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Peru's Fujimori jailed 25 years Aljazeera.net Peru's former president has been jailed for 25 years after being found guilty of crimes against humanity and other charges. Alberto Fujimori, 70, said he would appeal against the verdict after he was found to have ordered massacres and kidnappings ... Former Peruvian President Fujimori's conviction a milestone Christian Science Monitor Ex-Peru President Fujimori convicted of mass murder, kidnapping Los Angeles Times Times Online - ABC Online - Voice of America all 956 news articles

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Quake Toll in Italy Rises to at Least 235 Washington Post Rescue workers combed central Italy for survivors of Monday's earthquake while the death toll continued to rise. Tent camps housed some of the 50000 left homeless by Italy's worst earthquake in three decades. Video: Italy quake - Berlusconi: 100,000 left homeless France 24 REFILE-Italy seeks survivors, prepares to bury quake dead Reuters guardian.co.uk - BBC News - CNN - Times Online all 6,947 news articles

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Obama’s Europe trip: ‘A good opening act’ Christian Science Monitor The president made few concrete gains in his first overseas trip, but helped begin remaking America's image in the world. By Howard lafranchi | April 7, 2009 edition Reporter Howard lafranchi discusses how President Obama dealt with European leaders ... Video: Obama addresses Turkish parliament in Ankara EUX.TV Obama in Europe: 'The waters didn't part' MiamiHerald.com Reuters - Washington Post - Voice of America - CNN International all 5,427 news articles

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Fidel Castro "energetic" in meeting with US lawmaker Reuters By Jeff Franks and Thomas Ferraro HAVANA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro seemed alert and energetic on Tuesday in his first known talks with US officials in years, and asked how to best help US President Barack Obama normalize ... US politicians meet 'fit' Castro BBC News US lawmakers meet with Fidel Castro CNN Times Online - Telegraph.co.uk - FOXNews - New York Times all 1,798 news articles

Ministers will today announce a £40m bailout for charities dealing with the effects of the recession, but the lifeline is a fraction of the sum the government was urged to provide at crisis talks last year.

The money follows job cuts at household names including Shelter and the NSPCC, and amid warnings that one in three charities is expected to lay off more staff in the coming months.

Though campaigners yesterday welcomed the fund, it is less than a tenth of the £500m the charities sought at crisis talks three months ago, and far below their more recent request for £100m to keep vital services alive. The aid also comes as the government faces growing pressure over its inability to rein in the excesses of bankers, who received bailouts and assistance worth more than £500bn .

The chancellor, Alistair Darling, said yesterday that the Treasury may be powerless to prevent bankers at the Royal Bank of Scotland receiving large bonuses, even though 68% of the bank is now owned by the government and RBS is scheduled to post losses running to billions of pounds for the current financial year.

The government has said it has ordered an independent review into executive pay, but the former deputy prime minister John Prescott dismissed as "nonsense" the Treasury argument that existing banking staff contracts made it impossible to intervene. He said: "No ifs, no buts. Don't pay the bonuses."

Publication of the government's charity action plan came after it convened a crisis summit in November in response to big names in the sector cutting services and making redundancies. Moneys held by charities fell by 13% in the past year, according to a survey of 260 large charities, while in October last year a Charities Commission survey suggested that one in 12 charities was having to make redundancies to avoid cuts in services - with one in three charities predicted to do so in the forthcoming months.

The Cabinet secretary, Liam Byrne, said: "Charities, third sector organisations and social enterprise who give debt advice and help with mental health problems are all experiencing a step up in demand ... We're launching a package of help with tens of millions extra for charities providing employment advice, mental health and family support services in the most deprived areas of England and Wales, plus millions extra to help those out of work start volunteering [in the sector]."

Though £9m of the money comes from existing Department for Work and Pensions funds for volunteer programmes for the unemployed, the government has found money from the Treasury and Department for Health budget.

It will today announce £15.5m for a community resilience fund for small and medium size community groups in deprived areas. The cash will be aimed at groups offering debt advice and services supporting families and young people.

Organisations such as Shelter and the NSPCC, though on the frontline of providing services in the downturn, are unlikely to qualify for these new funds. A government aide said the community resilience fund had been established to support organisations just below the local authority level. It has also found £16.5m to help third sector organisations merge to be able to cope with the downturn. Help the Aged and Age Concern have already done so.

Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the association of chief executive officers of voluntary organisations cautiously welcomed the aid: "It's a start, but more is going to be needed as the recession unfolds, and in two or three years, £500m may end up being the total sum. Those smaller charities who support people who have lost their job will be coming back to the government and asking how can you support us more?"

