Rushanara Ali MPs statement on escalating violence in Bangladesh
Rushanara Ali MPs statement on escalating violence in Bangladesh
Bethnal Green and Bow MP Rushanara Ali said:
“The current situation in Bangladesh has raised serious concerns among the British Bangladeshi community and in the wider international community. I am shocked and saddened that this upheaval has already cost many people’s lives in recent weeks in clashes, riots, rallies and protests. There are also real concerns about human rights violations and reports of police brutality. The number of dead and injured across Bangladesh is increasing at an alarming rate and the uncertainty of the current situation continues to put people’s lives and livelihoods at risk.
"I have already made representation to the UK Foreign Secretary Rt. Hon William Hague MP requesting the British Government take urgent action and apply its influence on the Government and opposition leaders of Bangladesh to bring an end to the violence which risks destabilising the country. I appeal for calm from the British Bangladeshi community who are rightly very concerned about developments in Bangladesh. We need to foc
Mali campaign: French jets hit rebel bases near Kida
BBC:
French warplanes have bombed rebel bases and depots inremote parts of northern Mali to try to cut off supply routes, France's foreign minister says.
Laurent Fabius told France Inter radio that the rebels would not be able to stay long without fresh supplies.
Thirty jets struck on Sunday around Tessalit amid fears the rebels could re-group in the mountainous region.
In Paris, US Vice-President Joe Biden backed plans for an African-led force and eventual UN operation in Mali.
Speaking alongside French President Francois Hollande, who visited Mali at the weekend, Mr Biden said they had agreed that African troops should take over from French forces "as quickly as reasonably possible", before the UN assumes overall command.
Efforts must then be made "as quickly as is prudent [to] transition that mission to the United Nations," Mr Biden said.
Mr Hollande said the French-led mission would continue, with the aim of restoring Mali's "territorial integrity" before peacekeeping operations began.
Kidal talks
Speaking before his president's appearance at the Elysee Palance, Mr Fabius said that Sunday's air strikes had been aimed at "destroying the bases and fuel depots" of the rebels.
"If you look at the map, they have taken refuge in the north and in the north-east," Mr Fabius said.
"But they can stay there for long only if they have ways to get supplies. So, in a very efficient manner, the army is stopping that."
Mr Fabius would not say whether the air strikes were aimed at preparing for a new ground assault, but said transition to African forces - and withdrawal from Timbuktu - "could happen very fast".
The French launched their intervention in Mali on 11 January as Islamist militants moved south and threatened the capital, Bamako.
Since then, the militants have been driven from population centres in the north and east.
Kidal remains the only major town not in the control of French and Malian forces.
French troops are at the airport in Kidal, but rebels from a Tuareg group who want their own homeland in northern Mali - the MNLA - still control the town itself.
Malian Interim President Dioncounda Traore has offered to hold talks with the MNLA in order to help secure Kidal.
Tessalit is about 200km (125 miles) north of Kidal and is a gateway to the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, where rebels are believed to have sought refuge after being forced from the main population centres.
It is thought the mountainous areas could provide perfect hiding places for the militants.
It is believed that several French civilian hostages are being held by militants in the area, making the situation even more delicate.
On Saturday Mr Hollande said it would be wrong to assume the military operation was over, while Mr Traore said it would be difficult to completely rid the country of Islamists.
French withdrawal
Meanwhile, aid agency Oxfam has warned that food and fuel supplies to some parts of northern Mali are starting to dry up as many predominantly Arab and Tuareg traders have fled fearing reprisal attacks.
Oxfam said prices in Gao had risen by more than 20% since the French military intervention.
Philippe Conraud, Oxfam country director in Mali, said if the traders did not return soon, it could become "very difficult for people to get enough food to feed their families".
Reports have also emerged that a senior figure in the main militant Islamist movement - Ansar Dine - has been captured near the Algerian border by a rival separatist group.
Malian security sources quoted by AFP news agency named the man as Mohamed Moussa Ag Mouhamed, third in command of the group. The report cannot be verified.
Mr Hollande received a warm welcome on Saturday as he visited the northern desert city of Timbuktu, recaptured by French and Malian troops a week ago.
