Royal Ascot Set To Win Back Confidence In Racing

By Paul Kelso, Sports Correspondent

Royal Ascot is one of the highlights of the sporting and social calendars, five days of pomp, pageantry and world-class racing that attracts entrants and attention from around the world.

When the Queen led the Royal procession she was adhering to more than 300 years of tradition, but this year the meeting was particularly welcome after a scandalous spring for racing.

The build-up to the Flat season has been overshadowed by a series of scandals that have shaken faith in the sport.

In April, Mahmood Al Zarooni, leading trainer for the Godolphin stables, was banned for eight months after 22 horses at his yard were found to have been given performance-enhancing anabolic steroids.

A separate investigation is under way into a number of other trainers amid allegations that their horses were administered the same drug, stanozolol, in medication. One trainer, Gerard Butler, is already facing charges for this offence.

The scale of the Al Zarooni affair has caused genuine shock in racing circles and raised questions over the way the sport polices the use of drugs, particularly at international meetings like Ascot.

Mahmood Al Zarooni

The Royal meeting has become a genuine international event, with entrants from America, Australia and South Africa a key part of its appeal. Overseas sprinters such as the unbeaten Australian great Black Caviar, one of the stars of last year's meeting, have become a fixture.

But each of those countries has different rules regarding performance-enhancing drugs to the UK, causing some to ask whether Ascot's famous acres constitute a level playing field.

The international runners are all tested on arrival in the UK and have to declare all medication they have used in the months leading up to the meeting.

The benefits of using drugs in training could linger long after the drugs have cleared a horse's system however, as the BHA has acknowledged by banning all the Al Zarooni horses for six months.

The leading overseas runners at this year's meeting all insist they are and have been drug-free, but some are frank about the need to use drugs in their domestic racing.

Barry Irwin, co-owner of Animal Kingdom, the Kentucky Derby winner who was set to be the star-turn of the opening day when it ran in the first race, the Queen Anne Stakes, told Sky News drugs are a regrettable fact of life in American racing.

He is campaigning to have Lasix, an anti-bleeding agent, banned in the USA. Until it is, he says, he has little choice but to use it.

Black Caviar's owners after receiving the trophy last year from the Queen

"If we didn't use Lasix on older horses it would be like Usain Bolt putting his starting blocks five yards behind the others and I am not prepared to do that.

"But I am campaigning harder than anyone else to have the rules changed. The reason we are talking about Lasix is because it is the last drug standing. Once we get rid of that then we will be in better shape."

Danny O'Brien, who saddled Shamexpress in Tuesday's King's Stand Stakes, would like Australia to outlaw anabolic steroids, which can be used out-of-competition.

"I personally don't use them (steroids) on my horses and I tend to think that going forward our rules will fall into line with British rules," he said. "The use of them would be very minimal in Australia but I would prefer that they were not used at all."

Dr Peter Webbon, chief executive of the Animal Health Trust and Britain's leading equine vet, is in little doubt that anabolic steroids such as stanozolol, the Al Zarooni drug famously used by Ben Johnson, can confer a distinct advantage, but says their use is unethical and callous.

"I think we all agree that it is really unethical to expect a racehorse to compete other than on its natural merits," he said.

The British Horseracing Authority and Ascot Racecourse are confident that they have measures in place to ensure that racing is fair and honest at its showpiece event. And Paul Bittar, chief executive of the BHA, says Britain will campaign for reform of rules around the world.

"The rules we have in place are the high-water mark in world racing and we want to encourage others to adopt them," he said. "We are pretty confident that the procedures are stringent enough to give punters confidence."

Mr Bittar said the BHA's response to the Al Zarooni case has demonstrated that it is willing to tackle wrongdoing wherever it arises.

He said: "People can have confidence that the regulator has dealt with it without fear or favour, and I think with Godolphin we have shown we treat everyone the same under the rules, including charging the leading trainer in the country."

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Brazil Protests: Clashes Over World Cup Costs

Major protests have been held in cities across Brazil over rising bus fares and the cost of staging the 2014 football World Cup - with Brazilian media putting the number of demonstrators as high as 230,000.

An estimated 50,000 people took to the streets of Sao Paolo, while reports said there were 100,000 on the streets near Rio de Janeiro's Legislative Assembly.

There were clashes outside the building as police used tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse small groups of masked youths.

