Wandsworth Mother Admits Killing Children

A mother suffering from post-natal depression has admitted killing her two young children at the family home.

Felicia Boots wept at the Old Bailey as she pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Mason, nine weeks, and Lily, 14 months, on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Boots told the court she killed the children at their house in Wandsworth, south-west London, in May and said she was "eternally sorry".

The 35-year-old, who wore a black suit and white blouse, sent a note to the court which was read by her counsel Kate Bex.

It said: "May 9, 2012, is a day I will be eternally sorry for. It should never have happened. It troubles me more than anyone will ever know.

"Part of me will always be missing. I am a good person. I am a good mum and I never meant any of this to happen. I am truly sorry."

The children's bodies were found by their father, Jeff, an investment banker. Details of their injuries were not given in court, apart from to say they had been asphyxiated.

The Old Bailey heard Boots had suffered post-natal depression after the births of both children but had appeared to be getting better.

She was prescribed antidepressants but had not been taking them after becoming convinced the babies would be taken away from her because of the effects of the drugs on her breast milk.

The couple, who married in 2007 and came to the UK from Canada, had just moved house and were still unpacking when the children died.

"They were a happy family and they were comfortably well-off," Edward Brown QC, prosecuting, said.

On May 9, Mr Boots had gone to work as normal and was sent a picture of Lily by his wife but when he arrived home the house was in darkness.

He found his wife on the stairs, hugging herself and curled up, the court heard.

Mr Brown said: "Mr Boots ran past her and found their two children lying lifeless on the floor of a walk-in cupboard off the main bedroom.

"He very soon returned, very distressed, to his wife. On questioning, she told him she had killed the children at 2pm. She also said she had tried to kill herself."

The court heard that Mr Boots was supporting his wife.

He said: "This plainly is a tragic case. There were signs Mrs Boots had made an attempt on her own life. She had marks to her neck."

Boots was ordered to be detained at a psychiatric unit and the court was told she would be given full support and care if she became pregnant again.

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Superfast 4G Launched In 10 Cities Across UK

Superfast 4G broadband is made available to millions of consumers in 10 UK cities today, heralding a new era for mobile phone use.

The network EE, which owns Orange and T-Mobile, is launching its range of 4G products and services in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester.

Formerly known as Everything Everywhere, the company is offering speeds up to five times faster than 3G.

The service will be available on the Apple iPhone 5 and devices from HTC, Samsung, Nokia and Huawei.

It comes as EE's 4G pricing plans faces heavy criticism, with additional charges for customers on certain tariffs if they exceed download allowances.

Long queues are expected at shops across the country as consumers rush to sign up to the new service and get their hands on a 4G device.

EE is the sole UK provider of 4G until next year

EE customers in six more cities - Belfast, Derby, Hull, Newcastle, Nottingham and Southampton - will have access to 4G by the end of the year.

The group then plans to roll out the service to further towns, cities and rural areas next year, with population coverage of 70% and rising to 98% in 2014.

Rival operators including Vodafone, O2 owner Telefonica and Three will be able to launch their own 4G services and products from next spring.

The companies had threatened legal action against communications regulator Ofcom over its 4G auction process, which has allowed EE to be the sole UK provider of the superfast services until next year.

Vodafone launched a "4G phone promise" last week, offering customers the chance to bring an eligible phone into any store and have 70% knocked off their remaining contract in exchange for taking on a 4G device.

The services will allow uninterrupted access to the web on the go, high definition films to be downloaded in minutes and television to be streamed without buffering.

The cheapest EE tariff offers just 500MB worth of downloads costing £36 per month. Customers who want to download more than their allowance will be forced to pay extra.

The top EE tariff for standard customers will cost £56 per month with a data allowance of 8GB.

An hour of streaming live TV, for example on Sky Go, can use up to 225MB - half the basic tariff's data allowance.

Technology expert Kate Bevan said: "I don't think we know quite how much data we use, going about using the day to day internet.

"When you're on the base package of 500MB that's a couple of episodes of EastEnders and you will chew through that fairly quickly.

"Also, you are going to be locked into them for two years, these are 24-month contracts."

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Royal Mail Delivers 1,000 New Parcel Jobs

Royal Mail is to create 1,000 new jobs as it looks to cash in on the boom in online retailing.