The death toll from the deadliest bushfires in Australia's history could reach into the hundreds as the devastation is uncovered in the burning and blackened ruins of towns, the authorities warned last night.

Described as "hell on earth", the fires left at least 108 dead, but police in Victoria said the final death toll would be much greater.

"I think it [the body count] will be up into the 100s ... 200," acting Sergeant Scott Melville, who has the job of dragging bodies out of charred vehicles and homes, told the Melbourne Age. "It's like a friggin' war zone up here, it's like a movie scene."

The army has been called in to help the thousands of exhausted firefighters who, for the third consecutive day, will try to put out 26 fires threatening suburbs near Melbourne.

Fifty fires were also raging across New South Wales, where temperatures reached 46C (115F) yesterday.

An emotional prime minister, Kevin Rudd, announced a A$10million (£4.5m) emergency relief fund and said: "Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria ... many good people now lie dead."

Shock was turning to anger today as it emerged that some of the fires were deliberately lit. Rudd said those responsible for the fires were "mass murderers".

"This is of a level of horror that few of us anticipated," he said.

Mike Rann, South Australia's premier, described the arsonists as terrorists and "the enemy within".

In New South Wales, a 31-year-old man will appear in court today charged with lighting a fire that destroyed bushland on the state's central coast.

Gordon Brown told Rudd the UK was ready to help, and the Queen offered her condolences to the bereaved families.

Among them were a veteran television newsreader, Brian Naylor, and his wife, as well as a firefighter whose family perished while he was trying to protect residents of another fire-ravaged town.

Mary Avola, from Strathewen, 30 miles north-east of Melbourne, described how she and her husband Peter, 67, tried to flee their endangered home on foot, looking for safety. He told her to go on ahead and she has not seen him since. "He was behind me for a while," she told the Age. "He just told me to go and that's the last time I saw him."

Residents of the worst-hit regions in Victoria told of the extraordinary speed the fire travelled, and how they feared there "was not going to be a tomorrow".

A thick blanket of black ash blotted out the sun, leaving an eerie and "horrible orange glow", said one resident. "It rained fire."

Others described how flames four storeys high raced across the land like a speeding train, wiping out towns within an hour. The pretty alpine town of Marysville was flattened, street by street, every public building - the post office, police station, guest houses - no more.

Many tried to escape the acrid smoke in their cars but some did not make it, trees exploding and blocking their exit.

Victoria Harvey said a local businessman watched as a car in which his two children were sheltering went up in flames. "He put his kids in the car, turned around to go grab something from the house, then his car was on fire with his kids in it and they burned," she told the Australian Associated Press.

Marie Jones said a badly burnt man carrying his infant daughter told her his wife and other child had been killed. "He was so badly burnt. He had skin hanging off him everywhere and he said 'Look, I've lost my wife, I've lost my other kid, I just need you to save [my daughter]'," Jones said.

Survivors said the devastated areas looked as though they had been hit by a nuclear bomb, and those who lit the blazes "must pay".

"How can people do this? If the coppers can't get them, and someone else finds them, they'll kill them," Jarrod Champion, who found the body of a friend, told The Herald Sun. Jay Cherie from Kinglake Central told ABC her family had no warning of what was to come. "My little girl was saying to me, 'Mum am I going to see my friends again?', she also said to me, 'Mum am I going to live tomorrow?'."

At least 750 homes have been destroyed and more than 330,000 hectares burnt out, while authorities said some fires could take weeks to contain.

Jim, from Tanjil South, was seeking refuge in his swimming pool with embers dropping in the water around him when he called ABC radio to describe his ordeal. He said it was as dark as midnight, and "we can smell the fire... we're still in the pool here and we can hardly see here, it's so dark".

The authorities, which today will continue the grim task of checking charred houses, vehicles and water tanks for bodies, said the final death toll would not be known for days.

Victoria's premier, John Brumby, broke down, saying: "It is just a day I hope in my life time I never see repeated."

Victoria has roasted in extreme temperatures for a fortnight. The bushfires which worsened last Saturday were driven by hot winds of more than 60mph, and record temperatures of 46.4C in Melbourne, the highest in 70 years.

Politicians from all sides rounded on the state-supported Royal Bank of Scotland yesterday as the row intensified over the failed bank's apparent determination to share £1bn of bonuses among staff.

The former deputy prime minister John Prescott called on the Treasury to rule out any bonuses and the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, told bankers: "The party's over."

The Treasury announced it had commissioned an independent review of the reward policies at banks, but the chancellor, Alistair Darling, admitted that existing contractual obligations between RBS and its employees may mean bankers still receive handsome bonuses. It has been suggested the bank has set aside a bonus pot of £1bn for its 177,000 employees. There is growing anger that bankers who mishandled billions in the run up to the recession may still be rewarded despite RBS being propped up by £20bn in taxpayers' money.

Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of RBS, and Sir Tom McKillop, the former chairman, will face some of this opprobrium when they give evidence to the Treasury select committee this week.

Speaking on BBC1's Sunday AM programme, Darling said he had reached an agreement with the new chief executive of RBS, Stephen Hester, that no one "associated with losses" should be rewarded. However he appeared to concede RBS bankers were likely to receive bonuses out of sync with performance in 2008, with losses running into billions set to be outlined in three weeks. The chancellor said: "Obviously there are contractual problems with some staff."

RBS also wanted to make sure they have slimmed bonus payments down to the absolute minimum, the chancellor said. "They have to understand that these banks would not be here but for the British taxpayers, therefore they have to show the degree of restraint that people would expect," he said.

But Prescott dismissed the contractual obligations. He is using a Facebook site to create a campaign to stop RBS and other banks involved in the government's recapitalisation scheme receiving bonuses.

He said: "Using the contracts argument is absolutely nonsense. These contracts would have been worthless without the government. Without the government, these bankers would have been on the dole. We are seeing a reversal of Robin Hood - rob the poor to pay the rich. The many are paying for the few. No ifs, no buts, don't pay the bonuses."

The employment minister, Tony McNulty, also questioned bonuses for senior bank executives and board members "in the current circumstances".

The Treasury said the former chairman of Morgan Stanley, Sir David Walker, would chair the review of banks and their bonus structures. A Treasury official said: "There will be a tightening of the banks' purse strings. This is about keeping any rewards in line with the public mood, and the public mood is unforgiving."

Darling has asked Walker to make recommendations about the effectiveness of risk management by banks' boards, including how pay affects risk-taking. It will also look at how boards operate and at the balance of skills.

RBS would not be drawn on a figure for capped bonuses but said there would be "no reward for failure".

The Treasury said it had been planning to move on bonuses for some time and pointed to a review begun in October.

A ground-breaking law enforcement unit with members from seven European countries, led by a Briton, has coordinated the seizure of almost 40 tonnes of cocaine in the first 18 months of its existence.

The seizures are worth hundreds of millions of pounds and amount to as much as a fifth of the cocaine that drugs cartels would probably have dispatched from South America to Europe over the same period in small boats and light aircraft.

Among the 70 operations coordinated by the Portuguese-based unit was the seizure of 1.5 tonnes of cocaine on a yacht called Dances with Waves off the south-west coast of Ireland. The drugs are believed to have been destined for the British mainland in time for Christmas.

There have also been interceptions across the breadth of the Atlantic, one leading to the arrest of the suspected head of a drugs gang in Brazil.

Officials working against organised crime said the Maritime Analysis and Operation Centre-Narcotics (MAOC-N) has played a part in driving up the wholesale price of cocaine to a record level in Britain, to about £40 a gram.

But despite the seizures, cocaine, or more usually cocaine adulterated with other substances, is as cheap and readily available in Britain as it ever has been. Gangs have become adept at cutting cocaine to make the consignments go further, and drugs charities say the work of organisations such as MAOC need to be backed by other initiatives.

The executive director of MAOC is Tim Manhire, a British senior officer from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca). The unit, however, is an equal partnership between the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands.

Since the organisation was created in the summer of 2007, legal proceedings have begun in Spain, France, Ireland, Portugal, Liberia, Venezuela and Brazil as a result of its operations. Nations outside the organisation, including Liberia, the US, South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, have contributed resources to the work.

The idea is to give the seven partners a way of sharing information and resources effectively. Manhire said that before MAOC officials faced the problem of the "1,000-mile telephone wire". Britain, for instance, might know that a vessel was packed with drugs but would not have a ship of its own to intercept it, and a call to another country's navy might not have received a whole-hearted response. Consequently, liaison officers from the seven countries were brought under one roof. Europol and the US Joint Interagency Task Force South (the American anti-drugs force) are also represented. Now, if one nation gets intelligence about a drugs shipment, the officers can meet around a table and work out who has the resources to try to intercept it.

"We aim to be as flexible as possible," said Manhire. "For just one job, for example, we may have a Royal Navy ship carrying Spanish law enforcement, with French air support helping out."

The involvement of African nations is seen as particularly important because west Africa has become a key staging post in drug trafficking to Europe. The US is particularly worried that the burgeoning drugs trade to Africa will destabilise states there, and also believes that yachts dropping off drugs are returning across the Atlantic loaded with weapons for drugs gangs.

