- Heathrow closes runway after emergency landing
Oslo-bound flight turns back shortly after takeoff due to technical fault, and 75 passengers and crew safely evacuated
Heathrow airport's northern runway remains closed after a British Airways plane trailing smoke made an emergency landing on Friday morning.
The flight, heading to Oslo from Heathrow, returned to the airport shortly after takeoff due to a technical fault. Airport officials initially shut both runways but later reopened the southern strip.
Witnesses under the flight path saw flames and smoke coming from the Airbus A319 plane as it came in to land over west London.
One man who was working in a garden in Chelsea when the plane flew overheard said he feared something terrible was about to happen when he saw flames coming from the engine.
"It was very low and horrendous to watch," a man named Jamie told Sky News. "It's the kind of thing you see seconds from disaster.
"There was loads of flames coming from the back of the right engine as it came over us. The noise was like a fighter jet … [The engine] was on full fire when we saw it."
Emergency services arrived at the scene and 75 passengers and crew were safely evacuated on emergency slides.
London fire brigade said a crew from Heathrow fire station had assisted the airport's fire service with an aircraft fire, which had been put out.
British Airways said it was caring for its customers and would be carrying out a full investigation into the incident.
Passengers on resumed flights at Heathrow were told to expect delays of 30-60 minutes, as well as 30 minutes of aircraft taxiing time.
- Eurozone crisis live: Japan closes higher after wild day of trading
The Japanese market suffered another turbulent session after Thursday's dive – dropping as much as 3.5% in the afternoon – but stabilised to close 0.9% higher
- Woolwich attack: police wait to question two suspects
Michael Adebolajo and second suspect remain too badly injured to be interviewed over death of Drummer Lee Rigby
Detectives are still waiting to question two men arrested over the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, the young soldier who was hacked to death in London on Wednesday.
It emerged on Thursday that both of the men alleged to have killed Rigby had been known to the domestic security service MI5 and the police over an eight-year period, but had been assessed as peripheral figures and thus not subjected to a full-scale investigation.
One of the two suspects was named as Michael Olumide Adebolajo, who was filmed brandishing knives and justifying the attack as a strike against the west while Rigby lay yards away bloodied and fatally wounded.
Adebolajo, from a Nigerian churchgoing family and who converted to Islam, had complained of harassment by MI5 in the last three years after he came to the intelligence agency's attention.
The identity of the second suspect was not confirmed, but police on Thursday raided a house in Greenwich where Michael Adebowale, 22, was registered as a voter.
The suspects, shot by police shortly after the incident, remain in separate hospitals, too badly injured to be questioned at present.
The Ministry of Defence said on Thursday that 25-year-old Rigby, from Rochdale, had served in the army for seven years and had spent six months in Afghanistan in 2009. He had a two-year-old son, and had been based in London since 2011.
Detectives investigating Rigby's death also arrested a 29-year-old man and woman on suspicion of conspiracy to murder the soldier, suggesting there may have been a wider plot to carry out the attack. The 29-year-old woman was arrested at a flat in Greenwich, south-east London.
David Cameron said on Thursday that parliament's intelligence and security committee would examine the wider role of the police and MI5, an inquiry that is expected to address any lessons that may need to be learned after counter-terrorism officials decided not to monitor the suspects.
Speaking in Downing Street before a visit to Woolwich, Cameron said: "You would not expect me to comment on this when a criminal investigation is ongoing, but what I can say is this: as is the normal practice in these sorts of cases, the Independent Police Complaints Commission will be able to review the actions of the police, and the intelligence and security committee will be able to do the same for the wider agencies, but nothing should be done to get in the way of their absolutely vital work."
There were some suggestions that one of the two men may have tried to visit Somalia. Whitehall sources did not deny reports that one of the suspects was stopped while trying to travel to the wartorn east African country. Somalia is feared by counter-terrorism officials to be a training ground for violent jihadists.
The extremist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammad, who has been expelled from Britain, told the Guardian he had tutored Adebolajo in Islam after he converted to the religion in 2003. He was the former leader of al-Muhajiroun, an organisation banned for professing extremist views. Mohammad described Adebolajo as a shy man who had been angered by the Iraq invasion, and who would ask questions about when violence was justified.
Adebolajo had a Muslim name, Mujaahid, which means one who engages in jihad. He went to meetings of the now-banned Islamist organisation from around 2004 to 2011, but stopped attending meetings and those of its successor organisations two years ago.
The soldier's murder is being treated as a terrorist incident. Cameron chaired another meeting of the government crisis committee Cobra on Thursday. However, the national threat level from al-Qaida-inspired terrorism remains unchanged, suggesting that officials do not believe Britain faces a wave of similar attacks.
The immediate focus is on the criminal investigation. On Thursday, detectives from Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command raided five addresses in London and one in Lincolnshire that was the Adebolajo family home.
Sources stressed that the investigation was at an early stage, but detectives are examining whether the arrested woman was in a relationship with one of the two men detained on Wednesday, and what the links are between the four people they have in custody. The arrests are a clear signal that counter-terrorism detectives suspect the attackers may not have acted alone.
Adebolajo's mother moved her family out of London to Lincolnshire in an attempt to remove him from the influence of a street gang. But Michael Adebolajo returned to the capital to go to university. The 28-year-old was a regular volunteer at the al-Muhajiroun stall outside HSBC bank on Woolwich high street, handing out extremist literature. One witness said he had recently been seen outside Plumstead community centre encouraging an audience to go to Syria to fight.
His family were churchgoing Christians of Nigerian heritage but he converted to Islam about 10 years ago and investigators are trying to establish how he became radicalised to the point that he may have committed violence.
The murder led to condemnation from President Obama in Washington who said: "I condemn in the strongest terms the appalling attack against a British service member in Woolwich on 22 May. The United States stands resolute with the United Kingdom, our ally and friend, against violent extremism and terror.
"There can be absolutely no justification for such acts, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim, the police and security services responding to this horrific act and the communities they serve, and the British people. Our special relationship with the United Kingdom is especially important during times of trial."
Among British authorities there are fears of a violence and potential attempts by extremist groups such as the English Defence League to exploit the tragedy. In London, police said they had deployed 1,200 extra officers amid fears of a backlash. Dozens of Islamophobic incidents were reported in the wake of the murder, including attacks on four mosques.
Police countered claims of a delayed response, saying they were first called to reports of a man being attacked in the street at 2.20pm. Four minutes later they were told by witnesses that one attacker had a gun, at which point officers in an armed response vehicle were ordered to the scene.
Five minutes later, at 2.29pm, the first unarmed officers arrived, joined at 2.34pm by armed officers. Two of them opened fire, and a Taser was also fired.
- Man held hostage for a month in New York
Three arrested after Ecuadorean victim snatched on street, bound and burned with acid while held for $3m ransom
A businessman was snatched from a New York City street in broad daylight, then held captive for more than a month in a warehouse where he was bound and burned with acid while his kidnappers demanded a $3m ransom that his family in Ecuador did not have, police said.
Pedro Portugal, 52, was found this week after detectives who had been monitoring phone calls noticed pizza deliveries to a deserted area in Queens and zeroed in on the warehouse.
Three men were arrested and charged with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment. One other suspect is believed to be at large in the US, and three fled to Ecuador.
Portugal, a father of six who owned a small accounting and tax firm in Queens, was burned with acid and spent almost a month with his head cloaked, officials said. He remained in hospital on Thursday.
Police said he was approached by three captors on 18 April. One flashed what looked like a police badge and called out the victim's name. He was forced into a sports utility vehicle where he was held at knifepoint and bound, then taken to the warehouse. His mother in Quito, Ecuador, received a call from a man calling himself Tito demanding a $3m ransom, police said.
Police commissioner Raymond Kelly said the family had some property, but not enough cash to pay the ransom. Five detectives were sent to Ecuador to learn more about the victim and his family.
"It's something that we're still investigating to see why these people thought that $3m might have been available," Kelly said.
Portugal was burned, beaten and threatened with mutilation and death, including threats to cut off his fingertips if the family didn't come up with the money, officials said. The man "suffered physical injuries and has been deeply traumatised by the ordeal", said the Queens district attorney Richard Brown.
On 20 May, investigators who had been monitoring the area noticed a light on upstairs in an otherwise dark warehouse in Long Island City, in Queens. They went in and discovered Portugal with his hands bound in a makeshift apartment.
"The person who was 'babysitting' him, as they called it, got away, but he was arrested very quickly," Kelly said.
