Nine held in second Rochdale case

The budget airline Ryanair has launched a new routebetween Edinburgh and Szczecin in Poland. The flights willgo twice a week from the capital to the northern Polish city.The infrastructure minister Alex Neil said it showedScotland’s ambition to compete internationally.

One of themen onboard ahelicopter that ditched inthe North Sea has told of his“textbook” rescue. The SuperPumawas carrying 12passengers and two crewmembers when it camedown 25miles off the coastof Aberdeen on Thursday.All were recovered from

the sea and taken back toAberdeen. Offshore workerJames Foreman said theysurvived because of the skillof the pilots.

Flights from capital to Poland

Ideal rescueNinemen have been questioned by detectivesinvestigating a second suspected case of child groomingin Rochdale, GreaterManchester. Last week ninemenwere given prison sentences of between four and 19 yearsfor a string of sexual offences against underage girls.

Focus, page 16

Scots regiment names ‘to stay’

Miles Amooreand TimRipley

NEWS IN BRIEF

TWO British soldiers werereported killed inside an armybase in Helmand province yes-terday by gunmen wearingAfghan police uniforms.The deaths of the soldiers in

the Nahr-e-Saraj district of theprovince takes the death toll ofBritish servicemen andwomenin the country to 414 since 2001.Next of kin were beinginformed last night.Another Nato soldier, whose

nationality was not disclosed,was killed by an improvisedexplosive device in a separateincident. A fourth died of non-battle-related injuries.

It is understood the twogunmen opened fire at about3pm at a joint Afghan-coalition

base. An Afghan policemanreturned fire, killing one andwounding the other, whoescaped.Neither Nato nor the Min-

istry of Defence would confirmthenationalities of the dead sol-diers and there was confusionoverwhether the gunmenweregenuine police or insurgents indisguise. However, Afghan

sources said the soldiers wereBritish. Nato’s InternationalSecurity Assistance Force (Isaf)would confirm only that two ofitsmembers had been killed.In a statement, Isaf said:

“We are aware of the claimsthat the shooters were AUP(Afghan uniformed police).However, operational reportsindicate these were insurgentsdressed in AUP uniforms andnot actual AUP.”Fareed Ahmad, a spokesman

for Helmand provincial police,claimed the killers had beenworking in the police for a yearandwere fromNangarhar prov-ince in eastern Afghanistan.Before yesterday’s incident,

20 Nato troops had been killedby Afghan soldiers or police inat least 15 separate attacks thisyear.

THE July 7 widowwho issuspected of plotting toblow up western touristsin Kenya was betrayed bya fellow Briton, accordingto police.When Jermaine Grant,

29, was arrested inMombasa last December,just days before the allegedattack was due to belaunched, he told detectivestherewas amuchmore“important” figureinvolved.He is said to have

claimed that the keyco-ordinator was SamanthaLewthwaite, a whiteMuslim convert whosehusband, GermaineLindsay, was one of foursuicide bombers whokilled 52 people in Londonon July 7, 2005.

“There is someonemuchbigger you really want; sheis the financier,” Grant hadsaid, according to a Kenyananti-terrorism police source.Grant, of Newham, east

London, allegedly went onto disclose the location ofseveral houses linked toLewthwaite inMombasa,a resort on the IndianOcean popular withBritish holidaymakers.However, by the time

police visited the propertylast used by Lewthwaite,28, of Aylesbury,Buckinghamshire, she hadalready fled.Thewidow, who has

three young children, wastravelling on a fake SouthAfrican passport bearingthe identity of a nurse fromEssex, Natalie FayeWebb.“We believe shemay now

be in Somalia,” a seniorpolice official told TheSunday Times. The allegedplot was hatched byAl-Shabaab, an Al-Qaedaaffiliate in Somalia.Lewthwaite and another

Briton, Habib Saleh Ghani,have been charged in theirabsence with possession ofbomb-making chemicalsand conspiring tomake anexplosive device with theintent to harm others.Grant, who faces the

same charges—which hedenies— appeared in courtlast Thursday for the startof his trial.

Britongave upJuly 7widow

Afghanpolice killUK troops

Porn site opt-out for4m families in Britain

Flora BagenalMombasa

JEREMY HUNT, the culturesecretary, defied calls for hisresignation this weekend,insisting he had never soughtadvice from News Corporationabout the phone hackingscandal.Hunt’s links to News Corp

are again being scrutinisedafter an email emerged in evi-dence to the Leveson inquiry byRebekah Brooks, former editorof the News of the World. Theemail, sent by Frederic Michel,senior vice-president of govern-ment affairs inEurope forNewsCorp, to Brooks, said Hunt hadasked for advice to “guide hisand No 10’s positioning” onphone hacking.Michel told Brooks that