A second MAOC centre, in the south of France, which will do the same sort of job but focus on the Mediterranean and involve countries from north Africa, is about to open.

The organisation's results were yesterday praised by the British government and by the UN.

Alan Campbell, the Home Office minister, said: "Drug trafficking is an international problem and we need to work together to tackle it. The Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre is an excellent example of what can be done when a number of countries collaborate closely in tackling a common threat. The results over the last 18 months demonstrate its success [at] having prevented some 40 tonnes of cocaine reaching the streets."

Hamid Ghodse, the president of the International Narcotics Control Board, which monitors the implementation of the UN drug control conventions, said it had been calling on governments to work together against drug smuggling. "In a short time, they have done a very good job. I hope that more of this type of collaboration happens," he said.

Ghodse added that the control board was concerned about the route to west Africa and pleased that MAOC was making efforts to end it; the organisation believes that every year 125-150 tonnes of cocaine arrives via small boats and aircraft. But the US estimates that 550 tonnes of cocaine a year comes into Europe, mainly hidden in container ships.

Martin Barnes, chief executive of the charity DrugScope, agreed that the coordinated international approach appeared to have made "some progress" in tackling the supply and trafficking of illicit drugs in Europe. However, he added: "We cannot escape the fact that demand remains high. Recent figures show that the UK has the highest levels of cocaine use in Europe and the drug appears to be relatively affordable and available on the street drug market.

"Enforcement measures have a role to play in tackling the harm caused by drugs but this should be as part of a coordinated response alongside sustained investment in drug treatment and effective public health and education campaigns."

Bad behaviour in schools is being fuelled by teachers' failure to properly identify children with special educational needs, according to the government's chief adviser on school discipline.

Schools are labelling children as naughty when they have serious problems and have been failing to address the causes of disruptive behaviour, in some cases for years, according to Sir Alan Steer, a headteacher who has advised on behaviour issues in schools since 2005.

He said many schools and teachers were working well to identify pupils who were struggling because they had a special educational need (SEN). But some teachers were failing to spot conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with the result that children's problems were not being correctly treated. Steer, who was head of Seven Kings high school in east London until he retired last August, will today unveil the latest in his government-commissioned reports on school discipline.

His previous reports have led to fundamental changes in the law to give headteachers and schools the right to search pupils for drugs, alcohol and stolen items. His latest review recommends pressure be put on schools to identify children who need help, and to use the money they are already allocated to support these children. Pupils with SEN - including conditions such as dyslexia, autism and ADHD - are more than nine times as likely to be permanently excluded as the rest of the school population. They are also more than three times as likely to be persistently absent from school.

An estimated 17.2% of pupils have an SEN, but fewer than 3% (222,600 children) have a statement of SEN, which is only given once they have been thoroughly assessed to determine the nature of their problem and to decide the support they need, which can include specialist lessons or extra time in exams.

Beverley Walters, of the National Association for Special Educational Needs, said that the symptoms of ADHD and mild forms of autism were frequently mistaken for bad behaviour.

"For a child with a special educational need, if they don't understand the way they feel and the teacher doesn't understand the way they feel, they will be deeply affected and that can come out as frustration or lack of concentration which will affect behaviour. We would like to see teachers getting more training and support to recognise these things." Mark Lever, chief executive of the National Autistic Society, said: "Parents tell us that some teachers put their child's behaviour down to naughtiness or poor parenting, rather than recognising that it arises as a result of disability. We hear this even when the child does have a diagnosis."

John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said: "The main complaint from schools is that they don't get the back-up they need to help them manage children with SEN. There needs to be more high-quality support for teachers to help kids with SEN."

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, said: "We know there is some excellent work going on in our schools to support children with SEN, but teachers have told me that they need help in being able to identify children with SEN earlier and quicker."

Fifty pupils in a school in Wiltshire have been suspended for going on strike to play in the snow.

The teenagers, from Nova Hreod school in Swindon, refused to leave the playing field after their morning break on Wednesday. They have been suspended until Monday.

Julie Tridgell, the school's headteacher, said she was forced to take a tough response because the strike's ringleaders were encouraging others to miss class to play.

It was just a poor excuse for bad behaviour, she said.

Today she was forced to close the school because of renewed snowfall but insisted there was to be no slacking. As Tridgell informed all parents via the school website, their children should be doing coursework and studying online using sites like GCSE Bitesize.

"As I mentioned in my letter posted on the website yesterday I would like to ask you as parents to remind our students that they should be spending time on school work," she wrote today.

"When we return to school next week (let us hope there is no more snow!) we will be reviewing our procedures with regards to school closure and exploring if there are additional/other polices/practices we could adopt or put in place to minimise the number of days lost to snow and poor weather conditions."