Luis Lopez, vice-consul of Ecuador in New York, said police kept the consulate informed about the investigation.
Christian Acuna, 35, Dennis Alves, 32, and Eduardo Moncayo were arraigned late on Wednesday and were being held without bail.
According to the criminal complaint, Moncayo said he met a man named Claudio Ordonez, known as "Doctor", and they agreed to kidnap Portugal. Moncayo is accused of flashing the fake police badge that caused Portugal to stop on the street.
The men were accused of being paid between $800 a week and $5,000 in total by Ordonez to stay with Portugal at the warehouse.
Ordonez was at large, as was an unknown man wearing a red sweatshirt who was captured on surveillance footage at a Chase bank in Manhattan trying to withdraw money from Portugal's account.
- Bridge collapse in Washington state sends cars and people into water
Part of bridge over the Skagit river gives way, with rescuers using boats to search for people in the water
The major highway bridge linking the Washington state city of Seattle with Canada and the rest of the Pacific north-west region collapsed late on Thursday, dumping several vehicles and the people inside into a river.
The four-lane Interstate 5 bridge collapsed about halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, Trooper Mark Francis of the Washington state patrol said.
Francis said he did not know what caused the collapse, which came at the start of one of the country's busiest holiday weekends of the year.
Kari Ranten, a spokeswoman for Skagit Valley hospital, said two people who were injured in the collapse were being taken to the facility. She said another person was being taken to a different area hospital.
A search of the river continued and a dive team was on the scene.
"We don't think anyone else went into the water," said Marcus Deyerin, a spokesman for the North-west Washington Incident Management Team. "At this point we're optimistic."
Helicopter footage aired by KOMO-TV in Seattle showed one rescue boat leaving the scene with one person strapped into a stretcher. A damaged red car and a damaged pickup truck were visible in the water.
A Skagit Valley Herald reporter at the scene said a sheriff's office rescue boat had arrived and rescue crews were looking for people in the water.
A man told the local Skagit Valley Herald newspaper he felt a vibration and looked in his rear view mirror to see that the part of bridge he had just crossed was no longer behind him. "I thought something was wrong with my car at first," he said
The bridge is not considered structurally deficient but is listed as being "functionally obsolete" meaning that its design is outdated, according to a database compiled by the Federal Highway Administration.
The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.
Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state's bridges.
The group said more than a quarter of Washington state's 7,840 bridges were considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
- Cabinet office to fly rainbow flag during Pride week
Francis Maude to show commitment to equality agenda by allowing flag to be flown from cabinet office next month
Francis Maude is to show the government's commitment to the equality agenda by allowing the rainbow flag to be flown from the cabinet office in Whitehall during Pride week next month.
David Cameron has faced criticism for attempting to distance the Tory leadership from gay rights after declining to speak in detail about the equal marriage bill in the run up to its bumpy ride through the commons earlier this week.
But Maude intends to make clear that the government remains deeply committed to the equality agenda after authorising the flying of the Rainbow flag from the cabinet office between 25 June and 1 July. "This shows the government's commitment to the equalities message," one source said.
Maude made a personal intervention on the eve of the two day debate on the marriage (same sex couples) bill in the commons on Monday and Tuesday this week. In an article for the Daily Telegraph he wrote of how Britain, including himself, has become more liberal since the era of Margaret Thatcher.
Maude cited his family's experience. He wrote: "For me it was also a family experience that shaped my outlook. It was not by any means unique but it was a formative experience. My brother Charles, who was gay, died from AIDS in 1993.
"Society was a far less accepting place for gay men such as him. I think how much better his life would have been had there been greater acceptance of publicly acknowledged stable same-sex relationships. In the two decades since, much has changed. But I think this additional step, of extending marriage to all, is important both symbolically and practically. And it is something which most – though I appreciate not all – gay men and women want."
The prime minister spoke passionately in favour of gay marriage on Wednesday after the bill had completed its initial commons stages. He told the Today programme on Radio 4: "There will be young boys in schools today, who are gay who are worried about being bullied who are worried about what society thinks of them, who can see that the highest parliament in the land has said that their love is worth the same as anyone else's love and that we believe in equality. I think they will stand that bit taller today and I am proud of the fact that that has happened."
- Protect children from internet pornography, report demands
Report finds evidence of a high correlation between exposure to violent and sadistic images and behaviour
Children are exposed to violent and sadistic imagery which risks distorting their attitudes towards relationships and sex, according to the children's commissioner for England.
A report released on Thursday by the commissioner's office found that children who watch pornography are more likely to develop sexually risky behaviour and become sexually active at a younger age.
It called for urgent action to "develop children's resilience to pornography" after discovering that a significant number have access to sexually explicit images. It also called on the Department for Education to ensure all schools delivered effective relationship and sex education, including how to use the internet safely.
"We are living at a time when violent and sadistic imagery is readily available to very young children … even if they do not go searching for it, their friends may show it to them or they may stumble on it while using the internet," said the commissioner, Maggie Atkinson.
"For years we have applied age restrictions to films at the cinema but now we are permitting access to far more troubling imagery via the internet. It is a risky experiment to allow a generation of young people to be raised on a diet of pornography."
The report, based on a review of academic research, also found that pornography could influence children's sexual attitudes, foster a negative attitude towards relationships and lead them to engage in risky behaviours such as unprotected anal sex, sex at a younger age and the use of alcohol and drugs during sex.
Sue Berelowitz, the deputy children's commissioner, said compulsory education was the only way to ensure children were guarded "against the possible impact of pornography on them and their relationships". She said: "As part of our inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs and groups we have seen that young perpetrators of sexual abuse describe their activity as 'like having been in a porn film'. This report provides the evidence to support there being a high correlation between exposure to pornography and it influencing children's behaviour and attitudes."
Miranda Horvath, senior lecturer at Middlesex University, which led the review of academic evidence, said: "When pornography is discussed, it is often between groups of people with polarised moral views on the subject. Rather than adopting a particular ideological stance, this report uses evidence-based research to draw its conclusions and further the debate."
The report's recommendations echo calls made by the End Violence Against Women coalition to make sex and relationships education compulsory in secondary schools. A recent survey by the National Association of Head Teachers found many parents believe schools should teach about the dangers of pornography as soon as children are old enough to use the internet.
- British fraud suspect found hanged in French jail
John Steele, 38, was found by prison guards hanging in his cell on Tuesday, four days after being remanded in custody
A Briton arrested on suspicion of organised fraud has been found hanged in a French jail. John Steele, 38, was found by prison guards hanging in his cell on Tuesday, four days after he was remanded in custody.
Steele, who had lived near Paris for some years, was believed to be behind a scheme which took more than £1 million in loans from French banks.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are aware of the death of a British national in France on 21 May and we stand ready to provide consular assistance."
- Boy Scouts of America vote to end ban on gay youth members
Vote at annual meeting in Texas may relieve political pressure but openly gay leaders are still banned
The Boy Scouts of America on Thursday voted to allow gay youths in the organization, partially ending a long-standing ban on accepting homosexual members.
Of the 1,400 scout leaders voting at the annual meeting in Texas, more than 60% supported the proposal. The members voted in favor of adjusting the BSA membership rules to read: "No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone."
While gay youth members can now be accepted into the scouts, gay scout leaders are still banned from the organization.
"The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive, and unresolved societal issue," the BSA said in a statement. "As the National Executive Committee just completed a lengthy review process, there are no plans for further review on this matter."
The policy will be implemented at the more than 116,000 scouting units on 1 January, 2014.
"While people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting. Going forward, our Scouting family will continue to focus on reaching and serving youth in order to help them grow into good, strong citizens," the BSA said.
The ban has been a fraught issue since it was instituted, in 1978. It was subject to renewed criticism in July 2012 when the organization reaffirmed its ban after conducting a confidential two-year review.
Gay-rights groups used the affirmation to reinvigorate the fight against the ban, and numerous online campaigns emerged in support of the campaign. Barack Obama said in February that he would like to see the ban lifted.
A national BSA governing board member, Ernst & Young CEO James Turley, said the organization should drop the policy and corporations including Intel, UPS and Merck withdrew funding to the group as uproar against the ban grew.
BSA announced on 19 April that it would seek to an end the ban on openly gay youth members, after surveying 1 million members of the organization. The organization said in a release that the issue was "among the most complex and challenging issues facing the BSA and society today".
