Linesman Dies After Attack By Teenage Players

A football linesman beaten and kicked by teenage players during a youth match has died.

Three players aged between 15 and 16 were arrested after Richard Nieuwenhuizen collapsed at the Dutch club Nieuw Sloten in the town of Almere on Sunday.

The 41-year-old, whose own son had been playing in the game, later died in hospital. His team, Buitenboys, has not announced the exact cause of death.

"You can't believe this could happen. That kids of 15 or 16 are playing football, you come to watch and see something like that," said Buitenboys chairman Marcel Oost. "He did it every week. He enjoyed doing it. He was a real football man; he was always here."

Dutch sports minister Edith Schippers said: "It is absolutely terrible that something like this can happen on a Dutch sports field."      

Parents and other volunteers regularly referee and officiate at sports matches involving their children in the Netherlands, where youth football and hockey is popular and well-organised.

Anton Binnenmars, of the Royal Netherlands Football Association, said: "It is too crazy for words that somebody involved in a sporting hobby becomes a victim of this kind of aggression."

Police said they would not rule out arresting more suspects.

Nieuw Sloten said in a statement on its website it has banned the players involved and pulled their team out of the league. Such incidents "do not belong on a football field", the statement added.

The Dutch FA said all Nieuw Sloten's matches next weekend had been cancelled at the club's request.

The attack in Almere was even discussed at a news conference in Spain on the eve of Ajax's Champions League match against Real Madrid.

"You can't imagine it happening," said Ajax coach Frank de Boer. "That boys of 15, 16 years short circuit like that. You wonder about the parenting... this is too ridiculous for words."

The death is almost exactly a year since a Dutch amateur footballer fatally kicked a 77-year-old supporter following a match.

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Kate Pregnant: Duchess Remains In Hospital

The Duchess of Cambridge is spending her second day in hospital suffering from a severe type of morning sickness after confirming she is expecting a baby.

Kate was admitted to King Edward VII Hospital in central London on Monday where she is likely to remain for the next few days.

Her husband Prince William was by her side until 8.20pm when he left the hospital without speaking to the media outside.

William leaves the hospital on Monday evening

It is understood the rest of the royal family learned about the news only a few hours earlier on Monday.

The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry - and Kate's family - are said to be "delighted".

The child will be third in line to the throne, whether it is a boy or girl, after Prince Charles and Prince William.

The Prime Minister was among the first to congratulate the royal couple on Twitter. "I'm delighted ... They will make wonderful parents," David Cameron said.

Deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg tweeted: "... a perfect way to round off the Queen's Diamond Jubilee year".

Labour leader Ed Miliband tweeted: "A royal baby is something the whole nation will celebrate".

Julia Gillard, prime minister of Australia, called it "delightful news" and Jay Carney, press secretary to US president Barack Obama, said: "On behalf of everyone here in the White House, beginning with the President and the First Lady, we extend our congratulations ..."

St James's Palace would not say when the royal couple became aware of the pregnancy - only that it was "recently".

Only last week Kate took to the hockey field while visiting her old school

It is understood that the pregnancy has not passed the 12-week point and the announcement was prompted by the Duchess's medical condition.

It was reported that the Queen's former gynaecologist Marcus Setchell, who delivered the Countess of Wessex's two children, is treating her.

Kate is suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a rare condition which causes severe vomiting during pregnancy and can cause dehydration, weight loss and a build-up of toxins in the blood or urine called ketosis.

The Duchess's engagements this week have all been cancelled, said St James's Palace.

Kate and William were married at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011.

:: Bookmaker William Hill said favourite names are Frances and John, both at 9/1, while Charles, Victoria and George are 10/1.

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George Osborne Plans Tax Avoidance Crackdown

By Darren McCaffrey, Sky News Reporter

Chancellor George Osborne is set to unveil a £154m blitz on wealthy companies and rich individuals who dodge tax.

Officials will be ordered to use the cash to draft in an army of investigators to target high earners who aggressively avoid or evade paying tax.

The money will also fund extra staff to speed up work challenging multinationals' transfer pricing arrangements to stop global companies using legal loopholes to shift profits out of the UK.

