THE floods claimed the lives of newborn twins after a dramatic effort to airlift them and their mother to safety.
Two RAF helicopters were scrambled to reach the woman after she gave birth prematurely as floodwater engulfed her town.All three were hoisted into the air moments after the birth, but tragically the babies died soon after arriving at hospital. News of the deaths in Tewkesbury, Gloucs, came amid growing panic over fresh water supplies as the Army was ordered in to ward off looters after bottled water was handed out at supermarkets.
Flood victims warned of more rain on the way says the Telegraph
Britain's flood victims are facing further misery with Government officials warning water levels are still to peak in many areas, while forecasters predict another deluge of heavy rain.Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, warned last night that the crisis along parts of the river Thames was still expected to worsen.
Flooding “could be unavoidable” in Reading, Henley and Marlow, he said.
“This emergency is still not over,” Mr Benn warned.
More rain will stretch the emergency operation even further. The Met Office has predicted rain today, heavier downpours on Thursday and then the threat of persistent heavy rain stretching through the weekend.
THIRST AID says the Mirror
A HUGE mercy mission was launched yesterday to get clean water to more than 350,000 flood victims.
The Army was drafted in to distribute three million litres to 140,000 homes which have been without water since supplies were contaminated on Friday.
But water bosses admitted it may take two weeks to get the taps running again in Gloucestershire - and begged frantic families to remain calm.
Meanwhile, profiteers were charging up to £15 for bottles of water as looters ransacked cars abandoned in the floods.
Whilst the Independent warns of
What lies beneath
There were warnings of a mounting health risk from thousands of gallons of sewage and toxic chemicals that have spilled into homes, gardens and streets in recent days. The Health Protection Agency urged people to keep out of the water to avoid contact with potentially fatal microbes such as E.coli. The agency also warned of a sharp rise in stress-related illnesses as a result of the flooding.
WATER RATS says the Mirror
CALLOUS conmen, thieves and racketeers are cashing in on the misery of flood victims by fleecing the elderly, looting submerged cars and flogging bottled water for exorbitant prices.
While most people are going out of their way to help those worst affected by the deluge engulfing the Midlands and southern England, vile gangs and unscrupulous individuals are targeting the vulnerable. Astonishingly, some crooks even tried to pinch vital steel flood barriers.
Different weather matters in the Guardian which reports
Death toll rises in southern Europe's heatwave
Southern Europe sizzled in record-breaking temperatures yesterday with the heatwave being blamed for deaths in Hungary and Romania, power cuts in Macedonia and forest fires from Serbia to Greece.
Up to 500 people have died in Hungary because of the heatwave with deaths attributed to heatstroke, cardiovascular problems and other illnesses aggravated by high temperatures which reached a record high of 41.9C (107F) in the southern city of Kiskunhalas.
Countries across the Balkan peninsula also laboured under temperatures that hit a historic 43C in Belgrade and 44C in Bulgaria. In an urgent announcement, Greece's weather service predicted temperatures of 45C (113F) and the government urged people to restrict their movements and stay indoors.
And on a lighter note the Mirror reports that
LINEKER AD ON HOLD
WALKERS have postponed plans to screen a new Gary Lineker crisps advert until the flood crisis ends.
The new campaign shows the BBC sports presenter singing and dancing in the rain with potato farmers - getting his suit splattered with mud from the tractors.
The ads - to mark Walkers' use of British spuds - were due to be shown next week but bosses felt it could be seen as insensitive. A spokeswoman said: "We didn't think it would be appropriate during the current crisis."
The advert will now be screened at a later date.
The Mail meanwhile leads with
Hospital superbug soars by 22 per cent in just three months
Cases of a deadly hospital superbug which thrives in filthy conditions have soared to record levels.
In the past year, almost 56,000 vulnerable and elderly patients have caught Clostridium difficile - a stomach bug that can be halted with simple soap and water.
Between January and March alone, 15,592 people were infected with the bug - a staggering 22 per cent rise on the previous three months.
The true toll is likely to be even higher, as the figures cover only the over-65s who account for 80 per cent of infections.
The Telegraph says that
The new figures from the Health Protection Agency show rates of the other major health care associated infection, MRSA, are dropping.The biggest falls have been in large acute teaching hospitals and in London.
Georgia Duckworth, of the HPA, said: "Certain hospitals have made great strides in bringing down their levels of MRSA, for example, by targeting interventions at risk areas and procedures
The Times concentrates on the governments rail strategy announced yesterday
Rail fares to soar as government slashes funding says the paper
Rail passengers face above-inflation fare increases every year for the next decade after the Government announced yesterday that it was cutting public funding for the railways by 50 per cent, or £1.5 billion a year.
