Human body parts among tonnes of NHS clinical waste stockpiled by disposal firm

Health reporter(wp/es):

A criminal investigation has been launched after tonnes of waste from NHS hospitals, including body parts, was allowed to pile up by a disposal company.

Healthcare Environment Services Ltd has been found to be in breach of its permits at five sites in England which deal with clinical waste and a criminal investigation has been launched, the Environment Agency said.

The Health Service Journal (HSJ) reported that amputated limbs and pharmaceutical waste were among the matter which had been allowed to mount up.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said there is "absolutely no risk" to public health.

It is believed the waste was stored securely, but was not being processed and disposed of within the correct regulatory timeframes.

Healthcare Environment Services said the UK had experienced "reduced incineration capacity" over the last year, which it had repeatedly highlighted to authorities.

An Environment Agency spokeswoman said: "The Environment Agency has found Health Environmental Services to be in breach of its environmental permits at five sites which deal with clinical waste.

"We are taking enforcement action against the operator, which includes clearance of the excess waste, and have launched a criminal investigation.

"We are supporting the Government and the NHS to ensure there is no disruption to public services and for alternative plans to be put in place for hospitals affected to dispose of their waste safely."

A Government spokesman said: "We are monitoring the situation closely and have made sure that public services - including NHS Trusts - have contingency plans in place. There is absolutely no risk to the health of patients or the wider public.

"Our priority is to prevent disruption to the NHS and other vital public services and work is under way to ensure organisations can continue to dispose of their waste safely and efficiently."

A spokesman for Healthcare Environmental Services said: "Healthcare Environmental has highlighted the reduction in the UK's high-temperature incineration capacity for the last few years.

"This is down to the ageing infrastructure, prolonged breakdowns and the reliance on zero waste to landfill policies, taking up the limited high-temperature incineration capacity in the market.

"Over the last year, this reduced incineration capacity has been evident across all of the industry and has affected all companies."

It added that it had "consistently highlighted" the issue to environmental regulators, and there has been no disruption to services to customers.

Unilever U-turn over plan to move HQ piles pressure on bosses

Pic:Consumer goods firm Unilever has abandoned plans to move its legal headquarters from London to Rotterdam ( PA )
Business correspondent(wp/es):

The future of Unilever’s board was in doubt on Friday after a shareholder rebellion forced the consumer goods giant into a “humiliating” climbdown from plans to move its HQ to the Netherlands.

The decision to abandon shifting its legal head office to Rotterdam and switching from two classes of shares to one comes six months after it unveiled the plans and just weeks before investors in Unilever’s Dutch and UK entities were due to vote on them.

The Marmite and Dove soapmaker, led by chairman Marijn Dekkers and chief executive Paul Polman who is eyeing retirement, is understood to have seen the extent of opposition and realised its plans could be rejected.

“This is somewhat humiliating — at least humbling — for Polman, and may accelerate his retirement,” said Investec analyst Eddy Hargreaves.

Shareholders have been coming out almost daily over the past few weeks to oppose the ideas, concerned that exiting the FTSE 100 will mean the stock is less likely to be included in UK managers’ portfolios.

Attacks on Unilever are a long way from the City praise heaped on the consumer goods company after it last year fought off a £115 billion takeover from US foods behemoth Kraft Heinz.

It had wanted to move to the Netherlands, where Dutch laws typically favour the defender in takeover attempts, to simplify its corporate structure.

Unilever has previously said it “engaged extensively” with shareholders and “we believe the vast majority are fully supportive of the board’s proposals”. The board today said it will consider its “next steps”.

Corporate brokers UBS and Deutsche Bank, tasked with keeping Unilever up to speed on shareholder thinking, advised Unilever on the relocation plan. Both declined to comment.

Shareholders with around 11% of the UK-listed shares had opposed the plan, and many investors welcomed today’s U-turn.

Iain Richards from Columbia Threadneedle said: “Better approaches are possible and the problems for shareholders were foreseeable.” Aviva Investors’ Mirza Baig said it was “in the best interests” of its UK shareholders and UK plc. M&G Investment said it proved shareholder engagement paid off.  

The controversy could trigger a widespread review, said Rachel Reeves, chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee. “Whatever the arguments made for incorporating into the Netherlands, there was a real suspicion that, in the wake of the hostile bid from Kraft Heinz, part of the motive for the move was that UK rules too easily allow takeovers,” she said. 

“As a committee, we will want to consider looking at the Government’s White Paper on foreign takeovers to see whether the new regime should include additional safeguards.”

UBS analysts said: “We believe the market’s focus will now shift to the next steps, corporate governance improvements under the current structure and the operational performance.”

