Thavisha Peiris pizza delivery murder: Two arrested - BBC News

31 October 2013 Last updated at 20:44 ET

A man and a teenager have been arrested on suspicion of murdering a pizza delivery driver in Sheffield.

Thavisha Lakindu Peiris, 25, was found dead by colleagues in his car in Southey Crescent, Sheffield, on Sunday. He had been stabbed in the chest.

He had been making his final delivery for Domino's Pizza before he was due to start a new job as an IT consultant.

South Yorkshire Police first arrested a boy, 17, on Thursday evening and a man, aged 25, later the same night.

Both are being held in custody for questioning.

Mr Peiris had been working at the takeaway in Halifax Road after graduating from Sheffield Hallam University in 2011.

He set off at 21:50 GMT to make a delivery in Southey Crescent but did not arrive.

His colleagues found him dead in the driving seat of his Toyota Yaris in a parking bay close to the delivery address.

A post-mortem examination found he had died from multiple stab wounds.

Mr Peiris's parents, Sarath Mahinda Peiris and Sudarma Narangoda, said they had been left "heartbroken" by his death.

Speaking from their family home in Sri Lanka, the couple said: "We sent our son to the UK to study so he can have a better life. Now we are left with only a broken heart."

South Yorkshire Police said it had more than 50 police officers working on the investigation and Mrs Peiris's family are understood to be making plans to travel to South Yorkshire.

Illegal immigrants cost taxpayer more than £4000 a head each year - Telegraph.co.uk

Operation Vaken, which took place between July 22 and August 22 in six London boroughs, saw mobile billboards take to the streets emblazoned with the slogan "Go home or face arrest".

Mr Harper said the 60 voluntary departures represented a "notional saving" of £830,000 based on the average £15,000 cost of an enforced removal.

The report said: "The average cost of a voluntary removal is £1,000, and the average cost of an enforced removal is £15,000.

"The 60 voluntary removals connected to Operation Vaken therefore represent a notional saving of approximately £830,000 compared to the costs of enforcing those removals.

"In addition, each person living illegally in the UK is estimated to cost up to a further £4,250 per year in costs to public services.

"The return of 60 individuals, as a result of Operation Vaken, may therefore have saved an additional estimated £255,000 in public service costs annually on this basis, with savings continuing into future years."

Last week Theresa May, the Home Secretary, admitted the vans were "too much of a blunt instrument" and will not be rolled out nationwide.

The Home Office report showed that of the 125 illegal immigrants who came forward two thirds were from India. In all, 90 Indians came forward, along with nine Pakistanis, six Brazilians and five South Africans.

In all, 15 said they had asked to go home voluntarily because of the ad van campaign. Another 19 said they came forward because they had seen coverage of the ad vans in media reports or on the internet.

The bulk of the remainder said they had seen other posters or leaflets which were distributed by the Home Office as part of the campaign, which cost just £9,740 in total.

So far 11 people have gone home specifically because of the ad vans.

Among those who contacted the team were a Nigerian man who had overstayed his visa by seven years and contacted the Home Office after seeing a report about the ad van on television. Another was a South African woman who came to Britain in 1999 and overstayed her visa.

The report also disclosed the advertising campaign, which encouraged illegal immigrants to send a text to the Home Office for information about returning home, received 1,561 texts of which more than 1,000 were hoax messages.

Britain's total illegal population is by its nature very difficult to measure but a report by the London School of Economics in 2009 gave an upper estimate of 863,000.

German journalists urged to shun Google and Yahoo - Reuters India

By Harro Ten Wolde

FRANKFURT | Thu Oct 31, 2013 10:38pm IST

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The union representing German journalists advised its members on Thursday to stop using Google (GOOG.O) and Yahoo (YHOO.O) because of reported snooping by U.S. and British intelligence.

"The German Federation of Journalists recommends journalists to avoid until further notice the use of search engines and e-mail services from Google and Yahoo for their research and digital communication," the union said in a statement.

It cited "scandalous" reports of interception of both companies' web traffic by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain's GCHQ.

