Malvern St James Girls' School taught wrong exam book

Educational reporter(wp/bbc):::

Students at a £37,000-a-year independent girls school were taught the wrong text for their exam.

Pupils at Malvern St James Girls' School, in Worcestershire, realised the error while sitting the IGCSE English literature exam on 15 May.

Headmistress Olivera Raraty apologised "wholeheartedly" for the issue, which affected one section of the exam paper.

The exam board said the school could submit a request for special consideration of students' marks.

The Cambridge IGCSE is an international qualification.

According to The Independent, English literature students had been studying Spies by Michael Frayn but there were no exam questions about the book.

Mrs Raraty said: "No girl should be disadvantaged by this. Fortunately, all exam boards have procedures in place to deal with this type of incident and we meet the criteria for 'special consideration'.

"A full internal investigation is under way and we are unable to provide further comment at this time."

A spokesperson for exam board Cambridge International said: "We recognise that this is distressing for the students involved. We have asked the school to follow our procedures for rare situations like this by submitting a request for special consideration on behalf of the students affected."

The organisation's website explains that "special consideration" is a post-exam adjustment made to a candidate's mark to make allowances for adverse circumstances.

The school is rated "excellent" by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, and The Good Schools Guide described students as "in the main pretty well-heeled".

Former GP Alan Tutin jailed over patient sex assaults

Pic-Alan Tutin groped his patients during at Merrow Park Practice in Guildford/bbc

Crime reporter(wp/bbc):::

A former GP has been jailed for 10-and-a-half years for sexually assaulting women and girls, one aged just 12, over a 24-year period.

Alan Tutin, 71, assaulted patients at a Guildford surgery after they went to him with minor ailments including a sore throat and a mole.

Jurors heard Tutin, of Matfield, Kent, asked one to undress so he could take her blood pressure but then groped her.

He was convicted of 15 counts of sexual assault at the Old Bailey in December.

Jailing him, Judge Nigel Peters QC, said: "There cannot be a more serious abuse of trust that these courts have to deal with than that of a doctor and a patient.

"You violated the faith your patients had in you. You carried out wholly unnecessary procedures and examinations, no doubt to fuel your own sexual gratification."

'Like Benny Hill'

Father-of-four Tutin carried out unnecessary breast and internal examinations on patients at the Merrow Park Practice, where his wife was also a GP, between 1980 and 2004.

Jurors heard one woman describe how he touched her breasts in a "Benny Hill way", fondling them "as though he was feeling a couple of melons".

Prosecutor Sally O'Neill QC told the court that at the time of the offences, there was a culture of "doctor knows best" and a "general disinclination to complain or make a fuss".

Complaints about Tutin were made in 1999 and two trials were held, but neither led to any "adverse findings", the Old Bailey heard.

Investigations by police and the General Medical Council followed and Tutin was given a warning in 2003 before he stopped practising the following year.

He was arrested in 2006, but there was no prosecution until the criminal investigation reopened in 2013.

Teenage girls

Tutin had been accused of molesting 25 female patients, including a child who was nine.

In December, jurors convicted him of 15 offences against 15 women, some of whom were teenagers at the time, but cleared him of eight other offences.

The jury was discharged after they could not decide on a further five counts of indecent assault, including charges relating to the nine-year-old girl.

A retrial was held at Blackfriars Crown Court on three charges, but Tutin was cleared on Tuesday.

Representing the disgraced doctor, Louise Sweet QC said: "Prison is hard for a man of no experience, let alone a man of his years."

An NSPCC spokesman said: "Tutin's patients went to him in good faith, seeking his wisdom and reassurance.

"Instead he used his position for his own depravity over two decades, targeting vulnerable women and young girls."

Det Ch Insp Richard Haycock, of Surrey Police, said Tutin abused his position to assault his patients: "This was a gross breach of the trust that they placed in him."

UK white supremacist jailed for plot to kill female MP

Crime reporter(wp/reuters):::

A British far-right extremist who planned to murder a female Member of Parliament with a sword was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday.