Theresa May urges Labour voters to 'look afresh' at the Conservatives

Pic:Theresa May penned the piece urging people to consider a switch ( AP )
Political reporter(wp/es):

Theresa May has penned a detailed message urging Laboursupporters to switch their allegiance to the Conservatives instead.

The Prime Minister, in a detailed piece written for the Observer, outlined her desire for “the Conservatives to be a party for the whole country”.

She also took her opportunity for a fresh swipe at opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Mrs May claimed his leadership had left some lifelong Labour backers “appalled”.

Outlining her desires for people to switch allegiance, Mrs May wrote: “I want voters who may previously have thought of themselves as Labour supporters to look at my government afresh.

“They will find a decent, moderate and patriotic programme that is worthy of their support.”

Following this, she largely promoted what she sees as the key recent achievements and the goals of the Conservative party.

She outlined her desires for a “best Brexit deal for Britain”, investment in the NHS, improved standards in schools and building a strong economy.

Harking to Labour’s commonly used “for the many, not the few” slogan, she ended her piece: “The British people are not bound by ideology and there has never been a time when party labels have counted for less. This presents an opportunity Conservatives must seize – to be a party not for the few, not even for the many, but for everyone in our country who works hard and plays by the rules.”

Mrs May’s vision, which was slightly more than 1,000 long and also posted on her official Facebook page, has met derision in some quarters.

Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery said: "With the Government about to impose some of their most brutal cuts yet on working people, Theresa May's claim that austerity is over is a con.

"The Tories have spent their entire time in power running down our schools, local services and NHS, while gifting huge tax breaks to big business.

"The Prime Minister is clearly spooked, so is resorting to desperate pleas in an attempt revive her failing administration. The British public won't be fooled."

While John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said he was “not worried at all” that people would switch form Labour to Conservative.

Speaking on Sky News’ Ridge on Sunday he said “They’re falling apart. So it is no wonder she’s desperately looking for support fairly cynically from anywhere. No I’m not worried at all.”

Some Conservative supporters also seemed confused by the Prime Ministers words. 

One person, responding to Mrs May on social media, asked: “What about those voters who previously thought themselves as Conservatives? Where do you suggest we go?"

Police hunt after three men assaulted in homophobic attack in Wood Green,North London

Crime reporter(wp/es):

Police are hunting for two suspects after three men were assaulted in a homophobic attack in north London.

Scotland Yard said the three victims were attacked by two men in Wood Green in the early hours of the morning.

Officers were called to the scene near the junction between Station Road and High Road, N22​ at around 4.30am on Thursday, October, 4.

"Three men aged in their 20s had been assaulted by two suspects,

" a Met Police spokesman said.

"One of the men required hospital treatment, but he was subsequently discharged."

Detectives have releasing images showing two men they wish to trace in connection with the incident. One of the men is seen in both images, the second man is only seen from the back in one of the images.

There have been no arrests and enquiries continue, the Met said.

A spokesman added: "There was a verbal interaction between the victims and the suspects prior to the attack, which is why we are treating this as a homophobic incident."

The men were then subject to a physical assault, officers said, but no weapons were involved.

Anyone with information is asked to call detectives in the Haringey Community Safety Unit via 101 quoting CAD 969/Oct04. To remain anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111

Signs of crime drop in London's parks - as figures show 70 per cent of offences are thefts and drugs

Crime reporter(wp/es):

Thefts and cannabis offences make up 70 per cent of crimes in London's Royal Parks, official figures show.

Overall, the number of crimes in the eight parks have remained consistent, with signs of a drop in numbers this year.

But there are hundreds of thefts every year, partly due to high tourist football, as well as hundreds of instances of cannabis possession.

Of the 6,067 crimes recorded between January 1, 2013 and August 31 this year, 2,313 (38 per cent) were thefts and 1,959 (32 pc) were cannabis possession.

Meanwhile, 28 people were raped and 103 suffered grievous bodily harm. There was one murder: 62-year-old Jairo Medina in Hyde Park in 2016.

The parks - Richmond Park, Bushy Park, Regent’s Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Greenwich Park, St James’s Park and Green Park - are policed by the Met's Operational Command Unit. A spokesman insisted they are safe spaces, taking into account the tens of millions of visitors each year.

He said: "Officers carry out regular foot, cycle and vehicle patrols. Overall levels of crime within the Royal Parks have been relatively consistent over a number of years.

"Crime within the parks are very low when taking into account the large volume of people visiting year on year."

Thefts were recorded as 454 in 2013, 393 in 2014, 387 in 2015, 432 in 2016, 421 in 2017 and 226 so far this year. Of these, 320 were of pedal cycles.

