Regulator Ofcom orders BT 'separation' from Openreach network

Telecoms regulator Ofcom is to order a legal separation between BT and its Openreach network but stopped short of a full break-up.

Ofcom said it was proceeding with the move "after BT failed to offer voluntary proposals that address our competition concerns".

It said it still backed a form of separation in which Openreach remained a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT but warned that if this failed it could reconsider a full split.

BT shares were 1% lower in early trading.

The announcement comes hours after Sky News revealed that the telecoms giant was to name former Ofcom director Mike McTighe as Openreach's first independent chairman.

This was likely to be seen as a step in the right direction for the regulator. 

Openreach runs the UK's main telecoms network, used by BT's retail division as well as rivals including Sky, the owner of Sky News, Vodafone and TalkTalk.

Those rivals have pushed for a full separation, warning that BT benefits from a big conflict of interest.

Ofcom said creating a more independent Openreach, working in the interest of all providers, was a key part of plans to improve broadband and telephone services across the country, with better quality and greater investment.

It set out concerns about the current arrangement in July and has now said it was "disappointed that BT has not yet come forward with proposals that meet our competition concerns".

Ofcom added: "Some progress has been made, but this has not been enough, and action is required now to deliver better outcomes for phone and broadband users."

BT's proposals still fell short on "the transfer of people and assets, and the level of influence that BT Group executives could exert over the management of Openreach".

Ofcom is now proposing for Openreach to become a distinct company with its own board, with a majority of independent directors including the chairman not affiliated with BT.

The company would be guaranteed greater independence on making strategic investments and have a duty to treat all of its customers equally.

Ofcom said it was preparing to notify the European Commission of its plans but remained "open to BT bridging the gap between its proposal and what is required to address our strong competition concerns".

A consultation on the plans will take place next year.

The regulator said an earlier consultation launched in the summer had revealed concerns about slow broadband speeds, the availability of high-speed fibre broadband and the quality of service from major providers.

Ofcom said it had considered calls for a full break-up of BT and Openreach as well as concerns raised by BT about the "substantial costs" this would trigger and the impact on its pension scheme.

It said its current view that Openreach should remain a subsidiary of BT was "likely to achieve the greatest improvements for everyone in the shortest amount of time".

But the regulator warned: "If Ofcom's monitoring suggests that legal separation is not delivering sufficient benefits for the wider telecoms industry and its customers, we will return to the question of structural separation - fully breaking up the companies."

Jill Stein tries to force recount in Pennsylvania, as Trump team keeps up talk of voter fraud with no evidence

President-elect Donald Trump and Green Party candidate Jill Stein continued raising competing doubts about the election on Monday, with Trump's transition team voicing concerns about voter fraud without providing evidence and Stein taking legal action to trigger a recount in Pennsylvania, one of three states she has targeted for additional scrutiny.

Trump on Monday was also officially declared the winner in Michigan by a slim margin. Stein announced plans to force a recount there on Wednesday. In Wisconsin, where Stein asked for a recount last week, elections officials on Monday announced a timeline and procedure for it.

In a conference call with reporters, Jason Miller, communications director for the Trump transition team, read a statement from the president-elect stating his disapproval of Stein's recount efforts.

“The people have spoken and the election is over,” Miller said. He later added: “It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, the president-elect won 306 electoral votes on Election Day, the most of any Republican since 1988.”

Miller also echoed Trump's Sunday accusations of widespread voter fraud, which have not been backed up by any evidence.

[Donald Trump’s bogus claim that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton] 

“I do think that's an issue of concern, the fact that there's a concern that so many voted who were not legally supposed to,” Miller said. Asked for evidence, he cited studies about voter registrations conducted before the election but presented no specific proof of his claims that has emerged since the vote was conducted.

Stein, who finished well behind Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, announced that she filed a legal petition in Pennsylvania on behalf of 100 voters “to protect their right to substantively contest the election in Pennsylvania beyond the recounts being filed by voters at the precinct level.”

“Americans deserve a voting system we can trust,” Stein said in a statement. “After a presidential election tarnished by the use of outdated and unreliable machines and accusations of irregularities and hacks, people of all political persuasions are asking if our election results are reliable. We must recount the votes so we can build trust in our election system.”

But Stein acknowledged in a Sunday video that it would be difficult to force a recount in Pennsylvania and would require her to “jump through some hoops.”

Republicans raised doubts Monday that Stein's argument would prevail.

