Bulger killer reveals his identity as strain proves too much

One of James Bulger's killers, Jon Venables, who was granted a new identity after serving his sentence for the 1993 murder, has been revealing his true name, unable to cope with the strain of keeping his past a secret, it emerged last night. Venables had blown his cover several times before he was put into custody last week, according to senior sources close to the Ministry of Justice.

Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, yesterday cited "extremely serious allegations" in relation to the recall of Venables but refused to elaborate. It is, however, understood that he would have had to be satisfied that Venables presented "an unacceptable risk to life and limb" to put him in prison.
This week Mr Straw will meet Denise Fergus, James Bulger's mother, to discuss the case. Mrs Fergus claimed yesterday that she had been the victim of a "massive cover-up" and said: "If this hadn't been about to leak into the papers, I don't believe they would have even told me he was in prison. It hurts me to think that someone else might have suffered at Venables' hands in the process. I feel so angry about it."
Government officials had become increasingly concerned at Venables "self-disclosing" the truth about who he was, and he is now being kept on a prison hospital wing. He has already told staff and inmates who he is and it is believed that officials have ruled out any plans to create a new identity for the 27-year-old while he is in his current mental state.
Along with James's other killer, Robert Thompson, Venables has been living in the community on a life licence after serving eight years in a secure children's home for the murder of the two-year-old boy.
News of his recall last week – the first time that he has actually served any jail time for his crime – prompted widespread speculation. Theories have ranged from a fight with a workmate to reports that he has committed a serious sexual offence, amid a drink- and drug-fuelled lifestyle that has seen him returning to Liverpool on nights out and to watch football matches, and even working as a bouncer.
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers' union, said: "A disturbed child who kills, then spends eight years in a secure unit and then nine years having to pretend they're somebody else is bound to be deeply psychologically affected. It's not surprising that he may have revealed his true identity, given the enormity of what he's done and the difficulty of coming to terms with that and a new identity." Venables being recalled to prison is the "worst possible outcome" given the years spent trying to rehabilitate him, he added.
And last night the man who devised the plan that kept the Bulger killers – both aged 10 at the time – in care for eight years told the IoS how he always feared that this day would come.
Malcolm Stevens, a former senior civil servant who was the home secretary's special adviser on the care and detention of Section 53 offenders (young people who commit grave crimes) at the time of James Bulger's murder, said: "I always wondered what would happen to these youngsters when they became young men and when they had relationships... how on earth would all that pan out? It's difficult to imagine the pressure."
Mr Stevens remembers the pair as "a couple of fairly ordinary youngsters from downtown Liverpool.... What made the case much more serious in my book was that there was no obvious reason why that offence was committed. There was no cause and effect."
The two killers lived in fear of being discovered, he added: "They were always very apprehensive about their identities being known. All the way through they were frightened to go out... they were very frightened and my guess is that's never going to go away, so that will still be there now."
And while Venables comes to terms with being in prison for the first time, the news will be an unwelcome reminder of the past for Robert Thompson, now also 27, who is gay and is believed to be in a long-term relationship with a man who knows his real identity.
Dr Ian Cumming, a consultant forensic psychiatrist who works in the Prison Service, said: "So much about people's interactions with others is built on trust, and if what you're doing and who you are is not really correct then that's quite a strain on the individual. You've got enormous burdens to carry around ... in a lot of ways you have been given an enormous opportunity, another chance with a new identity, but it's a double-edged sword and comes at a price."

Depardieu meets Putin to collect Russian passport

Gérard Depardieu enjoyed a lively first day as a Russian citizen today, with banquets, toasts and offers of free property.

The French actor, who has said he is leaving France in protest at a tax increase on the super-rich, has now received his Russian passport, possibly directly from the hands of President Vladimir Putin.
The two men, who enjoy a warm friendship, met in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, ostensibly to talk about the release of a film in which Depardieu, 64, plays the wild, debauched Russian monk Rasputin. Mr Putin’s spokesman said the actor “used the opportunity” to pick up his new documents.
In a letter to Russian journalists last week explaining why he was taking Russian citizenship, Depardieu wrote of his “love” for Mr Putin and called Russia a “great democracy”. It is unclear whether he will actually live permanently in Russia, and thus become eligible for a 13 per cent flat income tax rate. He has said that Moscow is too big a metropolis for him and he would prefer to live in the countryside.
He certainly has no shortage of offers of a roof over his head. The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has said the actor would be welcome in Chechnya, while today Depardieu was receiving a ceremonial welcome in Mordovia, west of Moscow.