Jack Renshaw, who had admitted being a member of racist group National Action until it was banned as a terrorist organisation, will have to serve at least 20 years in prison.

National Action was outlawed in 2016 after it praised the murder that year of Jo Cox, a female opposition Labour lawmaker, in a frenzied street attack by a Nazi-obsessed loner, the first far-right group to be outlawed in Britain since World War Two.

Renshaw’s target was another Labour lawmaker, Rosie Cooper, 68, London’s Old Bailey court heard.

Prosecutors said he planned the murder as a blow against a “Jewish-controlled state” oppressing the white community. He saw Cooper as a traitor who deserved to die as she represented a false democracy.

He had bought a sword that the online seller had described as “19 inches of unprecedented piercing and slashing power at a bargain price”.

Renshaw, 23, had admitted planning to commit a terrorist act and to making threats to kill a police officer who had been investigating him for an unrelated matter.

Before sentencing him, the judge heard how Renshaw was serving a three year prison term for stirring up racial hatred in two anti-Semitic speeches in 2016.

“Jack Renshaw was prepared to act on his white supremacist world view and plotted to kill a Member of Parliament (MP) – a plan reminiscent of the abhorrent murder of Jo Cox,” said Jenny Hopkins of the Crown Prosecution Service.

“A crime of this type against anyone is a serious matter but when our MPs are targeted it is also an attack on the democratic process and public service.”

Cooper said in a statement: “My deepest wish is that this case is the last occasion when any public servant, any politician, has their life threatened for simply doing their job.

“I believe today justice has been served. Not for me personally, but for every MP and public servant, and for our democratic way of life which affords us the privilege of free speech, without fear of violent retribution.”

At another trial last year, Renshaw was also given a 16-month prison sentence for child sex offences.

Brexit talks collapse as May's premiership crumbles

Political reporter(wp/reuters):::
Britain’s tumultuous divorce from the European Union was again in disarray on Friday after the opposition Labour Party declared last-ditch talks dead due to Prime Minister Theresa May’s crumbling government.

Nearly three years after the United Kingdom voted 52% to 48% in a referendum to leave the EU, it remains unclear how, when or even if it will leave the European club it joined in 1973. The current deadline to leave is Oct. 31.

Brexit talks between May’s Conservative Party and Labour collapsed hours after May agreed on Thursday to set out in early June a timetable for her departure.

'Queen's bones' found in Winchester Cathedral royal chests

Royal correspondent(wp/bbc):::

Bones held in mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral could include those of an early English Queen, researchers have found.

The contents of six chests have been analysed and radiocarbon-dated.

University of Bristol biological anthropologists found they contained the remains of at least 23 individuals - several more than originally thought.

One is believed to be that of Queen Emma who was married to kings of England, Ethelred and Cnut.

Although the chests, originally placed near the high altar, had inscriptions stating who was supposed to be within them, it was known the names bore no relation to the actual contents.

The contents had become mixed when the cathedral was ransacked and the bones were scattered by Roundhead soldiers during the English Civil War in 1642.

They were repacked by locals so it was not known whose remains were replaced, or if they were the same bones.

Queen Emma

• Born in the 980s, the daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy
• Married two kings - Æthelred the Unready (reigned 1002-1016) and Cnut the Great (reigned 1017-1035)
• Had children including two kings - King Harthacnut (reigned 1040-1042) and Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042-1066)
• A key political figure in her own right, she gave the dukes of Normandy a hereditary claim to the English throne, leading to the Norman Conquest in 1066
• Described in a Latin inscription on a mortuary chest as the "mother and wife of the kings of the English"
• A research project began in 2012 and has dated the contents of the chests to late Anglo-Saxon and early Norman periods.
  More than 1,300 bones were reassembled and analysing the sex, age and physical characteristics led researchers to conclude that a mature female's remains could be those of Emma of Normandy. Her bones were found dispersed in several of the chests.
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  • Roman coin hoard 'is largest British find'
  Further DNA analysis is being carried out to confirm the royal identity.
  It had originally been thought that the remains of between 12 and 15 high status individuals were held in the chests, however, the research revealed the partial remains of at least 23 people.
• There was also an unexpected find of the skeletons of two boys aged between 10 and 15.
  Prof Kate Robson Brown said they were "almost certainly of royal blood".
  "We cannot be certain of the identity of each individual yet, but we are certain that this is a very special assemblage of bones," she said.
  The findings, as well as the bones of Queen Emma, form part of a major Kings and Scribes: The Birth of a Nation exhibition which opens later this month.