"Even with the wide range of input, it is extremely difficult to accurately quantify the potential impact of maintaining or changing the current policy," the organization said. "While perspectives and opinions vary significantly, parents, adults in the Scouting community, and teens alike tend to agree that youth should not be denied the benefits of Scouting."
Those in support of the ban were comprised primarily of religious groups and older scouting parents (pdf). "Views among parents under the age of 50 have changed significantly in the past three years, with a majority now opposing the BSA's current policy," reads the BSA voting information packet.
According to the AP, 70% of the more than 100,000 scouting units in the US are chartered by religious organizations. Though some of those groups don't support the ban, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Southern Baptist churches have supported it in the past.
The organization has more than 2,658,000 youth members and more than 1 million adult members. Incorporated in 1910, the BSA's mission is "to provide an educational program for boys and young adults to build character, to train in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and to develop personal fitness".
- George Zimmerman lawyers release data from Trayvon Martin's cellphone
Photos and texts appear to be defence team attempt to discredit killed 17-year-old ahead of Zimmerman's murder trial next month
Lawyers for the accused murderer George Zimmerman released a series of texts and photographs from Trayvon Martin's cellphone on Thursday, showing the Florida teenager discussing guns, fighting and smoking marijuana.
The move appears to be at attempt to discredit the 17-year-old's character ahead of Zimmerman's trial for second-degree murder next month, at which the neighbourhood watch leader's defence team will claim Martin was the aggressor in their fatal confrontation in a Sanford gated community in February 2012.
Mark O'Mara, Zimmerman's lead attorney, still has to convince circuit court judge Debra S Nelson to allow the evidence to be shown to jurors, against the objections of prosecutors who insist the teenager's history is irrelevant to the case.
But the release of more than 20 pages of records from the phone, together with the photographs and several videos, are a clear indication of the defence strategy for the trial scheduled to begin on 10 June, with Zimmerman, 29, denying murder on the grounds of self-defence and facing at least 25 years in jail if he is convicted.
In the text messages released on Thursday, Martin tells a friend that his mother had kicked him out of her house because he had been suspended for skipping school, and told him that he needed to move in with his father.
In others, he talks about using marijuana. "Oh, u smoke?" a friend asked him. Martin replied: "Yea do u??"
A third topic of conversation is organised fighting. One message to a friend refers to an apparent contest with another youth late in 2011, with Martin writing: "he got mo hits cause in da 1st round he had me on da ground an I couldn't do ntn."
O'Mara has insisted it was Martin who attacked Zimmerman, breaking his nose and smashing his head on a concrete pavement during a fight before his client managed to free his gun and fire off a single, fatal shot to the teenager's torso.
The transcripts of the text messages released on Thursday are blacked out in many places, making it unclear who Martin was talking to in his various discussions. But several are to the so-called Witness 8, a girlfriend who has also claimed she was on the phone to him as he walked through the Retreat at Twin Lakes community and encountered Zimmerman on February 26 last year. "U gotta gun?" he asked her.
Two other messages appear to confirm his interest in weapons. Eight days before his death, a friend texted him: "You want a .22 revolver". No reply is shown.
Days later, he asks another unidentified friend: "U wanna share a .380".
Among the photographs recovered from the phone are several that have already been circulated online but which are appearing in formal court submissions for the first time.
One is a close-up of a handgun, believed to be a .40 calibre Smith & Wesson. Others show Martin blowing smoke from his mouth, and there are two pictures of what appear to be cannabis plants.
State attorney Bernie de la Rionda has already asked Judge Nelson to ban evidence of Martin's marijuana use at the trial but defence lawyer Don West said it was relevant because Zimmerman said in his 911 call to police before the incident that he was following a suspect who "looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something."
West has argued that the autopsy report should be presented to jurors.
Judge Nelson is expected to rule on that and several other pre-trial issues at a one-day hearing in Sanford on Tuesday. The trial could last up to six weeks.
- Woolwich attack: MI5 knew of men suspected of killing Lee Rigby
• Security service assessed suspects but did not investigate
• Victim Lee Rigby had served in the army for seven years
• Police raid homes in London and Lincolnshire
• Extremist cleric says he tutored suspect
The two suspects in the butchering to death of a British soldier had been known to the domestic security service MI5 and the police over an eight-year period, but had been assessed as peripheral figures and thus not subjected to a full-scale investigation, it has emerged .
One of the two attackers was named as Michael Olumide Adebolajo, the man seen in dramatic video brandishing knives and justifying the attack as a strike against the west while his victim lay yards away bloodied and fatally wounded.
Adebolajo had complained of harassment by MI5 in the last three years after he came to the intelligence agency's attention. The identity of the second suspect was not confirmed, but police on Thursday raided a house in Greenwich where Michael Adebowale, 22, was registered as a voter.
The admission came as the Ministry of Defence named the victim of the attack in Woolwich as Drummer Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old from Rochdale who had served in the army for seven years. Rigby, who had spent six months in Afghanistan in 2009, had a two-year-old son, and had been based in London since 2011.
The suspects, shot by police shortly after the incident, remain in separate but unidentified hospitals, too badly injured to be questioned.
Detectives investigating Rigby's death also arrested a 29-year-old man and woman on suspicion of conspiracy to murder the soldier, suggesting there may have been a wider conspiracy to carry out the attack. The 29-year-old woman was arrested at a flat in Greenwich, south-east London.
Parliament's intelligence and security committee would examine the wider role of the police and MI5, David Cameron said on Thursday, an inquiry that is expected to address any lessons that may need to be learned after counterterrorism officials decided not to monitor the suspects.
Speaking in Downing Street before a visit to Woolwich, Cameron said: "You would not expect me to comment on this when a criminal investigation is ongoing, but what I can say is this: as is the normal practice in these sorts of cases, the Independent Police Complaints Commission will be able to review the actions of the police, and the intelligence and security committee will be able to do the same for the wider agencies, but nothing should be done to get in the way of their absolutely vital work."
There were some suggestions that one of the two men may have tried to visit Somalia; Whitehall sources did not deny reports that one of the suspects was stopped while trying to travel to the war-torn east African country. Somalia is feared by counterterrorism officials to be a training ground for violent jihadists.
The extremist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammad, who has been expelled from Britain, told the Guardian he had tutored Adebolajo in Islam after he converted to the religion in 2003. He was the former leader of al-Muhajiroun, an organisation banned for professing extremist views. Mohammad described Adebolajo as a shy man who had been angered by the Iraq invasion, and who would ask questions about when violence was justified.
Adebolajo had a Muslim name, Mujaahid, which means one who engages in jihad. He went to meetings of the now banned Islamist organisation from around 2004 to 2011, but stopped attending those meetings, and those of its successor organisations, two years ago.
The soldier's murder is being treated as a terrorist incident. Thursday saw another meeting of the government crisis committee Cobra, chaired by Cameron. However, so far the national threat level from al-Qaida-inspired terrorism remains unchanged, suggesting that officials do not believe Britain faces a wave of similar attacks.
The immediate focus is on the criminal investigation, which on Thursday saw detectives from Scotland Yard's counterterrorism command raid five addresses in London, and one in Lincolnshire that was the Adebolajo family home.
Sources stressed that the investigation was at an early stage, but detectives are examining whether the arrested woman was in a relationship with one of the two men detained on Wednesday, and what the links are between the four people they currently have in custody. The arrests are a clear signal that counterterrorism detectives suspect the attackers may not have acted alone.
Adebolajo's mother moved her family out of London to Lincolnshire in an attempt to remove him from the influence of a street gang. But Michael Adebolajo returned to the capital to go to university. The 28-year-old was a regular volunteer at the al-Muhajiroun stall outside HSBC bank on Woolwich High Street, handing out extremist literature. One witness said he had been recently seen outside Plumstead community centre encouraging an audience to go to Syria to fight.
His family were churchgoing Christians of Nigerian heritage but he converted to Islam about 10 years ago and investigators are trying to establish how he became radicalised to the point that he may have committed violence.
The murder led to condemnation from President Obama who said: "I condemn in the strongest terms the appalling attack against a British service member in Woolwich on May 22. The United States stands resolute with the United Kingdom, our ally and friend, against violent extremism and terror.
There can be absolutely no justification for such acts, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family of the victim, the police and security services responding to this horrific act and the communities they serve, and the British people.Our special relationship with the United Kingdom is especially important during times of trial."
Among British authorities there are fears of a violence and potential attempts by extremist groups such as the English Defence League to exploit the tragedy. In London police said they had deployed 1,200 extra officers amid fears of a backlash. Dozens of Islamophobic incidents were reported in the wake of the murder, including attacks on four mosques.
