Life sentence for mid-Atlantic bomb plotter

A 23-year-old man found guilty of conspiracy to murder by plotting with a convicted terrorist to blow-up passenger aircraft over the Atlantic has been sentenced to life in prison.

Adam Khatib, from Walthamstow, east London, was convicted at Woolwich crown court yesterday, after an eight-week trial, of plotting the terror attacks with ringleader Abdullah Ahmed Ali.

The latter was jailed for a minimum of 40 years back in September after being found guilty of conspiracy to murder by organising the transatlantic attack.

Today, Khatib was ordered to spend a minimum of 18 years in prison.

Khatib's co-defendant Nabeel Hussain, 25, from Chingford, was found guilty of engaging in preparation of terror acts and jailed for eight years, while Shamin Uddin, 39, from Stoke Newington, was found guilty of possessing terrorist items and jailed for 15 months.

He was also sentenced to five years and nine months for possession of a firearm, a charge he pleaded guilty to earlier.

The 39-year-old had also faced charges of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts but the jury cleared him.

The court heard that Khatib had acted as a 'loyal partner and servant' to Ali and had travelled with him to Pakistan.

The plot, discovered in 2006, led to a strict clampdown on liquids being taken on to commercial aircraft, the effects of which are still being felt today.

Three other men, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain and Umar Islam, were convicted back in September of being involved in the plot.

Commenting after the sentencing, Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall from the Met's counter-terrorism command, said: 'Adam Khatib may not have known the full extent of the plan being hatched by his co-conspirators, but he certainly knew that they had murder in mind.

'He was a footsoldier to Abdullah Ahmed Ali and was actively involved in a conspiracy to attack innocent members of the public.

'Nabeel Hussain assisted Ali and his cohorts in preparing for acts of terrorism. Both men are committed terrorists who met Ali when he was furthering his plans to blow up transatlantic aircraft.

'Hussain even contemplated losing his life in an act of martyrdom and had made a Will expressing a willingness to die a violent death.'

Inter and Barca seal passage to last 16

Inter Milan and Barcelona both avoided embarrasing early exits from the Champions League, although the pair were forced to work harder than they might have hoped.

Jose Mourinho's Inter, with just four European goals and one win in their last seven San Siro outings, nudged into the knockout stages courtesy of a 2-0 win over Russian champions Rubin Kazan in Group F. Former Barcelona front man Samuel Eto'o got the ball rolling shortly after the half-hour before a ferocious free-kick by Marco Ballotelli wrapped up the win.

In the Ukraine, defending champions Barcelona had to come from behind to earn top spot in the group. The Spaniards were stunned by Dynamo Kiev after just two minutes through Artem Milevskiy but hit back through Xavi after 33 minutes. The pre-tournament favourites grabbed the winner after the break through Ballon D'Or winner Lionel Messi's gloriously struck free-kick.

The story of the night, though, came in Belgium where goalkeeper Sinan Bolat headed an equaliser five minutes into injury-time as Standard Liege snatched a place in the Europa League from opponents AZ Alkmaar. He became the second stopper in as many nights to get their name on the scoresheet after Bayern Munich's Hans Butt notched against Juventus on Tuesday.

In Group G Stuttgart, who sacked manager Marcus Babbel earlier this week, needed to beat Unirea Urziceni to make it into the last 16 behind Sevila. And they all but secured victory in the first 11 minutes.

Ciprian Marica slotted home after five minutes, Christian Trasch grabbed the second three minutes later and Pavel Pogrebniak the third in the 11th minute. The frighteners were put up the Germans shortly after the interval when Unirea snatched one back, although it proved to be nothing more than a consolation.

Darling announces boiler scrappage scheme

A new boiler scrappage scheme has been announced by Alistair Darling in his pre-Budget report.

The scheme will help 125,000 families replace their old boilers with newer, more efficient models.

The scheme, similar to the car trade-in scheme, was one of a series of green measures announced in the report and is hoped to reduce domestic heating and hot water bills and cut greenhouse gases.

In his speech the chancellor said: 'Each inefficient boiler adds over £200 to household bills and one tonne of carbon to the atmosphere. A quarter of all the country's emissions come from households.'

The scheme will see about £200 million added to help cut carbon emissions from homes from April 2010.

Mick Williams, of Williams and Co, a plumber's merchant in Hampshire, who started a petition for the scheme, told inthenews.co.uk: 'All in all it's very pleasing. It's much better than the car scrappage scheme for the environment, small businesses should benefit and house holders will save about £250 a year. So it's a win, win, win situation.'

He did though add that he was yet to see the details of the scheme and stressed the importance of the involvement of small business.

The scheme will be open to households with what are known as G-rated boilers, which are graded as 70 per cent efficient, so long as they replace them with A-rated boilers.

It is also expected to give a boost to British industry, as about 60 per cent of boilers used in the UK are manufactured here. About 120,000 boiler engineers also look set to benefit from increased business.

Some though feel that the pre-Budget report did not go far enough in terms of the environment.

John Sauven, Greenpeace executive director, said: 'Alistair Darling peppered his speech with references to a low carbon economy, but failed to announce the scale of change that would actually give us one. A bold chancellor would have scrapped Trident, saved £100 billion and used the cash to create a green investment bank.