11 expensive things students just don't need

tries to help students get everything they need - free stuff, huge discounts and unbeatable money saving advice, for example. But in thinking about what students do need, it's only natural that we'd try to identify the things they can do without. What are the unnecessary drains on their already shallow finances?

Delving into our student survey data, we’ve gathered the money saving wisdom of those who’ve run the perilous economic gauntlet of university and compiled the things that you really can live without as a student. 
Car
You may have had it for years, it’s probably your pride and joy, and if you’re really cool you might have even given it a name - but we’re sorry, you need to get rid of your car, and you need to do it now. As if petrol prices weren’t frightening enough, you’ve then got tax and insurance to worry about.
Smartphone
Our smartphones tell us where to go, they can name songs that we don’t know, and they can even talk to us. All that is, we admit, pretty damn cool - but is it necessary? Smartphone tariffs of upwards of £30 per month are the norm, whilst a cheaper handset and a pay-as-you-go plan can leave you paying less than a third of that.
TV and TV Licence
We’re sorry - if you have a TV, you DO need a TV Licence. But with catch-up services and a crazy little thing we’ve discovered called the internet, you don’t need a TV. Assuming you’ve got a laptop you can watch BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD or Sky Go for FREE. And providing you don’t watch live TV using the iPlayer, you can avoid having to fork out for a TV Licence, saving you a cool £145.50.
Travel
You miss your friends. You miss your family. But if you’re regularly splashing out on cross country train travel, before long you’ll certainly be missing the money more. Even with your 16-25 railcard nothing will eat into your student loan faster than weekly trips home. Your friends and family will still be there at Christmas, and until then just use free services such as Skype to stay connected.
Drinks
We know cutting out the booze completely is a step too far for most of you, but there is still a way to avoid being stung by extortionate drinks prices. As the price of alcohol has increased the practice of pre-drinking has gathered some serious momentum over recent years. Drinking at home is cheaper, safer, and best of all - you can do it in your PJs and slippers.
Meat
Vegetarian students are allowed to be smug. Not only are they hitting their 5-a-day, but they’re also saving a fortune on the weekly shop. Meat is more expensive than ever, but cheaper cuts can be just as tasty - for example two chicken breasts will cost you around £4, whilst for half that price you can get three wings and three thighs.
Textbooks
One thing many students don’t see coming is just how pricey a brand new textbook can be - and when there’s ten or so on the average recommended reading list, you can easily find yourself in the red before you’ve made it out of Freshers’ Week. You can find used books all over the Internet. You can track down people in the years above for their old books. You can consider cheaper eBook versions of academic texts, through providers such as CourseSmart. And lastly, there’s a big room full of books that lets you borrow them for FREE. Yes, we mean the library.
High-end laptop
Ten years ago only the privileged were sent off to uni with their very own laptop - now you’d be hard pushed to find a student without one. Though a laptop is undeniably a necessity for most students you don’t have to spend the best part of a grand on it. If all you need it for is browsing the web and word processing you can comfortably pick one up for less than £300.
Printer
Until recently a printer was thought of a must have for students. Thankfully, times have changed. Almost all universities now ask for essays to be handed in electronically, negating the need for a printer. And even if you do need to print stuff off, it’ll be so seldom that it makes much more financial sense to do it on campus, where prices are normally somewhere around 5p per sheet.
Gym subscriptions
There’s no denying that student gyms tend to be a lot cheaper than those found in the real world, but cheaper doesn’t necessarily mean cheap. We’re not saying you should avoid exercise entirely, rather that there are plenty of ways to stay in shape without splashing the cash. Go for a run, learn yoga online, take a swim in the sea, have sex - the possibilities are endless.