Tridgell was sticking unapologetically to her tough line on the pupil walkout. She told the Swindon Advertiser: "They refused to come in so I had to take a tough line. Students must understand they cannot behave like that. I am giving them a clear message.

"It was a difficult day on Wednesday but the school is focused on improvement and rewarding those young people who come into school and do the right thing day after day."

The children who started the strike may be excluded, and the school will be notifying parents.

The school's name Hreod is not a Guardian typo but an ancient Saxon word meaning "reed", and is mentioned as part of a placename in the Domesday Book.

A teacher is to receive more than a quarter of a million pounds in compensation for an assault by a teenage pupil which has left her with permanent back pain.

Sharon Lewis was 26 when the 13-year-old boy, who cannot be named, jumped on her back and placed her in a headlock. He ignored her pleas to stop and she eventually fell to the floor hitting a wall and window.

News of the award came as Ed Balls, the education secretary, was due to address the Safer School Partnership conference in Leeds following the launch of a report on behaviour and special educational needs from the government's chief adviser on school discipline, Sir Alan Steer.

The attack took place at a school for pupils with learning and behaviour difficulties in Nottingham five years ago. It ended Lewis's teaching career and has left her with constant pains in her neck and down her back.

Immediately after the attack, she suffered flashbacks and nightmares. She says the ordeal has made her withdrawn and has affected her concentration.

The teenager had previously assaulted another member of staff at the school and was known to have violent outbursts.

Lewis's £280,000 payout, from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, is thought to be one of the highest ever awarded to a teacher. Chris Keates, general secretary of NASUWT, the teachers' union which helped Lewis, said no amount of money would compensate for Lewis' physical pain.

She said there were too few measures in place to protect teachers against violent pupils. In some schools, particularly where pupils had serious behavioural problems, teachers believed being assaulted was all part of the job, she said. "No-one should ever have to go to work with the expectation of being assaulted," said Keates.

An "apprenticeship tsar" to breathe fresh life into the government's training and skills programme is to be created under the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill published today.

The office of the "chief executive of skills funding" is one of a series of measures outlined in bill that is intended to shake up the way training is organised in England,and will abolish the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), the biggest quango Labour created.

In a significant boost to the apprenticeships programme, which is being put on a statutory footing, every suitable young person who wants one will be entitled to an apprenticeship by 2013. By 2020, ministers want 250,000 apprenticeships to start each year. They estimate this will mean that one in five young people will begin an apprenticeship within the next 10 years.

The bill confers the first legal definition of an apprenticeship for nearly two centuries, and makes clear that they are fundamentally employment-based. An apprenticeship agreement can only happen where "a person (the 'apprentice') undertakes to work for another (the 'employer')". This clearly excludes so-called "programme-led apprenticeships", training courses started in colleges in the expectation that the trainees will enter arrangements with employers at a later stage. These schemes have been criticised by opposition parties and the government has grown anxious that they are not regarded as proper apprenticeships.

Lorna Unwin, professor of vocational education at the Institute of Education, London University, said: "It is significant that apprenticeships have been put on a statutory basis. We haven't had this in this country since 1815." That year, the Statute of Artificers, that had come in during Elizabeth I's reign and governed apprenticeships, was repealed, she said.

In place of the LSC there will be two new bodies: the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), which will service adult education and training, and the Young People's Learning Agency (YPLA). This will support local authorities, which are to be given responsibility for funding education for 16- to 19-year-olds.

Another casualty of the bill, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), will be changed into the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, a body responsible for advising ministers on the curriculum and qualifications. Ofqual, set up last April to take over the QCA's role as regulator of qualifications and their assessment, is to be put on a formal basis with new powers.

The right of schools to search pupils for weapons will be extended in the bill to include alcohol, drugs and stolen items.

As announced last spring, people are to be given the right to ask for time off from work to do training. But the bill does not impel employers to grant a request, merely to consider it. Employers can turn it down for a good business reason. And there is no obligation to meet the costs of any training.

The bill closes a loophole that allowed people with outstanding student loan repayments to have their debts wiped out by entering into "individual voluntary agreements".

Children's trusts, which bring together social services, schools, GPs and police, are to be made statutory. Stregthening them had been an ambition for the past 18 months, Ed Balls, the children's secretary, told MPs yesterday. But there is no doubt that this move was given extra urgency by the case of Baby P and the subsequent alarm about the performance of some local authorities' children's services. Since 2004, councils have been able to set up children's trusts that bring together schools, social services, police and GPs. But some – including Haringey – had not done so.