Police tried to rebut claims of a delayed response saying they were first called to reports of a man being attacked in the street at 14.20. Four minutes later they were told by witnesses that one attacker had a gun, at which point, 14.24, officers in an armed response vehicle which patrols London's streets, were ordered to the scene.
Five minutes later, at 14.29, the first unarmed officers arrived at the scene, and at 14.34 armed officers arrived and two of them opened fire, and a Taser was also fired.
• This article was amended on Friday 24 May 2013 to include updated information about the second suspect.
- London attack: police make two further arrests after Woolwich killing - live updates
• Victim identified as Lee Rigby
• Cameron: it was attack on Britain and 'betrayal of Islam'
• PM seems to say suspects were known to security services
• Two men under arrest in hospital
• Attack prompts fears of backlash against British Muslims
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- Obama speech: 'Perpetual war will prove self-defeating' – live updates
President expected to sharply curtail the unmanned killing programme and discuss crisis at Guantánamo Bay prison
- Obama details drone policy in speech outlining counter-terrorism doctrine
Increased oversight designed to bring killing programme out of legal shadows as president defends use of strikes in the past
Special courts would be asked to decide on targeted assassinations of terrorism suspects under a clutch of new legal checks proposed by Barack Obama to bring an end to the notion of an "boundless war on terror".
The president, who currently has to personally sign off on targeted drone strikes outside the US, hopes the increased oversight will help bring his controversial programme of killings out of the legal shadows.
He also proposed that a smaller number of drone attacks in the future would be carried out primarily by the US military rather than the CIA, having first passed a new test to ensure that alternative options have been exhausted.
But the White House defended its decision to launch hundreds of such strikes in recent years, insisting they were more discriminating than other military options such as aerial bombing and had helped prevent terrorist attacks.
In a major policy speech outlining new US counter-terrorism doctrine, Obama also announced a series of steps he was taking to try to speed up the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention centre – including lifting a blanket ban on the transfer of prisoners to Yemen and seeking a site in the US for military commissions to take place.
Obama said America was at a crossroads, having spent over a trillion dollars and 7,000 lives fighting wars over the last decade. "We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us," he said.
"To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance."
Though some of the policy details have been trailed, the speech at the National Defense University marks a softening of rhetoric too.
Despite continued attacks in Boston and London, Obama said the US should seek to address the "underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism" through greater foreign aid and diplomacy. He claimed that success in fighting al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan meant the US had to think more about deterring home-grown terrorists in the future.
"In the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al-Qaida will pose a credible threat to the United States," said Obama. "Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don't need to fight."
Nonetheless, the policy measures announced by Obama remain limited. Transferring drone operations from the CIA to the Pentagon was a "preference" rather than a guarantee, said administration officials, in background briefings before the speech.
Obama also said he would ask Congress to review his proposal for future drone strikes to be subject to court review or an independent oversight board.
"The establishment of a special court to evaluate and authorise lethal action has the benefit of bringing a third branch of government into the process, but raises serious constitutional issues about presidential and judicial authority," he said. "Another idea that's been suggested – the establishment of an independent oversight board in the executive branch – avoids those problems, but may introduce a layer of bureaucracy into national security decision-making, without inspiring additional public confidence in the process."
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 240 and 347 people have been killed in total by confirmed US drone strikes in Yemen since 2002, with a further 2,541 to 3,533 killed by CIA drones in Pakistan.
Human rights campaigners cautiously welcomed the attempt to bring US drone warfare policy into the open, but called on President Obama to publish the new legal tests agreed this week but only seen by Congress.
Dixon Osburn, a director at Human Rights First, said: "On its own, it is not clear that taking things away from the CIA makes a difference – the special operations command at the Pentagon is also secret – but at least the military are schooled in the rules of war.
"It looks like Obama is trying to return his counter-terrorism strategy to something that operates within the law. We want to know what that legal framework is though."
Elisa Massimino, president of Human Rights First, said: "We strongly welcome the statement that our values and ideals are our greatest asset. It is a slogan that we have a heard a lot but it is good to finally hear a strategy for how you get there."
General Willian Nash, a veteran of Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm, and now an independent consultant on national security issues, added: "He has begun the transition from a perpetual war to a more normalised national security framework."
Earlier, the White House began its new effort to draw a line under the controversial drone-strike policy by admitting for the first time that four American citizens were among those killed by its covert attacks in Yemen and Pakistan since 2009.
Obama also said the fight against domestic extremists would pose new challenges in balancing civil liberties and announced plans for the Department of Justice to review how it protected journalists during the pursuit of classified leaks.
But in a swipe at his predecessor, George W Bush, the president said the war of terrorism had to come to an end if US values were to be preserved. "Our victory against terrorism won't be measured in a surrender ceremony on a battleship, or a statue being pulled to the ground. Victory will be measured in parents taking their kids to school; immigrants coming to our shores.. And long after the current messengers of hate have faded from the world's memory … the flag of the United States [needs to] stand for freedom."
- Glencore and Trafigura 'may have supplied Iran's nuclear programme'
UN report says that if links with Iranian company are confirmed they could form breach of international sanctions
The UN has warned that trades by the commodity companies Glencore and Trafigura could have breached international sanctions by supplying a company linked to Iran's nuclear programme.
The Guardian reported in April that Glencore had traded $659m (£430m) of goods, including aluminium oxide, with Iran last year.
Glencore, which is run by the multi-billionaire Ivan Glasenberg, has admitted that some of its aluminium oxide ended up in the hands of the Iranian Aluminium Company (Iralco), which has provided aluminium to the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI).
A confidential UN panel of experts report on Iran, seen by Reuters, states: "If confirmed, such transactions may reflect an avenue for procurement of a raw material in a manner that circumvents sanctions."
The report, which was complied by a panel of international experts and distributed to some members of the UN security council but which has not been published, says: "Iran continues to seek items for its prohibited activities abroad by using multiple and increasingly complex procurement methods, including front companies, intermediaries, false documents and new routes."
The panel listed 11 violations of sanctions since June 2012 and said it was investigating at least six possible sanction violations; one of those is thought to be Glencore's dealings.
The report calls on member states to show additional vigilance in order to "identify suspicious transactions".
Kodjo Menan, the Togolese ambassador to the UN and deputy chairman of the security council's committee on sanctions, confirmed to the Guardian that members were concerned about the reports of Glencore and Trafigura's dealings with Iran.
A spokeswoman for the British mission to the UN expressed concern that the report, or elements of it, might never be made publicly available if some members of the security council vetoed its publication.
Trafigura, which hit the headlines for dumping toxic oil waste in the Ivory Coast in 2006, has also admitted trading aluminium oxide (also known as alumina) with Iralco.
Dealing with AEOI has been banned by UN sanctions since 2006. Iralco has been subject to sanctions since December 2012. Both Glencore and Trafigura said their deals with Iralco were completed before sanctions came into force.
Glencore said it ceased transactions with Iralco immediately when it learned of its links to Iran's nuclear programme, and the last trade was in October 2012.
"Glencore complies with applicable laws and regulations, including applicable sanctions," a spokesman said.
Trafigura said: "No deliveries have been made or exports received since new EU sanctions were published in December 2012. Trafigura Group companies are compliant with national and international law where applicable."
The UN experts' report comes days after Gary Fegel, Glencore's head of aluminium, told friends that he planned to leave the company.
Fegel, 39, is the ninth-largest shareholder in Glencore, holding a stake in the company worth $800m. He was named as the world's 22nd youngest billionaire by Forbes magazine this year.
Galsenberg has begun a three-month review of Glencore's aluminium business. A company spokesman said that Fegel's exit from the firm and Glasenberg's review were unrelated to the possible sanctions breach allegations.
- Nursery reforms could cut childcare costs by 28%, DfE calculates
New calculations released by Department for Education will boost those seeking to push stalled plans through
The cost of childcare could be cut by as much as 28% if the government was to go ahead with stalled plans to raise ratios of children to staff in nurseries.
Government plans are currently stalled due to a disagreement within the coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.
The new calculations released by the Department for Education under a freedom of information request said parent costs could be cut from £4 an hour to £3.49 an hour (a 12% cut) while teacher salaries could go up. Alternatively, if the extra revenue was used solely to reduce costs for parents, this could yield costs savings for parents of up to 28%.