Cannabis possession, despite making up a third of reported crimes since 2013, has been in decline. There were 614 instances in 2013 and 414 in 2014. However, this dropped to 255 in 2015, with 280 in 2016, 277 in 2017 and 119 so far this year.

The data, obtained from the Met under the Freedom of Information Act, also showed Hyde Park alone accounted for 51 pc (3,098) of the overall crimes.

But Joanna Clark, who sits on the safer parks panel for the Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, said this was inevitable given Hyde Park's estimated 13 million visitors a year. It also hosts concerts and demonstrations.

She told the Standard: “Hyde Park has a very high footfall of tourists. You can almost think of it in terms of shopping streets. Hyde Park is comparable to Oxford Street, which has thousands more people than, say, Richmond High Street.

Crimes in London's Royal Parks  

Overall figures between January 1, 2013 and August 31, 2018*  

Hyde Park: 3,098

Regent's Park: 650

Green Park: 585

Richmond Park: 414

Greenwich Park: 345

Kensington Gardens: 339

St James's Park: 324

Bushy Park: 221

*figures do not include 91 sexual offences recorded across all eight parks

“You are going to have more crimes where there are more people, but we have also been encouraged with the reduction of incidents this year.”

The figures showed there were 308 crimes in Hyde Park up to August 31, compared to 634 in the entirety of 2017.

Ms Clark continued: “Much of it is lower level crime, such as theft of bikes, rather than serious crimes. We don’t see many nasty incidents like the water fight a couple of years ago.”

In July 2016, a police officer was stabbed and four others injured after the water fight turned violent. A crowd of about 4,000 people had gathered.

Ms Clark added: “If you think about London, being such a big city, we are relatively incident free."

Regent’s Park has had the second highest number of crimes since 2013, at 650, followed by Green Park with 585.

Bushy Park, despite being the second biggest of the Royal Parks, had the lowest number with 221.

Sexual offences rise on railways, as more than 2,000 crimes reported to police

Crime reporter(wp/es):

Sexual offences on Britain’s railways are on the rise with more than 2,000 crimes reported last year, official figures show.

The number of sexual offences committed has increased by 16 per cent, jumping to 2,742, although officers believe this may only be a fraction of crimes, as “there are still many more crimes of this type which go unreported.”

60 per cent of these crimes were committed against women, British Transport Police (BTP) said.

Figures of how many offences have been reported to BTP have been published in an annual report. Data reveals some 61,159 crimes were reported by BTP in 2017/18, up from 52,235 during the previous 12 months.

Violent crime accounts for nearly one in five of all cases after rising by 26 per cent to 11,711.

BTP said 63 per cent of these violent crimes were classed as “common assaults”, which involved no injury to the victim.

Offences involving knives or other weapons went up by 46 per cent to 206, while robbery jumped by 53 per cent to 553 recorded crimes.

BTP chief constable Paul Crowther said: "The chances of becoming a victim of crime on the rail network remains low.

"However, after a long period of steady decreases, both crimes per million passenger journeys and notifiable offences have increased."

Nineteen crimes in total were recorded per million passenger journeys.

Forces in England and Wales registered just under 1.4 million offences in the "violence against the person" category in 2017/18 - a rise of nearly a fifth (19 per cent) compared with the previous year.

BTP's figures show a number of other crimes increasing on the rail network, including throwing missiles at trains (up 35 per cent to 316), arson (up 93 per cent to 143), live cable theft (up 86 per cent to 158) and theft from vending machines (up 21 per cent to 240).

The report also addressed terrorism, making reference to the Manchester Arena attack and London attacks.

It read: “The current threat level for international terrorism in the UK is ‘severe’, which means an attack is highly likely.

“However, last year on two occasions the terrorist threat leave was raised to ‘critical’, meaning an attack was expected imminently.

“On both occasions, we mobilised additional officers and worked with our policing partners to increase the number of armed police officers patrolling the rail network to protect the public and rail staff.”

It also tackled the issue of County Lines, adding it has “identified 476 individuals associated with County Lines gangs using trains.”

131 of these individuals were thought to be frequent travellers, it added.

As well as looking at violent and sexual crimes, the annual report also listed incidents such as people trying to harm themselves on the railway and trespassers.

The total number of people known to take their lives on Britain’s railways was 310, compared to 292.

The report read: “We are pleased to report that the number of life-saving interventions increased by 648, with 1,917 people prevented from harming themselves on the railway.”

While more people were helped by life-saving interventions, BTP said the number of trespass incidents has reached its “biggest increase.”

The total number of lost minutes increased by 22 per cent and trespass now accounts for 43 per cent of overall disruption, up from 38 per cent last year.

