one of her stories, I'll let you know. But Raymond Carver, I think he inspired a whole lot of people for that exact reason.

Dorothy Parker is someone who I'd been led to believe was funny. But I find her really sad; her stories are just really sad. Big Blonde is heartbreaking. And I think people find her funny because humour needs to cling to something. I used to go to these shows at Second City, and I would laugh and laugh and laugh, but then afterward I could never remember a single thing I had laughed about. I felt as if I'd had a really nice time, but I think humour needs some aspect of tragedy in order to be memorable. The funny things I remember all have a twinge of sorrow to them.

source:::gurdian(THE ENGLAND)

Knives out at the Bank of England as race for top job hots up

THE BANK OF ENGLAND BUILDING SITUATED IN CENTRAL LONDON:::pic courtesy+guardian
banking reporter(weastar times/guardian):::Seldom has the appointment of a governor of the Bank of Englandbeen the object of so much speculation, and for so long before the actual event. Even now the incumbent, Sir Mervyn King, governor since the late "Steady Eddie" George stepped down in 2003, has seven months to run before his second term expires on 30 June 2013.

King's gubernatorial stewardship has been divided into two distinct periods: a happy one and a not so happy one. After the early glory days, both as deputy governor and later in the hotter seat, King basked in the reflected acclaim for what was considered, for a time, to be one of Gordon Brown's greatest historic contributions to the British polity: the granting of operational independence in monetary policy to the Bank of England – that is, the power to determine the official short-term rate of interest.

In its early days, the monetary policy committee, which the governor chairs, was widely considered a huge success, and it was King who coined the acronym "Nice" (standing for non-inflationary continuous expansion) and applied it to that pre-crisis "nice decade".

However, King was always too much of a student of economic history to believe things could go on like that, and began to downplay expectations well before the onset of the 2007 financial crisis. Nevertheless, neither he nor the rest of the economic establishment was prepared for the magnitude of the crisis that was to hit them and the rest of us – a crisis during which the Bank can no longer boast about "achieving" the inflation target, because it has not done so for several years.

There have also been some little local difficulties with the Bank's analysis and forecasts of recovery – or non-recovery. King has recognised that there are limits to the degree to which monetary policy can offset the impact of the fiscal squeeze and other unfortunate developments.

During the Northern Rock crisis of 2007, relations between the Treasury and the Bank became very bad. The former chancellor, Alistair Darling, has already vented his wrath in an instant memoir, in which he castigated what he regards as King's slowness to grasp the extent of the problem. In turn, King was no fan of Darling's.

The Bank has also been widely criticised for its putative laxity in performing the role allocated to it by Brown of guardian of financial stability. Formal supervision of banking had been transferred to the Financial Services Authority, but the Bank should have been a lot more alert, as King has admitted.

Things became so bad in 2007 that neither prime minister Brown nor chancellor Darling wanted to reappoint King for a second term. The Treasury came up with two alternatives: Lord Burns, former permanent secretary to, yes, the Treasury; and Sir Andrew Crockett, former overseas director of the Bank of England, then working for JP Morgan.

Burns was soon declared a non-runner – after all, he had been squeezed out of the Treasury by none other than chancellor Brown. Burns was disliked by Labour for his "monetarist" past at the Treasury in the 1980s. There was as little chance of Brown appointing Burns to the Bank as – sadly, in my opinion – there was of George Osborne nominating Brown to lead the International Monetary Fund when Dominique Strauss-Kahn's private life caught up with him.

Crockett had been passed over several times before, both by the Conservatives when George was appointed in 1993 and by Labour in 2003, when he was interpreted as being too pro-euro – not an accusation that could ever have been levelled at either George or King.

But by cruel mischance it was not to be third time lucky for Crockett, whose international experience, especially as managing director of the Bank for International Settlements, as well as a long stint at the IMF, would have proved invaluable in the eye of the 2007 storm.

When the Treasury discovered that Crockett was suffering from an especially unpleasant form of cancer, there could be no question of approaching him (he died earlier this year). So King it was, and, although there were times during Brown's finest hour – the Bank recapitalisation of 2008 and the G20 fiscal and monetary stimulus of April 2009 – when Brown and King got on better, relations between the Bank and Labour in those latter days were often fractious.

