26/02/2013 BBC News at One

A hot-air balloon crashes in Egypt killing up to 19 tourists, among

them Britons. It came down near Luxor after an explosion 1,000 feet

up in the air. Eyewitnesses say people were jumping from the

balloon. An American photographer who took these photographs before

the crash described what he heard. We heard a bang, I saw smoke. Our

pilot told us to look forward to prepare for landing.

The Italian comedian whose protest party has won a quarter of the

votes in the general election, but his success brings stalemate for

Italy. Nick Clegg police should be able to

investigate inappropriate behaviour by Lord Rennard.

An inquest hears how Tom Maynard was electrocuted and then killed by

a train after fleeing police last year.

I'm at the world's biggest mobile phone show where they are showing

off sorts of new ideas. I can start this scooter by tapping the phone

on it. We will be looking at where mobile technology is taking us.

Jail for the man who supplied the gun to Mark Duggan - whose fatal

shooting by police sparked the Good afternoon. Welcome to the BBC

News at One. Two Britons are among a group of tourists who have died

in a hot-air balloon crash in Egypt. Up to 19 people are thought to have

been killed after the balloon exploded in mid-air this morning

near Luxor. Thomas Cook has confirmed that two of their clients

have died and two more have been injured.

In a field west of Luxor, the blackened wreckage of a tourist

adventure that went horribly wrong. Ambulances arrived minutes after

the balloon plummeted to the ground from 1,000 feet up. Eyewitnesses

said there had been a fire and an explosion. The photographer in the

balloon nearby described what happened. We were approaching the

end of our balloon flight, heading into Luxor. It was more of what we

heard. A loud explosion and then a lot of smoke right behind us. Our

first feeling was it couldn't be a balloon, but it turned out to be

this accident. These are his photographs of the balloon setting

off this morning, though which one was involved is not clear. Thomas

Cook UK said two of its guests are among the dead and two others were

Dawn balloon rides over some of Egypt's most famous sites have long

been popular with tourists. New controls were brought in four years

ago after a string of accidents. But recent passengers in Egypt have

also expressed concerns about the level of safety. There were six in

our little compartment and there weren't enough hand-holds. When it

does hit the ground like ours crashed the people standing in

there headbutt you so we had broken cheekbones, black eyes, broken

noses. One balloon safety expert says such flights are generally

safe but he admits there are problems in Egypt. From my

experience there and elsewhere overseas, I could see that there

were cracks in the system which might have contributed to this kind

of occurrence and so whilst I hope that this was just a one-off

accident, there are certainly doubts that one might raise about

the overall oversight of the system out there for balloon flights.

Investigations at the crash site are continuing and all hot-air

balloon flights over Luxor have now been suspended.

Stock markets have tumbled across Europe after Italy's general

election ended in stalemate and instability. A quarter of the vote

was won by a comedian's protest party resulting in no overall

winner. They tell the story of a political

crisis, an election that failed to find a winner. Italians woke up to

the news that neither of their biggest political parties can

control Parliament. Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the centre-left,

was expected to win, but he was torpedoed by a very familiar figure.

Silvio Berlusconi on the campaign trail. He promised big tax cuts and

many people liked the sound of that. Mr Berlusconi did enough to stop

his rivals winning, but now there's stalemate and there's frustration

at the confusion of it all. TRANSLATION: They have given us

another ungovernable country so we can't be happy about this result.

TRANSLATION: We don't know, they will decide. Our future is in the

hands of the four or five who do whatever they want.

This is where Italy's Prime Minister lives, but nobody is going

to be moving in any time soon. This country has been plunged into what

will very like I'll be a period of protracted political instability.

But one man was delighted with what happened last night, the comedian

turned politician Beppe Grillo. He led a new movement of citizen

activists who have utter contempt for the old traditional parties.

The activists came third, a stunning result that has shaken

Italian politics to its core. Our chief Economics Correspondent

is here. Let's take a look at the impact that this has had on the

stock markets. Yes, it is the old cliche, markets hate uncertainty.

They have got it with Italy today. Italy's government borrowing costs

have gone up to their highest since last October. Let's look at the

stock market further afield. The MIB index down more than 4% this

morning. The IBEX2.5%. The CAC is down 2%. The FTSE 100 is down 1.3%.

The old ghosts of eurozone crisis back again. It is obvious what

impact it will have on Italy - a lot of uncertainty. What about the

rest of the EU? What impact will have it there and here? It's

reawakened memories of the Greek crisis in the summer of last year,

an anti-establishment party gaining ground. The markets are worried

about Italian government debt and whether a new government can deal

with that. The danger is a spiralling loss of confidence

affecting banks. How could it affect the UK? We had two city

policymakers giving evidence today. Both said everything was looking

all right for growth in the UK! The problem is this looks like it could

go on for quite some time, as we were hearing in that report? Yes,

anything that smacks of continued uncertain ty and not coming up with

a government who can deal with further reforms and further

austerity increases a lack of confidence around Europe and all

last year's problems. After a period of comparative peace coming

back to haunt markets. Thank you very much. Let's go to Rome now and

our correspondent Chris Morris is there for us now.

