Top Stories:
BBC – Britain is bracing itself for rush-hour disruption after heavy snow blanketed much of the country. South-east England has been hit by the heaviest snow for 18 years, causing buses and trains to be cancelled and airports to be closed. Fresh bands of snow are now sweeping across the country. Parts of London could see a foot (30cm) of snow by Monday evening, while the Pennines and other parts of the north could see as much as 20 inches (50cm). The Met Office has issued an extreme weather warning for England, Wales and parts of eastern Scotland.
Times – Lord Mandelson today raised the stakes in the row over foreign workers by declaring that “no laws were broken” by the company which brought over Italian and Portuguese employees. As a new wave of wildcat strikes hit Britain, the Business Secretary appeared to pre-empt the findings of Acas, the conciliation service, which has been asked by government to determine if any laws were broken at the Total refinery in Lincolnshire. The Government’s stance appears to have inflamed workers at energy and construction sites around Britain.
Independent – A protester threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and called him a dictator as he delivered a speech on the global economy in England today. The shoe missed Wen and landed on the stage about a metre away from him during an address at Cambridge University in eastern England, a Reuters witness said. The protest mirrored the hurling of shoes by an Iraqi journalist at U.S. President George W. Bush on his farewell visit to Iraq in December. The protester, who was held by university security guards, blew a whistle and then shouted: “How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator?” Wen hesitated for a few moments in his speech before continuing speaking. University officials bundled the protester out of the building and security guards fanned out across the stage.
ITN – Zimbabwe’s central bank has revalued its dollar again, cutting another 12 zeros off its currency in a bid to tame hyperinflation and avert economic collapse. Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono said: “This Monetary Policy Statement unveils yet another necessary programme of revaluing our local currency, through the removal of 12 zeroes, with immediate effect.” Mr Gono gave no updated inflation figures but said broad money supply growth rose from 81,000 per cent in January to 658 billion per cent in December. The last time inflation was officially recorded in mid-2008 it had soared to 231 million per cent.
Business:
Telegraph – The Government should allow every distressed bank to go bankrupt and set up a fresh banking system under temporary state control rather than cripple the country by propping up a corrupt edifice, according to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. Professor Stiglitz, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told The Daily Telegraph that Britain should let the banks default on their vast foreign operations and start afresh with new set of healthy banks. “The UK has been hit hard because the banks took on enormously large liabilities in foreign currencies. Should the British taxpayers have to lower their standard of living for 20 years to pay off mistakes that benefited a small elite?” he said.
Guardian – The Woolworths brand is to be resurrected as an online store by the Barclay brothers, owners of the Daily Telegraph, who specialise in buying up home delivery retail groups. The sale will rescue the household name which appeared to be heading for an existence only in the pages of history following the store group’s collapse into administration in November with the loss of 30,000 jobs. Woolworths will join the Barclays’ already crowded Shop Direct mail order and online retailing empire, which encompasses Littlewoods as well as several former home delivery divisions of Argos including Kays, Marshall Ward and Great Universal.
Also In The News:
ITN – Gold bullion worth more than £700 million could be lying at the bottom of the English Channel. It has been confirmed that the wreck of legendary British warship HMS Victory, which sank during a storm in 1744, has been located around 330ft under the Channel. More than 1,100 sailors and 50 volunteers lost their lives when the Victory, the predecessor to Lord Nelson’s Victory and the world’s largest and finest warship, went down on October 5, 1744, with Admiral John Balchin at the helm. Florida-based firm Odyssey Marine Exploration located the vessel in May last year, around 60 miles from where it was historically believed to have been lost – near the Channel Islands. Jason Williams, executive producer of JMW Productions, who filmed the discovery, said: “Reports from the time say that the ship was carrying four tonnes of gold, around £400,000 sterling, which it picked up from Lisbon on its way to Gibraltar. “Today this has a bullion value of £125 million, but that is just its raw weight. That means it is worth about $1 billion.”
Express – BABY chimpanzees are smarter than human babies, British researchers revealed yesterday. They found that rejected chimps raised lovingly by human carers are cleverer than the average human baby up to the age of nine months. And they said the findings were a “stark warning” that children needed love as well as physical care or they risked growing up “maladjusted, unhappy and under-achieving”. The study is the first to compare the effects of the way chimp and human babies are raised.
London Paper – THOUSANDS of competitors battled through knee-deep mud and braved bitterly cold conditions today to take part in a race billed as the world’s ultimate test of endurance. Entrants wearing fancy dress and others wearing little clothing at all were among those taking part in the Tough Guy challenge at Perton, south Staffordshire. Those courageous enough to enter the event, which incorporates an Army-style assault course, are advised to undertake “cold water training” beforehand to guard against the threat of hypothermia. Open to individuals and teams, the event is described by its organisers as a “uniquely fear-ridden” test of both body and spirit.
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