Meanwhile, in opposition, the incoming chancellor, Osborne, had made a number of commitments, among them the restoration of banking-sector supervision to the Bank of England, and an attempt to get away from speculation about gubernatorial reappointments by specifying that, after King, the governor would be appointed for one term only, but that this was to be for eight years.

Relations between the Cameron/Osborne government and the Bank started well, not least because the governor backed its austerity plan (although he did add the rider that the timing was open to debate). More recently, relations between Treasury and governor appear to have deteriorated again, and this has undoubtedly affected the atmosphere in the runup to the selection of King's successor. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Osborne and his colleagues have thought for some time that the Bank needs a good shakeup, and that if at all possible the job should go to an outsider.

The protocol tells us that the governor is appointed by "the Crown"; in practice, this means by the prime minister and chancellor. Given a certain level of qualifications for the job, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the candidate with the fewest enemies has the best chance.

And in an innovation that some policymakers already regret, weare talking about "candidates": for the first time, people who fancy the job, and presumably themselves, have had to apply formally for interview by a Treasury panel of officials, accompanied by the outgoing chairman of the Bank's court. Thus the days when a prime minister such as Margaret Thatcher could meet a chairman of a bank a few times, take a shine to him, and appoint him governor have gone. This is what happened when Robin Leigh-Pemberton (now Lord Kingsdown) was appointed (1983-93) and seemingly strong contenders such as Sir Jeremy Morse and Sir Kit McMahon were bypassed because they had given offence to Thatcher over some trivial matter.

Some months ago, the Financial Times ran a story suggesting that the governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, was in the running for the job. This was vehemently denied all round. Carney's present contract runs to 2015 and he is rumoured after that to want to go into Canadian politics. But this might have been a case of no smoke without fire, or at least without a brief flame. Osborne knows Carney on the international circuit; Carney is chairman of the Financial Stability Board, the G20's key committee on reforming the financial sector; and, as Carney once proudly told me, Canada did not have a banking crisis.

It is perfectly possible to reconcile the denials with the theory that Osborne in some way sounded Carney out. But that is all water under the bridge now, and, unless some deus (or dea) ex machina appears, the appointment will almost certainly go to one of the British candidates.

Incidentally, there are historical precedents for a desperate chancellor to look overseas: Sir Geoffrey Howe, chancellor from 1979 to 1983, wanted at one stage to appoint Sir Philip Haddon-Cave, head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

And it is not the first time that a British chancellor has thought of a Canadian. Way back in 1943, the then chancellor, Kingsley Wood, sounded out Graham Towers, governor of the Bank of Canada, for the Bank of England job, but the approach came to nothing.

This would have been to succeed Montagu Norman, governor from 1920 to 1944, who was the bete noire of both the Labour party and Winston Churchill. Churchill always regretted bowing, as chancellor, to Norman's campaign to return to the gold standard at an absurdly high exchange rate in 1925. He observed in 1931: "Everyone I meet seems vaguely alarmed that something terrible is going to happen … I hope we shall hang Montagu Norman if it does. I will certainly turn King's evidence against him."

And that redoubtable Labour figure Sidney Webb, later Lord Passfield, once said that the Attlee government had nationalised the Bank of England in 1946 in order to avoid a repeat of the debacle.

In theory, the nationalisation of the Bank in 1946 reduced its powers considerably; certainly interest rate decisions thenceforth became the prerogative of chancellors until 1997 and independence. But as the Bank of England historian John Fforde observes: "The Bank of England Act 1946 brought Norman's creation under public ownership while doing little to change it."

It is important to note that, despite its operational independence, the Bank remains nationalised and was the largest item on the Treasury's balance sheet until the crisis of 2007-08 and the nationalisation of several high street banks.

The late Lord Croham, whose memorial service took place last week, once remarked to me that, despite the 1946 act, the Bank remained "totally independent" for decades. Things only opened up when, as Treasury permanent secretary in 1970, Croham (then Sir Douglas Allen) discovered that the Bank had no obligation under the 1946 act to let the Treasury see its books, and had been making the same payments to the Treasury as in pre-1946 days when "they should have paid more".