“Our General Counsel has reviewed the Election Contest and said it is totally and completely without any merit. It does not even allege any facts to support its wild claim that the ‘discontinuity’ of pre-election polls reported by the media showing that Hillary Clinton would win and the actual results could only have occurred through computer hacking originated by a foreign government,” said Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Rob Gleason in a statement.

Stein said she has raised $ 6.5 million from more than 137,000 donors for the recount efforts. Because of the margins, the states are not absorbing the costs of recounting the votes.

In Michigan, the Board of State Canvassers certified Trump's win over Clinton by 10,704 votes out of about 4.8 million cast. Stein's team said it plans to demand a statewide hand-recount on Wednesday, in accordance with the 48-hour deadline to do so.

In Wisconsin, where Trump defeated Clinton by a percentage point, the bipartisan state Elections Commission announced plans to begin a recount on Thursday, provided that proper payment for the recount has been received by the state. It rejected the Stein campaign’s request for a statewide hand recount, instead leaving it to each county to decide whether to use a machine or not. The Stein campaign said it was filing a legal challenge to trigger an all-hand recount.

Iranian vessel points weapon at US helicopter

An Iranian vessel pointed its weapon at a US Navy helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz at the weekend, it has been revealed.

The move was described as an "unsafe and unprofessional" action by two US defence officials who spoke to Reuters.

The officials, who were not identified, said the SH-60 helicopter had flown within half a mile of two Iranian vessels in international waters when one of the vessels pointed its weapon.

Those on the helicopter did not feel threatened, the officials said - but they added that the move could have prompted a retaliation.

It follows a similar incident in July, when an Iranian frigate pointed a weapon at a US Navy helicopter and coalition auxiliary ship during a US training exercise in the Gulf of Aden.

Iran has a history of such behaviour in Middle Eastern waters, including firing shots at a Singapore-flagged tanker in May.

The strait, which is just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world.

It is the path for about 40% of the world's oil tanker traffic and is claimed not only by Iran but also by Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

Islamic State terror plots revealed in seized 10,000 documents

A large trove of documents seized in Syria from the Islamic State reveals thousands of plots to attack Europe and other parts of the world, Britain's top commander in the region has said.

More than 10,000 documents and a huge amount of digital data were seized after the group was driven out of Manbij in northern Syria in August, according to Major General Rupert Jones.

"If we want to keep Britain safe, we need to deal with Daesh," he said, using another name for the extremist group.

The news comes as anti-terror police have started deploying on London's streets.

General Jones said: "External operations have been getting orchestrated to a very significant degree from within the caliphate, critically from within Raqqa and from within Manbij.

"They were key external operations hubs. There is a huge amount of intelligence, documentation, electronic material that has been exploited there that points very directly against all sorts of nations around the world."

:: 'Disneyland targeted' by terror suspects arrested in France

He declined to discuss details of the suspected plots as he spoke to reporters at the Al-Assad air base in Iraq.

British security services are analysing the material.

General Jones said they will be expecting fresh intelligence if the coalition retakes the Iraqi city of Mosul, where US-backed Iraqi and Peshmerga forces have launched an offensive.

"It will be a labyrinth of intelligence and we need to get that into the hands of the intelligence agencies," he said.

Attacks either perpetrated or inspired by Islamic State have struck cities across Europe, including Paris, where 130 people were killed in November last year, and Brussels, where 32 people died in March.

Last week, French anti-terror police foiled a terror ring plotting attacks in France.

Seven people were arrested of French, Moroccan and Afghan origin in Marseille and Strasbourg.

French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve did not reveal the intended target of the plot, but did say "the foiled attack was a co-ordinated attack aiming to target several sites simultaneously".

The US State Department urged Americans in Europe to be vigilant against a "heightened risk" of terrorism during the Christmas period.

Fidel Castro: How Cuban leader changed Southern Africa

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who died on Friday, played a crucial role in shaping southern Africa's history, writes Richard Dowden, from the UK's Royal Africa Society.

In Cuba it seems there will forever be two histories of Fidel Castro. 

One is the revolutionary who succeeded and became the guiding star for all who saw the world through the lens of Marxist Leninism. 

The other is the brutal dictator who suppressed democracy and kept his country poor. 

There is one place where Castro undoubtedly made a difference: Angola.

In 1975 a military coup in Portugal overthrew the dictatorship of Antonio d'Oliveira Salazar. 

