-Caveat Lector-
>From Irish Times
Thursday, May 20, 1999
Straw ends legal 'manipulation'
by limiting jury trial
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From Rachel Donnelly, in London
Up to 22,000 people a year in England and Wales are to lose the right to a jury trial,
the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, announced yesterday. The intention is to
end "manipulation" of the legal system and save th
e taxpayer millions in court costs.
However, the Bar Council has criticised the proposal to limit the right to choose a
jury trial in a crown court, rather than opt for a non-jury hearing in the lower
magistrates' court.
Mr Courtenay Griffiths QC, of the Society of Black Lawyers, said he was disappointed
with the proposal a few months after the publication of the report into the death of
Stephen Lawrence. Black defendants, he said, did no
t have faith in the courts and often felt the magistrates' court was a "police court."
Mr Griffiths said black defendants stood a better chance of getting a fair hearing
from a randomly selected jury panel than from a mag
istrate. In opposition, Mr Straw had described the proposal as "wrong, short-sighted
and likely to prove ineffective". Now, however, he endorses it. Addressing the Police
Federation in Blackpool, the Home Secretary said i
t was a source of "irritation" that under the present system defendants charged with
medium-ranking crimes - burglary or assault - can opt for a jury trial "for no good
reason other than to delay proceedings".
After the conference, Mr Straw said no other country in Europe allowed defendants to
choose where to be tried. He said in Scotland it was left to the prosecutor to decide
where the trial took place "and there were no comp
laints about that system".
In the Commons MPs criticised Mr Straw's decision to announce the proposal at a police
conference rather than to the House. The shadow home secretary, Sir Norman Fowler,
said a statement from Mr Straw was particularly imp
ortant since he had performed a U-turn on his previous jury policy.
It was left to Mr Straw's junior Home Office Minister, Mr Mike
O'Brien, to answer the critics. He told MPs Mr Straw was "very
scrupulous" about protocol and had arranged for the announcement to
be made in a written reply published yesterday.
The right to choose a jury trial in "either-way" cases dates back to
an 1855 Act of Parliament, which allowed certain crimes tried
normally in higher courts to be tried by a magistrate if the
defendant consented. Indictable crimes such as murder and rape can be
tried only in crown courts, while a magistrate hears lesser offences.
>From TheTimes (UK)
May 20 1999 BRITAIN<Picture: Line>
Caterpillars are being poisoned by GM pollen, report Nigel Hawkes and
Nick Nuttall
Modified maize 'killing butterflies'
GENE-ALTERED crops designed to kill pests may also kill butterflies,
American research has shown.
In laboratory experiments at Cornell University, monarch butterflies
were damaged by pollen from a crop already widely planted in the
United States, a GM maize that produces its own insecticide.
The plant is designed to produce a toxin that kills the corn borer
pest. The experiments, led by John Losey, an entomologist, found that
when monarch caterpillars ate it they grew more slowly and more died.
"Monarchs are considered to be a flagship species for conservation,"
Linda Rayor, one of the research team, said. "This is a warning
bell." John Beringer, of Bristol University, who was chairman of the
committee responsible for monitoring the planting of GM crops in
Britain, said: "This is a very interesting finding. It suggests that
it would be remiss now to approve large-scale use of these crops in
the US, if they have a significant effect on these insects."
The maize variety used in the experiments is modified by inserting a
gene from a bacterium that produces a toxin lethal to the corn borer.
As the plant grows, it produces the toxin and protects itself against
attack. The Cornell team tested the modified maize (called corn in
the United States) because the pollen spreads widely and may fall on
neighbouring plants which are eaten by insects that do not attack
maize. Monarch caterpillars feed exclusively on the leaves of common
milkweed, which grows around the edges of cornfields in America.
The team dusted pollen from the modified maize on to milkweed leaves
and allowed the caterpillar larvae to feed on them. After four days,
44 per cent of the caterpillars had died, they report in Nature. When
leaves free of pollen, or dusted with unmodified pollen, were used
none of the caterpillars died.
They apparently disliked the taste of the toxin and ate less. After
four days, those that survived weighed less than half that of
caterpillars on leaves with no maize pollen.
The results, say the team, have "potentially profound implications
for the survival of monarch butterflies". Half the American monarch
population is in the "corn belt" of the Middle West. The maize plants
shed their pollen between late June and mid-August, just at the time
when the caterpillars are feeding. The toxin goes into the
caterpillar's gut. Where it binds, the gut wall becomes a sieve which
allows pathogens normally kept in the gut before being excreted to
leak into the body. The caterpillar quickly sickens.
No such modified crops have yet been planted in Britain. Martin
Warren, head of conservation at the Butterfly Conservation charity in
Britain, said that butterflies were key environmental indicators,
sensitive to the use of chemicals, poisons and intensive agriculture.
Species that might suffer like the monarchs would include orange tip,
gatekeeper, small tortoiseshell and peacock.
Roger Key, an entomologist with English Nature, said yesterday that
other British species in habitats similar to the American monarch
included ringlet, common blue, green hairstreak, brown hairstreak,
meadow brown, green veined white and possibly small heath
butterflies.
He said that butterflies needed a rich and diverse countryside to
thrive, with caterpillars often depending on a single plant species.
Novartis, which sells the maize used in the study, said that it
focused solely on laboratory feeding experiments and did not
necessarily relate to effects seen in the field.
TheTimes
May 20 1999 BRITAIN<Picture: Line>
No 10 sets up secret team to back GM foods
BY NICK NUTTALL AND VALERIE ELLIOTT
A SECRET unit has been established by Downing Street to win over the
British public to gene altered crops and foods, a leaked Cabinet
Office letter reveals.
There are even damaging suggestions that ministers have "leant" on
the Government's most senior scientific and medical advisers to give
the impression that GM crop and food production has a clean bill of
health.
The strategy has the clear backing of Number 10 and involves key
figures in Downing Street. The team, known as the Biotechnology
Presentation Group, is trying to promote GM foods to the nation while
countering scaremongering in some sections of the media and campaign
groups.
A leaked memorandum from the Cabinet secretariat, the notoriously
secret wing of the Government, reveals the level of concern over the
way the public is reacting to GM food debate.
Among a battery of media management tactics are plans to enlist
sympathetic "independents" such as members of the biotechnology
industry and university scientists to argue in favour of GM crops and
foods through the columns of newspapers and on the airwaves. A
centralised "rebuttals" unit has also been endorsed to counter
negative claims about GM food technology.
The Biotechnology Presentation Group has also decided to try to woo
the government-funded National Consumers' Council over to its pro-GM
stance. Last night environmentalists accused the government of
"trying to nobble" the consumer group for its own political ends.
There are three ministers on the group: Tessa Jowell, the Health
Minister, Michael Meacher, Environment Minister, and John Battle, the
Trade and Industry Minister.
Also involved in the secret group are David North, a private
secretary to Mr Blair; Alun Evans, head of the No 10 strategic
communications unit; Peter Wilkinson, a press officer and Liz Lloyd
from the No 10 Policy Unit.
A leaked letter from Paul Britton of the Cabinet Office to the group,
proposes a "handling strategy" for Jack Cunningham's key announcement
on the Government's strategy on GM foods. It suggests rewriting the
chief medical officer and chief scientific adviser's report into the
issue.
A<>E<>R
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