Grieve Warns Of 'Ethnic Corruption' In UK

Politicians need to "wake up" to the problem of corruption in ethnic minority communities, the Government's senior law officer has warned.

Attorney General Dominic Grieve said he was referring "mainly to the Pakistani community" in his comments.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Tory MP pointed out that it could also be found in the "white Anglo-Saxon" community but he said it was a growing problem "because we have minority communities in this country which come from backgrounds where corruption is endemic".

"It is something as politicians we have to wake up to," he added.

The MP for Beaconsfield said: "I can see many of them have come because of the opportunities that they get. But they also come from societies where they have been brought up to believe you can only get certain things through a favour culture.

"One of the things you have to make absolutely clear is that that is not the case and it's not acceptable."

Baroness Warsi said electoral fraud also affects the Asian community

Asked if he was referring to the Pakistani community in his remarks, Mr Grieve told the newspaper: "Yes, it's mainly the Pakistani community, not the Indian community. I wouldn't draw it down to one. I'd be wary of saying it's just a Pakistani problem."

Mr Grieve highlighted electoral fraud as an area of concern, echoing comments made in 2010 by senior Tory Baroness Warsi.

Lady Warsi told the New Statesman magazine there were "at least three seats where we lost, where we didn't gain the seat, based on electoral fraud" and said the problems were "predominantly within the Asian community".

Mr Grieve also said that the UK's infrastructure could be put under strain if significant numbers of Bulgarians and Romanians come to the UK when controls expire in January.

He acknowledged that "the volume of immigrants may pose serious infrastructure issues".

Later in a statement, Mr Grieve said: "I am very clear that integration between ethnic communities in the UK has worked well and has delivered great benefits for all of us.

Mr Grieve said he was 'disappointed' with the Telegraph's front page story

"This is a point I clearly made in my interview with the Telegraph, and I'm disappointed that this has not been reflected in their front page story.

"The point I was making is that, as a law officer, it's my duty to ensure the rule of law is upheld, and one of the issues that I feel requires close attention is any potential for a rise in corruption to undermine civil society.

"I believe this is an issue which needs to be addressed calmly and rationally.

"I am absolutely clear that this problem is not attributable to any one community, as I know very well from my many years promoting community cohesion."

Sky News political reporter Darren McCaffrey said Mr Grieve's comments are likely "to prove controversial".

"We have to remember he is an elected politician and he is also the Government's top lawyer, he is someone that we don't usually hear from a lot and this is why his intervention is unusual," he added.

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Iran Nuclear Talks: Kerry Arrives In Geneva

US Secretary of State John Kerry has arrived for talks in Geneva as world powers push to clinch a historic deal over Iran's nuclear programme.

The arrival of Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had heightened speculation that Mr Kerry might also attend the crucial final stages of the latest round of talks aimed at curbing Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr Kerry's goal is to "help narrow differences and move closer to an agreement," a State Department spokeswoman said.

Mr Lavrov joined the talks as negotiators said there had been some progress on the third day of meetings and the White House said the US remained "hopeful" that agreement could be reached.

British Foreign Minister William Hague and his French counterpart Laurent Fabius are also due to travel to Geneva to take part in negotiations.

This third meeting since President Hassan Rouhani's election in June is seen as the biggest hope in years to resolve the decade-old standoff over Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran's Foreign Minister said talks were 'progressing well' on Friday

Failure might mean Iran resuming the expansion of its atomic activities, while Washington and others could toughen already painful sanctions and the possibility of Israeli military action would draw nearer.

Tehran suggested there had been an improvement after an hour-long meeting on Friday between Zarif and the powers' chief negotiator Catherine Ashton.

Mr Zarif said on Facebook: "The negotiations are progressing well but we still have differences of opinion over a limited number of issues."

"God willing we will reach a result," he told Iranian media.

Baroness Ashton's spokesman said that the meeting was "useful", without giving details.

Good relations between Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov were key to Syria talks

At the last gathering, foreign ministers including Mr Kerry flew to Geneva but three days of intense talks failed and they went home empty-handed.

Both sides say they want a deal but getting an accord palatable to hardliners in the United States, Iran and Israel has proved difficult.

According to a draft proposal hammered out on November 9, the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia, and Germany - the so-called P5+1 nations - want Iran to freeze key parts of its nuclear programme for six months.

In return Iran would get minor and, Western officials insist, "reversible" sanctions relief, including unlocking several billion dollars in oil revenues and easing trade restrictions on precious metals and aircraft parts.

This hoped-for "first phase" deal would build trust and ease tensions while negotiators push on for a final accord that ends once and for all fears that Tehran will get an atomic bomb.