In the southern city of Porto Alegre, a group of protesters set a bus on fire and threw rocks at empty commuter trains amid calls for transparency and fighting corruption.

Students protest outside the National Congress building in Brasilia

Elsewhere, there were peaceful protests through the capital Brasilia where more than 200 youths briefly occupied the roof of the National Congress and some 5,000 later formed a human chain around the building.

Protests also were reported in Curitiba, Belem, Salvador and Belo Horizonte.

"This is a communal cry saying, 'We're not satisfied'," said Maria Claudia Cardoso, in Sao Paolo.

A fire near Rio's state legislative assembly

"We're massacred by the government's taxes, yet when we leave home in the morning to go to work, we don't know if we'll make it home alive because of the violence.

"We don't have good schools for our kids. Our hospitals are in awful shape. Corruption is rife. These protests will make history and wake our politicians up to the fact that we're not taking it anymore."

Sandra Amalfe added: "We need better education, hospitals and security - not billions spent on the World Cup."

A protester against Brazil's hosting of the World Cup

The protests follow the opening games of the Confederations Cup over the weekend, just one month before a papal visit, a year before the World Cup and three years ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

President Dilma Rousseff acknowledged the protests in a brief statement saying: "Peaceful demonstrations are legitimate and part of democracy. It is natural for young people to demonstrate."

She faces re-election next year and her popularity rating recently dipped for the first time in her presidency.

The unrest, which began last week after the announcement of increased bus fares, has rapidly spread with demonstrators focusing their anger not just on the transport fares but also on the £9.5bn the government is allocating for the Confederations Cup and the World Cup.

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Record Air Fare Rises Push Inflation Higher

The annual rate of inflation was driven higher than expected in May as air fares rose by record levels, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The rebound in the CPI measure of inflation to 2.7% - which followed a surprise dip to 2.4% in April - was also blamed on fuel prices increasing but the ONS said the biggest contributing factor was a 22% jump in airline ticket costs between April and May.

The ONS said that prices rose across European, long-haul and domestic flights though higher air fares were not necessarily linked to the early timing of the Easter holidays.

Overall transport prices rose by 0.4% between April and May.

The price of clothing and footwear also rose 1.2% month on month to tighten the squeeze on households, as the cost of women's outdoor clothing increased during a colder-than-normal month.

But food and drink prices helped hold back inflation, with price falls for meat, vegetables, fruit, sugar, sweets and jams.

Stubbornly high inflation is expected to peak around 3% over the next few months ensuring a summer of pain for consumers, though the Bank of England has forecast it will fall back towards its 2% target more quickly than originally expected.

Rising energy bills coupled with high fuel and tuition fees have been among the inflationary pressures facing households in recent years at a time of below-inflation pay rises.

The resulting squeeze in spending has been among the factors holding the UK economy back from stronger growth.

The Treasury gave its reaction to the inflation number by pointing to the fact that the CPI measure was down by almost a half from its peak of 5.2% in 2011.

A spokeswoman said: "To help families with the cost of living, the Government has increased the tax-free personal allowance to £10,000, which will take 2.7 million people out of income tax altogether and save a typical taxpayer over £700.

"(It has) frozen fuel duty which has kept petrol prices 13p per litre lower than they would otherwise have been."

But TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said Britain was set for a "joyless" recovery.

She said: "Britain's great wage squeeze shows no sign of abating. Forty consecutive months of real wage falls means people have less to spend on the high street, and are why economic green shoots are not being felt across the country."

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Army Cuts: Thousands Told They Will Lose Jobs

Nearly 4,500 Army staff have been given their redundancy notices in the latest round of staff cuts, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

A total of 4,480 are being axed as the Government tries to reduce the number of regulars by about 20% to 82,000.

Sky's Defence Correspondent David Bowden said those who take voluntary redundancy will be leaving within six months, and compulsory redundancies will be complete in a year.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the move was necessary to help balance the books, but insisted operational capability would not be affected.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has confirmed there will be no further reductions in manpower in the next round of spending cuts.

Announcing the latest tranche of redundancies, the third to arise from the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, he said: "It is with great regret that we have had to make redundancies to deliver the reduction in the size of the armed forces, but unfortunately they were unavoidable due to the size of the defence deficit that this Government inherited.

