Granted, too, British government ministers are expected to be generalists, not specialists. For all her Cabinet seniority and political longevity, caravanning weekends in Derbyshire always looked more her scene than jet-setting to solve international crises. Yet within days of the announcement, here was Mrs Beckett stepping on a plane to New York, chatting to the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and successfully picking her way – with only a little diffidence – between thorny questions about the use of military force against Iran. The Foreign Office just did not seem to be Mrs Beckett’s natural habitat.

By nature a very modest, courteous and kind man, he had a quick wit and a wry sense of humour; his chuckle rings in the memory.Robin Glasscock. Among the many surprises sprung by the recent Cabinet reshuffle, one stands out. This time last week the notion that we would be hearing the name Margaret Beckett and the job of Foreign Secretary combined in the same sentence would have seemed the height of improbability. The older ones, several now occupying high academic positions, will recall him behind his typewriter in a fug of pipe smoke, surrounded by banks of record cards, atlases and weighty volumes in foreign languages. Students, particularly those for whom he was Director of Studies at Jesus College, remember him with admiration, respect and affection. They also remember his demanding standards and the length of his reading lists. In September 1995, he counted it a great honour to give the Carl O Sauer Memorial Lecture at Berkeley.

Less is more, but you don’t want to get so timid that there’s nothing there It’s all about small, telling details. This is not a charge which is usually levelled at Davies, also responsible for such publicity-fuelling, “sexed-up” adaptations as Tipping the Velvet, Moll Flanders and The Chatterley Affair. “Writing sex scenes for television is an enormously tricky business,” Davies says “You have to get the balance right. In his screen version, Davies has tempered the more graphic sequences of the novel, leading to accusations in some quarters that he has watered it down. Also, I’m afraid, there are still a lot of homophobic people out there. ” Davies agrees, saying simpy: “For some tastes, it’ll be too out there.” But it could have been even farther out there.

“I’m not worried about the Daily Mail,” says Saul Dibb, the director. “They always foam at the mouth – that’s their job!” Kate Lewis, the producer, is equally unperturbed. “I’m sure there will be members of the BBC2 audience who say that scenes of gay sex are not for them. After a drink in the pub, they repair to the bushes in the communal gardens of the Notting Hill home where Nick is staying.
The day I visit the set of The Line of Beauty, however, the film-makers do not seem unduly concerned about newspapers getting all hot and bothered over their work. The offending item appears at a climactic moment of what the screenwriter Andrew Davies is already calling “the bushes scene”, a feverish sexual encounter near the beginning of BBC2’s three-part dramatisation of Alan Hollinghurst’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Line of Beauty. The drama’s protagonist, a young gay man named Nick Guest (played by Dan Stevens), gets up close and personal with Leo Charles (Don Gilet), a man he has just met through a lonely-hearts column. It’s the shot of the tube of lubricating gel that may well prove the final straw for some newspapers.

One thing for certain is the winner will be a woman, but the young hopefuls Michelle Dewberry and Ruth Badger believe that their success has nothing to do with their sex.. They have been dubbed “Beauty and the Badger”. Tonight, viewers will find out which of the two finalists in the BBC2 show The Apprentice will hear Sir Alan Sugar utter the immortal words “You’re hired”. While the hardcore gamer will still want a dedicated games unit, these will be good enough for most of us to while away Tube journeys..