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Women Were 'Kept As Slaves For Over 30 Years'

Two people have been released on bail as part of an investigation into slavery and domestic servitude at a house in London sparked by a report on Sky News.

The inquiry was launched after one of three alleged victims told a charity she had been held against her will for more than 30 years in a house in Lambeth, south London.

She contacted the Freedom Charity after seeing its founder Aneeta Prem in a report last summer about forced marriages.

Scotland Yard said the charity, which advises and supports victims of forced marriages or honour-based violence, got in touch and helped with sensitive negotiations, which revealed the location of the house and led to the rescue of the three women.

Police said two people detained in connection with the investigation - a 67-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman - have been bailed until a date in January, pending further inquiries. 

Police believe the youngest of the alleged victims may have spent her entire life as a domestic slave.

Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland from the Metropolitan Police's human trafficking unit told a news conference at Scotland Yard that the force had "never seen anything of this magnitude".

Home Secretary Theresa May is "shocked by this appalling case," her department said in a statement.

Officers said the two suspects, who are not British, were arrested at 7.30am on Thursday and taken to a south London police station for questioning.

Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland said the victims were 'highly traumatised'

One of the three alleged victims is a 69-year-old Malaysian woman, the other a 57-year-old Irish woman and the third a 30-year-old Briton.

All three, described by police as "highly traumatised", were taken to a place of safety where they remain.

Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said police do not believe the women were sexually assaulted, but they may have been physically and mentally abused.

Ms Prem told Sky News it was the Irish woman who phoned the Freedom Charity after watching her on television.

"I think all of them saw me on the news and made a decision because of the name of the charity and because they had seen me on TV - that gave them the courage to make that phone call," she said.

"I can't go in to too many details but they managed to get to a phone and make a call to us.

"We started to talk to them in depth when we could. It had to be pre-arranged when they were able to make calls to us and it had to be done very secretly because they felt they were in massive danger.

"It was planned that they would be able to walk out of the property. The police were on standby."

The three women were rescued from an address in Lambeth, south London

Police said the British and Irish women left the house and met police at an agreed location on October 25. They helped police find the address, where the third woman was rescued on the same day. 

DI Hyland said the suspects were not immediately arrested as officers had to "establish the facts" from "extremely traumatised" victims.

He said it appeared the three alleged victims had been given "limited freedom" during the three decades they claim to have been held as slaves.

He said he was unable to confirm any relationship between the suspects and the three women who were freed.

"I don't know any relationships between the women in respect of the suspects," he said.

"Clearly, because of the nationalities of the women that have been held victims, it's very unlikely they are related in any way."

He added: "We applaud the actions of Freedom Charity and are working in partnership to support these victims who appear to have been held for over 30 years."

A neighbour said the arrested couple were "very nice".

The neighbour added: "They just kept themselves to themselves and I keep myself to myself. So it was just a case of we'd pass and say hello to each other.

"They just seemed a very normal couple. I just know it's very unfortunate."

A Home Office spokesman said: "The Home Secretary is shocked by this appalling case and while the police need to get to the bottom of exactly what happened here, she's made clear her determination to tackle the scourge of modern slavery."

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Ex Co-op Bank Chairman Paul Flowers Arrested

Former Co-op bank chairman Paul Flowers has been arrested in connection with a drugs supply investigation, police have said.

West Yorkshire Police said officers arrested the 63-year-old in the Merseyside area on Thursday night and he is being questioned at a police station in West Yorkshire.

Mr Flowers, a Methodist minister, was suspended by both the church and the Labour party following claims that he bought and used illegal drugs including crystal meth, crack cocaine and ketamine.

He has also been engulfed in allegations about gay sex, questions over his expenses claims at a drug charity and drink-driving.

Mr Flowers being quizzed by MPs about his time at the bank

It also emerged he had resigned as a Labour councillor after adult material was discovered on his computer.

His arrest comes as the Co-op is seeking to recover £31,000 paid to him since he quit his £132,000-a-year post in June.

Mr Flowers, who led the Co-op Bank for three years, has been accused of incompetence after the bank found a £1.5bn black hole in its finances.

This followed the purchase of Britannia Building Society in 2009 and abortive attempts to take on hundreds of Lloyds Bank branches.

The bank now faces a rescue which will see 50 branches close and investors including US hedge funds take control of 70% of the business.

In a statement, it said: "When Paul Flowers relinquished his responsibilities in June, it was agreed, as per his contractual obligations, that his fees for the rest of his period of office would be paid.

