Killer found after hospital escape
A CONVICTED killer dubbed the Black Dog Strangler who escaped from a secure hospital has been found, police said.
Phillip Westwater, 44, fled St Nicholas Hospital in Gosforth, Newcastle, at 10am yesterday after asking to go to the toilet.
He was found last night when a member of the public recognised him from a photograph circulated through the media.
Optimism up among business leaders
THERE is a growing sense of economic optimism for the year ahead compared to 12 months ago, a poll of business directors has suggested.
Business leaders are starting 2013 with a better outlook on the coming year than at the beginning of 2012, a survey of 1,369 members of the Institute of Directors (IoD) found.
According to the findings, the proportion who expect 2013 to improve on the previous year exceeds those with a pessimistic outlook by a margin of plus 31%, a direct reversal from the start of 2012, when the balance of opinion was minus 31%.
President reignites Falklands row
ARGENTINE president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has reignited the row over the future of the Falkland Islands in an open letter to David Cameron calling on him to relinquish British control.
The letter, published as an advert in the Guardian and reported in other newspapers, says that Argentina was forcibly stripped of the Malvinas – the Argentinian name for the islands – in “a blatant exercise of 19th-century colonialism”.
The 59-year-old president, who made several calls for the return of the islands during last year’s 30th anniversary of the two countries going to war, urged the Prime Minister to abide by United Nations resolutions she says back the Argentinian cause.
Working-class boys university call
UNIVERSITIES should recruit more white, working-class boys in the same way they target students from other disadvantaged groups, it will be suggested.
Universities Minister David Willetts says white, working-class teenage boys should be categorised alongside ethnic minorities and those from disadvantaged communities when universities look to attract students.
His suggestion comes against a backdrop of a drastic fall in the number of university applications from men.
Nationality demand for housing
SOCIAL housing applicants must be forced to reveal their nationality to keep a closer watch on the number of council lets taken up by foreign nationals, immigration campaigners said.
Fewer than half of applications for council properties in London include the nationality of the tenant, Migration Watch UK has estimated, but this information is only disclosed voluntarily.
The independent think-tank has called for the nationality question to be made compulsory to improve transparency over who is receiving social housing.