But that’s what they say about Ariel Sharon,” said one anonymous expert quoted in a special report by Time magazine.The magazine also claims that French officials last month admitted for the first time that the fungus had spread from the floor to the wall paintings.One photograph published by Time shows the fungus apparently attacking a prehistoric horse painted on one of the walls of the cave’s main gallery.Teams of scientists are working in shifts to carefully remove visible filaments of the fungus – a species identified as Fusarium solani – by meticulously plucking them from the wall of the cave by hand, the magazine says.”One knowledgeable visitor to the cave last month not only saw Fusarium on the paintings, but noticed a greyish tinge to formerly black surfaces where growths had been removed,” the magazine says.The archaeologist Paul Bahn, an expert on cave art, said: “This is extremely worrying. A few years ago we thought there would be a risk to them because of this fungus.”However, other visitors to the caves are not convinced that the fight against the fungus, which first appeared in 2001 just months after a new air-conditioning system was installed, has been won.”They tell us the cave’s condition is stable. All the floor was covered as if in snow, but only the floor, not the paintings on the walls,” said Dr Jean-Michel Geneste, director of the French government’s National Centre for Prehistory “We think that now there is no risk to the paintings. The fungus is believed to have been introduced after contractors began to install a new air conditioning system that was meant to preserve the precious 17,000-year-old cave paintings from the heat and humidity generated by their many visitors.
The historical importance of Lascaux is immeasurable and any damage to its art would have serious repercussions given the cave’s status as an evolutionary icon for the development of human art and consciousness.The figures are so modernist in design that when Picasso emerged from the cave soon after it was first discovered in 1940 he exclaimed: “We have invented nothing.”Some experts who have seen the damage claimed that the French authorities had deliberately played down the scale of the problem because of their embarrassment at allowing it to happen to a World Heritage Site.At one time, the fungus covered the floors of the entire cave system near Perigueux in the Dordogne in central France, although the curator of Lascaux insisted yesterday that the infestation had now been brought under control.”The fungus appeared very suddenly.

A pernicious white fungus has spread “like snow” in the caves of Lascaux in France where the fabulous rock art has been described as the “Sistine Chapel of prehistory”. Mike Penning, the Conservative MP for Hemel Hempstead, has called for a public inquiry into the fire and said that the progress report moved the inquiry along “only fractionally” and he expressed concern over investigations conducted “behind closed doors”.. But the HSE has been asked whether it is in a position to judge if human error was to blame, because it was responsible for inspecting the site. It could have been a spark from a nearby fire pump house, or an emergency generator, or a passing car. The HSE report ­ the third since the fire ­ did not allocate blame for fear of jeopardising a possible court case. But it appears that, like the level gauge, the alarm system was broken.

Inspectors may never find out what caused the explosion, because the evidence was destroyed in the fire. The alarm should have automatically closed the valves to prevent more fuel being pumped into the tank. The tank was also fitted with an alarm, independent of the faulty gauge, which should have gone off as the petrol reached the maximum level. The tank was full by about 5.20am, after which a vapour cloud rose above the tank, visible on CCTV. They will have ultimately been deposited into the soil or the ocean.” A safety gauge in tank 192 at Buncefield appears to have jammed at about 3am on 11 December, showing the tank two-thirds full. Professor Ian Colbeck, director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex, said: “If this event occurred in the summer then the corresponding ground level air pollution impacts would have been significant.” Dr Alastair Lewis, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of York, said: “Although air quality was not adversely affected, persistent organic pollutants generated by the fire will not simply have disappeared. A separate report published yesterday by the Environment Department, Defra, said: “It is unlikely that pollutants emitted after the Buncefield oil depot explosion had widespread impacts on air quality at ground level.” But experts said that it was because weather conditions allowed the smoke to rise high into the atmosphere, spreading the pollutants over a large distance.

Air quality inspectors sought yesterday to allay public fears about the damage done to the atmosphere by a smoke cloud more than 200 miles wide. They have found traces of PFOS, but below the level said to be safe for human consumption. Since the fire, inspectors have taken almost 400 water samples from sources around Buncefield, near Hemel Hempstead. Yesterday’s report by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) warned that chemicals from fighting the firehave passed into the water table.

It is considered a safe haven in the volatile tech sector because of its steady earnings growth and impressive cash generation. Sage’s first-half results highlighted 18 per cent revenue growth to £459.9m and a 19 per cent pre-tax profit increase to £113.7m. Yet after its aborted bid to buy its Norwegian rival Visma and slowing organic growth in the first half, some investors may be getting edgy.Shares in the Newcastle-based software developer have risen 30 per cent over the past year. Our view: Buy

Share price: 252.5p (-12.75p)
Sage is the great UK technology survivor. It’s the only UK tech stock to have kept its place in the FTSE 100 since the tech downturn, while more glamorous sector rivals now fight among the mid-caps. In fact, it only finished selling the assets the late Mr Rowland had built up less than a year ago.

