She said she did not know that her husband kept a large amount of ready cash at their home and refused to name his friends. “I don’t want to get innocent people involved in this case, the police will make their lives a misery as well,” she said.Earlier yesterday, a defence witness told the jury that MrCameron was aggressive and had a fiery temper. Sean Johnson also said that when he questioned Mr Cameron’s fiancée, Danielle Cable, about a newspaper account that Mr Noye had carried out an unprovoked attack on Mr Cameron, she said: “What do you expect me to say?”But Mr Johnson, a former partner of Ms Cable’s aunt, Michelle Cable, admitted under cross-examination he was a convicted armed robber, had been involved in drug running with the former Great Train Robber Gordon Goody and had his hotel bill paid by Mr Noye’s son, Kevin. Asked by Mr Bevan when he had last seen Kevin Noye, Mr Johnson replied: “Last night.”Mr Johnson was sentenced to three and a half years at a young offenders’ institution after admitting robbing a post office in 1993. He said he had met Kevin Noye, who was seeking information to help his father, while on holiday in Spain.The trial continues.. Drinkers who become violent will be banned from pubs for life and police given the power to close down rowdy premises instantly under wholesale changes to Britain’s licensing laws. Drinkers who become violent will be banned from pubs for life and police given the power to close down rowdy premises instantly under wholesale changes to Britain’s licensing laws.
The tough new sanctions were unveiled by the Government yesterday as it announced plans to allow pubs and shops to sell alcohol 24 hours a day, seven days a week in appropriate areas.
The long-awaited White Paper on licensing called for the abolition of current restrictions on opening hours and proposes a new system to covering pubs, clubs, off-licences, cafés, theatres and cinemas.In a Commons statement, Jack Straw said he wanted pubs to stagger closing times to prevent the “binge drinking” that was the trigger for most city-centre violence after 11pm. To compensate for the more liberal regime, local residents will be strongly protected and there will be a clampdown on under-age drinking.Police will have new powers to order immediate closure of rowdy premises and to shut down pubs and clubs in a “geographical area” in town centres for 24 hours if worried about disorder. Anyone convicted of violent behaviour in pubs could be banned for life from all licensed premises, a huge increase from the current two-year maximum ban.To tackle football hooliganism, a loophole allowing the sale of alcohol on trains will be closed to ensure drink-free travel on match days. Off-licences near football grounds can closed down for the first time. A new offence of buying alcohol for someone under 18 will be created and anomalies allowing children as young as five to consume drinks in pub gardens will be scrapped.The Home Secretary said some aspects of the law had barely changed for a century and had to be changed to give greater freedom for drinkers while improving public order.
“Fixed closing times encourage binge drinking around last orders. The result is lots of people hitting the streets, and sometimes each other, at the same time,” he said.Under the new system, to be operated by local authorities rather than magistrates, all licensed premises will be able to apply to sell alcohol round the clock. However, licensing authorities will have to assess the impact on local residents and will be able to impose conditions such as soundproofing, CCTV or registered door staff. The paper also proposes allowing Welsh districts to ban alcohol sales on Sundays. Other new measures include licences for all outlets serving food between 11pm and 5am, including burger bars and cafés.About 78,000 pubs and bars and 45,000 shops and supermarkets nationwide will be affected by the plans, which the Government said will save the drinks industry £1.9bn over 10 years in reduced red tape costs.Both the drinks industry and police chiefs welcomed the reforms, emphasising the need to cut the law and order problems associated with closing time. Rob Taylor, the Assistant Chief Constable of Manchester and the Association of Chief Police Officers’ spokesman on licensing, said: “We support the removal of the rigid permitted hours which are so clearly linked to peaks of crime and disorder.”.
Three children were killed when they stepped on a land mine in Sarajevo, say police. Three children were killed when they stepped on a land mine in Sarajevo, say police.
Ema Alic, 11, Goran Biscevic, 12, and Haris Balicevac, 12, died on Monday in a minefield encircling the capital and left from the Bosnian war.”Nobody could help them in that moment because they were in the middle of the minefield,” said Sarajevo police spokesman Adnan Kosovac.According to eyewitnesses at least one of the victims, a girl, was still alive after the explosion. She was screaming for help but nobody could approach her because of the danger of other live mines in the field. Six hours passed by the time a path to them was de-mined, and by then all three were dead.Millions of land mines are strewn across Bosnia as a result of the 1992-1995 war. Mine explosions kill and injure dozens of people every month, and minefields render stretches of land along the former front line unusable.. Christian Democrats sought to exorcise the ghosts of their scandalous past yesterday, relaunching Germany’s biggest opposition party under the leadership of the “Iron Maiden”.
Christian Democrats sought to exorcise the ghosts of their scandalous past yesterday, relaunching Germany’s biggest opposition party under the leadership of the “Iron Maiden”.
After so many months of bitter infighting, described by the outgoing chairman as “criminal intrigues”, the election was in the end an anticlimax. Angela Merkel, the 45-year-old physicist from the East, was the only candidate to carry on where her predecessors Wolfgang Schäuble and Helmut Kohl had failed.”Our party is intact,” Ms Merkel declared after her landslide victory “We are back.”Back where, though, she would not say. The spin-doctors had been hard at work papering over the cracks between two fundamentally opposing ideologies, not to mention the division between Kohl loyalists and opponents. For the first time since 1951, Mr Kohl gave this party conference a miss.However, his absence could not conceal the rifts.Some speakers, including Ms Merkel, sought to bury their former chancellor by praising him. Others, such as Mr Schäuble, the last victim of those “criminal intrigues”, would not even mention his name, andrefused to join in the applause when the Kohl platitudes rolled.Ms Merkel is the most liberal leader the CDU has had, the new general secretary, Ruprecht Polenz, is of a similar ilk, whereas the leader of the parliamentary group, Friedrich Merz, is as far to the right as one can find in mainstream politics anywhere outside Bavaria.Ms Merkel’s hour-long speech was thus a tightrope act, seeking to dispel some of the lingering suspicions about her. She spoke about the need to protect human embryos, and remained silent about her well-known liberal views on abortion.She beat the patriotic drum and also paid tribute to the Catholic values of her party, despite being the daughter of a Lutheran pastor.The self-denial reached fever pitch when she lashed out at plans by Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, to bring in computer specialists from Asia and Eastern Europe.In the coming regionalelections in North RhineWestphalia, the CDU is resorting to the use of xenophobic slogans to woo voters.Ms Merkel’s distaste of such tactics is common knowledge, yet yesterday she joined in the populist chorus against the new Gastarbeiter.