Royal Mail reports 4% rise in profits

Royal Mail has today announced an operating profit rise of four per cent for the six months to September, compared to the same period last year.

The postal service said profits for the period stood at £184 million, while last year's total stood at £177 million.

Royal Mail said overall group revenues were down due to the 'continuing decline in mail volumes and economic recession which, along with intensifying competition, had an impact on all of the group's businesses'.

The company also said it had paid more than £300 million into its pension fund over the period, saying 'despite the resilient profit performance, group cashflow continues to be negative with an outflow of £434 million during the six months, largely driven by continuing investment and the cost of voluntary redundancies'.

The postal service added: 'During the period we also made a cash payment of more than £300m into the pension fund. The pension fund deficit is currently being revalued with the historic deficit widely expected to be at least £10 billion compared with £3.4 billion at the last valuation three years ago.'

Adam Crozier, chief executive of Royal Mail Group said: 'Traditional volumes continue to fall in the UK and around the world as electronic communications continues its inexorable growth: for example the Dutch postal operator TNT has said that volumes in the Netherlands will fall by seven to nine per cent in 2010 while in some countries such as the US the decline is as steep as 13 per cent.

'It is too early to assess the impact of the Communication Workers Union's (CWU) recent strike action but we are grateful to all those postmen and women who chose to continue working through the strikes and for the huge efforts made by our managers to help keep the mail moving.'

New details on MPs expenses published

The House of Commons has published details of expenses claimed by MPs under the second home allowance.

The information released online shows claims made during 2008-9 and the first three months of 2009-10.

Downing Street has already announced this morning Gordon Brown will repay £500 he claimed for painting a summer house.

Hundreds of thousands of claims, and their supporting receipts, have been released this morning with Westminster promising the details will be much more transparent than the information released earlier this year which was mainly blacked out.

The Guardian claims the new information shows more than 50 MPs 'flipped' their second home allowance last year from one property to another.

The previously unheard of procedure gained notoriety earlier this year when public anger at MPs expenses reached fever pitch in light of the publication of expenses claims by the Daily Telegraph.

However, the MPs named in today's Commons list are said to have not broken any rules. Many swapped their designated home from one in London to another, or one in their constituency to other. Some though 'flipped' between a London property and one in their constituency.

Among them is the Tory MP Douglas Hogg, who gained notoriety after his lavish claim to have his moat cleaned at the taxpayers' expense became public.

Others include Commons Speak John Bercow and former defence secretary Des Browne who changed his second home designation from one London property to another.

Nine local authorities rated as "poor"

Children's services in nine local authorities have been rated as 'poor' in a report released by Ofsted.

Authorities singled out for criticism were Birmingham, Cornwall, Doncaster, Essex, Haringey, Leeds, Rotherham, Warrington and Wokingham. All received the lowest rating possible.

Out of the 152 English authorities assessed, ten received an 'excellent' rating for children's services, while 94 were judged 'good' and 40 'adequate'.

Authorities that received an 'excellent' rating were Blackburn with Darwen, Camden, City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston-upon-Thames, Lewisham, Richmond-upon-Thames, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth, and York.

In the worst performing authorities, Ofsted's identified 'serious weaknesses in aspects of social care provision for children and young people' as well as 'insufficient numbers of permanent and experienced social workers'.

Haringey council, the subject of severe criticism in the wake of Baby Peter's death in 2007, had 'significant weaknesses in areas of social care provision' and 'safeguarding [was judged] to be inadequate', the report said.

The number of under-performing children's services has increased from the eight identified last year.

A press release from Ofsted said: 'These results show that the majority of councils are doing a good job and the vast majority are at least satisfactory...The small number of poorly performing authorities must renew their determination to improve, in the knowledge that it is both possible and necessary.'

In response to the report, Haringey council leader councillor Claire Kober said: 'We continue to work very hard to address the fundamental problems in our child protection services.

'Major changes have already been made and officers and councillors are committed to doing all we can to make Haringey's child protection the best there is.'

Facebook criticised for new privacy changes

Facebook has caused controversy by introducing new privacy settings which critics say could increase the amount of information people expose online.

The social-networking site launched the changes yesterday, sparking a wave of criticism from civil liberties campaigners, digital rights groups and bloggers.

Users logging onto Facebook since yesterday would have immediately seen a pop-up asking whether they would like to update their privacy settings. The site said it hopes the changes would help users to manage their Facebook account, and what others could see, rather than revealing too much private information.

The Electric Frontier Foundation's Kevin Bankston said: 'The new changes are intended to simplify Facebook's notoriously complex privacy settings and, in the words of today's privacy announcement to all Facebook users, 'give you more control of your information.'

'These new 'privacy' changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before. Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data.

'Not to say that many of the changes aren't good for privacy. But other changes are bad, while a few are just plain ugly.'

Facebook began testing the settings a few months ago. The changes let people decide who should see updates, whether all 350 million Facebook members should see them, and if they should be viewable across the web.

Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, said: 'Any suggestion that we're trying to trick them (users) into something would work against any goal that we have.'

But blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick said: 'This is not what Facebook users signed up for. It's not about privacy at all, it's about increasing traffic and the visibility of activity on the site.

'Information like your email address is recommended to remain limited to friends, but make no mistake about it - Facebook wants you to make the status messages you post visible to the entire internet.'