A total of 3,500 French troops are currently in Mali.
Nearly 2,000 army personnel from Chad and Niger are helping consolidate the recent gains. A further 6,000 troops will be deployed as part of the UN-backed African-led International Support Mission to Mali (Afisma).
Horsemeat scandal leaves Burger King facing a whopping backlash
News: The Guardian
Mark King
01/02/2013
Thousands of consumers complain on Facebook and Twitter after fast food giant admits some burgers were contaminated
A whopper burger sits in the kitchen of a Burger King restaurant in Basildon. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Fast food retailer Burger King is facing an angry backlash from customers after admitting some of its burgers were contaminated in the horsemeat scandal that has seen Britain's major supermarkets withdrawing meat from their shelves.
Thousands of consumers took to social media sites on 1 February to express their outrage at the news, with one Facebook user calling it "despicable". The company was forced to take out a series of national newspaper advertisements in response, in which it apologised to customers.
Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, led the charge, tweeting: "Now Burger King drawn into contaminated burger scandal. Can you ever eat one again?"
@zmama891 added: "Burger King.....that is not good!!!!!!! Don't think I will be having a Whopper for a very long time.....here's to homemade burgers". This was echoed by @Cresean who wrote: "Never have to worry about me eating there EVER again!". @holssdavies wrote: "Horse meat in Burger King burgers. Can never eat a whopper again."
On Burger King's Facebook page, one angry user wrote: "How does everyone feel about those burgers and the fact that you are also feeding them to your children." Another commented: "I will NEVER eat in any of your "restaurants" again. FOR SHAME." One user even called for the firm to close all its UK branches immediately.
The fast food company, whose products were not tested in the food standards checks by Irish authorities that sparked the furore, has moved production from the Silvercrest plant in Ireland to Germany and Italy as a precaution. On 31 January it said test results at the plant revealed "very small trace levels" of horse DNA in its products, but burgers taken fromrestaurants had tested negative.
As governments in Ireland, the UK and Poland, where a supplier used by Silvercrest for a year is thought be the source of the contamination, continued their investigations, Burger King admitted that, contrary to previous assurances made to it by Silvercrest, it too had now been linked to the scandal. Authorities insist there is no health danger to consumers.
The horse meat scandal will worry Burger King management, as a sustained period of customer revolt can damage revenue and profits – there are already signs on Facebook that US consumers are questioning domestic outlets following the UK scandal.
Retail industry experts said Burger King needed to act quickly if it was to restore its reputation. Mark Lowe, founder of branding and communications consultancy Third City, said: "Burger King were far too hasty with their initial denials, but they've gone some way to rectifying this with full disclosure and quick action on Silvercrest.
"In crisis communications what you do is always more important than what you say, and Burger King would do well to follow this up by making a gesture to customers."
When Tesco's frozen burgers were implicated in the scandal the supermarket took out a series of newspaper adverts apologising repeatedly for failures in its supply lines.
Burger King has done the same, placing advertisements in the Sun, Express, Mirror, Star and Times newspapers in an attempt to keep customers updated on what had happened and what it was doing in the future.
Those advertisements stated: "You wanted answers. So did we." They also carried a quote from Diego Beamonte, vice-president for global quality at Burger King, saying the company was "deeply troubled by the findings of our investigation and apologise to our guests, who trust us to source only the highest quality 100% beef burgers. Our supplier has failed us and in turn we have failed you".
A spokeswoman for the firm could not say if the company is troubled by the consumer backlash or whether it planned further series of advertisements to keep customers updated on developments
Tesco drops Irish supplier over horsemeat scandal
Tesco drops Silvercrest for 'breach of trust' after it supplied meat with up to 29% equine DNA that had come from Polandin
Silvercrest, in County Monaghan, Ireland, which normally makes 200m burgers a year for different clients. Photograph: Philip Fitzpatrick/PA
Tesco has sacked one of its main suppliers over the horsemeat in burgers scandal, the company has said.