At all events, the choice of the new governor will be announced soon. The hot favourite is deputy governor Paul Tucker, but odds-on favourites do not always win, even if the bookies stop taking bets on them. In this business there can be no each-way bets, but it is interesting that the former Treasury permanent secretary Lord Burns is also reported to have applied – and that Gordon Brown is not now in a position to veto him.

Of course if, having gone around the houses, the prime minister and chancellor do end up, with some reluctance, opting for Tucker, they could still put Burns in there to keep a Treasury eye on him.

Man Utd stand accused over low level of corporation tax!!!!!!

taxation reporter(weastar times/gurdian):::Manchester United, one of the world's richest football clubs, has paid more to its tax advisers than it has in corporation tax returns over the past six years, the Observer can reveal. The club has kept payments on its £2.1bn in revenues for the period to a minimum, with no corporation tax at all being paid in two of the years it has been owned outright by brothers Joel and Avram Glazer.

Between 2006 and 2012 United's parent company paid more than £4.1m to their tax advisers PriceWaterhouseCoopers. For the same period it paid just £3.5m in tax. PwC this summer faced the embarrassment of a tax avoidance scheme it devised for a client being declared invalid by the courts and criticised by HM Revenue & Customs.

Manchester United's parent company, Red Football Joint Venture, has not acted illegally. Its revenues have largely avoided tax because the club's huge debt and interest repayments are tax deductible. The American brothers bought the club in 2005 for about £800m, largely using debt. The club has since paid more than £400m dealing with the legacy of that takeover through interest and debt repayments, vastly reducing the club's profitability on paper.

A spokesman for United said that payments to PwC were "not simply related to corporation tax", but were made in relation to a range of tax issues, such as the club's pension scheme.

He added that, in addition, the figures did not take into account tax payments that were merely deferred and would be paid at a later stage. The parent company said: "We pay all corporation tax on our UK companies as and when it is due."

However, the case raises fresh questions over whether the government is doing enough to ensure that some of Britain's largest companies raising huge sums in revenue are paying their fair share at a time of austerity.

Before its takeover the club was profitable, largely debt free and regularly paid more than £7m a year to the taxman.

Simon Hughes MP, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, speaking out just days before the chancellor's autumn statement, called on the government to reform the way the tax system deals with highly leveraged firms.

"The government must investigate the tax treatment of these kinds of deals. It cannot be right to allow people to buy up companies, pile them with debt and get a tax break for the privilege," he said. "The road to recovery needs a more responsible form of capitalism and must bring an end to this kind of financial engineering. The Glazer family must not be allowed to fill their pockets at the expense of the taxpayer and Manchester United supporters throughout the world."

This month the Observer revealed how three of Britain's water companies enjoying huge revenues, Thames, Anglian and Yorkshire, were paying little or no tax while paying huge dividends to their shareholders and handsomely rewarding their executives in pay and bonuses.

Richard Murphy, an economist campaigning for fairer tax, said the government had done "pitifully little" to deal with the tax implications of highly leveraged takeovers, where debts are piled on to profitable companies and the taxman loses out.

Andrew Green, a fund manager in the City of London and adviser to the Manchester United Supporters Trust, which has campaigned against the Glazers, said: "The club was piled with debt so the Glazers could buy it. The club has lost about half a billion pounds in interest and debt repayments, which could have been invested. The taxpaying public loses out because a club that was paying tax on its profits isn't paying much at all any more."

This summer the club floated on the New York Stock Exchange and registered itself in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven, in a move that will reduce its "indebtedness", according to the parent company's Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

It is predicting a record turnover for 2012 of between £350m and £360m, with the company recently boasting of its best "commercial year" yet.

The club says the float in New York will see it pay more tax than before, as profits will be liable to corporation tax in the US. However, the club's prospectus for the float confirms it has sought assurances from the Cayman Islands' authorities that profits directed there will not be taxed in the future.

The prospectus says that the company received an undertaking to the effect that, for 20 years, "no law that thereafter is enacted in the Cayman Islands imposing any tax or duty to be levied on profits, income or on gains or appreciation … will apply to any property comprised in or any income arising under the company, or to the shareholders thereof, in respect of any such property or income".

Domestic violence accounts for 10% of emergency calls, data shows

national anti crime reporter(weastar times/gurdian):::One in 10 emergency calls to police are categorised as domestic violence related, rising in some areas to a fifth of all 999 alerts.