Brighter than a full moon': The biggest star of 2013... could be Ison - the comet of the century

At the moment it is a faint object, visible only in sophisticated telescopes as a point of light moving slowly against the background stars. It doesn't seem much – a frozen chunk of rock and ice – one of many moving in the depths of space. But this one is being tracked with eager anticipation by astronomers from around the world, and in a year everyone could know its name.

Comet Ison could draw millions out into the dark to witness what could be the brightest comet seen in many generations – brighter even than the full Moon.
It was found as a blur on an electronic image of the night sky taken through a telescope at the Kislovodsk Observatory in Russia as part of a project to survey the sky looking for comets and asteroids – chunks of rock and ice that litter space. Astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok were expecting to use the International Scientific Optical Network's (Ison) 40cm telescope on the night of 20 September but clouds halted their plans.
It was a frustrating night but about half an hour prior to the beginning of morning twilight, they noticed the sky was clearing and got the telescope and camera up and running to obtain some survey images in the constellations of Gemini and Cancer.
When the images were obtained Nevski loaded them into a computer program designed to detect asteroids and comets moving between images. He noticed a rather bright object with unusually slow movement, which he thought could only mean it was situated way beyond the orbit of Jupiter. But he couldn't tell if the object was a comet, so Novichonok booked time on a larger telescope to take another look. Less than a day later the new images revealed that Nevski and Novichonok had discovered a comet, which was named Comet Ison. A database search showed it has been seen in images taken by other telescopes earlier that year and in late 2011. These observations allowed its orbit to be calculated, and when astronomers did that they let out a collective "wow."
Comet Ison has taken millions of years to reach us travelling from the so-called Oort cloud – a reservoir of trillions and trillions of chunks of rock and ice, leftovers from the birth of the planets. It reaches out more than a light-year – a quarter of the way to the nearest star. In the Oort cloud the Sun is but a distant point of light whose feeble gravity is just enough to hold onto the cloud. Every once in a while a tiny tug of gravity, perhaps from a nearby star or wandering object, disturbs the cloud sending some of its comets out into interstellar space to be lost forever and a few are scattered sunward. Comet Ison is making its first, and perhaps only visit to us. Its life has been cold, frozen hard and unchanging, but it is moving closer to the Sun, and getting warmer.
Ison's surface is very dark – darker than asphalt – pockmarked and dusty with ice beneath the surface. It's a small body, a few tens of miles across, with a tiny pull of gravity. If you stood upon it you could leap 20 miles into space taking over a week to come down again, watching as the comet rotated beneath you. You could walk to the equator, kneel down and gather up handfuls of comet material to make snowballs, throw them in a direction against the comet's spin and watch them hang motionless in front of you. But it will not remain quiet on Comet Ison for the Sun's heat will bring it to life.
By the end of summer it will become visible in small telescopes and binoculars. By October it will pass close to Mars and things will begin to stir. The surface will shift as the ice responds to the thermal shock, cracks will appear in the crust, tiny puffs of gas will rise from it as it is warmed. The comet's tail is forming.
Slowly at first but with increasing vigour, as it passes the orbit of Earth, the gas and dust geysers will gather force. The space around the comet becomes brilliant as the ice below the surface turns into gas and erupts, reflecting the light of the Sun. Now Ison is surrounded by a cloud of gas called the coma, hundreds of thousands of miles from side to side. The comet's rotation curves these jets into space as they trail into spirals behind it. As they move out the gas trails are stopped and blown backwards by the Solar Wind.
By late November it will be visible to the unaided eye just after dark in the same direction as the setting Sun. Its tail could stretch like a searchlight into the sky above the horizon. Then it will swing rapidly around the Sun, passing within two million miles of it, far closer than any planet ever does, to emerge visible in the evening sky heading northward towards the pole star. It could be an "unaided eye" object for months. When it is close in its approach to the Sun it could become intensely brilliant but at that stage it would be difficult and dangerous to see without special instrumentation as it would be only a degree from the sun.
Remarkably Ison might not be the only spectacular comet visible next year. Another comet, called 2014 L4 (PanSTARRS), was discovered last year and in March and April it could also be a magnificent object in the evening sky. 2013 could be the year of the great comets.
As Comet Ison heads back to deep space in 2014 the sky above it would begin to clear as the dust and gas geysers loose their energy. Returning to the place where the Sun is a distant point of light, Comet Ison may never return. Its tail points outward now as the solar wind is at its back, and it fades and the comet falls quiet once more, this time forever.