Hunt wanted to prevent apublic inquiry last year asthe phone hacking scandalunfolded. Michel has alreadysaid his contacts were mainly

with Hunt’s adviser, AdamSmith. The renewed pressureon the culture secretary cameas the Metropolitan policeconfirmed yesterday that itsinquiries into phone hackingand payments to public offi-cials could last until 2015.Hunt has denied wanting to

prevent a public inquiry. Aspokesman for the ministersaid: “He did not speak toFrederic Michel. He did not askfor advice on phone hacking,nor did he ask anyone to seekadvice on phone hacking.“There are over 50 references

in emails where FredericMichel has said he spoke to [theminister]. He did not speak tothe minister [in those cases].Adam Smith has accepted hewent too far and he resigned.“The minister is looking for-

ward to putting his side of thestory at the Leveson inquiry.”Ed Miliband, the Labour

leader, said it “beggared belief”

that Hunt was still in his job:“Jeremy Hunt was standing upfor RupertMurdoch, not for thepublic interest.”The email fromMichel dated

June 27, 2011 correctly saidHunt would play down theimpact of the phone hackingscandal on News Corp’s take-over bid of BSkyB, the satellitebroadcaster.Michel wrote: “JH is now

starting to look into phonehacking/practices more thor-oughly and has asked me toadvise him privately in thecoming weeks and guide hisand No 10’s positioning.”The new document was

disclosed after a 163-pagedossier of emails betweenMichel and Hunt’s office wasreleased by the Leveson inquirylastmonth.Labour said the emails

showed that News Corp, parentcompany of News Interna-tional, which owns The Sunday

Times, has a “back channel” ofinfluence to the minister’soffice.David Cameron has rejected

calls for an inquiry into Hunt’sconduct by Sir Alex Allan, theprime minister’s independentadviser on ministerial inter-ests. Lord Justice Leveson hassaid it is not in his remit toconsider whether Hunt broketheministerial code.Conservatives yesterday

defended Hunt. Lord Fowler,the Conservative peer, said itwas right that the Levesoninquiry should hear Hunt’sevidence before any decisionwasmade onhis future: “We’vegot to listen to his defence.”The Metropolitan police said

yesterday that OperationWeeting into phone hackingand related inquiries had cost£8.91m in 2011-12. The inquirieswere planned to run until 2015and were budgeted to costabout £40m.

as far as defence goes, at leastnot in terms of the Scottishregiments.“There are effectively no

Scottish regiments left now.People say, ‘The army is notsafe with the SNP.’ Well, it’scertainly not safe with theConservatives, Labour andthe Liberal Democrats. I’mnot comingat this as anation-alist, but I’ll dance with thedevil if it means saving theScottish regiments.”In an interview with The

Sunday Times, Hammond

tried to reassure campaignersthat his proposals would notdemean the country’s tradi-tions. He said: “I knowpeoplefeel very strongly about theseissues and I understand why.I think the key thing isprotecting the regimentalstructure.“In some cases cap badges

of old traditional regimentsthat have long since gonehave been attached to bat-talion names, and I under-stand that there will be con-cerns about protecting thosecapbadgenames ifwehave to

take out battalions. We willlook to do everything we canto protect them.”Hammond will announce

this week that he has elimi-nated a £38 billion hole in thedefencebudget,making itpos-sible to place equipmentorders again with confidenceand claim that for the firsttime in modern history hisdepartment will have anunderspend and substantialcontingency fund.

Battle stations, focus, page 15That’s theMoD sorted — now

tomake mischief, page 12

Nicholas HellenSocial Affairs Editor

HELMANDPROVINCE

50 milesAFGHANISTAN

Nahr-e-Sarajdistrict

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W W Continued frompage 1

JonUngoed-Thomas

Hunt defies newpressure to resign

ONE of Britain’s biggestinternet providers has brokenranks by offering all its 4m sub-scribers a blanket opt-out forpornography sites.TalkTalk is offering parents

protection for every computer,games console or ereaderaccessing the internet via thefamily broadband connection.Its decisionwill put pressure

on other internet providers toreconsider their opposition tooffering parents a simplechoice on whether to havean internet filter protecting thehome. Downing Street hasordered a consultation, backedup by the threat of legislation.TalkTalk’s filter, HomeSafe,

blocks sites categorised asunsuitable for under-18s,includingpornography, suicideand self-harm, gambling,dating, drugs andweapons.Dido Harding, the chief

executive of TalkTalk, whichhas spent £20m on the safe-guard system, said: “Our com-petitors are being dreadfullyslow to wake up to the fact thatsociety as a whole caresstrongly about this.”Claire Perry, the Tory MP for

Devizes, who led an inde-pendent parliamentary inquiryinto online child protection,has warned that the failure toclean up the internet at sourcemeans that young childrenmaking innocent searches arebeing confronted with explicitpornography.

An analysis by The SundayTimes of traffic generated byfive of the most popular adultsites shows they account for740m page views a month inBritain, twice the number gen-erated by Wikipedia. Visitorsspend twice as long on the sexsites. Under-17s account forapproximately 2% of the traffic,according to the analysisusing Google’s DoubleClick AdPlanner.This weekend, Perry

described it as a “massive stepforward” and said it would putpressure on the others to makeone-click filtering the defaultsetting. She said: “They arec om in g k i c k i n g andscreaming.”

TalkTalk shames its rivalsover porn, Editorial, page 20

2 NEWS