Gossips reckon it will not be long before the group unveils a major acquisition in Africa.. Second, Cazenove said Frova faces a significant competitive threat from the imminent launch of a rival drug by GlaxoSmithKline.Finally, Lonrho Africa added 1.25p to 37p after appointing Gerard Holden, formerly head of mining at Barclays Capital, as joint executive chairman. Lonrho Africa, which was once part of Tiny Rowland’s business empire, is again being built up as a pan-African conglomerate. Although Vernalis reported positive results for its menstrual migraine treatment Frova on Monday, the broker said it was concerned about the ability of this data to drive market share gains in the near term.First, it believes that Vernalis’ US partner will be prevented from using the data to market the treatment to physicians before the start of next year.

The 165,000 government workers now without pay support about a third of all Palestinian families.While the Quartet offered no concrete details of what kind of mechanism they envisaged, the task of setting it up was left to the EU. It seemed clear, however, that the World Bank will be asked to step forward to be the conduit for the funds. The Palestinian Authority, which has depended almost totally on outside aid for years, has not been able to pay its workers for two months. Washington in particular argued that isolating the new Palestinian leaders remained the only means to force them to change their positions.At the last resort, some in the US argued, it would propel the Palestinians to new elections and possibly a new team of leaders. Attitudes in Washington were hardened after Hamas publicly sought to justify a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on 17 April.The impact of suspending aid has already been grave, however. Earlier this week, the World Bank warned of economic chaos if some way of supplying aid wasn’t found.Both the EU and the US cut off almost all aid to the Palestinians as a response to the election of the Hamas-led government in March.

But after complaining of headaches, doctors thought it prudent to move ahead with a small operation to relieve the pressure. The operation was a complete success, with Keith up and chatting with his family today.”The accident happened while Richards was on holiday following the Asia-Pacific leg of the Stones’ Bigger Bang tour, which took them to Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand. He reportedly lost his grip while climbing the tree with his fellow band member Ronnie Wood at the exclusive Wakaya Club resort.His wife, Patti Hansen, flew to Auckland and has been by his side since. According to The Sun, she smuggled miniature bottles of vodka into hospital for him. The paper had previously reported that Richards gave up drinking and smoking after the fall.Richards, along with Mick Jagger, the lead singer, has been the backbone of the Rolling Stones since the Sixties.

His history of drug abuse and arrests in his younger years has given him the reputation of rock’n'roll’s ultimate survivor. He likes to greet concert audiences by quipping: “Good to be here, good to be anywhere.”The guitarist has suffered other freak accidents, some in quite sedate circumstances. In 1998, he broke three ribs and punctured a lung after falling off a ladder while reaching for a book in his library. Two years later, he punctured a finger on a guitar string and it became infected.The diagnosisBy Maxine Frith* Relatively few people require surgery after a head injury but Keith Richards’ age – and his hellraising past – mean he had an increased risk of potentially fatal complications. People who suffer a minor head injury may suffer a chronic subdural haemorrhage, which causes slow bleeding in the brain and the development of a clot. If the clot increases in size, it begins to compress the brain and restricts the flow of blood Left untreated, it can cause brain damage.

“You never really see the bigger sizes in the high street.”Group sales climbed 8.2 per cent to £484.8m, pushing profits before tax up to £51.8m in the year to 25 February Since then, sales have advanced 7.1 per cent. Despite weak consumer spending, the company is confident about the future as women get bigger – the average dress size across Britain has moved from size 12 to 14 or 16 in recent years.
The company has an increasing part of its clothing range – which starts at size 12 – going to size 34, with some items even size 38. Thanks to ever-expanding waistlines, profits have ballooned at the mail order group N Brown, which specialises in frocks for the fuller figure. The Manchester-based company shrugged off a tough retail climate and posted a 26 per cent rise in annual profits after increasing its range of dress sizes and launching a new range of boots in multiple calf widths. I will be giving this away to further the cause, just as I did last year to help Amnesty move into a new office.” But she also warned that a consumer boycott could be counter-productive.”(They) rarely work and the people you hurt are primarily the weak and the frail. “There will be huge implications for state funding, and possibly for the economy as consumption of goods and services declines.”The research will be updated annually to illustrate the changing shape of Britain’s pensions landscape.The Government is reviewing the UK pension system and is expected to publish a White Paper outlining its proposals for reform within the next few weeks.Gordon Brown is believed to be uneasy about taking up the Pensions Commission’s recommendation to link the state pension to earnings, and has been reluctant to axe the pensions credit system.Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the Pensions Commission chairman, says state pension reform will fail without these recommendations being adopted..