Passengers will be forced to pay a much higher proportion of the cost of running the network and in return will receive only a modest increase in capacity. The Government published a 30-year rail strategy yesterday that ruled out a new high-speed line and double-deck trains and made few specific commitments for relieving overcrowding, among them that the number of carriages will grow by 1,300, or about 13 per cent, by 2014.
A similar headline in the Independent which says
Plans in the White Paper include putting 1,300 new carriages on the railways to cut overcrowding while increasing passenger numbers. Officials said they aimed to improve the number of trains running on time from 88 per cent to 92 per cent and cut services running more than half an hour late by a quarter. The £5.5bn upgrade of the London Thameslink line was approved to increase capacity in time for the 2012 Olympics, and major redevelopment of Birmingham New Street and Reading stations will go ahead.
The Guardian leads with
Tory voters turn against Cameron
David Cameron is losing his appeal to voters, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today which suggests that many Conservative voters are losing their enthusiasm for the Tory leader. It also shows that he is no longer attracting new support to the party.
The poll, giving Labour a six-point lead, has the Conservative party on its lowest share in any ICM poll since the last days of Michael Howard's leadership in 2005. adding that
It suggests that the Brown bounce is gaining momentum: 21% of voters say their opinion of Gordon Brown has improved in the last month, against only 8% who say it has fallen. By contrast, Mr Cameron is in growing trouble: 21% of voters say their opinion of him has dropped since Mr Brown took over.
TORY DONOR BLASTS FAILINGS OF CAMERON reports the Express
DAVID Cameron has come under fire from a major Tory donor for his “daily actions” and a range of policies which made him “extremely uncomfortable”.
The attack was levelled by former Tory treasurer and multi-millionaire Lord Kalms who has warned of a “summer of discontent” within the party.The criticism follows the third-place flops in two by-elections last week, while some Tory MPs are dismayed that their leader has chosen to tour Rwanda while much of Britain — including his own Oxfordshire constituency of Witney — is struggling with the flood crisis.
I'LL KICK OUT 4000 says the front page of the Sun
GORDON Brown last night vowed to deport 4,000 foreign convicts by the end of the year.
He ordered the expulsions to free up places in Britain’s choked prisons.
Two thousand criminals from abroad were due to be booted out by immigration authorities by Christmas.
But the PM told them to double the number. He told The Sun: “We are going to take a far tougher line. I want a message to go out — if you come here you work and learn our language.
“If you commit a crime you will be deported. You play by the rules or you face the consequences.” Mr Brown added: “I’m not prepared to tolerate a situation where we have people breaking the rules in our country when we cannot act.”
Meanwhile according to the Telegraph
Gordon Brown 'broke promise' over EU treaty
Gordon Brown is guilty of a "flagrant breach" of Labour's 2005 election manifesto for failing to grant a referendum on the new European Union treaty, William Hague has insisted.Setting the stage for months of bruising argument over Europe, the shadow foreign secretary accused the Prime Minister of "extraordinary cynicism" for claiming the replacement to the defunct constitutional treaty was less far reaching than its predecessor - and therefore did not merit a national vote
Gadafy frees Bulgarian health workers in HIV case as EU promises help for Libya reports the Guardian
Libya took a giant step back to international respectability yesterday after finally freeing six Bulgarian medical workers accused of infecting hundreds of children with the HIV virus and using their high-profile release to improve its relationship with the European Union.
Colonel Muammar Gadafy ordered the six freed after talks involving the European commission and Cécilia Sarkozy, the wife of the French president, who flew to Tripoli to try to bring the eight-year crisis to a successful conclusion. Mr Sarkozy is due to visit the Libyan capital today.
Home at last, after eight years of hell in a foreign prison says the Times
It was only the photograph of her granddaughter that kept Snezhana Dimitrova going.
The picture of the little girl were her comfort through eight terrifying years in a Libyan jail, three of them under sentence of death by firing squad.
The 54-year-old nurse had gone to the North African country to pursue her vocation as a childcare specialist.
But after forced confessions arising from alleged torture, including beatings and electric shocks, she was convicted, along with five colleagues, of deliberately infecting 438 Libyan children with the Aids virus. Yesterday morning on the tarmac at Sofia airport, Mrs Dimitrova tearfully hugged her two children and the seven-year-old granddaughter she thought she would never live to see
The Independent reports
Iran's message is softly spoken, yet clear: It will enrich uranium
Iran has issued its strongest signal to date that it will defy UN demands for a suspension of uranium enrichment - a possible route towards a nuclear bomb - threatening to respond to any further sanctions and accusing the Americans of "running away" from negotiations to end the crisis over the Iranian nuclear programme.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator told The Independent yesterday that uranium enrichment was "like breathing" for his country, and that Iran would not halt the spinning centrifuges at its main enrichment plant in Natanz, even if the Bush administration offered security guarantees.