 "Although smaller, our armed forces will be more flexible and agile to reflect the challenges of the future with the protection and equipment they need.

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said the redundancy notices being issued today "represent not just broken promises but a failing strategy" to reform the Army.

"There is a huge effort going into sacking soldiers, but nowhere near as much is being done to plug the gap by recruiting new reservists," he said.

"These redundancies represent not just broken promises but a failing strategy, and the level of voluntary applicants will be a signal of morale."

The MoD said: "Tough decisions needed to be made to address the multibillion-pound deficit and bring the defence budget back into balance.

"This unfortunately included making some redundancies across the armed forces. However we can be clear that these reductions will not affect our operational capability.

"The end of combat operations in Afghanistan and the restructuring of our armed forces means they will be more reflective of the complex global situation and more adaptable to future challenges and threats."

Chancellor George Osborne, speaking from the G8 summit in Northern Ireland earlier, said Britain had to make "difficult decisions" about spending to "live within its means".

He told Sky News: "We've got to have an Army we can afford ...

"And when it comes to the military what we've said is we want to make sure that Britain can still project itself abroad, defend itself at home, and that our soldiers have all the latest equipment they need to do that.

"As part of these changes, yes there have been difficult decisions about getting the size of the Army right, but we're also purchasing for them the latest equipment."

Both the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir David Richards, and the Head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, are concerned about the impact of further defence cuts.

Sir Peter has exclusively told Sky News that Britain's chances of success on the battlefields of the future could be at serious risk if the Army was downsized in the latest spending review, the results of which will be announced next week.

The Prime Minister was forced to respond to Sir Peter's comments by saying there would be no further staff cuts to the Army, Navy or Air Force.

British Army spokesman Major General James Chiswell told Sky News it was a "hard day" for staff but that the redundancies had been carried out "as fairly as we could hope for".

Personnel are being offered help with resettling into civilian life.

:: Britain's Last War? The Jeff Randall documentary on the impact of Army spending cuts is on Sky News, Tuesday at 8.30pm.

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Co-op Lures Top City Lawyer For Revival Plan

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

An adviser to the Britannia Building Society on the merger with the Co-op that led to the mutual's current travails is being parachuted into the group as part of its rescue plan.

Sky News understands that Alistair Asher, a partner at the 'Magic Circle' law firm Allen & Overy, is to join the Co-op as its new general counsel and the head of its legal services arm.

Mr Asher's appointment, which is to be announced to staff by the Co-op on Tuesday, will accelerate the overhaul of the mutual's management team under its new chief executive, Euan Sutherland.

His arrival will provide valuable experience on the restructuring of mutually-owned lenders, following his role advising on deals including the Co-op's merger with Britainnia in 2009.

That transaction left the Co-op with many of the problem loans that led to its announcement yesterday that it requires £1.5bn of new capital to satisfy banking regulators.

Mr Asher, who has been advising the Co-op on its ongoing restructuring, is expected to leave his role as the head of A&O's global financial institutions practice in the next few weeks, insiders said.

His role at the helm of the Co-op's legal services arm will position him as the leader of one of its faster-growing divisions. In last year's results, the group said that total legal services revenue for the year had risen 13pc to £33m and announced ambitious plans for growth  with the aim of employing 3,000 people in future.

Since his arrival, Mr Sutherland has engineered the recruitment of several key financial and banking executives, including the former head of HSBC's North American arm, Niall Booker, to run the Co-op Bank.

On Monday, the Co-op unveiled plans to fill the £1.5bn hole in the balance sheet of its banking arm, which will involve losses for some bondholders and the listing of its shares on the stock exchange.

Among the other measures being taken by the mutual are the sale of its life and general insurance arms, as well as a string of loan portfolios.

A Co-op spokesman declined to comment on Mr Asher's appointment.

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Supermarket Wars: Major Chains Lose Ground

The dominance of the so-called 'big four' supermarket chains has been further eroded amid an intense battle for business.

In its latest report on the sector, market researcher Kantar Wordpanel found that discount retailers Aldi and Lidl and higher-end Waitrose took more custom away from their bigger rivals as consumers hunted bargains amid the continuing squeeze on incomes.

Kantar said Aldi scored another all-time record share of 3.6% in the 12 weeks to June 9, while Lidl and Waitrose both held on to record shares from May of 3% and 4.9% respectively.