Workers whose employers made a contribution were likely to receive an average of 51 per cent of income at retirement.”Unless defined contribution plans are brought up to the same quality level of defined benefit schemes, then we will condemn generations of workers to a retirement close to the poverty line,” Mr Fraser said. We don’t believe this is because defined contribution pension plans are inherently flawed. The fault lies with the way those arrangements have been implemented. However, those contributing to defined contribution schemes would end up with an average salary of £13,200.Simon Fraser, Fidelity’s president of institutional business, said: “The gulf between the retirement expectations of defined benefit and defined contribution pension scheme is astonishing. Based on current pension contributions, Fidelity calculates the average member of a defined contribution scheme will have a pension pot big enough to replace only 38 per cent of what they earn at retirement.
In contrast, those fortunate enough to be a member of a final salary scheme throughout their career will have income equivalent to 81 per cent of their salary at retirement.Both of the calculations include the payment of a full basic state pension and any State Second Pension entitlement.According to the survey of more than 1,100 UK workers, people with final salary schemes are on course to retire with a gross annual income of £30,500. His resolve to overturn the decision taken by his predecessor that the supermarket industry did not merit a third £20m-plus investigation in six years prompted a mass choking-on-cornflakes moment for Britain’s top food retail executives.. Britons who save for a pension in a defined contribution scheme are on course to face a near 60 per cent cut in income when they come to retire, according to a survey published today by the fund manager Fidelity International.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if $80 is attained soon,” Victor Shum, an energy analyst at Purvin & Gertz, said.Ruth Bridger, a petrol price analyst at the AA Motoring Trust, said current petrol prices were based on oil prices in the low $70s two weeks ago. But Kaoru Yosano, the economics minister, defended the bank’s right to decide the timing of policy moves.Stephen Lewis, chief economist at Insinger de Beaufort: “There can be no surprise the BoJ chose to pay little attention to this tangled web of political motivations when it decided to put an end to zero rates.”The Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, who must step down in September, said the nation’s economy had not yet emerged from deflation but that such a situation was close.. Sadakazu Tanigaki, the finance minister, and Shinzo Abe, the chief cabinet secretary, had urged the BoJ to stick to the zero interest rates right up to this week. The economy grew at an annualised rate of 3.1 per cent in the first quarter.Yesterday’s rate rise was the end of a prolonged bout of shadow boxing between government ministers, who believed a rate rise would dent the recovery, and the BoJ, which wanted to raise rates to demonstrate its independence and show it was able to take pre-emptive action But in recent weeks the government has been split. “I have caused a fuss and made some people worried,” he said, but added that he wanted to keep fulfilling his responsibilities.Japan is now enjoying its second-longest period of growth in the post-war period.

“The chances that rates ultimately rise to 3 per cent or so, which no one seems to expect, are much higher than the chances it lifts rates just one or two more times and then goes back on hold as many still suggest,” he said.At a news conference, Governor Toshihiko Fukui repeated that he intended to stay in his job despite a public outcry over his links to an equity fund whose manager has been indicted for insider trading. “The Bank will adjust the level of the policy interest rate gradually in the light of developments in economic activity and prices if they follow the projection presented in the outlook report,” its statement said.”In this process, an accommodative monetary environment ensuing from very low interest rates will probably be maintained for some time.”Analysts said the BoJ would continue to raise borrowing costs gradually as the economy expanded, although with inflation forecast to run at 1 per cent, real rates looked set to remain negative – stimulating the economy – for some time to come.Stephen Kirchner, at Action Economics, said: “We see scope for follow-up tightenings in the fourth quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007, but this will still leave Japan’s real official interest rate in negative territory well into 2007.”But Julian Jessop, chief international economist at Capital Economics, said the markets were too complacent about the risk of steeper rate rises. The Tokyo stock market fell almost 1.7 per cent, although analysts said this was a reaction to record oil prices rather than the rate rise, which had been well signalled.
The BoJ said it had taken its action against a background of “steady improvements” in economic activity but hinted it was not the first of many increases. UK institutional shareholders are expected to launch a similar claim.. Japan raised interest rates for the first time in almost six years yesterday, ending its era of zero rates and delivering final confirmation that the world’s second largest economy had ended a decade of stagnation.