Clinton and Obama clash after YouTube debate reports the Guardian
Bickering broke out yesterday between the camps of the two main contestants for the 2008 Democratic nomination with Hillary Clinton's team seeking to portray Barack Obama as naive in his approach to foreign policy in the wake of an experimental debate organised by CNN and YouTube.
Mr Obama, responding to a question from a YouTube user in Monday night's debate, said he would meet without preconditions the leaders of countries with which the US has strained relations - Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.Mrs Clinton, asked the same question, said she would not as she did not want to be used "for propaganda purposes".
Yesterday she said she thought Mr Obama's response was "irresponsible and frankly naive". Mr Obama's camp highlighted a quote from Mrs Clinton in April in which she said: "I think it's a terrible mistake for our president to say he won't talk to bad people
Schoolboy guilty of terrorism offences reports the Telegraph
Raja, from Ilford, who was then 17, caught a bus to West Yorkshire as part of a plan to travel to Pakistan for terrorist training. He left his parents a note which said: "If not in this (world) we will meet in the Garden of Paradise, Inshallah [God willing]. "The situation is such that you will live another 30 years, maybe 40 years. When death will befall you, maybe then you will appreciate what I have done now." A "PS" added that he was going abroad.
Raja's distraught parents called the police in February last year.
SORTED says the Mirror
EXCLUSIVE Royal Mail climbdown as bosses scrap pensions-axe document
bosses did a U-turn after a hostile reaction from union leaders and negative publicity.
Last night management admitted they had abandoned plans to send out the documents and said they would be shredded. but strangely says the paper
they had failed to communicate this to anyone, including the union, until Monday.They insisted the backtrack had nothing to do with the Mirror's story and claimed the decision was taken earlier this month.
MR WHITEHOUSE, DID MR LANGHAM EVER DISCUSS UNDERTAKING RESEARCH FOR YOUR TV SHOW? NO says the Mirror
COMEDIAN Paul Whitehouse told a court yesterday he had no knowledge of his co-star Chris Langham using child pornography as research for a TV show they were writing.
The Fast Show star, who co-wrote and starred with Langham in the BBC series Help, was quizzed by prosecutor Richard Barraclough QC.
QC: Did Mr Langham ever discuss with you that he was undertaking any research for the shows?
Whitehouse: Not to my knowledge, no.
QC:: Did you ever do any research? Whitehouse: None whatsoever. I don't think we felt we needed to. Or I didn't anyway.
The prosecutor asked if there had been discussion in the series of explicit sex with little girls.
Whitehouse: Absolutely not.
QC: Did Mr Langham tell you that he had been researching things like that?
Whitehouse: No.
I didn't know of Langham porn says the Sun
When Paul entered Maidstone Crown Court — where he has been called as a prosecution witness — Langham smiled from the dock.
But Fast Show star Paul, 49, ignored him and seemed nervous as he gave evidence.
The court heard that Help was the first time the pair had worked together.
According to the Mail
BBC staff are sent on courses to learn they shouldn't lie
BBC bosses have been accused of wasting licence-fee money on teaching their staff not to lie.
The decision to send 16,500 employees on an "integrity" course in the wake of the fake TV shows scandal was condemned by MPs.
Two of the corporation's top executives appeared before a Commons committee investigating the affair.
Director general Mark Thompson is on a family holiday, so his deputy Mark Byford and chief operating officer Caroline Thomson were asked to explain how viewers were deceived by a string of shows including Children In Need and Comic Relief, as well as the doctored footage of the Queen
And whilst on the subject of the Queen the Telegraph amongst others reports that
Queen plans 60th anniversary return to Malta
The Queen and Prince Philip plan to celebrate their diamond wedding on a private holiday in Malta, the Mediterranean island where they enjoyed some of their happiest days as a young couple.
The royal couple will stop off at the island, for what has been described as a second honeymoon, on their way to Uganda for an official Commonwealth trip. Officials at Buckingham Palace would say only that it was a "private stay" at the invitation of the Maltese government.
Finally the Mail reports that
UFO sightings bring town to a standstill
A crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought a town centre to a standstill when five mysterious UFOs were spotted hovering in the sky.
Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, in a seeming formation, hovered above Stratford-Upon-Avon for half an hour.
The unidentified flying objects lit up the otherwise clear night sky above Shakespeare's birthplace in Warwickshire on Saturday.
Although Air Traffic Control reported no unusual activity, some witnesses were convinced they were witnessing an extra-terrestrial spectacle.
No comments:
Post a Comment