Britain's largest supermarket chain said on Wednesday that one of the biggest burger plants in Europe had failed to source, as demanded, all ingredients from the UK and Ireland and had been dropped for "breach of trust". The meat used in Tesco burgers found to contain up to 29% horse DNA had instead come from Poland.
However, ABP Food Group, owners of the Silvercrest plant in Ireland, revealed that Tesco would continue sourcing fresh beef from other ABP companies.
Tesco said the findings from its investigations concurred with those of the Irish government, and that it would now start its own system of comprehensive DNA testing.
Beefburgers on sale in Spain were the latest to come under scrutiny on Wednesday, when tests commissioned by a Spanish consumer organisation found two out of 20 samples were contaminated with horse DNA. Tesco, Iceland, Lidl and Aldi were among supermarkets identified a fortnight ago as having products with equine DNA in them by Irish food safety authorities, although not all the products implicated had been on sale in Britain.
Other supermarkets took their burgers off the shelves as a precaution. Tesco's supplier, Silvercrest in County Monaghan, which normally makes 200m burgers a year for different clients, was one of three food processors identified. The Silvercrest plant has been shut down for deep cleaning, the management has been changed and the Irish government is going to supervise the processor's operations indefinitely.
Investigations at the only UK plant owned by ABP – Dalepak Hambleton in North Yorkshire – are continuing, although it is still in operation.
Tim Smith, Tesco's technical director, said: "We now understand – with as much certainty as possible – what happened. The evidence tells us that our frozen burger supplier, Silvercrest, used meat in our products that did not come from the list of approved suppliers we gave them.
"Nor was the meat from the UK or Ireland, despite our instruction that only beef from the UK and Ireland should be used in our frozen beefburgers. Consequently we have decided not to take products from that supplier in future."
Smith said Tesco was ultimately responsible for the food it sold. "We will not take anything for granted after this incident. It has shown that, in spite of our stringent tests, checks and controls there remained a small possibility that something could go wrong and it did. We want to stop it ever happening again, so we are taking action to reduce that possibility still further.
"To underpin the strong measures already in place, we will now introduce a comprehensive system of DNA testing across our meat products. This will identify any deviation from our high standards."
ABP said it had let customers down and apologised. Paul Finnerty, the group's chief executive, said: "We have learnt important lessons from this incident and we are determined to ensure that this never happens again.
"We have put in place new procedures to audit all our third-party suppliers. We have also established comprehensive DNA testing procedures – we will become an industry leader in this area," said Finnerty, adding the company would not allow the Silvercrest incident "to overshadow what is a great business".
Poland has been named as the source country for the contamination just as the Warsaw government seeks to improve its own population's confidence and loyalty in homegrown beef. A section in the latest edition of the government newsletter Polish Food is devoted to this drive, which comes as beef production there is expected to fall substantially.
In 2012 British imports of fresh and frozen beef from Poland totalled 6,200 tonnes, 3.5 times the amount imported in 2010, although this still represented less than 3% of all imports. Ireland imported just 849 tonnes last year, less than 4% of all imports.
Eblex, the organisation responsible for marketing the English beef and sheep industries, says Poland lacks a specialist beef industry. Instead, young bulls are almost entirely produced from dairy calves.
In a private member's debate in Westminster Hall on Wednesday, the Labour MP for Croydon North, Steve Reed, questioned whether the UK's Food Standards Agency was still fit for purpose.
He said that the government had carved up its responsibilities between the environment and health departments and cut its budget, which, along with "swingeing" cuts to local authority budgets for trading standards, had left food safety and labelling controls fragmented.
Defra minister David Heath said that although the amount of food sampling carried out by local authorities had fallen, tests were more sophisticated. He admitted the number of food safety officers had fallen by 6% between 2010 and 2012.
The minister told MPs that the agency was looking in detail now at how horsemeat from the UK contaminated with the drug phenylbutazone, which is banned in the human food chain, came to be exported to and consumed in other European countries.
Asked if he could reassure the public that contaminated horsemeat had not re-entered the UK food chain from Europe, he said that the department would re-examine how horse passports operated.
The government has been criticised for abolishing the National Equine Database, but Heath said that was a "red herring", since it had never provided information on whether horses were fit for the human food chain.