Conservative ministers had been hoping to relax staff-child ratios by September, but Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, vetoed the plans saying he thought the proposed ratio changes would lower the quality of childcare. Conservatives are likely to use the figures to show they have been on the side of parents and choice, but are being blocked by the Liberal Democrats.
Department estimates suggest that if legal ratios for under-threes rose from four children for each member of staff to six and increased from a ratio of one to eight to one to 13 for staff looking after over-threes, the number of full-time places could be expanded by 52% to 73.
This increase in places creates a gross additional revenue of around £200,0000 based on the nursery charging £4 an hour. Even assuming the setting required the employment of a graduate, revenue would rise by £166,0000. Distributing this over 73 childcare places for 52 weeks a year and 39 hours a week the nursery could maintain its revenues and reduce its fees from £4 an hour to £2.88 an hour, a reduction of 28%.
The figures are bound to be raised by allies of the education secretary, Michael Gove, and the children's minister, Liz Truss, to show that parents are being denied a large-scale cut in their childcare costs by Liberal Democrat objections.
It is not yet clear if the plans can be revived, but Gove has acknowledged that his plan to introduce the changes by September are looking hard to implement. He claimed that Clegg had vetoed the plans because he was worried he was about to be challenged for his party leadership by the business secretary, Vince Cable.
The Daycare Trust earlier this year showed nursery costs rising while wages are stagnating: it found average childcare costs were increasing by more than 6% a year (more than double the rate of inflation).
After-school care costs more than a family holiday to Florida and the costliest nurseries are more expensive than top public schools.
- GPs threaten to quit commissioning to concentrate on patients
Doctors' leader says GPs finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile sharply rising workload with new managerial duties
GPs may have to give up working with the new NHS organisations that control £65bn of treatment budgets, to help their surgeries cope with the sharply rising workloads, medical leaders are warning.
A few GPs have already pulled out of involvement with their local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) because they could not spend enough time with patients while also helping run the groups. The growing demand for GP services is also making others consider withdrawing, even though CCGs are meant to be GP-led.
Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the difficulty of reconciling patient care with new managerial duties in their local CCGs meant it was "inevitable" some GPs would pull out of the CCGs.
The 211 CCGs are the key new NHS organisations that, as a result of the coalition's NHS shakeup last month, replaced primary care trusts as the bodies to commission and pay for treatment for patients across England.
"Sadly, for some GPs being involved with CCGs is taking up considerable amounts of their time. If you have a workforce crisis and if you have a workload that's not getting easier, it's inevitable that we must be in the consulting room trying to address that rather than in CCG board meetings outside consulting rooms, doing what could be done by managers. This is already happening to some extent", said Gerada.
"I find what many CCGs are doing immensely useful. But when push comes to shove, if GPs have to choose between seeing patients and involvement with a CCG, our first duty as clinicians is to our patients."
Dr Kailash Chand, the British Medical Association's deputy chair and a former GP who was awarded an OBE for his services to the NHS, said some GPs could not perform both roles adequately.
"About a quarter of GPs in England are involved in some way with their CCG, whether as the chair or just as someone who sits on one of their committees, and thus has a lot of meetings to go to. That extra work related to commissioning services is cutting into the time they can spend with patients, just at the time that demand for GP services has been going up, so some GPs now have too much to do," said Chand.
"Some have already pulled out of active CCG work – attending meetings – because they can't cope with the dual workload of the managerial stuff around commissioning and looking after patients. While that's not happening on a large scale at the moment, it could become a wholesale pulling out if [the health secretary] Jeremy Hunt tries to force GPs to resume responsibility for providing out of hours care."
Meanwhile, a row between the government and the medical profession intensified as the leader of Britain's GPs accused the health secretary of "spouting rubbish" and rejected his demand that family doctors take back responsibility for out-of-hours care.
Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the British Medical Association's GPs committee – which represents the UK's 40,000 GPs – launched a sustained assault on Hunt over his "denigration" of GPs and his blaming of them for the growing crisis in A&E care.
Buckman's speech, to Thursday's annual conference of the BMA's local medical committees (GP branches), highlighted the increasingly vocal unease about Hunt's approach felt by the BMA and the medical royal colleges which represent the UK's nurses and GPs.
Buckman rejected Hunt's call for GPs to resume responsibility for providing out-of-hours care overnight and at weekends in England, as they did until 2004 when 90% chose to cease doing so in a revised contract deal with the then Labour government.
NHS Clinical Commissioners, the organisation that represents about 130 of the 211 CCGs, warned that "at practices across the country, workloads are at breaking points and GPs are ready to buckle under the strain" – and that Hunt's blaming of GPs for the alarming rise in patients attending hospital A&E departments was damaging GPs' morale.
Last month, Dr Chandra Kanneganti resigned as the clinical director for unscheduled care with Stoke-on-Trent CCG, just days after it assumed its powers on 1 April. He told the Pulse medical website at the time: "We need to spend more time at practices than we did before. Practice and patients are our main priority. With the recent changes in the [GPs'] contract, I'm not sure how long I can spend time on my commissioning duties. I don't want my patient care compromised."
Hunt on Thursday struck a more emollient tone towards GPs in a speech setting out ways to improve the quality of primary care, such as hiring a new chief inspector of primary care and rating GP surgeries.
On Tuesday, Hunt had claimed that GPs' failings were leading to overcrowded A&E units. Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the BMA's GPs committee, yesterday made clear that GPs could not and would not take back responsibility for overnight and weekend care, a key ambition which Hunt reiterated.
- Stock markets lose nerve on fears of end to quantitative easing
Britain's top companies lose £36bn in value as stock markets react to US warnings on QE and drop in Chinese manufacturing
A day after the FTSE 100 came within 90 points of its December 1999 all-time high, the index slumped 143 points yesterday to 6696, wiping £36bn off the value of Britain's top companies.
The 2.1% fall was the index's worst in one day since it lost just over 2.5% a year ago to the day, on fears that Greece could leave the eurozone. But after its recent strong surge this latest fall in the blue-chip index merely wipes out the gains made since last Friday.
Stock markets around the world tumbled from their recent highs as investors took fright at weak Chinese manufacturing data and signs that the US Federal Reserve might end its bond-buying programme sooner than expected.
Markets have been buoyed in recent months by the various measures taken by central banks to stimulate the global economy by flooding it with cash. Measures include printing money, buying up mortgage-backed bonds and keeping interest rates at historic lows. Much of the recent economic data indicated the policy was having the desired effect, while the long-running eurozone crisis seemed to have entered a period of relative calm.
But analysts have been warning that any signs the money taps were about to be turned off or that the global economy was not recovering as expected would be taken badly by the markets.
Thursday's rout began with comments late on Wednesday from the Federal Reserve suggesting that America could end its quantitative easing, or QE, programme in the near future, and accelerated after a Chinese survey showed factory activity had fallen for the first time in seven months in May. The Nikkei 225 dropped more than 7% overnight on Wednesday to 14,483, its biggest one-day fall for two years. However, analysts pointed out that the Japanese index had almost doubled in value since November, so was still well ahead for the year.
European stock markets fell, with Germany's Dax and France's Cac both closing around 2.1% lower, while Italy's FTSE MIB fell 3% and Spain's Ibex was down 1.4%.
On Wall Street the Dow Jones industrial average, which had reached an all-time high this week, fell sharply when trading opened on Thursdaybefore staging a recovery. By lunchtime the US index was down just 15 points following stronger than expected weekly jobless claims and home sales.
Rupert Osborne, futures dealer at City broker IG, said: "The stronger home sales and jobless claims … fit with the idea that the US economy is approaching a point where a reduction in stimulus is appropriate. This neatly illustrates the irony of the position; traders across the world are openly hoping for poor US data since this keeps the Fed involved."
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, had hinted on Wednesday about a possible easing of its $85bn-a-month bond-buying programme, in a testimony to Congress. These comments were later compounded by the minutes of the Fed's last policy-making meeting, which showed that some members thought such a move could come as soon as June, much earlier than any analysts had been expecting.
Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at financial spread-betting company CMC Markets UK, said: "There was an expectation after Bernanke's testimony on Capitol Hill that the latest Fed minutes wouldn't add too much to overall market expectations around the prospects for further easing against expectations of possible tapering.
"The release of the latest Fed minutes completely changed that dynamic with a single line, 'a number of participants express a willingness to reduce QE in June'.
"The disappointing Chinese manufacturing data gave markets the extra nudge over the edge that was needed and persuaded investors with money in the game to cash in."