Emma Day: Murdered woman told child support of threats from ex

Pic--Emma Day was murdered by her former partner, who had waited outside the school gates for her/bbc

Crime reporter(wp/bbc):::

The family of a woman killed by her ex have criticised the "blasé" attitude of the child maintenance service after she had told it of his violent threats.

Emma Day, 33, was murdered by Mark Morris as she walked home from school in south London in May 2017 after they argued about childcare payments.

A review into her death said the management of her case was "inadequate" and found wider "systemic issues".

Her sister, Lorna McNamara, now wants a full inquest into Ms Day's death.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it would consider the report's recommendations.

Ms Day and Morris had a child together during their eight-year "on-off" relationship before separating in March 2016.

While making a child maintenance claim in November 2016, Ms Day disclosed a history of domestic violence, which had been reported to the police, a domestic homicide review said.

Two days later she rang the service again to cancel the claim after Morris met her outside her work at King's College Hospital, followed her on to the bus and made violent threats.

Mrs McNamara said: "They [child maintenance] didn't really do anything - they just went 'OK we'll cancel your claim', even though Emma told them why she did so. They were just very blasé about it."

The service then informed him of the cancellation and the pair are believed to have had no contact through the festive period.

Ms Day made a further incomplete claim in January 2017, and when asked by the service on 16 May why it had not been finished, she told them Morris threatened her.

Nine days after that call Morris waited for Ms Day with a knife outside the gates of their child's school in West Norwood before stabbing her to death after they argued over payments.

He was jailed for life after admitting murder at the Old Bailey, when the court was told he had repeatedly threatened to kill Ms Day if she did not cancel the £2,000-a-year child maintenance claim, texting her: "I'll go to prison before you get a penny from me."

As a result of its findings, the report's authors asked the DWP to urgently commission an independent review into the child maintenance service's policy around domestic violence.

It also asked the service to set up a "robust domestic violence training programme".

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Mrs McNamara has begun a crowdfunding campaign for an inquest, because "I don't want this to happen to another family".

A DWP spokeswoman said: "Our thoughts are with Ms Day's friends and family.

"The child maintenance service takes the safety of its clients seriously and we will consider the recommendations of this report.

"There are processes and training in place to mitigate risks to people in cases of domestic violence, and we continually review and improve these processes."

Lloyds Bank to pay quarterly dividends

Banking&Finance Reporter(wp/reuters):::

Britain’s biggest domestic lender Lloyds Banking Group said on Thursday it would pay dividends quarterly from the first quarter of 2020, in a move aimed at distributing income to its 2.4 million shareholders more regularly and efficiently.

The new approach will see the lender adopt three equal interim ordinary dividend payments for first three quarters of year followed by, subject to performance, a larger final dividend in the fourth quarter, the bank said in a statement. It currently pays out dividends twice a year.

Lloyds is one of Britain’s biggest dividend payers and distributed around 4 billion pounds to investors in 2018.

It paid a total ordinary dividend of 3.21 pence per share in 2018, up 5% on the payout for 2017 and intends to return 1.75 billion pounds to shareholders through a share buy-back this year.

The changes to its dividend policy will not impact the current buyback programme or any future decisions to buyback shares, Lloyds said.

Just 11 firms in the FTSE 100 paid quarterly dividends in 2018, including HSBC, Unilever, BP, GlaxoSmithKline, British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, Land Securities and British Land.