Accused pair to 'turn witnesses' for gang-rape trial

Two of the men allegedly involved in the rape and murder of an Indian medical student have said they are ready to turn state’s witnesses – apparently in an attempt to avoid the death penalty.

Four of five men charged with the murder and gang-rape of the  23-year-old were brought before a court in Delhi today, where two of them indicated their readiness to  appear for the prosecution. According to the Press Trust of India, Pawan Gupta, 19, a fruit vendor, and Vinay Sharma, 20, a fitness trainer, refused to accept the services of legal aid counsel and instead expressed their willingness to act as witnesses.
Two other defendants, a 33-year-old bus driver Ram Singh and his brother Mukesh, 26, asked the court to provide a lawyer to defend them after the local lawyers’ association refused to act on their behalf.
The four defendants, along with a fifth man, Akshay Singh, 24, a bus washer, are due to be brought before a judge tomorrow, who will send the case to a fast-track court set up specially to deal with it. A sixth male is scheduled to be dealt with by a juvenile court because he claims he is only 17.
“All the accused persons were informed that they can seek legal aid in the case, if they have not engaged any counsel,” Jyoti Kler, a magistrate, told a hearing to which the men were brought yesterday so their custody in jail could be extended. “Accused Pawan and Vinay have refused to take service of the legal aid counsel and have submitted that they want to become witnesses on behalf of the state.”
The attack on the medical student and her male friend on 16 December, and her subsequent death in a hospital in Singapore, where she was sent for specialist treatment, has gripped India and sparked an unprecedented debate about the country’s attitudes towards women and the frequency of sexual harassment and attacks. The government has been obliged to set up a commission to look into the issue and tighten punishments for rapists.
Over the weekend, the father of the murdered student repeated his belief that he wanted “the world to know” the name of his daughter, Jyoti Singh Pandey, and called for it to be made public. Under Indian law, individuals who have been raped cannot be identified by the media unless they give their permission or, if they are dead, their family agrees.
“My daughter didn’t do anything wrong. She died while protecting herself,” her father told Britain’s Sunday People newspaper, speaking from the family home in Uttar Pradesh. “I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.”
The developments followed a decision by the police to file charges against an Indian television channel that broadcast an interview with the gang-rape victim’s male companion, in which he severely criticised the police response to the attack.
In the interview with Zee News, the man, who was not named, condemned officers and the public for failing to come to the aid of himself and his friend after they were stripped naked and thrown from a moving bus. It is claimed the police took up to 45 minutes to reach the scene and then fought over which unit had jurisdiction.
“They were just watching us. My friend was bleeding profusely. I was more concerned about her,” the young man said. “But instead of taking us to a nearby hospital, [the police] took us to a hospital that was far away. The policemen didn’t help us because my friend was bleeding profusely and they were probably worried about their clothes.”

Delhi rape: India looks within itself for answers

The rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi sparked outrage across India. But does a visit to a neighbourhood central to the story offer any clues as to where the country goes next?

A small lemon caught my eye as I reached the front door of the brick hut where the bus driver, one of those accused in this horrific case, lives with his brother.
It was hanging on a wire from the wooden door post - placed there last week, a neighbour said - as a charm to ward off the evil eye.
This tightly-packed south Delhi settlement of single storey dwellings is now under a cloud of shame - because four of the six arrested for the savage rape and killing of the young woman live here.
The case has also badly tarnished India's image abroad.
As ever, journalists reporting this story have come looking for symbols of the bigger picture - and this place has now come to signify the dark side of India many see as being behind this gruesome crime.
Most of its residents are migrants who have come to Delhi from impoverished rural areas, widely seen as the cradle of regressive attitudes to women, where figures show rapes are commonplace but rarely reported because of the social stigma.
Fitting perhaps that the district takes its name from a nearby shrine to a man born of India's untouchable castes.