"Following recent revelations, the board stopped all payments with immediate effect and no further payments will be made."

The Co-op is in serious trouble after a series of bad deals

Tory MP David Davis has said George Osborne and the Treasury had "serious questions to answer" about the oversight of the bank.

"There are really serious questions to answer about what they were all doing," David Davis told the Financial Times.

Issues over the bank's operations were raised by a rival at the time of the aborted takeover bid of Lloyds branches.

"These problems were apparent to a rival and would have been - with a bit of work - to anyone else," Mr Davis said.

Labour - which accuses Prime Minister David Cameron of seeking to "smear" the party over its relationship with the Co-op - seized on the comments in a bid to move the spotlight on to the Conservatives.

Leader Ed Miliband insists the party acted with the "utmost integrity" in its dealings with Mr Flowers and suspended him when the allegations about his private life emerged.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who received a £50,000 donation to his office from the Co-operative Group, said he had "nothing to hide".

Labout has come under fire over its dealings with the Co-op

He told Sky News political editor Adam Boulton that he had never had a phone call or a meeting with Mr Flowers and stressed that the donation came from the Co-op Group and not the Co-op Bank.

Mr Cameron has announced an inquiry into the bank's ailing finances and the decision to appoint Mr Flowers - with details expected to be announced within days.

It emerged on Thursday that Mr Flowers was convicted of drink-driving in 1990 and for gross indecency in a toilet with a man in 1981.

In 2011, he resigned from Bradford council after being caught with pornography on his council laptop and it has been alleged he falsely claimed £75,000 from a drugs charity when he was chairman of trustees in 2004.

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Hundreds Of Brits Jailed Abroad On Drug Charges

By Tadhg Enright, Sky News Correspondent

More than 850 Britons are locked up in prisons overseas for drugs-related offences - with some facing the death penalty or sentences of up to 39 years.

The figures have been released by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) which has launched an information campaign aimed at preventing others from meeting a similar fate.

The "Know Before You Go" campaign says the zero-tolerance approach of some countries often results in strict penalties which can come as a shock to British travellers who, if arrested, can be detained for months without trial in distressing prison conditions.

Consular affairs minister Mark Simmonds told Sky News:  "There's an assumption that what might be a cautionary offence in the UK will be a cautionary offence in other countries.

"People continue to be astonished at some of the penalties handed down for certain crimes overseas.

"In some countries possessing small amounts of marijuana can lead to decades in prison."

While the FCO helps Britons detained overseas, it has warned it cannot interfere in the process of law, and its message to anyone tempted to smuggle drugs is the risk will always be greater than the reward.

The campaign follows the high-profile cases of Michaella Connolly and Melissa Reid, who are in jail in Peru accused of cocaine smuggling.

They have admitted the charges but prosecutors have rejected their pleas and they face prison terms of up to 15 years.

Briton Terry Daniels is helping to spread the word, having once been jailed in Spain for drug smuggling.

"When I first saw the girls (in Peru), one of them looked very similar to me at that age and it absolutely shocked me," she said.

While working in the bars and clubs of Tenerife in 1997, Terry went on holiday with her boss, only to be arrested upon their return when cocaine was found in his suitcase.

"He was a drug smuggler and in their eyes we were both guilty. Whether I knew or not, they didn't care," she said.

Lindsay Sandiford faces the death penalty in Bali for drug smuggling

She spent the following 14 years, some of it in a mixed prison, fighting and waiting for a pardon from the King of Spain.

She said: "Nobody's invincible, everybody who goes abroad thinks they're wearing some cloak like nobody can see what they're doing. Don't take any risks that you wouldn't take in this country. Drugs are bad enough here, let alone abroad."

Convicted drug smugglers can face the death sentence in a total of 33 countries worldwide, including Thailand and Indonesia.

British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford, 57, is currently on death row in a prison on Bali having been convicted of smuggling cocaine.

In the United Arab Emirates, possessing - or even testing positive for - the smallest amount of illegal drugs carries a minimum four-year sentence.

The charity Prisoners Abroad is currently supporting 80 Britons between the ages of 18 and 30 held in foreign countries for drug offences. Two thirds of these are still awaiting trial, while others are serving sentences from a year to nearly 39 years.

Chief executive Pauline Crowe said: "In many countries, men and women find themselves without access to food, clean water and the most basic of medical care.

"We urge people to consider the unsanitary conditions, overcrowded cells and the constant threat of disease before they get involved in drugs. They may have to live through these conditions for many, many years."

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Paris Shootings: Suspect's DNA Is A Match

DNA collected at one of the scenes of the Paris shootings is a match to a suspect arrested on Wednesday evening.