Market leader Tesco, number two player Asda and Morrisons all saw their market shares dip though Sainsbury's bucked the trend, raising its share to 16.7% with sales growth of 3.5%.

Kantar analyst Fraser McKevitt said: "The continuing polarisation of the grocery market poses a difficult question for the big four retailers - how to make their offer appealing in an increasingly squeezed market.

"Asda recently announced it is going toe-to-toe with Aldi on the price of fresh food and produce, demonstrating its growing concern with the threat from the discounter," he said.

Earlier this month Tesco reported a first-quarter like-for-like sales fall of 1% while Sainsbury's posted a 0.8% rise. 

Last month Morrisons reported a first quarter decline of 1.8% while Asda posted a 1.3% rise.

The country's biggest chains are investing in their online operations amid a big spend shift to the web among consumers.

Convenience store numbers are also growing while Morrisons confirmed last month it was aiming to catch its main competitors by launching an online food offering with Ocado.

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Libor Scandal: Ex-Trader Faces Eight Charges

A former City trader has been charged in connection with the investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into the manipulation of the Libor interbank lending rate.

Tom Hayes was formally charged with eight offences of conspiracy to defraud when he attended Bishopsgate Police station in the City on Tuesday morning.

The 33 year-old from Surrey, who used to work for UBS and Citigroup, was one of the three individuals arrested on December 11 last year by officers from the SFO and City of London Police.

He will appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court at a later date - expected on Thursday.

Tom Hayes used to work for Swiss bank UBS in London

The SFO said its investigation into the manipulation of Libor was continuing.

In a separate development amid the wider world probe into the alleged fixing of bank rates, authorities in Hong Kong confirmed that its investigation into possible benchmark rate manipulation had been extended to include HSBC and a number of other banks.

Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced in December that is was investigating UBS about possible misconduct relating to its submissions for the Hong Kong Interbank Offered Rate (Hibor).

Last week, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) claimed that traders from 20 banks, including HSBC, had tried to inappropriately influence benchmark rates in the Southeast Asia city-state.

"As home regulator of HSBC in Hong Kong, the HKMA has asked HSBC to promptly implement remedial measures and actions as required by the MAS," HKMA said.

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Child Abuse Online: Web Firms Attend Talks

By Sophy Ridge, Political Correspondent

Leading internet companies have agreed a new strategy with the Government in an attempt to crack down on child abuse online.

Firms including Google, Microsoft and Facebook attended the summit called by Culture Secretary Maria Miller.

And Mrs Miller told Sky News they had agreed a "fundamental change" to the way the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) works, with the industry-funded body set to adopt a role actively seeking out and blocking child pornography.

"What we've agreed today is a fundamental change to the way in which the industry will be working to remove illegal child abuse images that are too readily available online," she said,

"Now the Internet Watch Foundation will be able to seek out those images and that will be an important way of increasing the number of those images that are removed."

The main UK internet service providers (ISPs) have agreed to provide extra funding for the IWF, understood to amount to £1 million, to help it take on the extra duties.

Mark Bridger accessed child abuse images online before killing April Jones

Under existing arrangements the IWF only acts on content that has been reported to it rather than proactively seeking out illegal images.

The meeting comes after two child killers were found to have viewed such material online.

Mark Bridger, convicted of murdering five-year-old April Jones, and Stuart Hazell, who murdered Tia Sharp, 12, both accessed images of abuse.

Web giants outlined some action in the 12 days following the announcement of the summit.

TalkTalk and BT confirmed customers trying to view inappropriate material will be confronted by a pop-up warning.

And Google has pledged millions of pounds to organisations who try to tackle child abuse online, such as the Internet Watch Foundation, which maintains a blacklist of images.

It was unclear exactly what concrete action - if any - the Government would demand from the meeting, which comes as the Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre struggles with budget cuts of 10%.

Companies providing internet services in Britain have already rejected a call from the Prime Minister's adviser to impose parental filters for adult content as a default setting when viewing content online.

The Internet Service Providers Association said it remained opposed to default filtering because it "can be circumvented and lead to over- or under-blocking" of offensive web pages.

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China Builds World's Fastest Supercomputer

China has built the world's fastest supercomputer, which is almost twice the speed of the previous record-holder from the US.

The Tianhe-2 has been developed by the National University of Defence Technology in central China's Changsha city and is capable of 33,860 trillion calculations per second.