The decision by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to raise its lending rate to 0.25 per cent means the country has joined the United States and the eurozone in a synchronised global tightening of monetary policy. If the judge gives permission for a review but decides there is insufficient time to hold it before trading officially begins in Rosneft shares on Wednesday, Yukos will ask for an injunction to delay the listing.Yukos has promised a “lifetime of litigation” against Rosneft and any investors who buy into the company. The Rosneft prospectus contains details of compensation claims against the company totalling $48bn. Apart from the US action, an unnamed Spanish investor has launched a compensation claim against the Russian government claiming the expropriation of Yukos assets breached a bilateral investment treaty between the two counties. Institutional investors have emerged with 36 per cent of shares, of which 24 per cent have been bought by UK funds. This makes it the sixth-largest IPO in the world.BP, Britain’s biggest company, is one of three strategic investors who have bought shares in the flotation.

More than 20 luminaries from the worlds of food, fashion, music, architecture and art designed a unique range of 25 deckchairs which were auctioned last month to raise £30,000. The prints, which range from the dainty to the eccentric – including the dancer Michael Clark’s chair with a hole in its seat – can be rented by the public or bought either in chair or canvas form, and will replace the more conventional blue-and-white striped seats for hire in London parks.
The deckchair launch could not have come at a more timely moment, according to weather experts, who predict “perfect” conditions for the next two days, with less humidity than the Mediterranean. Designer deckchairs ranging from models with a hand-painted lady by the cartoonist Quentin Blake, to a recipe scrawled on its back by the chef Fergus Henderson, to Paul Smith’s hallmark stripesfeatured among a batch of 700 exclusively commissioned sun-loungers in four London parks yesterday. Life is even more challenging for any child newly arrived from the South, who will be none the wiser when his teacher tells him “Don’t thee threeup me eawt” (“Don’t you keep answering back”) or – rather more unenviably – “Tha’t backerts thee” (“You’re not very bright”).. To those uninitiated in the local dialect, even the process of choosing a builder can be a bewildering experience in Wigan, Greater Manchester. “We con do ought and I’m not codding,” read the words on the side of one well-known local tradesman’s van, by which he means he can do anything and isn’t kidding. “Look at it this way, on 4 July 1776 when they took down the Union Jack and raised up Old Glory, did our lives change for the better? The answer is they did not.”.

At some point though the United States will wake up to its indigenous people.”But there is little appetite for heaping the blame on the English. “We are a microcosm of society – we have everyone from janitors to doctors and lawyers. If you look at the number of people in the tribes of Virginia who need public assistance, it is statistically negligible. Across the Canadian border, the Innu, also part of the Algonquian-speaking Powhatan, work with groups such as Survival International to combat rampant alcoholism, depression and petrol-sniffing among the young.But Chief Adkins says it is wrong to believe that all are blighted by social ills. But the colonists were never satisfied – enough was never enough. And that was the story of America from the east coast to the west.”Today Native Americans own just 2 per cent of the US landmass and many experience profound social problems. “When I look back, the positive thing that accrued is that our folks learnt some new technology that the English brought with them.

“With all that land someone was going to come out there sooner or later,” he says.Stephen Adkins, a retired human resources director with Du Pont, leads the Chickahominy. “I’m just really glad that the English people are recognising us for who we are when our own country doesn’t,” he said.Warren Cook, assistant chief of the Pamunkey, is also philosophical about the past but determined that the future will not see his tribe forced to cede what is rightfully theirs, particularly over fishing rights. Mr Smith, a computer expert who worked on the human genome project, prefers to reserve his disdain for the American government. By the time the two sides had got round to signing a peace treaty, war, disease and hunger had reduced the native population by 65 per cent and consigned them to the physical and social margins of the New World being built around them.The eight tribes themselves, and their 7,000 members, only received official recognition 25 years ago and the legality of the agreement which granted them their two reservations in Virginia is still disputed with the US government.But there appeared to be little in the way of hard feelings. They are here as the guests of the Jamestown 2007 British Committee, an organisation set up to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first English-speaking colony in North America.
The first ships carrying colonists set off from Gravesend and the tribe’s most famous daughter, Pocahontas, is buried in a riverside church in the town.But while the sons of Kent went on to found the United States of America, the arrival of the English was to prove catastrophic for the indigenous peoples who had inhabited Tsenacomoco, their name for the forests that flanked the James river, where they lived.

