Top Stories:
BBC – The financial brutality of 2008 has been confirmed after the FTSE 100 index recorded its biggest annual decline since its inception in 1984. Britain’s main share index ended 2008 trading down 31.3% compared with a year earlier. With trading closing at 1230 GMT, the FTSE finished 2008 at 4,434 points. A year ago it closed at 6,457. The FTSE indexes, including the FTSE 250, are the benchmark for investors, including institutional funds.
Independent – Israel today said the time was not right for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and stepped up preparations for a possible ground offensive after Hamas’s long-range rockets hit another major population centre. “If conditions will ripen and we think there will be a diplomatic solution that will ensure a better security reality in the south, we will consider it. But at the moment, it’s not there,” an aide quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as saying.
ITN – A planned communications database containing details of everybody’s telephone calls, emails and internet use could be run by a private firm, according to reports. The option to tender out the management of the controversial database will be included in a consultation paper to be published next month. The database is designed to help police and the Security Service by ensuring they have access to vital communications information which may not by saved by telephone or internet providers. The plans have already come under fire from civil liberties campaigners and leading critic, the former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken McDonald, has dismissed the notion that additional legal assurances would ensure the information is not misused. He said: “All history tells us that reassurances like these are worthless in the long run. In the first security crisis the locks would loosen.”
Guardian – Campaigners for the elderly have called a 75p rise in the personal allowance of care home residents “Scrooge-worthy” and “insulting”. Care home residents whose accommodation, food and nursing fees are paid by the state will have £21.90 a week from next April to pay for essentials such as clothing, shoes, transport and toiletries from April. However, the Department of Health defended the move, saying the Personal Expenses Allowance (PEA) was being increased in line with changes to all other state benefits. Care home residents must contribute to the cost of their care, usually through savings or pensions, and are entitled to keep the PEA from their own money to pay for the rest of their needs. Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern, said the 75p increase was “barely enough to buy a packet of biscuits, let alone any seasonal treats”. “It’s an insult to the vulnerable care home residents who rely on it and it is humiliating for them to have to go with a begging bowl to family or friends just to buy essentials,” he said. “Ministers should be ashamed of themselves for reneging on their promises to Parliament and for burying the bad news over the festive season.”
Business:
Times – Henry Kaufman, the Wall Street economist known as Dr Doom, and Kevin Bacon, the Hollywood actor, have emerged as the latest victims of Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Mr Kaufman, a prominent economist who came to be regarded as a financial oracle, has lost several million dollars through a brokerage account which he held with Bernard L. Madoff Securities for more than five years, he told the Wall Street Journal. He told the Journal that his loss through Madoff was “no more than a couple per cent of my entire net worth” and “immaterial to my financial wellbeing”. It has also emerged that Kevin Bacon, the actor who recently appeared in Frost/Nixon, and his wife Kyra Sedgwick, an actress, were investors with Mr Madoff.
STV – Straitened Swiss bank UBS AG said on Wednesday it had sold its stake in Bank of China at a discount to institutional investors and would book a gain of a “few hundred million dollars” in the fourth quarter. UBS is struggling to repair its balance sheet after massive investments into risky U.S. assets forced it to make nearly $49 billion (33.7 billion pounds) of writedowns, more than any other European bank.
Also In The News:
Sky – Britain’s sporting heroes have dominated the New Year Honours List with Olympic cycling champion Chris Hoy and racing driver Lewis Hamilton topping the bill. Hoy’s knighthood caps an extraordinary year for the 32-year-old cyclist. This summer he became the first British athlete for 100 years to clinch three gold medals at the same Olympic Games, winning the team sprint, Keirin and match sprint. Hamilton, who receives an MBE, was the first Briton to take the F1 championship since Damon Hill in 1996. And double gold medallist Paralympian swimmer Eleanor Simmonds, 14, becomes the youngest ever person to be given an honour, winning an OBE.
Evening Standard – Revellers will have an extra second to enjoy the New Year celebrations. Drunken partygoers may not notice but, thanks to the Earth’s erratic rotation, the countdown to 2009 will last a moment longer. British physicists and official timekeepers around the world will insert a “leap second” to bring the most accurate atomic clocks in line with the astronomical day. London’s Big Ben, whose bongs bring in the new year across the UK, will be adjusted while the BBC adds an extra “pip” to mark the delayed start to the year. Peter Whibberley, a senior research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington which is helping to coordinate the update, said: “The difference between atomic time and Earth time has now built up to the point where it needs to be corrected, so this New Year’s Eve we will experience a rare 61-second minute at the very end of 2008 and revellers all over the UK will have an extra second to celebrate.”
Sun – Pictured: Black and white twins Hayleigh and Lauren Durrant proudly hold their new sisters Leah and Miya — who incredibly are ALSO twins with different coloured skin. Their mixed-race parents Dean Durrant and Alison Spooner repeated the two-tone miracle after a seven-year gap.
Telegraph – An army sergeant has set a world record by sitting on 40,040 seats in 48 hours. Terry Twining, who is a member of the Adjutant General’s Corps and has been in the Army for 18 years, averaged one seat every four seconds at Belgium’s King Baudouin national football stadium, raising more than £4,000 for charity. Sergeant Twining, who lives with his family in Gosport, Hants, completed the challenge just weeks after a triple hernia operation and beat the previous record by 790. He said: “It’s brilliant that I’ve broken the record but my legs are killing me. “It was hard work but such a relief when it was finally over, and the money is going to a great cause, which is very close to my heart. “I knew that sitting in all those seats would be an extreme challenge – that’s why I decided to do it and I’m just overjoyed that I managed it.” The previous record of 39,250 seats was set at the Rose Bowl stadium in California, USA, in 2007.
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