In China the HSBC purchasing managers index fell to 49.6 points in May, from 50.4 the previous month. Any level below 50 produced by the survey of industry indicates a contracting sector. China is a major consumer of commodities, so the signs of a slowdown in the country put metal prices under pressure, with copper down more than 3%. Oil prices also slid lower, Brent crude falling nearly 1% to $102 a barrel.
But gold and silver edged higher as investors searched out safer assets amid the sell-off.
- Bangladesh factory collapse blamed on swampy ground and heavy machinery
Investigation into 24 April disaster at Rana Plaza garment factory recommends life prison sentences for building's owners
The defects and errors that led to the world's deadliest garment-industry accident include the swampy ground the Rana Plaza was built on, the "extremely poor quality" construction materials and the massive, vibrating equipment operating when the eight-story building collapsed, a committee appointed by Bangladesh's government has concluded.
The committee recommended life prison sentences for the owners of the building and the five garment factories that operated there, though the charges they currently face carry a maximum seven-year term. Their report, submitted to the government on Wednesday, says nothing about the role an inadequate regulatory system played in the 24 April collapse, which left more than 1,100 people dead.
The disaster highlighted the hazardous working conditions in Bangladesh's £13bn garment industry and the lack of safety for millions of workers who are paid as little as £25 a month. The 1,127 killed at Rana Plaza in the Dhaka suburb of Savar are among at least 1,800 Bangladesh garment-industry workers killed in fires or building collapses since 2005.
The investigating committee, appointed by the interior ministry, found that the ground Rana Plaza was built on was unfit for a multi-story building. "A portion of the building was constructed on land which had been a body of water before and was filled with rubbish," committee head Khandker Mainuddin Ahmed said. He said the land had been swampy with shallow water.
Building owner Sohel Rana also "used extremely poor quality iron rods and cement," Ahmed told Associated Press on Thursday.
"There were a series of irregularities." The report found Rana had permission to build a six-storey structure and added two floors illegally so he could rent them out to garment factories. Past statements from authorities said the owner had permission for a five-storey structure and added three floors illegally.
The report also said the building was not built for industrial use, and the weight of the heavy garment factory machinery and their vibrations contributed to the building collapse.
Some elements of the report, including problems with building materials and heavy equipment, were previously mentioned by investigators.
Rana Plaza was shut down briefly after workers spotted cracks in its walls and pillars a day before the collapse. But the garment factory workers were called back to work, many of them forcibly, hours before the building fell.
The committee recommended that Rana and the owners of the garment factories be sentenced to life in jail if they are found guilty of violating building codes. Rana, three engineers and four factory owners have been arrested, but the building-code charges they face carry a maximum sentence of seven years behind bars.
The committee urged the government to ensure all those injured at Rana Plaza receive free medical treatment. More than 2,500 people were rescued shortly after the disaster.
Labour activists are among those who have blamed not just the owners but the government for the disaster. Government inspections of garment factories are infrequent and easily subverted by corruption, and the garment industry, by far Bangladesh's biggest exporter, is highly influential in government.
- John Kerry acknowledges failures over Israeli-Palestinian peace process
US secretary of state begins fourth recent visit to region by saying he hopes to surprise people by laying a path to peace
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has acknowledged years of disappointment over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process at the start of his fourth recent visit to the area, but added that he hoped to confound sceptics and cynics.
Kerry met the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and won strong support for his peace mission from the British foreign secretary, William Hague, who is also visiting the Middle East.
Speaking in Jerusalem, Kerry said: "I know this region well enough to know there is scepticism; in some quarters there is cynicism and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment. It is our hope that by being methodical, careful, patient - but detailed and tenacious - that we can lay on a path ahead that can conceivably surprise people and certainly exhaust the possibilities of peace."
He praised Netanyahu's seriousness in trying to find ways back to the negotiating table. Later he and Abbas discussed their "shared commitment to the peace effort", a statement said.
Both sides have said they want to see Kerry's efforts succeed. The Palestinians claim that the secretary of state has asked to be given until 7 June to make progress, and they have agreed to refrain from pursuing their statehood claims at international bodies until then.
On the Israeli side, an unannounced de facto moratorium on settlement expansion has been marred by a move to retroactively authorise four West Bank outposts and to press ahead with 300 new homes in the settlement of Beit El.
Most diplomats and observers are cautious about Kerry's chances of success. However, earlier this week the Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, hinted at some slow progress, saying: "Mr Kerry is keeping things [close to] his chest. He likes to work very, very, very below the radar and grow things like mushrooms."
Speaking to a United Nations committee in New York, Erekat described the situation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "apartheid - worse than that which existed in South Africa".
The growth of Israel's settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are illegal under international law, remain a major stumbling block to renewing talks. The Palestinians want construction to stop before re-entering negotiations while Israel insists it has the right to increase the settler population.
Hague, on a two-day visit to the region, said the peace process was "an urgent priority for the United Kingdom and the world", and welcomed the "very strong commitment" of the United States to resume negotiations.
"My visit is in support of those efforts," he said. "We urge all parties to move the process forward and to really give the bold and decisive leadership that will allow success." Peace was necessary, just and possible, he added.
The foreign secretary visited a Bedouin community, Khan al-Ahmar, on the eastern edge of Jerusalem, whose homes, school and animal shelters are under a demolition order from the Israeli authorities.
- FTSE 100 falls sharply from 13-year high
Investors take fright at weak Chinese manufacturing data and concerns that Federal Reserve might end QE next month
Leading shares have fallen sharply from their recent 13-year highs, as investors took fright at weak Chinese manufacturing data and concerns that the US Federal Reserve might end its bond-buying programme sooner than expected.
A day after the FTSE 100 came within 90 points of its December 1999 peak, the index slumped 2.1%, down 143.48 points at 6696.79. This is its worst daily performance in percentage terms since exactly a year ago.
But after its recent strong surge, this latest fall merely wipes out the gains made since Friday.
Overnight the the Nikkei 225 dropped more than 7% to 14,483.98 in the wake of a Chinese survey showing factory activity had fallen for the first time in seven months in May. In early trading on Wall Street the Dow Jones industrial average fell sharply initially but had recovered most of its losses by the London market close.
Global markets have been buoyed in recent weeks by the various measures taken by central banks to stimulate the global economy, as well as growing signs that the actions were having a positive effect.
The US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, soothed market fears of an early end to its $85bn a month bond-buying programme in a testimony to Congress on Thursday. But just hours later, the minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting seemed to paint a different picture, suggesting the stimulus programme could ease off as early as June.
Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: "There was an expectation after Bernanke's testimony on Capitol Hill that the latest Fed minutes wouldn't add too much to overall market expectations around the prospects for further easing against expectations of possible tapering.
"The release of the latest Fed minutes completely changed that dynamic with a single line, 'a number of participants express a willingness to reduce QE in June'.
"This is hugely significant because this Fed meeting came before the most recent payrolls data and the huge upward revisions to the numbers that we saw at the beginning of May. If members of the committee felt this way before the huge upward revisions to the jobs numbers, then it stands to reason they probably feel even more inclined now, bringing forward the probability of an even livelier debate about the timing of a slowdown in the current levels of stimulus, when the Fed next meets on 18 and 19 June."
In China the HSBC purchasing managers index fell to 49.6 points in May, from 50.4 the previous month. Any level below 50 indicates contraction.
- Benefits cap will have catastrophic effect on families, court will hear
Vulnerable families challenging £500-a-week cap say it may force victims of domestic violence to return to their abusers
Families will suffer catastrophic effects and victims of domestic violence may be forced to return to their abusers, it will be argued in the first test cases challenging the government's imposition of a £500-a-week cap on benefits.
A judge has already given permission for a full judicial review of claims that involve four vulnerable families relying on welfare payments. One household is facing imminent eviction, according to documents filed at the high court.
One of the families lives in Haringey, one of the four London boroughs selected by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as pilot areas for introducing the controversial benefits cap.
The families have not been identified. Two of the claims involve victims of domestic abuse; their claims are supported by the refuge charity Women's Aid.
The DWP restrictions are supposed to provide an incentive for those on benefit to seek work and prevent families from receiving more by remaining dependent on welfare.
The government's own impact assessment of the Welfare Reform Act estimated that as many as 56,000 households would be affected, losing on average around £93 a week. The overall cap has been set at £500 per household and £350 for single adults.
There is no right of appeal against benefit reductions. The cap applies however many children there are in a household. Large families are therefore likely to be disproportionately affected by the regulations.