Royal Mail is planning a £75m investment programme in its UK express parcels business as packages become increasingly important to the company with letter numbers continuing to fall.

In the last reported financial year, its parcels businesses accounted for almost half of the group's revenues, excluding the Post Office, and online retailing is expected to continue to grow as stores place a greater emphasis in online sales.

High rents, other cost pressures and low consumer confidence have combined to hurt the high street since the financial crisis, prompting many retailers to invest heavily in online.

As a result, Royal Mail is to open a new parcel processing centre in Chorley, Lancashire next year.

In addition two new depots will be opened in Cornwall and Hampshire with a further nine existing depots expanded or moved to larger sites over the next four years.

Royal Mail Group's chief executive Moya Greene said: "Our investment is part of Royal Mail Group's strategy to grow its parcels businesses in the UK and overseas.

"Our strategy is to convert the rise in parcel volumes into profitable growth. That means becoming a much more customer-focused company being run on commercial lines and investing in new, vital technology."

The move has been welcomed by the Government.

Mark Hoban, minister for employment, said: "It is great news that 1,000 new jobs will be created across the country as a result of this investment.

"We've now got a record number of people in employment and these jobs will provide welcome opportunities for people who are looking for work."

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Scotland Yard Scrapped As Met Makes Cuts

The Metropolitan Police are planning to move from Scotland Yard in a bid to save millions of pounds a year.

Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey told the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime that the forces could save around £6.5m a year by moving to a smaller office.

The decision comes as the police force looks to make cuts of more than £500m.

Five police stations in London will also be scrapped as part of the cuts: South Norwood, Richmond, Highbury Vale, Walthamstow and Willesden Green.

The number of senior police officers will also fall - but Met bosses stressed that there will still be around 25,000 constables in the capital.

Mr Mackey said the New Scotland Yard building in Westminster's Victoria Street needed £50m worth of refurbishment, but would become an "expensive luxury" as the force made the staff cuts.

"It's an expensive building to run and it's an expensive building to maintain and as we go through this change programme, it's going to have space in it that we don't need. In central London that's an expensive luxury."

The building has been used by the Met since 1967 but costs around £11m per year to run.

The Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation John Tully described the sale as like losing the Crown Jewels.

"An iconic building like New Scotland Yard is going to bite the dust," he said. "The Mayor needs to look at his own office. He sits in a brand new building on the South Bank - why doesn't he sell that to save money?

"Thousands of people work at New Scotland Yard and it seems to me that there will be a lot of incremental costs to relocate people."

Some 61 police counter services - smaller desk operations - will also be shut.

Assistant Commissioner for territorial policing Simon Byrne said: "Going forward with the financial pressures we face, it can't make economic sense to keep a building open on the off-chance that someone might pop in a couple of times per week.

Mr Byrne told City Hall that the force could look at co-locating with the fire service and local authorities, as well as manning "pop-up" desks in supermarkets.

Once a move is approved, the force is expected to vacate Scotland Yard within two years.

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Breast Cancer: Thousands Are Over-Diagnosed

By Thomas Moore, Health and Science Correspondent

Almost 4,000 women a year are having treatment for breast cancer they don't need, according to new research.

An independent panel of doctors called in to assess the UK's breast screening programmes found some women are diagnosed with tumours that would never cause them any problems in their natural life span.

But the doctors say screening also prevents more than 1,300 deaths a year, underlining the benefits of regular mammograms.

Cancer Research UK, which took part in the review, strongly recommends women turn up for screening.

The charity's chief executive Dr Harpal Kumar said: "Screening remains one of the best ways to spot the very early signs of breast cancer, at a stage when treatment is most likely to be successful."

The review was ordered after European researchers had warned that screening may do more harm than good.

The independent panel trawled through 11 studies involving thousands of women, in the hope of settling the controversy.

According to results published in The Lancet medical journal, for every cancer death prevented three women will be over-diagnosed and may have surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy as a result.

National cancer director Professor Sir Mike Richards said leaflets explaining breast screening will be rewritten within four months to reflect the new information.

"We have always said that there are some cancers that can be found that would not have caused problems in a woman's lifetime,"  he said.

"What we can now do is put a number on that, to give an estimate.

"Women can make their individual choices based on good information."

But Dr Deborah Cunningham, clinical director of breast services at Charing Cross Hospital in London, warned that some women could be put off screening.