The force said the increase in the total number of crimes is partly due to improving the way crime is recorded, which has increased accuracy and given victims and witnesses "more confidence to report crime".

Paul Plummer, chief executive of industry body the Rail Delivery Group, said: "The nature of some crimes is changing and as part of our long-term plan to change and improve, we are investing in new technology and innovations to make our railway even safer for our staff and customers."

Machine with power to detect hackers BEFORE they have committed a crime tested by Cambridge scientists

University reporter,Cambridge(wp):

A machine with the power to identify cyber-criminals who may be plotting to commit an offence has been tested successfully by experts. 

Scientists at Cambridge University have tested a system – likened to George Orwell’s "Thought Police" - for scanning the web to identify potential cyber-criminals based on how they were commenting in forums.

But the researchers who piloted the programme denied it would be used by police forces to lock people up before they commit a crime, like in the Tom Cruise movie and dystopian story by Philip K. Dick, “Minority Report”.

Computer scientists used machine learning to crunch swathes of data from 113 known cyber-attackers and built algorithms to compare the data to thousands of underground forum users, scanning comments for the warning signs that they may be planning a cyber-attack.

The findings come as the need for methods to prevent cyber attacks is growing. This week it emerged that Vladimir Putin's spies had attempted to hack the international watchdog investigating the Salisbury nerve agent poisonings, Foreign Office computers in Whitehall and defence laboratories in Porton Down.

They whittled the accounts down to 80 individuals who were highly likely to become an "actor" in a cyber-attack, and when the team went back to read the comments first hand, the researchers said it was clear there was certainly cause for suspicion.

The computer "identified variables relating to forum activity that predict the likelihood a user will become an actor of interest to law enforcement,and would therefore benefit the most from intervention," said the published paper.

"This work provides the first step towards identifying ways to deter the involvement of young people away from a career in cybercrime," the paper said.

Dr Alice Hutchings worked alongside the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre at the university’s Department of Computer Science and Technology on the research.

She said the team looked at a large pool of a quarter of million users and believe the system could be used up by cyber-crime police as a way of detecting “risky” individuals.

The technique worked by processing some 30 million posts from the Hackforums website, looking for key words and references to criminal activity, such as “DDoS” referring to a Denial of Service attack, or people who discussed distributing malware and “account cracking”.

"The National Crime Agency does have a preventative strategy within their cyber-crime unit," she added. "They've said they want to be able to divert people away from serious activity."

But she dreads the idea that it could be used by so-called “Thought Police” to lock-up potential criminals pre-emptively.

The New Scientist made the comparison between the Cambridge experiment and the authoritarian police in George Orwell’s 1984, in which “Thinkpol” officers seek out “Thoughtcrimes” – punishing people for believing anything that goes against the government.

But it could perhaps play the role of a "Thought Social Worker", using warning signs to intervene before young people turn into criminals, the scientist said.

Dr Hutchings said: "I deplore the idea of thought police arresting people before they commit crimes.

"You shouldn't be held liable for something you've just thought of doing, or spoken about but we need some kind of system to intervene when someone is at risk."

"The aim of doing this is to be able to divert people away from the criminal justice system, by identifying who is most at risk of being prosecuted and putting them in a pro-social pathway. I don't want young people to be arrested, I want to see a successful intervention. 

"Young people are being drawn to this kind of activity, and they are often very talented and intelligent. When they end up in the criminal justice system it is very stigmatising - they end up with fewer prospects, and it can ruin their entire lives."

Cyber crimes have had devastating consequences in the past and can sometimes by driven by tech-minded youngsters.

One young hacker from Hertfordshire created a programme that fuelled more than 1.7 million attacks last year causing millions in damage when he was only 15.

His "TitaniumStresser" code allowed customers (he charged a membership of £250) to disrupt any website they liked, causing immeasurable losses to thousands of individuals, businesses and other organisations.

The need to prevent cyber-attacks is incredibly pressing today.

Government officials this week accused Russia of conducting a Blitzkrieg of attacks, against chemicals weapons watchdogs in the UK, US and Netherlands – allegedly by the Kremlin’s own “Sandworm” hacking unit.

Four Russian men with diplomatic passports were arrested in the Netherlands after an attempted attack on the OPCW laboratories, which are aiding the UK in investigating the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal anf his daughter Yulia.

The team were attempting a “brazen” close-range hack into the facility's systems, and it followed a previous attack against Porton Down – one of the UK’s most secretive military research centres.

Despite mounting evidence, the Kremlin continues to deny any involvement, calling the case a widening of the UK governments “propaganda” campaign against Russia.

But it is just the latest in Mr Putin’s online war – Russia has been blamed for playing a role in the distortion of the Brexit referendum and the US election which saw Donald Trump take the presidency.