"The searches made by journalists are just as confidential as the contact details of their sources and the contents of their communication with them," said Michael Konken, head of the union which represents about 38,000 journalists. He said there were safe alternatives for both searches and email.

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the NSA had tapped directly into communications links used by Google and Yahoo to move large amounts of email and other user information between overseas data centres. It said the programme was operated jointly with GCHQ.

Google's chief legal officer said it was 'outraged' at the apparent interception of data from its private fibre networks. The company declined to comment on the German union move. Yahoo said it had strict security in place at its data centres and had not given access to the NSA or other agencies.

Revelations by fugitive U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden about the scale of NSA surveillance worldwide, from the alleged mass trawling of emails to the tapping of world leaders' phones, have caused international outrage.

The German government said last week it had evidence that Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone had been monitored by U.S. intelligence.

Government snooping is especially sensitive in Germany, which has among the strictest privacy laws in the world, since it dredges up memories of eavesdropping by the Stasi secret police in former communist East Germany.

Earlier this month, Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) said it wanted German companies to cooperate to shield local internet traffic from foreign intelligence services, although experts believe this could be an uphill battle.

In August, Deutsche Telekom and its partner United Internet (UTDI.DE) launched an initiative dubbed "E-mail made in Germany" to protect clients' email traffic.

(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde and Jörn Poltz; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

5 Israeli soldiers hurt, Palestinian killed as IDF, Hamas clash on Gaza border - Jerusalem Post

IDF soldiers who were carrying out work to destroy a Hamas terrorism tunnel on the Israel-Gaza border came under fire from a Palestinian terrorist cell overnight Friday.

The IDF stated that terrorists detonated an explosive device targeting the soldiers during the operation. The attack left five soldiers injured. One is suffering from serious injuries, one was moderately wounded and three soldiers were lightly hurt, an army source said. The wounded were airlifted to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

In response to the attack, the IDF fired a shell at terror suspects in the nearby Gazan district of Khan Younis. One Palestinian gunman was killed and a second was wounded, according to Palestinian medical sources.

IAF aircraft also struck an attack tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, the IDF stated.

The IDF accused Hamas of breaking the terms of the ceasefire deal that ended Operation Pillar of Defense in December 2012.

The soldiers were operating on both sides of the security fence in the Eshkol Regional Council, where the IDF uncovered a 1.7 kilometer long attack tunnel some two weeks ago. The tunnel began in Gaza and crossed the border into Israel, before branching into two tunnels.

A Hamas source said that clashes broke out in the area after a number of Israeli tanks crossed the border fence into Gaza in an area close to where the tunnel was discovered.

Hamas said the IDF tanks had entered the Gaza side of the border and had remained there for several hours and clashes erupted as militants fired mortar shells at the tanks.

"This mission was imperative due to the potential to utilize the terror tunnel for future attacks against Israeli civilians," IDF spokesman Lt.-Col. Peter Lerner said. "This tunnel, similar to the one used to kill two IDF soldiers and kidnap Gilad Shalit in 2006, was built for this heinous purpose."

On October 12, the IDF uncovered the massive Hamas attack tunnel leading from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, into Israel, complete with an electrical supply and phone lines.

The tunnel might have been intended for attacking or kidnapping soldiers, or for moving terrorists from Gaza into Israel to commit an atrocity against civilians in border towns and villages, army sources said at the time of the discovery.

It took Hamas over a year to complete, and is tall enough inside to allow people to stand fully upright as they travel along it. The tunnel is buried some 20 meters underground as it crosses the Gaza border.

A security source said it was the most well-designed terror tunnel found by the IDF to date.

The tunnel was constructed using approximately 24,000 Israeli concrete slabs which the IDF had permitted into Gaza to ease the crisis in the civilian construction sector, Southern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Sami Turgeman said. As a result, Israel has stopped allowing concrete into Gaza.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Newspaper review: Brooks and Coulson in news - BBC News

1 November 2013 Last updated at 01:38 ET

Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson are pictured on several front pages, after the phone-hacking trial at the Old Bailey was told they had an affair which lasted for six years.