The figures, obtained following freedom of information requests, have prompted fresh demands for a long-term strategy to tackle Britain's "hidden crime."

Home Office data reveals that more than a million British women a year experience domestic violence, although experts believe the vast majority of incidents remain unreported.

However, domestic violence conviction rates in the five years to 2011 stood at just 6.5% of incidents reported to police.

Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, said: "Last year the domestic violence rate was twice as high as the burglary rate. Two women every week are killed at the hands of their abuser in England and Wales, yet it still isn't given enough priority to keep people safe."

Cooper is currently consulting on ways to better protect women, saying too much complacency surrounds the issue and she advocates the establishment of a domestic and sexual violence board to provide a long-term strategy to the problem.

The figures, obtained by the Labour party, reveal that Merseyside police had the highest proportion of domestic incidents in emergency calls received between April 2010 and April 2012, 43,995 out of 207,326 (21.2%). West Mercia police had the second highest with 18,041 of 99,188 emergency calls concerning domestic violence. Wiltshire had the lowest with 4,073 of 56,363 (7.2%).

Chief executive of the east London-based Nia project, Karen Ingala Smith, highlighted the government's contradictory position on the issue, saying that almost a third of funding for violence against women services from local authorities has been cut.

She said: "The government says it is committed to addressing violence against women, but with it's sustained attack on welfare benefits, women's representation and women's bodily autonomy, it is undermining any efforts to make women and girls safer."

cyber criminal &bank-credit card thief Lewys Martin of Kent faces Oxbridge cyber attack charges

national cyber crime reporter,kent(weastar times/weekly ict/Ebc):::
A man has been accused of 17 offences connected to the blocking of the websites of finanicial different bank,creadit card company,e-commerec site, national  Police site.
The charges against Lewys Martin, 33, also relate to the theft and use of personal data and failing to disclose passwords to encrypted equipment.

The offences all relate to public-facing websites.

Mr Martin, of Dover Road, in Walmer, Kent, is due before magistrates in Maidstone on fist week of December.

Kent Police said he was charged following an investigation by its Special intilligence anti cyber crime Branch Investigations Team and the Kent Police Digital Forensic Unit.

He is charged with eight counts of unauthorised acts with intent to impair operation of or prevent or hinder access to a computer, and three of unauthorised computer access with intent to commit other offences.

Mr Martin also faces four charges of obtaining an article for supply for use to commit or to assist in commission of computer misuse, and two of failing to comply with a notice to disclose the key to protected information.

suspect black-carrabien nigro and its gang -Sex attack on schoolgirl, 11, in Enfield park!!!

sex&black crime reporter(weastar times/Ebc):::The girl caught a bus home from school in Enfield town at 16:15 GMT on Friday and got off in Bury Street, Enfield.

While walking along Galliards Road, she was dragged into Jubilee Park by the pitch and putt area and assaulted. She is currently being treated in hospital.

Police described the suspect as a black male with afro hair wearing a dark grey top and black baggy jeans.

The victim returned home at about 19:45 GMT and was then taken to hospital.

Det Insp Simon Ellershaw: "This was a brutal attack on a defenceless 11-year-old girl on her way home from school and I am appealing for the public's help in catching the person responsible.

"We are interested in speaking to anyone who was in the Jubilee Park area between 16:15 and 19:45 on Friday evening, 23 November, and may have seen anyone acting suspiciously or anyone following a girl in school uniform."

Det Insp Ellershaw said the Met was unsure of her movements between these times.

"She says that she was attacked in Jubilee Park. She also says that the attack happened for some considerable time - possibly in the region of two to three hours.

"That still leaves some time unaccounted for."

He said inquiries were trying account for "that missing time gap as well as trying to identify and arrest the person responsible".

"In her account, she said she was aware that someone was following her, because of that she crosses over Galliards Road on a number of occasions," he added.

"We've been looking for anyone that was in the area at the time, whether they noticed a schoolgirl - she was wearing a school uniform - a blue blazer and skirt - maybe walking slightly in a strange way - crossing the road more than once.

"We'd be looking to know if she was being followed by anybody and if they could describe that person, and equally if anyone's been seen hanging around that park... acting suspiciously."