McCann lawyers in website demand

Lawyers representing Kate and Gerry McCann have demanded a website claiming their daughter was not abducted be taken down. The Madeleine Foundation claims Madeleine is dead and her parents bear some responsibility for her death. In a statement on its website, the foundation says libel specialists Carter-Ruck have also demanded they hand over all remaining copies of leaflets and booklets they published to support their claims. The spokesman for the McCann family, Clarence Mitchell said: "Kate and Gerry have consistently made it clear they will not dignify the actions of the so-called Madeleine Foundation with any comment whatsoever. "However Carter-Ruck's position is now clear and it is in the hands of Kate and Gerry's defamation lawyers." The statement on the foundation's website states they were given until Friday to reply to Carter-Ruck's letters and were now taking legal advice. Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family's rented holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3 2007 while her parents dined with friends nearby. Mr and Mrs McCann, both doctors from Rothley, Leicestershire, tapped into the huge public interest into their daughter's disappearance and made repeated appeals for information. They feared their daughter had been abducted and taken abroad and set up an official findmadeleine.com website as part of their campaign to be re-united with their daughter.(my view)barbara knows my view on this topic

Father gunned down in street named

A father of two who was shot dead at his front door in what is believed to be a gang-related attack has been named by police. Amran Khan, 29, from Oldham, Greater Manchester was gunned down on Friday night when he opened his door on hearing a disturbance. Three shots were fired at the victim, who lived on Nugget Street, and one of the bullets hit him in the chest, police said. He died at the Royal Oldham Hospital in the early hours of Saturday, leaving behind a wife and two young daughters, aged one and four years old. Officers are trying to establish a motive, but according to sources, the attack may have been gang-related. Chief Superintendent Caroline Ball, from Oldham Police, urged anyone with information to come forward. She said: "Tragically, a young man has lost his life as a result of this shooting and our thoughts are with his wife and two young daughters during this traumatic time. "We understand the community will be very shocked and deeply upset by what has happened, so I would ask that they work with us to help find whomever is responsible for Amran's murder. "If the answers are in the community, then that positive dialogue will help us find Amran's killers." Ms Ball said there would be an increased police presence in the area over the coming days to reassure residents

Five ways banks rip you off

Whether it's uncompetitive interest rates, penalty fees or hefty transaction charges, there are many ways banks are profiting at our expense. We look at the top five ways your bank makes money from you and show you how to get your own back. 1. Sky-high overdraft rates While the base rate stands at just 0.5%, the majority of high street banks charge between 18% and 20% interest on overdrafts (not to mention the host of charges when you exceed your overdraft). Though a recent regulatory crackdown has forced banks to reduce these rates, it still represents a huge waste of your money - especially when it's so easy to avoid. If you're often in the red, then you should consider switching to an account that offers a more competitive overdraft. The Alliance & Leicester Premier Direct account charges no interest for the first 12 months, thereafter charging a usage fee of 50p a day (up to a maximum of £5 a month). Note that A&L applies a maximum overdraft limit of £2,000 2. Miserly credit rates Most high street banks pay a miserly 0.1% credit interest on their current accounts, while some pay you nothing at all. So why not take the time to switch to a bank that rewards you for your custom? Some accounts out there pay as much as 6% on credit interest. All you have to do is shop around. 3. Foreign transaction fees Every time you use your card while abroad, banks charge you a fee of up to 3% of the transaction. It's called a foreign transaction fee and it's a profitable business: data shows that banks rake in almost £60 million a month during the peak summer period. Banks charge different amounts for this and some don't charge for European transactions, so checking the small print on your deal or switching current accounts can save you money. Alternatively, you could consider taking a pre-paid travel card with you overseas. It works just like your bank card except that you can load it up with foreign currency, allowing you to avoid the foreign transaction fee altogether. Just make sure you do your research, as some pre-paid cards come with hefty fees themselves. 4. Inverse order of payments It's not just current accounts that can offer a bad deal. Credit cards come with a host of sneaky fees too. Did you know that your bank manipulates your credit card repayments in order to maximise the cost to you? Almost all cards impose an inverse allocation of payments, which basically means that any repayments you make go towards the cheapest debt, leaving the highest interest-earning portion earning interest for the bank until everything else is paid off. This trick can prove particularly costly in the age of short-term interest-free credit cards. For example, imagine you take out a card that comes with a 12-month 0% balance transfer deal and a three-month offer on new purchases. Now let's assume you switch £3,000 debt to your new credit card, which offers 12 months interest free on transfers and three months on new purchases. You then have an unexpected £1,000 expense which you can't immediately cover, so you put it on the card and plan to repay it before the 0% new purchase offer expires in three months time. But when you do repay that debt, you'll find those funds went towards the balance transfer instead. So after three months you still owe the £1,000 from that new purchase, and it is now earning interest at a rate of anywhere between 16% and 19%. Before you can even begin to repay it, you have to clear the £2,000 remaining on your balance transfer. There are three ways to avoid this trick: choose a card that offers identical new purchase and balance transfer deals, find a card that pays things off in an order that suits you and not them (the Nationwide Gold Card for example) or simply use a separate credit card for each. 5. Cash advance According to data from debt charity Credit Action, the average credit card APR is currently 17.95%, or 17.45% above base rate. But even that pales into insignificance compared to the almost 30% interest rate charged on cash withdrawals. And of course, because of the inverse order of payments mentioned earlier, you will have to clear all other debt before you can begin paying it off. Not to mention the fact that your traditional "grace period" - the amount of time between buying something on a card and being charged interest on it - does not apply to cash withdrawals. As a final kick in the teeth, such withdrawals also tend to attract a fee of up to 3%.