The country was tired of fighting wars in its colonies in Africa, long after the UK and France had pulled out of their African empires. 

Angola's three liberation movements had been fighting the Portuguese but they were at odds with each other and soon civil war broke out. 

The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Soviet Union, was largely coastal and urban. 

Of the other two, Jonas Savimbi's Unita was supported by apartheid South Africa and Western countries, and the FNLA, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola, was backed by Angola's northern neighbour Congo.

The Vietnam war was just drawing to an end but here, on the West Coast of Africa, a new war began which threatened to become a proxy war for the communist and capitalist superpowers. 

The Americans, whose long and bloody war in Vietnam had scarred the country's conscience, were not ready for another intervention. 

From a distance they backed the FNLA and then worked with the South Africans to support Unita. 

The Russians and Fidel Castro in Cuba supported the MPLA. But while the big players sought a power-sharing agreement, Castro decided to act. 

The Russians sent about 1,000 advisers, money and prayers but no combat troops. East Germany also sent military assistance. 

But for Castro this was not just an adventure or purely ideological. Many Cubans are of African origin and come from the Angolan coast. 

Castro saw an opportunity to exert his brand of international solidarity and make a difference on a global scale. 

He sent 3,000 combat troops and 300 military advisers, as well as tanks and fighter aircraft. 

The battleground was Cuito Cuanavale, a small town in the south on the river Lomba and the gateway to south-eastern Angola where South Africa was training, supplying and directing Unita forces.

The world had changed

The first attacks were in 1983 and a full-scale battle took place in 1986 - the biggest battle in Africa since El Alamein in Libya in 1942.

The largely white South African army took heavy casualties but held the town and stopped the Angolan offensive, preventing it from advancing south and capturing Savimbi's headquarters at Jamba.

There was a stalemate but it was not a situation that South Africa could maintain for long, even though it also controlled neighbouring Namibia at the time. 

Shortly afterwards Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union and began to make overtures to the US. 

I was in Washington at that time and managed to get a briefing on Angola at the Pentagon. I was shown a satellite photograph that showed Cuban and East German airforce bases in southern Angola, some south of Cuito Cuanavale. 

I asked if the South Africans had seen them yet. 

"They will find out soon enough," came the reply.

At that extraordinary moment I realised that the world had changed. 

The Americans had decided that since the Soviet Union was no longer the big threat in the region, the real enemy of peace in southern Africa was the racism of South Africa.

The man whose decision to go to war in Angola had triggered this moment was Fidel Castro.

At least 62 dead as Uganda moves against tribal king

The death toll from a weekend of fighting in western Uganda has risen to 62 after clashes between police and a militia loyal to a tribal king, according to regional police.

An initial 55 deaths had been reported on Sunday.

"So far we managed to kill 46 of the royal guards and we also arrested 139 [guards]," regional police spokesman Mansur Suwed told the Reuters news agency.

He said the number of police killed had risen to 16 from 14 after two officers died from their wounds.

Police arrested King Charles Wesley Mumbere on Sunday and accused his supporters of trying to create a new state in the area near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mumbere has distanced himself from the cause. However, the authorities accuse his royal guards of training in the mountains beside separatist militia forces to attack government installations.

"The situation is volatile. Several of our guards have been killed after 

Sports Direct faces probe over deal with Mike Ashley's brother's firm

Mike Ashley's Sports Direct faces a probe by the accounting watchdog over an arrangement between the company and a delivery firm owned by Mr Ashley's brother.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said it had begun investigations into the "preparation, approval and audit" of the sportswear giant's financial statements for the year to 24 April.

It said the probe followed "reports of an arrangement between Sports Direct and Barlin Delivery Limited which was not disclosed as a related party in the company's financial statements".

Sports Direct pays Barlin Delivery, run by the founder's elder brother John, a share of revenues from overseas orders.

It emerged in August that the firm's accounts did not disclose the relationship.

Mr Ashley, majority owner of Sports Direct, has come under intense pressure over the way he runs the firm from both shareholders and politicians.

It follows allegations that workers at its Shirebrook warehouse in Derbyshire faced Victorian conditions.

Mr Ashley, who also owns Newcastle United, has pledged to make changes and invited MPs to come and see the site.

But a visit by members of a Commons committee earlier this month was overshadowed by claims that a recording device was hidden in a tray of sandwiches in a room where they were meeting.

Sports Direct denied knowledge of any device.