Mr Osborne's latest tax crackdown will be outlined in this week's Autumn Statement, which is also expected to contain bleak news for benefits claimants.

Margaret Hodge chairs the Public Accounts Committee

Details of the plan emerged as a damning report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) condemned global companies with huge UK operations that are getting away with paying little or no corporation tax.

The tax avoidance plans employed by companies like Starbucks, Amazon and Google are described as "outrageous and an insult to British businesses and individuals who pay their fair share".

Starbucks has now declared that it is preparing to change its tax affairs so that it pays more into Britain's coffers and there is growing pressure on others to follow suit.

Margaret Hodge, who chairs the PAC, said: "It does feel as if corporation tax has become a voluntary tax and if you look at the money the Treasury gets in from corporation tax, in the last year alone we have over £6bn less.

Starbucks says it is reviewing its tax arrangements

"At times like this when money is tight we need every penny of tax we can get."

The report is also critical of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) saying that it lacked determination and looked way too lenient in the face of aggressive tax planning.

But Katja Hall, from Confederation of British Industry, told Sky News that tax avoidance is not a widespread problem.

"Companies pay £163bn in tax in the UK every year and the large majority of companies pay the right amount of tax," she said.

The PAC report wants so called "tax scroungers" to be named and shamed in much the same way as benefit cheats.

However, Mr Osborne warned against pricing Britain out of the world economy.

"If we make our taxes less competitive, that will just mean more companies stay out of Britain," he said.

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M1 Crash: Motorway Closed After Cars Collide

A serious crash closed the M1 motorway between junctions one and five in both directions - but the northbound carriageway has since reopened.

The collision happened shortly before 2.40am on the southbound carriage between junctions five and four, near Watford in Hertfordshire.

The carriageway is closed in both directions from London to Watford.

The southbound carriageway is expected to remain closed until at least mid-morning but the northbound carriageway has reopened, Hertfordshire Police said.

Drivers are advised to use the A1, A40 or M40.

More follows...

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Osborne Eyes Tax Evaders And Pensions Of Rich

The Chancellor has promised to hunt down tax evaders and tax the wealthy - warning that everyone must make a contribution.

In his Autumn Statement on Wednesday, George Osborne is set to hit the pension pots of the wealthiest by slashing the £50,000 annual tax relief cap on pensions to as little as £30,000, according to The Sunday Times. That could raise between £600m and £1.8bn.

Tax evaders are also under the scanner of the Chancellor who told The Sun "we are hunting down those who evade tax wherever they try to hide".

The comments come as several leading football clubs face questions about their tax arrangements and amid an unprecedented public outcry over multinational corporations' tax avoidance through complex offshore mechanisms.

Starbucks, which recently came under fire from MPs over its tax affairs, is reportedly in talks with officials at Revenue and Customs about doing a deal.

In an article in The Sun, Mr Osborne said: "We are still all in this together. Everyone must make a contribution to dealing with our debts, from the richest in our society to those living a life on benefits.

"Every one of my Budgets has raised more from the richest. The situation under Labour where top people in the City were paying lower tax rates than their cleaners has been ended."

Meanwhile, shadow chancellor Ed Balls told the Sunday Mirror that a change of course was needed from David Cameron and Mr Osborne.

"When the medicine makes the patient sicker, you don't just take more of it. We need to change the medicine, or change the doctor."

Any form of mansion tax - or splitting council tax bands - is likely to be ruled out in the coming statement.

There is also speculation a planned 3p per litre rise in fuel duty planned for January may be delayed.

Some benefits are also expected to be frozen.

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Japan: 'Bodies Found' After Tunnel Collapse

Police have seen several bodies in a car inside a highway tunnel that collapsed in central Japan, reports say.

The Sasago tunnel on the busy Chuo Expressway, about 80-km (50 miles) west from Tokyo, caved in just after 8am local time, sending debris crashing down on cars and triggering a fire.

Seven people were believed to be missing and two were injured, the fire service said.

At least two cars were thought to be trapped.

Motorists described narrow escapes from falling debris, and a long walk through the darkness after abandoning their cars.

"When I was driving in the tunnel, concrete pieces fell down suddenly from the ceiling," a man in his 30s told public broadcaster NHK.