Italians left with a political vacuum? Yes, absolutely. It is the

one thing that outsiders didn't want, it is the one thing that most

politicians didn't want. They have been delivered a bloodied nose by

the voters. The idea of a party which isn't really a political

party at all, a movement which didn't exist four years ago, taking

one in four votes in a major European country. It is quite an

extraordinary achievement. It shows the level of dissatisfaction here

with the traditional political classes. The problem is that does

mean that there will be this period of uncertainty at a time when

everybody desperately wants Europe, the third largest economy in the

eurozone, to get back to work. Italy's been struggling for a

decade now with low growth, unemployment is rising. The

prescription from Brussels and to some extent from Germany has been

austerity, fiscal consolidation. A clear majority of voters last night

voted against that, voting for Beppe Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi,

it was a vote against the policies that many people see being imposed

on them from outside. Senior Liberal Democrats are due to

meet police officers over allegations of sexual harassment

against Lord Rennard. The police say they are working with the Party

to find out whether any criminal activity has taken place. Lord

Rennard strongly denies the allegations of inappropriate

behaviour towards women. The Liberal Democrats are facing a

mounting crisis, claims of a sex scandal at the top of the Party and

a leader who has changed his story about what he knew and when he knew

it. The questions won't two away for Nick Clegg. I understand there

are many people who appear to want to act as self-appointed detectives

trying to piece together events that happened many years ago. The

only way we will establish exactly what happened and who knew what and

when is by allowing the two investigations that I established

immediately after the Channel 4 broadcast to do their job. Five

women have made claims that Chris Rennard abused his position. He

stren usely denied those allegation -- strenuously denied those

allegations. Two inquiries have been set up to dig deeper. This is

one of the women who must be properly listened to. For a start,

it is going beyond the pat on the knee, who gets to decide what is

unacceptable advance and what is not an unacceptable advance? The

power dynamics are quite scary. business of being in coalition goes

on. Some senior Lib Dems can't escape the fact they have given

different versions of who knew what. REPORTER: Did you feel annoyed you

were putting out the line that he didn't know about the allegations

and then it changed? I'm not going to add to what I said yesterday. I

was perfectly comfortable with that. All this is unfolding as the

Liberal Democrats fight an intense battle to try to hold on to that

crucial seat of Eastleigh in a by- election this Thursday. But it

could put the spotlight on how politics and relationships work in

this place. The police have now been called in. Lib Dem officials

are meeting with officers later. They will look at Lord Rennard's

time in charge when this was the Party HQ. He was known as a by-

election guru. It is that by- election in Eastleigh that will be

the immediate concern. Nick Clegg and others will want to limit any

damage to the Lib Dem campaign over the next two days.

Let's get more on that from Norman Smith, who is in Eastleigh, where

there is that by-election. How is all this playing out for the

Liberal Democrats in Eastleigh? Well, my sense is that the Liberal

Democrats here feel they have been given "a hospital pass" in the form

of the Chris Rennard claims. The allegations are proving deeply

distracting and destabilising for a campaign they want to be fought on

local issues. Distracting because every time a Lib Dem MP comes down

here all he is questioned now about are the Chris Rennard claims.

Destabilising because there are so many allegations swirling around,

ricocheting around, that they simply do not know what sort of

headlines they are going to wake up to. Here is a paradox: While the

Party nationally is being mauled in the polls, with one suggestinging

they are down to 8%, locally a poll today suggests the Lib Dems are

still ahead by some 4%, so it could be that the Lib Dems here manage to

throw a dummy, hoof the ball into touch and save Nick Clegg's bacon.

Thank you. Here is a full list of all the

candidates contesting the Eastleigh by-election. It is also on the BBC

News website - bbc.co.uk/news. The Vatican has answered some of

the questions surrounding the future of the outgoing Pope.

Following his retirement tomorrow, Pope Benedict will be known as

"Emeritus Pope" and will continue to wear a white cassock. However,

his ring of office will be destroyed according to Vatican

tradition. His successor will be chosen by a conclave of more than

one hundred Cardinals in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.

A court has heard that a friend of Vicky Pryce is being investigated

for allegedly lying about her involvement in leaking the story

about Chris Huhne's speeding points to the press. Vicky Pryce denies

perverting the course of justice. Kevin Hutchinson-Foster, the man

convicted of supplying a gun to Mark Duggan minutes before his

fatal shooting by police, has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. If

killing of Mr Duggan sparked riots which spread across London and

other areas of London in August 2011.