"The families who bring this claim are indicative of … concerns regarding the legality of the policy, including its discriminatory effect, given its disproportionately adverse impact upon women (particularly single mothers), children, the disabled, and certain racial and religious groups," the court papers explain.
The families will suffer catastrophic effects if the cap is imposed on them, it is said. "Two of the families will receive nil for basic subsistence (food, clothes, heating) as their rent exceeds the £500 per week cap. They will immediately fall into arrears, face eviction and street homelessness.
"Two of the families have fled domestic violence in circumstances where they were financially reliant upon their abusive partners, and they now face a stark choice between descending further into poverty and risking losing their homes, or returning to their abusers in order to escape the imposition of the cap."
Rebekah Carrier, the solicitor at Hopkin Murray Beskine, who acts for all of the claimants, said: "This is a cruel and misguided policy. It will have a catastrophic impact on our clients and many thousands more vulnerable children and adults. They face street homelessness and starvation.
"A year ago the children's commissioner warned the government that these changes would result in a sharp increase in child poverty and homelessness, with a disproportionate impact upon disabled children and children of disabled parents, and some BME groups.
"The difficulties now faced by my clients were predictable and avoidable. The reason for the policy is said to be to encourage people to obtain work but my clients face difficulties in securing employment because they are lone parents with caring responsibilities for babies and toddlers, and disabled adults who have already been recognised as unable to work due to their disabilities."
The case will be argued by Ian Wise QC and Caoilfhionn Gallagher of Doughty Street Chambers. Lawyers are looking at least another 15 similar claims as law centres are approached by desperate families seeking advice about the effect of the benefits cap.
In a supporting statement, Niki Norman, deputy chief executive of Women's Aid, says: "The benefit cap is likely to have a significant adverse impact on women seeking to move on from refuge accommodation into other housing, and therefore on the availability of refuge space to women in crisis who seek urgent safe shelter.
"The inevitable result of the implementation of the benefit cap for women as they leave refuges is that some families will suffer destitution, some will become homeless again very quickly, and some will choose not to leave refuges, with all the resulting difficulties for refuges."
A DWP spokesperson said: "We are confident that the benefit cap measures are lawful and do not discriminate against any groups. The benefit cap sets a fair limit to what people can expect to get from the welfare system – so that claimants cannot receive more than £500 a week, the average household income."
The DWP has recently faced a number of judicial reviews on its welfare reform programme. Earlier this week a tribunal ruled that the work capability assessment (a test determining eligibility for disability benefits) put people with mental health problems at a substantial disadvantage. A separate judicial review has been considering whether the impact of the government's so-called bedroom tax on tenants "under-occupying" social housing is discriminatory.
- Father of Muhammad al-Dura rebukes Israeli report on son's death
Report re-ignites war of words over death of 12-year-old al-Dura in Gaza in 2000 by claiming the incident was staged
In a scrubby cemetery in central Gaza, where crumbling tombstones nestle in the sand amid wind-blown rubbish, Jamal al-Dura crouched at the grave of his son Muhammad to recite the Muslim prayer for the dead. With the youngest of his 11 children at his side, he took his hands from his face, laid them on the marble slab and looked up, a bitter as well as a bereaved man.
"Israel says my son isn't dead. Can you imagine how this feels for a father who has lost his child? They have all the technology tools in the world. He's not dead? Then bring him to me," he said.
The long, acrimonious war over the death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura in September 2000 was reignited this week with the release of an official Israeli report attacking a 55-second television broadcast, aired on that day 13 years ago, for what it said was distortion, falsehood, fabrication and incitement to terror.
The Israeli report – commissioned by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who endorsed its conclusions – suggested that the entire event may have been staged as a propaganda exercise and that Muhammad was not killed or even injured. This was dismissed with weary incredulity by Jamal, Talal Abu Rahma, the cameraman who filmed the incident, and by France 2, the television station whose broadcast ricocheted around the world.
The filmed scenes of Muhammad and Jamal cowering behind a concrete block on a street corner amid heavy gunfire, with the boy screaming in terror before slumping across his father's lap, became the most potent image of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that started shortly afterwards. It was reproduced on posters, stamps and murals across the Arab world and cited by al-Qaida in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the US.
It swiftly became part of what this week's Israeli report described as "the battle for the TV or computer screen [which] is often as or even more important than the actual military clash". Almost immediately, supporters of Israel sought to cast doubt on the veracity of the footage, and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) retracted an early statement at a press conference that "apparently the boy was hit by our fire".
The day itself, 30 September 2000, began with an outing to buy a car. Jamal and Muhammad travelled from their home in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza north to a car market in Gaza City. At the time, the Gaza Strip was punctuated with Israeli military checkpoints, heavily fortified army posts and watchtowers, there to protect 21 Jewish settlements.
Unsuccessful in their mission, the al-Duras embarked on the return to Bureij by taxi. When they reached the Netzarim junction, a military gateway between the northern and southern halves of Gaza and a frequent flashpoint between the IDF and Palestinian youths, trouble had already started. The taxi driver refused to go further, and Jamal and Muhammad set off to cross the junction by foot.
As gunfire started, father and son sheltered by a concrete water barrel close to the crossroads, diagonally across from the IDF post and round the corner from a Palestinian security forces command post. "I tried to hide by the cement block. I was raising my hands and waving to ask them to stop," Jamal told the Guardian this week. "I could see the soldiers in the tower but they didn't stop shooting.
"I was only thinking about one thing: how to protect my son. He was scared. When he was shot by the first bullet, I was telling him, don't be afraid, the ambulance will come. He said, I'm not afraid, you don't be afraid. When he fell across my lap, I realised he was dead. These seconds felt like hours, days."
Pressed on the sequence and timings of the events, Jamal became agitated, saying he did not remember details amid the confusion and terror of the moment. He and his son were under sustained fire for 45 minutes, he said, at the end of which he was seriously hurt and Muhammad was dead.
The pair were taken to the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where local reporters insist they saw the child's corpse in the morgue. Jamal was evacuated by the Jordanian authorities to a hospital in Amman, where he spent around three months being treated for his injuries.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Guardian correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg visited the scene. In her dispatch, she described "a circle of 15 bullet holes on a cinder block wall, and a smear of darkening blood."
Further on in her report, she said: "Aside from the circle of bullet holes – most of them below waist level – the expanse of wall is largely unscarred. This appeared to suggest that the Israeli fire was targeted at father and son."
Goldenberg quoted a volunteer in the ambulance attending the scene. "There was still some breath in [Muhammad] when we reached the ambulance, but when we opened the doors, they started shooting again," said Bassam al-Bilbays. The ambulance driver was shot dead.
An affidavit given by Abu Rahma, the France 2 cameraman, on 3 October 2000, said: "I can assert that shooting at the child Muhammad and his father Jamal came from the above-mentioned Israeli military outpost, as it was the only place from which shooting at the child and the father was possible. So, by logic and nature, my long experience of covering hot incidents and violent clashes, and my ability to distinguish sounds of shooting, I can confirm the child was intentionally and in cold blood shot dead and his father injured by the Israeli army."
These eyewitness descriptions were challenged by the Israeli report, which relied on military accounts, analysis of the footage and medical reports. It concluded that "contrary to the report's claim that the boy was killed, the committee's review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive. The review revealed that there is no evidence that Jamal or the boy were wounded in the manner claimed in the report, and that the footage does not depict Jamal as having been badly injured. In contrast, there are numerous indications that the two were not struck by bullets at all."
Central to its conclusions are the final few seconds of footage showing Muhammad as he "raises his arm and turns his head in the direction of [the cameraman] in what are clearly intentional and controlled movements". Abu Rahma's statements, the report says, "have been shown to be replete with contradictions, inconsistencies and falsehoods … Many additional contradictions, inconsistencies and falsehoods are to be found in the accounts given by [France 2's Jerusalem bureau chief, Charles] Enderlin, Abu Rahma, Jamal al-Dura and Palestinian medical professionals, which together make up the al-Dura narrative accepted throughout the world".
It also asserted that "the boy labelled as Muhammad al-Dura in photos from the Shifa hospital autopsy, and the one borne aloft at what was allegedly Muhammad al-Dura's funeral, has different physical characteristics than the boy seen crouching behind the barrel in the France 2 footage."