The Daily Telegraph says that, sitting side by side in the dock, "neither showed any emotion" as "intimate details" of their relationship were "laid bare".

In the Guardian, a cartoon by Steve Bell suggests how such a development might have been covered in the now defunct News of the World, the paper edited by both Mrs Brooks and Mr Coulson.

His mocked-up front page features the headline: "Ex-eds secret six-year sex romp."

The main headline in the Independent describes it as "the affair they didn't expose".

Mrs Brooks, Mr Coulson and six other defendants deny all the charges against them.

'Wishy-washy'

The Daily Mirror is less than impressed with the Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, who told MPs on Thursday how the government intended to get tough with the big energy companies.

The paper says he could have "read the riot act to the big six" - but instead offered a few "platitudes" about increasing competition.

The Daily Star accuses him of being "wishy-washy".

The release from prison of the mother of Baby P is the main news in the Sun.

It reports that Tracey Connelly will be given a "fresh name and different hairdo" - but not a complete new identity.

The paper says she was freed on Tuesday - the day it was confirmed that the former head of children's services at Haringey Council, Sharon Shoesmith, would receive compensation for unfair dismissal.

NHS pay-offs

The Times reveals details of some of the pay-offs given to senior managers when 161 NHS bodies were abolished as part of a shake-up of the health service earlier this year.

It says a married couple received redundancy payments of nearly £1m between them - before they were both re-hired by the health service a few months later.

The paper says its analysis suggests more than 50 staff were given payments in excess of £100,000 each, and more than a dozen of those recipients have since found work in the public sector.

"Did she or didn't she?" asks the Daily Mail, which says a shop manager from East Sussex "risked the wrath of courtiers" when she appeared to touch the Queen's back.

According to the paper, Kerry Bickerstaff seemed to "graze the fabric" of the Queen's coat during a visit to Newhaven.

Buckingham Palace insisted it was merely a near miss - and said the Queen would have taken no offence.

Driver cited for wearing Google Glass expects to fight ticket - Fox News

LOS ANGELES –  An early adopter of Google's Internet-connected eyeglasses plans to fight a citation for wearing the device while driving in San Diego, saying the technology makes navigation easier than smartphones and GPS devices.

Driver Cecilia Abadie was pulled over for speeding Tuesday evening, when a California Highway Patrol officer noticed she was wearing Google Glass and tacked on a citation usually given to drivers who may be distracted by a video or TV screen.

A challenge to what may be a first-of-its-kind citation could force authorities to re-examine laws and consider how best to regulate evolving gadgetry that will one day become mainstream.

The lightweight eyeglasses, which are not yet widely available to the public, feature a hidden computer and a thumbnail-size transparent display screen above the right eye. Users can scan maps for directions -- as well as receive web search results, read email and engage in video chats -- without reaching for a phone.

About 10,000 have been distributed so far in the United States to "explorers" like Abadie, and this week Google announced another 30,000 would be available for $1,500 apiece. Abadie, a software developer, got what she describes as the life-changing technology in May.

In an interview Thursday, she said she was not using her Google Glass when she was pulled over for allegedly going about 80 mph in a 65 mph zone on the drive home to Temecula after visiting a friend.

"The Glass was on, but I wasn't actively using it" to conserve the battery, she said. The device becomes inactive if it's not asked to perform a task.

Abadie expressed surprise that wearing the glasses while driving would be illegal and said she's "pretty sure" she will fight the ticket. First, she said, she needs to seek legal counsel. In the flurry of online commentary her traffic stop has generated, several people saying they are attorneys offered their services.

"The law is not clear, the laws are very outdated," Abadie said, suggesting that navigating with the device could be less distracting than with a GPS unit or phone because drivers don't have to glance down.

"Maybe Glass is more a solution to the cellphone problem than a problem," she said.

It's unclear whether a citation for Google Glass has been issued before. The CHP said it is not sure whether an officer within its own ranks has written one, and an agency spokesman pointed out hundreds of law enforcement agencies in California alone can write traffic tickets.

What is clear, CHP Officer Marc Hale said, is that drivers should not use Google Glass.