Tortoise Survives Motorway

LONDON, England (CNN) -- No one knows where he started his slow, lonely journey, but it ended this week when a quick-thinking driver scooped him up and rescued him from a busy motorway south of London. Freeway the tortoise, as he has since come to be known, is now living comfortably at an animal rescue center in Worthing, along England's south coast, while staff try to find his owner. Whoever owned Freeway fitted him with a microchip, but unfortunately the chip is blank, with no information about where he came from, said Billy Elliott, an animal rescue officer at Worthing and District Animal Rescue Service. The microchip is a type usually used in America, but it is made in Belgium, so it's likely the reptile came from one of the two countries, Elliott said. "They feel he was definitely from abroad, but we still don't know," Elliott told CNN. "It's still up in the air where he came from." It was Worthing resident John Formby who spotted the tortoise Wednesday as it crawled across five lanes of traffic on the M25, a major motorway that circles London. At the junction with the M23, a motorway that goes south toward Worthing, Formby said he spotted what he thought was a rock or piece of debris on the road. "As I get closer to it, it's moving," Formby told CNN. "As I get closer, I recognize it as a tortoise." Formby said he pulled over onto the hard shoulder of the road and went back to grab the animal. "As I'm running back, there's a few cars coming up," he said. "About seven or eight cars had gone past it, but two cars had actually gone straight over the top of it. A white van drove over the top of it." The tortoise had by that point made it from the middle lane to the slow lane, so Formby said he "jumped out (and) grabbed it." The animal didn't seem upset, he said -- "it seemed very determined just to get where it was going." Formby put the tortoise in his car, fed it, and took it home to Worthing, where he brought it to a vet to see whether it had been microchipped. The vet found the chip, but it had no information on it. "The microchip is an extremely useful system in helping reunite lost pets and their owners, but the microchip is only as good as the information on the database," Elliott said. He said they hope the chip manufacturer may at least be able to trace it to the veterinarian who inserted the chip. Freeway is a Hermann's tortoise, a type of small to medium tortoise originally from southern Europe, according to the California Turtle and Tortoise Club. Freeway himself is no bigger than a dessert bowl, Formby said -- about eight inches across and only three or four inches high. Elliott estimates he's about 10 years old. "He's very friendly," he said. "He's obviously a much loved pet." The animal rescue service will keep Freeway for the weekend before placing him in a foster home, Elliott said. If the owner can't be traced within 28 days, they will then try to find a new owner. Freeway's past and future may be a mystery, but one thing is for sure, Elliott said. "He's one lucky tortoise."

Michael Jackson Movie Trailer

Michael Jackson 'This Is It'. Movie will be in theaters everywhere October 28 (my view)-he's been"died"from 5 fucking minutes WTF

Sex-change boy of 12

A 12-year-old boy reported to have changed sex faces "a critical moment" in his life, a transgender campaign group has said. Bernard Reed, a trustee of the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES), said teachers and pupils at the child's secondary school in southern England were key to his future. The child's parents gave him a girl's name by deed poll and allowed him to wear a dress to school, according to The Sun. The paper said teachers at the school, which has not been identified, called an emergency assembly to explain to pupils the boy would now be treated as a girl. Mr Reed said it was likely the child had been confused about their gender for years. He said: "As many as 500,000 people in the UK experience this, but very few of them seek treatment or change gender. Very young children can realise there is something wrong that perhaps they can not understand and as they get older they can face more repressive forces. Their family may struggle with the issue and they may be bullied at school. "There is a small number that get the right support from their family and school so they can live as themselves. The start of puberty is a critical moment in their lives. What happens in other countries is the child is given treatment for the suspension of the pubertal process but this is refused in the UK." Children in this country can have hormone treatment to aid their physical development but this does not usually happen until they are at least 16 and surgery is not allowed until the age of 18 apart from in exceptional cases. Mr Reed said: "The key people in this are the teachers. They need coaching so they are confident about talking to the other children and their parents. The other key people are the peer group, the children who will be around the child." It was reported the child's parents hoped his transformation from male to female would not be noticed as he was starting secondary school this year, but pupils from his old primary school noticed the change.