"I saw a crushed car catching fire. I was rightened, left my car and walked for about an hour to get out of the tunnel."

CCTV footage of inside of the tunnel

Footage showed black smoke billowing from the 4.7-km (2.8-mile) tunnel in Yamanashi prefecture.

After the fire was extinguished about 11am, video footage from cameras inside the tunnel showed firefighters picking their way through cement roof panels that collapsed onto vehicles inside the tunnel.

NHK reporter Yoshio Goto, caught in Sunday's accident, hit the accelerator and managed to drive out.

"But it was a bit too late and pieces of ceiling fell on my car. I kept pressing the pedal and managed to get out," he said.

"Then when I looked around, I saw half of the car ceiling was crushed."

It was the worst such accident in Japan since 1996, when a tunnel collapsed and falling rocks crushed cars and a bus, killing 20 people.

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Leveson: Editors Urged Over Press Watchdog

McCann Urges PM To Pass Press Law

Updated: 10:19pm UK, Friday 30 November 2012

Gerry McCann has firmly pressed the Prime Minister to pass a new press law and urged him not to ignore the stories of the Leveson inquiry victims.

The father of missing Madeleine McCann said it was time for politicians to "do the right thing" and that if they did not do so his evidence would have been "almost useless".

Speaking the day after Lord Justice Leveson presented his proposals for a new watchdog, backed by law, Mr McCann said that the victims of press intrusion had given evidence to the inquiry so others would not suffer the same fate.

He said: "I think the only reason we went to Leveson was to effect change and if Leveson's report isn't implemented in full then I would say that giving evidence for all of the victims has been almost useless.

"For almost all the victims, the reason they were there was to stop other, ordinary people who were caught up in the most unfortunate circumstances suffering unnecessarily beyond what's happened to them.

"And I feel if Leveson is implemented we will be some way on that route."

In evidence to the inquiry last year, Mr McCann's wife, Kate, said she felt like "climbing into a hole and not coming out" after the personal diary she started in the wake of her daughter's disappearance was printed in the News Of The World.

The victims of phone hacking and press intrusion have launched an e-petition calling for all of Lord Justice Leveson's proposals for regulating the press to be implemented.

The actor Hugh Grant, Mr McCann and Chris Jefferies, a retired school teacher who won damages from eight newspapers who had linked him with the murder of Joanna Yeates in Bristol in December 2010, kicked off the Hacked Off campaign.

Mr Cameron has accepted a new independent watchdog is needed but rejected the call for new legislation to back it.

This has put him on a collision course with his coalition partners, the opposition and victims of press intrusion.

Earlier, Culture Secretary Maria Miller insisted the "principles" of Lord Justice Leveson's recommendations to reform the press could be met without statutory backing.

Ms Miller said the coalition was drafting new legislation to prove why the Prime Minister has "grave misgivings" about the idea and how it could curb "freedom of speech".

She told Sky News: "I feel very strongly you should have grave concerns about putting in place a piece of legislation which could have the effect in the long term of really bringing into question the ability to maintain freedom of speech in this country.

"But also on a practical level, we don't think it is necessary to have that statutory underpinning to achieve the objectives which we all agree on, which is to have strong, tough, independent self-regulation which is something that we need in this country to address the problems we have experienced in recent years."

Trevor Kavanagh, associate editor of The Sun, also warned such a move would be "the first step down the road to state intervention in the operation of newspapers".

"I think what the Prime Minister is doing is trying to safeguard freedom of the press. It is a hard won, hard fought for right and a freedom which dates back 300 years," he told Sky News.

On Thursday, Lord Justice Leveson condemned the "culture of reckless and outrageous journalism" that dominated sections of the press for decades as he unveiled the findings of his 16-month inquiry.

The Appeal Court judge called for a new watchdog with statutory underpinning to be given the power to require prominent apologies and impose fines of as much as £1m.

The three party leaders held talks on Thursday night and the negotiations will reconvene "soon". But the prospect of the consensus Mr Cameron says he wants to achieve appeared distant as all three parties continued to look at the fine detail of the 2,400-page report.

Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry was prompted by the disclosure that News Of The World journalists hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

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