"Anything that takes your attention away from the motoring public in front of you is a distraction," Hale said.

Though Google Glass users can continue looking ahead, by glancing at the screen they still divert attention from the roadway and that can make the headgear dangerous, according to David Strayer, director of the University of Utah's Center for the Prevention of Distracted Driving.

"Your eyes aren't looking where they need to look," said Strayer, who has tried Google Glass (though not behind the wheel). Like Abadie, he noted that the law lags far behind the technology.

Legislators in at least three states -- Delaware, New Jersey and West Virginia -- have introduced bills that would specifically ban driving with Google Glass.

A spokesman for Google did not reply to a request for comment. On its website, Google says this about using the headgear while driving: "Read up and follow the law. Above all, even when you're following the law, don't hurt yourself or others by failing to pay attention to the road."

Why Labour won't confront union thugs - Daily Mail

PUBLISHED: 19:02 EST, 31 October 2013 | UPDATED: 19:02 EST, 31 October 2013

For those who recall the dark days of the 1970s and early 80s – when endless strikes and violent mass picketing brought British industry to the brink of ruin – the bully-boy tactics deployed by the Unite union during the recent Grangemouth dispute will have brought a chilling sense of deja vu.

Coordinated by Unite's sinister 'Leverage Unit', mobs of protesters were unleashed to intimidate managers and their families at their homes.

It was a clear attempt to terrify the management into submission.

The Prime Minister described this thuggish dirty tricks campaign - during the Grangemouth dispute - as 'shocking' and called for a thorough investigation

Children, neighbours and even the Grangemouth oil refinery's main customers were targeted.

The Prime Minister yesterday described this thuggish dirty tricks campaign – exposed by the Mail – as 'shocking' and called for a thorough investigation.

So will Labour leader Ed Miliband now launch a full inquiry? Don't hold your breath.

For several hours yesterday he refused to discuss the issue at all.

By evening he was prepared to condemn intimidation in general terms but remained careful not to condemn Unite.

Of course we all know why Mr Miliband is so reluctant to act decisively on  both this affair and the Falkirk vote-rigging scandal, which also involves Unite officials.

Unite is by far Labour's biggest donor and its hard-Left boss Len McCluskey has threatened to cut off funding to the party unless it becomes more union-friendly.

Witness Labour's lurch to the Left under Mr Miliband, whose father was a Marxist who believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Unite's hard-Left boss Len McCluskey has threatened to cut off funding to the Labour Party unless it becomes more union-friendly

Unsurprisingly British business leaders, who generally had a good relationship with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, are becoming extremely nervous.

CBI chief John Cridland last night launched a scathing attack on Mr Miliband's recent socialist rhetoric, saying policies such as the plans to freeze energy prices and put up corporation tax 'raised the hairs on the back of my neck'.

In another disturbing twist, the Mail reveals today that the Unite mobs were provided with free mobile phone calls by a company founded by Andrew Rosenfeld, a significant Labour donor and close friend of Mr Miliband.

Could it be that Mr Miliband knew about Unite's odious Leverage Unit  all along?

We repeat: the case for a public inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the Labour party grows by the day.

The cost of migration

Despite persistent requests, the Government has steadfastly refused to publish its estimate of how many Romanians and Bulgarians are likely to come to Britain when their nations become full members of the EU next year.

Research by Salford University may reveal why: there are already 200,000 Roma migrants here, predominantly from those countries – four times more than Whitehall estimates of four years ago.

The study stresses this is a conservative estimate – and that's before the restrictions are lifted.

Meanwhile, separate research puts the number of illegal immigrants in Britain at around 863,000.

The annual cost of providing them with healthcare, schools and other public services is nearly 3.7billion.

Such figures are frankly breathtaking, and an insult to those in this country who have paid taxes all their lives and because of exorbitant fuel costs and eroding pensions face poverty in their old age.

The Prime Minister should defy the EU and extend the existing restrictions on migrants from Romania and Bulgaria, or at least prevent new arrivals claiming State support or social housing until they have worked here long enough to have paid a substantial amount of tax.

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