More than 80 MPs challenge expenses repayment demand

A total of 80 MPs have confirmed they want to challenge an auditor's request that they repay money they claimed on expenses dating back five years. Lib Dem Jeremy Browne, Labour's Frank Cook, Frank Field and Patrick Hall and Tory Bernard Jenkin are among those contesting Sir Thomas Legg's findings. Sir Thomas was asked to review all MPs' second home claims since 2004 after the expenses scandal broke in May. The MPs were told they had to signal an intention to appeal by 1500 GMT. They must then submit their written appeals by 23 December - which will be examined by former Court of Appeal judge Sir Paul Kennedy. Fridge claims Sir Thomas's review has annoyed many MPs who have been asked to repay money for a variety of reasons. Tory MP for Thanet North, Roger Gale, has appealed against the demand to repay £2,100 for mobile phone bills and £400 in rent for a London flat. He said Sir Thomas Legg had ignored the justification he gave for the claims, telling the Press Association Sir Thomas was "still knowingly releasing false information. I view that as dishonest. "Am I angry? Yes, I am. My reputation matters to me. I have been doing this job for 27 years. It has cost us well over a quarter of a million pounds out of our own pocket." Mr Jenkin, MP for Essex North, has been asked to repay the highest amount known - £63,250 - because he claimed it for rent on a property owned by his sister-in-law. The rules changed in 2006 to prevent MPs renting from relatives but Mr Jenkin has said he was not informed and says the Commons Fees Office had sanctioned the arrangement. He has said he will repay the money if the appeals process goes against him. Labour MP Ann Cryer has told the BBC she will be appealing against her demand for a "substantial amount". She said she had never claimed the maximum amount in second homes allowances. Ms Cryer, who is reported to have claimed rent on a flat owned by her daughter and is standing down at the next election, said she did "not want to leave with a cloud over my head". Stockton North MP Mr Cook's request for repayment relates to £600 claims for a fridge. He says other requests from Sir Thomas that he repay £964 for utility bills have been dropped and he has already repaid £1,019 he over-claimed for council tax. Mr Browne's case is more complicated. He told the BBC that he was being asked to repay £17,894 because of a "ridiculous application of the rules". The Lib Dem Treasury spokesman became MP for Taunton in 2005 and raised the deposit to buy a home in the constituency by remortgaging a London flat he had owned for several years. It meant the mortgage on his London flat increased from £130,000 to £190,000 - he designated the flat as his "second home" and went on to claim expenses on the interest of the £190,000 mortgage. Remortgage Sir Thomas said that breached a rule that MPs are not allowed to claim expenses for "interest on any additional mortgages, advances or loans secured on the same property". He said he should have claimed interest on the £130,000 mortgage and has asked Mr Browne to repay the difference. Mr Browne says the rule about remortgaging was meant to stop MPs withdrawing the equity on taxpayer-funded properties to "buy a new car, go on holiday or whatever it might be". But he said the increase in his London flat's value had happened before he became an MP and before he made any expenses claims on the mortgage. "I don't think that's a reasonable application of the rules and I think the money that accrued to me prior to my election is mine to spend as I see fit," he told the BBC. He argued that, under Sir Thomas's interpretation of the rules, he could have sold the flat and bought a new one and claimed 100% of the mortgage interest, or claimed for his Taunton home - even though either option would have cost the taxpayer more. "I think I acted in good faith," he told the BBC. Mr Field, MP for Birkenhead, is appealing against a ruling that he should repay more than £7,000 in gardening and household bills. Mr Hall, who represents Bedford and Kempston, is contesting a request that he repay a claim for mortgage interest of £260. He said: "It is a discrepancy. That is why I am going to the Kennedy review. The sum concerned is small, but it is a matter of principle." Labour MP Alan Simpson, who previously threatened legal action over the review's demand that he repay £500 in cleaning charges, said he had filed an "objection" but intended to leave it at that rather than formally appeal. Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked Sir Thomas to look for mistakes made in expenses claims approved by the Commons Fees Office over five years, when the expenses scandal broke in May. But Sir Thomas has applied his own limits on what he thinks should have been claimed for gardening and cleaning. Several MPs have been asked to repay the difference - sometimes amounting to thousands of pounds. Many MPs were unhappy about the "retrospective" nature of the ruling and had been expected to appeal.