She told Sky News: "They already have difficult choices to make. This complicates it further. Screening won't work if they don't turn up."

Beverley Angell was diagnosed with breast cancer after a routine screening appointment earlier this summer. She has no doubt that the programme is worthwhile.

"I could not feel the lump and I did not know it was there. It has saved my life."

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Planned Child Benefit Cuts 'Break EU Laws'

Cutting child benefit for middle-class parents breaks European laws and could be challenged in court, ministers have been told.

In the week that 1.2m letters outlining cuts to Child Benefit are sent out, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) has revealed it wrote to ministers earlier in the year warning that European citizens working in Britain will not necessarily have their payments reduced, making the new rules "discriminatory".

The letter described the change in rules as "seriously flawed in principle and in practice" and says it "could be an operational and reputational disaster for the Government and HMRC".

From January next year, Child Benefit will be withdrawn gradually from families where one parent or partner earns more than £50,000 and withdrawn entirely from those where someone earns more than £60,000 a year.

The ICAEW claims that British families who lose out could challenge the Government because they would be at a disadvantage over some EU citizens working in Britain who would continue to receive benefits from their own country – under separate social security systems.

"Two UK-resident high earners working in the same grade of job for the same employer may therefore have different tax liabilities because one is a migrant worker and one is not. This is fundamentally incompatible with the UK's EC Treaty obligations," said the accountancy body.

HM Revenue and Customs has insisted the new rules for British citizens comply with EU laws.

Meanwhile, a think-tank has warned that government reforms intended to encourage job claimants to find work could in fact leave many households worse off.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) questioned whether computer systems at the Department for Work and Pensions would be able to cope with the introduction of the new universal credit, which is due to replace a raft of out-of-work benefits from October 2013.

It warned that the overall effect of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith's benefit changes would be to add to the complexity of a benefits system which they were supposed to simplify.

The DWP maintained that Universal Credit "will help millions of people by making them better off in work than on benefits".

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UBS 'Rogue Trader': We Were Pushed to Limit

Alleged rogue trader Kweku Adoboli who is accused of gambling away £1.4bn has given jurors his account of how the losses unfolded.

The 32-year-old denies committing Britain's biggest ever fraud while working for Swiss bank UBS during the global financial crisis.

He said he "lost control in the maelstrom of the financial crisis."

He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and four counts of false accounting between October 2008 and last September relating to a so-called "umbrella" fund for off-book trades.

Southwark Crown Court heard the fund was doing well until he changed from a conservative "bearish" position to an aggressive "bullish" stance - under pressure from senior managers, Mr Adoboli said.

Describing the moment when he began to make serious losses as European markets crashed in July last year, he said: "The real problem was a result of the pressure to flip my position from short to long, this broke my control.

"I absolutely lost control, I was no longer in control of the decisions around the trades we were doing."

The court  has already heard how Adoboli worked for UBS's global synthetic equities division, buying and selling exchange traded funds (ETFs), which track different types of stocks, bonds or commodities such as metals.

He claims senior managers were fully aware of what he was doing and encouraged him to push the boundaries to make profits for the bank.

Yassine Bouhara, former co-head of equities at UBS, allegedly told Adoboli in an email: "You don't know what your limits are until you push the boundary so far that you receive a slap on the back of the wrist."

Answering questions by his defence barrister Paul Garlick QC, Ghanaian-born Adoboli said: "There were no secrets, there was no hiding, there was no holding back.

"We were told to go for it, we went for it. We were told to push the boundaries, so we pushed the boundaries. We were told you wouldn't know where the limit of the boundary was until you got a slap on the back of the wrist. We found that boundary, we found the edge, we fell off and I got arrested."

He also claimed that an alleged email to colleagues from a more senior trader, mocking his bearish position, contributed to his more aggressive approach.

"Everyone was laughing about it," he said.

Mr Garlick asked: "If you had remained bearish would any losses have followed from your trades?"

Adoboli replied: "If I had held on for one more day, just one more day, if I had just held on, those losses would never have happened."

The trial continues.

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Two British Gurkha Soldiers Killed In Afghanistan

Two soldiers serving with 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles have been killed in Afghanistan.

The soldiers were shot and killed by a man wearing an Afghan police uniform at a checkpoint in the Nahr-e-Saraj district of Helmand Province.

