Blogscrape

Security and political tensions are rising sharply before tomorrow’s long-awaited report into the fatal shooting of 13 protesters by British troops on Bloody Sunday in January 1972.

A key issue for detectives will be whether Robert Miller and James Robertson were influenced by Philip Nitschke, the Australian medic nicknamed Dr Death. Dr Nitschke, who founded the pro-euthanasia group Exit International, is also the inventor of the “deliverance machine”, a syringe linked to a laptop that can administer a lethal injection.

Liam Wray says that he is “impatient and excited” about the publication tomorrow of the long-awaited Bloody Sunday Inquiry report.

Road users are being put at risk by gangs of thieves looking for easy pickings who steal cast-iron manhole covers from quiet rural areas to sell as scrap.

Sir Jock Stirrup has led the military during four brutal years in which British forces have been stretched to the limit, engaged in their bloodiest fighting since Korea.

The Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls has claimed that the party’s refusal to rule out increasing VAT was central to its general election defeat.

The Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls has claimed that the party’s refusal to rule out increasing VAT was central to its general election defeat.

ONE of the key staff brought in to supervise expenses at Westminster has quit after just six months in the job following heated exchanges with MPs.

THE official from the Republic of Guinea barely batted an eyelid when the English lobbyist made a highly irregular offer over coffee in a Barcelona hotel. She wanted to buy Guinea’s vote at the forthcoming International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting with an aid package.

THE controversial Tory “A-list” aimed at boosting the number of female and black MPs could be scrapped under a wide-ranging review ordered by Baroness Warsi, the party’s chairwoman.

AMERICA the brave — and a television glitch — ruined the World Cup party for England last night. The USA held Fabio Capello’s team to a 1-1 draw while millions missed England’s opening goal because ITV screened a car advert on its HD screens instead.

HARRY POTTER is set to work his magic again. As the final two films of JK Rowling’s series approach completion, a new “Hogwarts experience” is to open in the studios where they are made.

I’ve no regrets, and I’m settling down

SCHOOLS are inflating their league table scores by entering pupils for “easier” vocational qualifications, previously secret government data have shown.

About the time President Barack Obama was sternly discussing the BP oil spill with the prime minister, David Cameron, by telephone yesterday, a protest group known as the South Florida Raging Grannies was plastering its latest video across the internet.

Anybody who does not know that big public spending cuts are on the way must have been on a long holiday. Yet in Britain’s town halls, government departments and quangos, the “non-jobs” and overpaid posts that proliferated under Labour are still on offer.

ENGLAND’S football team were planning a riposte last night to America’s alleged unfair play on a different field, the oil wells of the Gulf of Mexico.

ENGLAND fans went native last night and blew white vuvuzelas in support of their team rather than chanting to compete against the cacophony of sound that has become the symbol of this World Cup, writes Dan McDougall.

President Barack Obama’s vilification of “British Petroleum” stands in stark contrast to the approach taken to Union Carbide, the US firm responsible for the Bhopal disaster which killed about 3,000 people instantly in India in 1984. Some estimates put the final death toll at about 25,000.

THE last man to see Derrick Bird alive during the Cumbria massacre gave the killer’s location to a 999 operator that he claims was not passed on to armed police.