The news that China's computing capabilities have overtaken those of the US was revealed in the semi-annual TOP500 listing of the world's fastest supercomputers released on Monday.

It underlines the country's rise as a science and technology powerhouse.

The Tianhe-2, which means Milky Way-2, knocks the US Energy Department's Titan machine off the number one spot.

Scientists check a component on the Tianhe-2

Titan achieved 17.59 petaflops per second - equivalent to 17,590 trillion calculations a second.

By comparison, the human brain is believed to be capable of 10-20 petaflops per second - around half of that of Tianhe-2.

Supercomputers are used for complex work such as modelling weather systems, simulating nuclear explosions and designing airliners.

It is the second time a Chinese computer has been named the world's fastest.

In November 2010, the Tianhe-2's predecessor, Tianhe-1A, had that honour before Japan's K computer overtook it a few months later in the TOP500 list, a ranking curated by three computer scientists at universities in the US and Germany.

The Tianhe-2 is an indication of how China is using rapid economic growth to pay for sharp increases in research spending, to allow it to join the United States, Europe and Japan in the global technology elite.

Several banks of components which make up Tianhe-2

TOP500 editor Jack Dongarra, who toured the Tianhe-2 facility in May, said in a news release: "Most of the features of the system were developed in China, and they are only using Intel for the main computer part.

"That is, the interconnect, operating system, front-end processors and software are mainly Chinese."

China - the inventor of the abacus - has a proud history of inventing techniques for calculation and tabulation.

Experts say that although Tianhe-2 can perform more calculations per second than the brain, it is still not as powerful.

Human brains have far superior parallel processing, which allows them to operate multiple networks of neurons at the same time, whereas computers have to make calculations one at a time.

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G8: Cameron In Tax Evasion Battle At Meeting

Q & A: What is the G8 all about?

Updated: 3:21pm UK, Tuesday 18 June 2013

The G8 is a group of eight countries which are among the world's richest, plus the European Union.

It comprises the UK, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, Russia and the EU. As a result of their shared wealth, they have common interests and meet annually to discuss the issues that affect them.

What does it do?
It aims to overcome some of the major world problems by creating and agreeing solutions. Each year, the host sets the agenda and sometimes promotes practical ways of resolving issues.

Who are the leaders attending?
The UK's David Cameron, The US's Barack Obama, France's Francois Hollande, Germany's Angela Merkel, Italy's Enrico Letta, Japan's Shinzo Abe, Canada's Stephen Harper, Russia's Vladimir Putin and the EU's Herman van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso. 

Why is this year's being held in Northern Ireland?
Each year, a different country takes its turn to host the summit. This year it is Britain's turn. Northern Ireland, which experienced  paramilitary conflict until the Belfast Agreement brought it to a close, was chosen because it symbolises how working together can result in a successful peace.

Why do protesters demonstrate when it's held?
Much of the criticism of the G8 relates to claims that the group does not do enough to help the developing world, either through lessening Third World debt, or through reducing the cost of medicines. Other critics are against the way the grouping together of wealthy countries distorts power, by causing 'globalisation'.

Who pays for the summit and its policing?
The member country holding the G8 presidency is entirely responsible for organising and the cost of each year's summit. That includes its policing. This year's has been held at the Lough Erne Resort in County Fermanagh. The cost is estimated at £60m, with the Northern Ireland government paying £6m and the UK Treasury meeting the rest.

When was it last staged in UK and what happened?
It was last held in the UK in 2005, at Gleneagles, near Stirling, Scotland. On the agenda were the cancelling of third world debt and global warming. Ahead of the summit, finance leaders agreed to write off $40bn worth of debt owed by the 18 most highly indebted poor countries. The members also agreed a joint declaration to tackle global warming. More than 10,000 police officers from all over the UK kept order at protests. There were 700 arrests and in the middle of the event, on July 7, four terrorists set off suicide bombs on the London transport network, killing 52 people.

What has it ever achieved?
Many have argued that the G8 is becoming increasingly irrelevant, as other nations outside the eight become wealthier. The five leading developing nations, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa are not automatically invited. As a result, the meetings are sometimes seen as being a 'rich man's club, which is limited in its decision making. Some have suggested the G20, which involves the world's 20 richest countries, should replace it.

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