Major Laurence Roche, the spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: "The loss of these soldiers is a huge blow to The Royal Gurkha Rifles and everyone serving in Task Force Helmand. 

"Our thoughts are with their families, friends and fellow Gurkhas at this time."

Next of kin have been informed.

The Ministry of Defence say there have been a total of nine UK deaths attributed to so-called "green on blue" or "insider attacks this year."

The latest two deaths are now under investigation.

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UBS Cuts Thousands Of UK Jobs Amid Restructuring

UBS has confirmed it is cutting 10,000 jobs as it looks to drastically shrink its ailing investment bank which has a large presence in London.

Switzerland's biggest bank announced the plans as part of its third-quarter results which revealed a loss of 2.2 billion Swiss francs (£1.43bn) compared to a profit of 1.02 billion (£0.67bn) in the same period last year.

It said the result for the July-September period was damaged by a one-off charge of 3.1 billion Swiss francs (£2bn) linked to the restructuring of its investment banking division and a debt-related charge of 863 million (£574m).

Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said the investment unit, which has been hit by a series of costly blunders in recent years, would "continue to be a significant global player in its core businesses" but there would be "a significant acceleration" in its transformation.

The move will see the lender and wealth manager focus on its private bank and a smaller investment bank, ditching much of the trading business that cost it $50bn (£30bn) in the financial crisis and which had been "rendered uneconomical by changes in regulation and market developments".

UBS wants to concentrate on its traditional strengths in advisory, research, equities, foreign exchange and precious metals.

Of the total job cuts, which represent 15% of the workforce, 2,500 positions would be lost in Switzerland while the rest would be felt in the UK and US.

A UBS source told Sky News there was currently no confirmed figure for UK losses but said it would be fair to assume it would be around two thousand.

Dozens of traders in the City were told to go home this morning.

Mr Ermotti said: "This decision has been a difficult one, particularly in a business such as ours that is all about its people.

"Some reductions will result from natural attrition and we will take whatever measures we can to mitigate the overall effect.

"Throughout the process we will ensure that our people will be supported and treated with care."

UBS shares were trading 6% higher in early trading in Zurich as investors welcomed the transformation plan.

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Missing Pierre Barnes: Father Fears The Worst

By Paul Harrison, Sky correspondent, in Porquerolles

The father of a boy who went missing on a French island has told Sky News he fears he will not be found alive.

In his first British television interview, Stephen Barnes said he did not believe his son Pierre, 12, had been abducted.

Mr Barnes spoke about his "strong little boy" in the past tense as search and rescue teams scoured the island of Porquerolles for the missing youngster.

He said: "Having spoken to the police, in their mind the abduction possibility is just something they have to do in order to show they've looked at all options.

"Quite frankly if you're going to abduct someone you don't come to an island to do it, it's the worst possible place to abduct someone, nor do you go out in the teeth of a storm to try and abduct, it just doesn't make sense.

"Everyone believes, and I don't think there's much doubt, [that] the bike broke down, that he panicked, that he tried to make his way back.

A helicopter taking part in the search for the British boy

"Probably he got disorientated and probably also he tried to take a short cut and found he lost the tracks which would be difficult to see in the dark."

The Barnes family arrived on the small Mediterranean island on Saturday.

A couple of hours later, Pierre went for a short bike ride as a severe storm approached and which then hampered the search.

"He would have been very frightened, he would have panicked - as you know he dropped a shoe and didn't bother to collect it, but he's a strong little boy, tough, and I don't think he would have given up lightly," said Mr Barnes.

"He would have walked and walked and walked until eventually he was so tired that he would have found somewhere out of the wind. I'm certain his body is there."

As he spoke to Sky News, a police search team was checking in and around a small lake a few hundred metres from the apartment the Barnes family had rented for seven nights.

Mr Barnes added: "We as a family just need to come to terms with what it means and hopefully to be able to rejoice, if this is what it comes down to, in the 12 years of happy life that he had because he was such a - I think I have to start to talk in the past tense - happy boy, a little bundle of joy.

"He was not always well behaved, a tiny bit of a geek, a Doctor Who fanatic. He brought to us tremendous joy because of his curiosity and his quaint ways. His own life was a good one too.

"We're in no different a position to any other family that may be about to have to conclude that they have lost a child."

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