HIV Man Injects Sleeping Wife With Own Blood

An HIV-positive man has confessed to injecting his blood into his sleeping wife and infecting her with the virus that can cause Aids, reports have said. It is believed the man wanted to give her the disease so she would start having sex with him again, New Zealand's Sunday Star-Times said. Court documents detailed how the man, 35, twice pricked his 33-year-old wife with a sewing needle laced with his infected blood. The husband discovered he was HIV-positive - but his partner and children were not - during health checks imposed on them when the family arrived in New Zealand in 2004. The woman had said she wanted to maintain the relationship for the sake of the children. But she refused to have sex with her husband for fear of contracting the disease. In the documents, the wife described how, in May, 2008, she found a sting-like mark on her left thigh and two days later awoke to a stinging feeling in her leg. She said: "I got up... and I flicked the blankets... I looked at (the husband) and he was wide awake." The wife asked him if he had pricked her and he said, 'No'. But she later found evidence of "blood sprinkles" on their duvet, which she said her husband tried to hide from her. During a routine check-up four months later, doctors revealed she was HIV-positive. The woman confronted her husband, who admitted dipping a needle in his blood and pricking her with it. "All he said (was) he was sorry. He said, 'I used needles on you because I wanted you to be the same as me so that you can live with me and you won't leave me'," she said. The husband has admitted wilfully infecting another with a disease and faces up to 14 years in jail when he is sentenced at Auckland High Court next year.(my view)-He should have the death penalty as his wife IS going to die from aids now

Toddler found with needles in body

A Brazilian toddler is recovering in hospital after he was found to have up to fifty sewing needles stuck inside his body. Doctors treating the two year-old hope to remove all the needles but say it is proving difficult as some are inserted in vital organs. The boy's father has suggested the needles may be from a 'black magic' ritual after telling a newspaper that he saw items linked to 'black magic' in the home where the toddler lives with his mother and stepfather. X-rays showed the needles, some up to two inches long, throughout his body. Doctors believe they were inserted one by one and not swallowed. A police investigation is taking place.

Update.

Man admits sticking needles in boy. The stepfather of a two-year-old boy found with 42 needles in his body has confessed to jabbing them into the toddler as part of a religious ritual, Brazilian police said. The stepfather of a two-year-old boy found with 42 needles in his body has confessed to jabbing them into the toddler as part of a religious ritual, Brazilian police said. Roberto Carlos Magalhaes told detectives that a woman who went into a trance would "command him to stick the needles in the boy's body," police inspector Helder Fernandes Santana said. "According to his confession, he acted under influence of the woman, but it was him who stuck the needles in the boy's body," the inspector said. He said three people, including the stepfather and the woman, have been arrested, though no charges have yet been filed. An enraged crowd of more than 100 people surrounded the police station where the suspects were held on Wednesday night, hurling rocks at the building. Santana said they broke out a window of his own car because they wrongly believed the suspects were in it. Extra police were called in to restore order and protect the suspects. The child, meanwhile, was airlifted to the heart unit of a major hospital in north-eastern Brazil because two of the needles are close to his heart, but it was not immediately clear when doctors might be able to remove them. Surgeons at a hospital in the town of Barreiras in Bahia state, where the boy had been hospitalised since Sunday, had decided not to try to remove any needles immediately for fear they could cause more damage. Doctors located 42 needles in the boy, who was in stable condition in the coastal city of Salvador after a 240-mile flight to a hospital with a special heart unit. Hospital spokeswoman Susy Moreno said an evaluation of how to treat the boy would probably not be finished until Friday. The boy's mother, a maid, took him to a hospital in the small north-eastern city of Ibotirama on December 10, saying he was complaining of pain. Three days later, after X-rays revealed many of the needles, doctors moved him to the larger hospital in the nearby city of Barreiras. The mother told police she did not know how the needles got inside her son, whose name was not released because of his age.(my view)-If your a NUT JOB or not,you do not force your beliefs on to a child