The man, named by police as Abdelhakim Dekhar, was detained at around 7pm local time (6pm UK time) in a vehicle in an underground  car park in the western suburb of Bois-Colombes.

The office of city prosecutors said the reading of Mr Dekhar's rights had to be postponed because he was not in a position to be questioned.

Several sources close to the investigation said the suspect had been found in a semi-conscious state.

A witness to the arrest told BFM TV: "I don't know if they fired or not to make him stop. He did not move in the ambulance."

Police made the arrest after a tip-off

Police sources told the AFP news agency that the man arrested is the same Abdelhakim Dekhar who was convicted in 1998 for his links to a 'Bonnie-and-Cyde-style' murder spree.

Dekhar was accused of buying a gun used in the 1994 attacks by Florence Rey and her lover Audry Maupin.

Three policemen and a taxi driver were killed in the attacks, in a case that gripped France.

Dekhar protested his innocence at his trial in 1998, claiming he had been recruited by the Algerian secret service to infiltrate the French far-left. Despite that, he was found guilty and sentenced to four years in jail.

Investigators had earlier released CCTV images of the man they were looking for taken in an entrance in the La Defense business area.

They have received hundreds of calls about the case from members of the public.

On Monday, the shooter critically wounded a photographer at the offices of Liberation newspaper.

The suspect was caught on camera in the La Defense area

The photographer was arriving for his first day of freelance work at the newspaper and suffered wounds to his chest and stomach.

After fleeing the newspaper's offices in the east of Paris, the gunman is believed to have crossed over to the western edge of the city, where he fired several shots outside the main office of the Societe Generale bank. No one was hurt.

He then reportedly hijacked a car driven by a priest and forced him to drop him off close to the Champs-Elysees in the centre of the city.

The shootings prompted a manhunt across Paris. The motive for the attacks remains unknown.

The same man is also suspected of previously entering the offices of French TV station BFM carrying a gun.

The attacks led to French police arranging guards at Paris media outlets.

The photographer's assistant, who has not been named, is understood to be awake and off life support.

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Tory Rebels To Block Army Restructure Plan

By Becky Johnson, North of England Correspondent

Tory rebels are preparing to vote against controversial Government plans to axe 20,000 Army jobs and replace them with reservists.

Under the plans the newly named Army Reserve, formerly known as the Territorial Army (TA), would increase in size to 30,000 personnel by 2020.

However, led by Basildon MP John Baron, rebel Conservative backbenchers will attempt to block the move.

Mr Baron told Sky News the Government's plans need to be "properly scrutinised" to see if they are viable and cost effective.

"There are so many questions that remain unanswered, let's stop for a moment, let's properly scrutinise these plans and if they pass that scrutiny test by Parliament then, fine, they can proceed," he said.

Armed Forces reservists sign up

This week soldiers from 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, were cheered by crowds in Rochdale and Bury as they marched through the towns following their return from a six-month tour of Afghanistan.

They face the possibility of job losses as the Government restructuring proposals involve axing their sister 2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and merging the two together.

Captain Rex Anderton told Sky News: "There's a lot of disappointment, but we're a very reactive force, we've learnt to deal with change as it comes, that's one of the good things about the British Army is that we adapt and overcome whatever the decisions are made at a higher level."

Veteran Fusilier Stephen Taylor was watching the troops parade through Bury.

A gunner carrying out a training exercise in Northumberland

He served six years in the regular Army and 10 years in the TA.

He told Sky News he believes reservists cannot replace full-time soldiers.

"When you're a regular you're training every day of your life, seven days a week. When you're in the TA you're allowed to go home," he said.

"Reservists can only do so much. You need the regular Army to train the other people up, but the reservists can only do half the job."

However, among the crowds lining the streets was 18-year-old Army cadet Chris Hall, who believes joining the Army Reserve is an attractive option.

"For me it means I can follow a career other than the Army, I can do pharmaceutical research or go into medicine, and it still means I can be part of the Army ... I can follow a career myself and still serve my country," he said.

Regular and reserve army units prepare for operations in Afghanistan

Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall, said: "The Army is committed to delivering Army 2020.

"It will provide a coherent, integrated force of regulars and reserves that will deliver the capability the Government requires of us. We are well on our way to implementing this plan.

"To reverse course at this stage would be destabilising and damaging. Increasing and rebuilding the Army Reserve is crucial to delivering the fighting force of the future.

"To do otherwise would leave a gap in our capability and deprive talented young people of an opportunity to benefit from military service."

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