Baba is an urbane and widely travelled businessman, an avid reader who tries his hand at translating foreign texts into Arabic. He is jailed and tortured by Gaddafi’s men for inciting a student revolt. When he is let out his mind is damaged (in prison, under torture, he betrayed his friends) and his body a bloody pulp. The latter are Libya’s intelligentsia, people like the boy narrator’s father, Baba, and his best friend Ustath. It is this platitude that Hisham Matar, a Libyan exile, confronts in his debut novel, which chooses to remember the brutality of Libya under Gaddafi. “The country of men” is inhabited by torturers and their victims.

The former, guardians of the 1969 revolution, are bent on closing down anything pleasurable and free. “People should not forget the past, they should move beyond it,” Blair said of his visit to Tripoli. After writing the piece, he packed in his desk job and returned to Babbo, where he was promoted to the post of line cook, in charge of the grill. Am I crazy or something?”No, Am?e Nothomb isn’t crazy, but she is certainly eccentric.

And then, after, I become a small Japanese employee.”This, too, is not just a metaphor. The plane-saving feat turns out to be the highlight of an increasingly frenetic sequence of set-pieces, mostly concerned with the geological mischief wrought by his old adversary Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey). When I got to Bamako, they were preparing to fly the body back to Niafunke. During his illness he’d say, “I’m not going back home until I can go back by road.” The day after he died the wind had brought up dust and sand, so we had to drive up with him in this ambulance.

Esther is just nine. A suicide attacker detonated a bomb near the home of a prominent Pakistani Shia Muslim cleric in Karachi yesterday, killing the cleric and two other people, police said. The death of Allama Hassan Turabi is likely to raise tensions in Karachi, which is oftenthe scene of violence between Shias and Sunnis Turabi had narrowly escaped an attempt on his life in April.

He was the leader of a Shia party, Islamic Tehreek Pakistan, and a provincial chief for Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Forum, a hardline opposition religious coalition.. India has already called off the next round of peace talks, scheduled for 20 July, in reaction to the bombings, in which at least 179 people were killed.. Speaking in Bombay after meeting with victims of Tuesday’ s serial bombings, Dr Singh said India would not continue with the peace process unless Pakistan acted against Islamic militants based on its territory. Any threat of a return to hostility across one of the most dangerous nuclear faultlines in the world will cause international concern. He may even have been carrying some with him in the train when the bomb went off

Mr Shah was one of Mumbai’s diamond traders. Yesterday, the city’s famous jewel market was deep in mourning. Mr Shah was not the only diamond trader to die: the diamond market suffered the worst death toll of any single community in the bombings..

The peace process between India and Pakistan appeared to be in danger yesterday as the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, publicly accused “elements” in Pakistan of being involved in the Bombay bombings. Mr Shah, 32, was travelling in the first-class carriage where the explosion took place: he didn’t stand a chance and was killed But Mr Shah was not your average commuter Every day, he handled diamonds worth thousands of pounds. Manoj Shah was taking his usual journey home on Tuesday evening when a bomb went off on his Mumbai commuter train. Then the Hu brothers began to enlist the help of city authorities and became involved in rubbish collection, extorting money from refuse collectors. Zheng Ge, an officer at the Shunyi jail, and Liu Haiying, an interrogator with Shunyi Public Security Bureau, accepted bribes, prosecutors say, while in April 2004, a police officer, Peng Yinsheng, allegedly had dinner at a restaurant with Hu Yadong – while Hu was supposedly in jail.Senior Communist officials have expressed their fears that domestic and foreign Triads are trying to infiltrate the country.In May last year around 40 suspected mobsters, including the Hu brothers, were arrested The trial is expected to run until next week. Police began an investigation in early 2004 after a number of complaints from the public but the investigation was slow as victims were worried about revenge attacks.However, the government launched a crackdown in February and more than 1,000 gang-related crimes are under investigation. Thirty criminals have received jail terms of more than five years, life imprisonment or the death penalty..

They put crooked cops on the payroll.The brothers turned to politics. In June 2004, Hu tried to manipulate a village election by forcing villagers to vote for their candidate, prosecutors allege. The Hu brothers soon recruited dozens of hatchet men and formed a well- organised gang, investigators say. According to the prosecution, Hu Yadong sent the heavies round to beat up a man surnamed Zhang in 1996 because he refused to use Hu’s garage Half of Zhang’s right ear was cut off.