And yet the narrative many have given this place didn't entirely fit. This is not a tumble-down slum for "just arrived" rural migrants, as some reports have suggested, the soil of the fields still under their nails.

Many residents have been here 20 years. It's far from comfortable living, but far better than many slum settlements I've seen - with solidly built stone dwellings, neat and brightly painted - and everyone has basic services like electricity, water and sewage.
"Don't think we're all like the accused," said another neighbour. "When you grind wheat to make flour, insects will come out with it too," she said.

All the children go to school every day. And as we were talking to neighbours I noticed three older boys listening. They all spoke perfect English, it turned out, and were doing business studies at a local college.

They would not have looked out of place among the many young people protesting over the rape in recent weeks.
Yes they knew some of the accused, but you should not assume we are all like them, they said. And it got me thinking about the many different realities to this story.
Along with many others, I have reported the middle class Indians, young and old who have been taking the lead.
The narrative has been - one I have gone with too - that these are the people standing up for a more liberal, open country. But there is plenty of evidence that India's wealthier, more educated classes can be just as sexist in their attitudes towards girls and women.
Every year, thousands of girls are aborted because of a traditional preference for sons - medical staff are bribed into revealing the sex of the child.
It is leading to an increasingly skewed ratio of women to men. And some of the worst figures are in rich south Delhi.
Just like in a small village, many middle class families also prefer a son to inherit their property. One of the many consequences of having fewer women is increased trafficking for forced marriage and prostitution - and so the cycle of abuse goes on.
And while India's Congress party-led government has condemned the gang rape and promised new fast-track courts to deal with it, no politician has addressed the wider cultural issues.
Yet something has also changed, in the questions people are asking, how they are acting.

Showing solidarity

During the week, I interviewed a woman who had survived a rape - and years after the attack is still struggling to get justice.
She joined the protests on the streets of Delhi too, where there were plenty of reports of men using the opportunity to grope women.
But she said she was also struck by how many young men intervened to protect her and her friends, forming a circle around them if anyone got too close.
Musicians and Bollywood film-makers are suddenly under pressure to justify songs and movies that portray women as sex objects.
Harrowing details from an interview the victim's friend has given about the attack and the way the authorities treated them may encourage even more soul-searching.
And one image sticks in my mind from these past weeks - an Indian man sitting at one of the protests with a candle at his feet, quietly showing solidarity with the brutally murdered girl.
And in front of him he had a placard which read: "Let us look at ourselves first."

Banks win more flexible liquidity rules from Basel

Internationals financial regulators have eased rules on minimum quantities of cash and liquid assets all banks must hold, set to take effect in 2015.

The agreement, by the body that oversees the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, is an attempt to make banks less vulnerable to runs.
The new "liquidity coverage ratio" will be phased in from 2015 and take full effect four years later.
Analysts say the rules just announced are more flexible than a draft version.
The new rules are part of efforts to prevent financial shocks such as those prompted by the 2007 run on Northern Rock in the UK, or by the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers in the US.
Banks will have to hold enough cash and easily sellable assets, to tide them over during an acute 30-day crisis.
The final version of the rules updates a draft version put forward more than two years ago.

Analysts had warned that over-stringent standards could reduce lending and stifle economic growth.

The new version allows banks to hold a broader range of eligible assets, including some shares, corporate bonds, and high-quality residential mortgage backed securities.
It also gives them more time to comply with the new standards.
The head of oversight body's head, Mervyn King, said the timeframe ensures the rules "will in no way hinder the ability of the global banking system to finance the recovery".
BBC business editor Robert Peston says the oddity is that most banks currently hold considerably more than the new minimum requirement - because leading central banks have injected massive amounts of liquidity into the financial system through "quantitative easing".
But this simply reflects the depressed times we live in, our correspondents says.
The new rules would force banks to hold vastly more liquid assets than they did in 2007 when big banks barely had enough cash to meet demands for repayment from relatively small numbers of depositors and creditors, our correspondent adds.
They are part of the broader "Basel III" package of reforms, which will require lenders to set aside more capital to absorb losses.
The Basel Committee brings together representatives regulators from 27 nations.