The Israeli committee did not contact Jamal, Abu Rahma or Enderlin in the course of its eight-month review of the incident, although it included Abu Rahma's affidavit in the appendices of its report. In a statement to the Guardian, the Israeli ministry of intelligence and international affairs said the committee "requested information and materials from France 2, of which Mr Enderlin and Mr Abu Rahma are employees, via the French ambassador to Israel. In addition, the committee conducted an extensive review of dozens of interviews, statements and written accounts regarding the incident given by Mr al-Dura, Mr Abu Rahma and Mr Enderlin from 2000 until today."
Enderlin said no request had ever been received through the French foreign ministry. "If they want to contact us, I am here in Jerusalem; I have an Israeli lawyer, they do not need to go through the French ambassador. We have said many times we are ready for any independent investigation following international standards."
All three said they were prepared to testify before an independent international commission of inquiry, and Jamal said he was willing to have his son's body exhumed for forensic and DNA analysis.
"All the answers are in the footage. The camera is trustworthy," Abu Rahma told the Guardian this week in his Gaza City office. He said he was not surprised at the Israeli committee's conclusions. "In whose interests is this committee? I am ready to stand, anywhere and any time, in front of an independent international commission."
The Israeli report spoke of "malignant narratives", "mendacious media coverage" and "repeated attempts [by local stringers] to stage or fabricate media items". Abu Rahma pointed to his 27 years' experience as a journalist working for, among others, France 2 and CNN, and an award in 2009 from the Rory Peck Trust. "No one else has accused me of bias," he said.
France 2 is also engaged in a long-running libel case in Paris over its broadcast after a pro-Israel media monitor claimed the incident had been staged. A ruling was expected three days after Israel published its report, but has been deferred until 26 June.
Jamal said he had no idea at the time that he and his son were being filmed, and that he didn't see the broadcast until two months later. "These are lies from Israel. They are trying to hide the truth, but the truth is too strong to be hidden."
At the al-Duras's home, in a narrow alley in the Bureij refugee camp, the family has created a shrine to Muhammad. The house, which was rebuilt after extensive damage caused by an Israeli airstrike in the three-week war in Gaza in 2008-09, is now home to a second Muhammad, born two years after the death of his older brother, along with nine other siblings. "I was praying to God to give me another son, another Muhammad," said Jamal.
Despite his grief, Jamal said he had no hatred for the people of Israel. "I don't hate Israel, I hate the occupation. I am for peace. War is against humankind. I don't want others to lose their sons. Which parent doesn't want their children to grow up safe and secure?"
- Mark Bridger tells court he placed April Jones on living room floor
Man accused of murdering five-year-old girl says he wanted her to have 'peace and quiet'
The man accused of abducting and murdering April Jones told a court he lay the five-year-old girl on his living room floor to give her some "peace and quiet" and keep her warm – even though he claims she was dead by this point.
During his second day in the witness box, Mark Bridger conceded he looked at a cartoon image of a girl being restrained and sexually abused on the day April vanished, but denied he was sexually frustrated following a split-up with his girlfriend.
Bridger, a 47-year-old former lifeguard and slaughterman, also accused a seven-year-old girl who told the jury she saw April happily getting into his Land Rover of lying.
He continued to tell Mold crown court that he accidentally knocked April over and put her into his car before driving off in a panic and subsequently forgetting where he left the body.
The prosecution claims that he abducted April from near her home in Machynlleth, mid Wales, and murdered her in a sexually motivated attack. It alleges he concealed, disposed of or destroyed her body. Bridger denies all the offences.
During police interviews Bridger maintained he did not believe April had been in his house, Mount Pleasant in the village of Ceinws, three miles from Machynlleth.
But on Thursday he told the court that "dreams and images" of what may have happened there had come to him over the months.
For the first time he said he had a recollection of holding April and putting her on the floor of his living room, where her blood was found soaked through to the underside of the carpet and where fragments of bone that the prosecution claims may be from a child were discovered in the log burner.
Bridger said she was dead but "in some silly" way he may have hoped that by laying her in front of his fire he may have given her "peace and quiet" and kept her warm.
Elwen Evans QC, for the prosecution, pointed out that he had then put her outside in the cold. "I don't know what I did next," Bridger said.
He told the court he did not believe he had disposed of April's body. He thought "disposed" a "horrible way of putting it" and added: "I placed her somewhere."
The defendant and prosecutor often clashed over Bridger's use of language.
At one point Bridger rejected the claim he had "killed" the girl. "I caused the death of April. I did not kill her," he said.
Bridger said there was "no DNA evidence" of any sexual contact between him and April.
Evans asked him if he had been "sexually frustrated" on 1 October when April was last seen alive. He said: "Not at all." "Did you look at an image of child pornography?" "Yes."
Bridger claimed that the seven-year-old witness was lying when she said April got into his Land Rover. He said: "I believe she has been influenced," though he did not say by whom.
Evans said to Bridger: "You will say any lie that you think will save your skin." Bridger replied: "No."
He said he could not remember having April in his car after passing a monument a few minutes' drive from where she was last seen. He said: "I have a dead child that I have killed in my car. I had pins and needles. I felt sick. I felt numb."
Evans asked him if the focus was on him. "The focus has always been on little April," he said.
Questioned about his collection of knives, blades and axes, Bridger told the court he loved bushcraft. He said the implements were tools, not weapons. He argued that a utensil described by the prosecution as a "boning knife" was a standard kitchen knife.
The trial continues.
- Obama to bring US drone programme out from 'legal shadows' of the CIA
President expected to move drone policy to Pentagon in major counter-terrorism speech outlining new legal guidelines
The White House was due to announce a series of measures aimed at moving the controversial US drone killings programme out of the "legal shadows" on Thursday.
In a major counter-terrorism speech billed as marking the end of an unfettered "war" on terror, Barack Obama was expected to reveal that he will move responsibility for future drone operations from the CIA to the Pentagon so they can be more closely monitored by Congress.
A more limited range of strikes in countries such as Yemen are likely to be carried out by the US military working within a new set of legal guidelines agreed by Obama this week, giving greater clarification on how and when officials can target suspected terrorists operating abroad.
Attorney general Eric Holder told congressional leaders in a letter on Wednesday that they would be briefed in private on whether future drone attacks on suspected terrorists passed the new legal threshold.
Both the White House and the CIA declined to comment on details of the policy ahead of the speech but government sources told the Guardian they would add to existing congressional oversight measures in place. Until recently the administration did not even publicly admit the existence of the drone programme.
Human rights campaigners have cautiously welcomed the attempt to bring US drone warfare policy into the open, but called on President Obama to publish the new legal tests that he was due to announce later on Thursday.
Dixon Osburn, a director at Human Rights First, said: "On its own, it is not clear that taking things away from the CIA makes a difference – the special operations command at the Pentagon is also secret – but at least the military are schooled in the rules of war."
"It looks like Obama is trying to return his counter-terrorism strategy to something that operates within the law. We want to know what that legal framework is though."
Earlier, the White House marked this new effort to draw a line under the controversial drone-strike policy by admitting for the first time that four American citizens were among those killed by its covert attacks in Yemen and Pakistan since 2009.
In a letter to congressional leaders sent on Wednesday, attorney general Eric Holder Holder claimed one of the US citizens killed, Anwar al-Awlaki, was chief of external operations for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) and had been involved in plots to blow up aircraft over US soil.
However, Holder said three others killed by drones – Samir Khan, Abdul Rahman Anwar al-Awlaki and Jude Kenan – were not "specifically targeted". The second of these victims, Anwar al-Awlaki's son, is said by campaigners to have been 16 when he died in Yemen in 2011.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 240 and 347 people have been killed in total by confirmed US drone strikes in Yemen since 2002, with a further 2,541 to 3,533 killed by CIA drones in Pakistan.
"The president will soon be speaking publicly in greater detail about our counter-terrorism operations and the legal and policy framework," Holder told 22 senior members of Congress in Wednesday's letter.
"This week the president approved a document that institutionalises the administration's exacting standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities."
The attorney general said this document would remain classified, but relevant congressional committees would be briefed on its contents. No further details were given of other killings in the five-page letter.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama would also outline his renewed attempt to shut the Guantánamo Bay detention centre in the speech, and seek to explain why previous efforts had failed.
The White House said Thursday's speech will cover "broad counter-terrorism policy, including military, diplomatic, intelligence, and legal efforts".
"[Obama] will review the state of the threats that we face, particularly as the al-Qaida core has weakened but new dangers have emerged," it added. "He will discuss the policy and legal framework under which we take action against terrorist threats, including the use of drones.
"He will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. And he will frame the future of our efforts against al-Qaida, its affiliates and its adherents."
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