An inquest has heard how a county cricketer who had been tipped as a

future England star died after he was electrocuted on a railway line

before being hit by a train. Tom Maynard, who was 23, had been

trying to run away from police in the early hours of the morning last

The inquest began with growing -- glowing tributes from Maynard's

father and from sorry. We heard from a pathologist about

circumstances surrounding the death. A pathologist was unable to confirm

whether Maynard was killed before the tube train hit him or not. He

stepped on a live rail at London Underground. There was a lot

surrounding the toxicology reports. They showed that Maynard was not

only well over the legal alcohol limit but also that he had taken

cocaine within hours, perhaps, of his death. From a sample of his

hair it showed that he was a regular and habitual cocaine user

for perhaps a number of months. have heard from friends and team-

mates? A bowler who was playing for England a fortnight ago in New

Zealand, Rory Hamilton Brown, the captain at Surrey during Maynard's

career, also his girlfriend, Carly Baker. Both Hamilton Brown and the

other cricketer were asked about drug use, they said they were not

aware that he had been taking drugs. But questions are being asked and

statements being released by the Professional Cricketers'

Association defending both their drug education programme and their

drug-testing regime. A thank you. A our top story this lunchtime: A

hot-air balloon has crashed in Egypt, killing up to 19 tourists,

including two Britains. It came down near Luxor after an explosion

1000 ft in the air. The unwitting many mules, where

thousands are being duped into laundering money for fraudsters.

On BBC London: Tesco axes 800 jobs in Harlow but creates thousands

more in Reading and Dagenham. And the 100th anniversary of the

birth of a London photographer Norman Parkinson is celebrated in

pictures. -- of the London photographer.

Fraud experts have Lord -- warned that thousands have been duped into

laundering money for fraudsters, allowing their own bank account to

be used to disguise the proceeds of crime in exchange for a cut of the

cash. Simon Gompertz reports. They target you after you posed a

CV online or through mass e-mails, offering innocent sounding admin

jobs as long as you have a bank account, for reduce the pay packet.

In fact, it is fraudsters wanting to use your account to launder the

proceeds of their crimes. They call you a money mule. This woman was

out of work for a year and was tempted. She even signed a contract

but, luckily, pulled out. It makes you feel sick. I had been out of

work for a long time. I wasted time filling in details thinking I might

get a job at the end of it. But it was just wasting my time. Dirty

money from credit card and other frauds is paid into the mule's

account to disguise criminal origins. The mule takes a cut and

then transfers the cash to an overseas bank, classic money

laundering. Do you know what's a money mule is? The students are

being told to take care. There is such concern about the

danger of becoming money mules that Crimestoppers is warning students

not to be duped into becoming involved. Today's research shows

13% of unemployed people offered work as money mules accepted it,

and 19% of students. They might not realise it, but they are breaking

the law. It is a colossal waste, you are taking almost all the risk

on behalf of the criminals, that is why they try so hard to get people

to do this for them, they are most likely to be caught. Hundreds of

thousands may have already worked as money mules. They risk their

bank accounts being frozen and maybe even being sent to prison.

Victims of rape were encouraged by police to retract allegations to

boost detection rates, according to a report by the Independent Police

Complaints Commission. The watchdog says the approach taken by a

specialist unit in South London of failing to believe victims was

wholly inappropriate. June Kelly is at New Scotland Yard, what is

thought to have been going on? is not for the first time the

country's largest force is in the dock over failings in rape

investigations. In this case, when women went and complained to

officers at Southwark in South London, in some cases they were

pressurised to retract the allegation. We don't know how many

women are involved, the figures have not been kept, but it was so

officers could meet detection target rates. In 2008 a woman made

a complaint, she was pressurised to withdraw, she did that, the man and

Bob, a very violent man, went on to murder his two young children, a

boy of 10 and a girl of eight. This begs the question, if he was

investigated properly he potentially could have ended up in

jail and those children could still be alive today. Senior officers at

Scotland Yard acknowledge this is another bad day for the Met in

terms of rape investigations, they say that since 2009 or rape

investigations in London have been placed under one centralised

command -- all rape investigations. They say this bad practice is not

happening today. Her 80% of people living in care

homes have either dementia or a significant memory problems,

according to a new report from the Alzheimer's Society. The charity

found many families have worryingly low expectations about the quality

of life their loved ones will lead in care homes.

As the number of people diagnosed with dementia increases, the

question of how to provide them with good quality care becomes more

pressing. Lorna Anderson is now happily settled in this home, where

the care is good. But the first place she was in was very different.

Her daughter Lorraine was so appalled by the conditions she took

her mother out after just a week. There was a remarkable change in

mum, she was happy, laughing, but staff could understand her care

needs. They also let her express herself, which is very, very

important. Today's report shows more people than ever are living

with dementia in care homes. 80% of care home residents are thought to

have dementia or a significant memory problems, but just 41% of

families surveyed thought their relatives had a good quality of

life. There is a widespread fear of going into a home. 70% of adults

say the prospect scares them. More and more people living in care

homes have been diagnosed with dementia or severe memory problems.

Their families seem to have a very low expectation of the kind of

quality of life they might enjoy. The Alzheimer's Society says that

does not have to be the case. Throughout our lives, for our

children or ourselves and our working lives, we demand high

quality. Why should we expect a lower-quality, a second class

quality, for people at the end of lives? This is what good care looks

like, gentle and patient, forming a connection, for example through

photographs prompting memories. People live well with dementia, it

is not just a case that they have dementia and it is a final outcome,

they can live very well with dementia, people in the community,

people in care. The report says families need to know that good

quality care for dementia sufferers does exist, and they need to know

how to find it. If a High Court challenge could

change the way 17 year-olds in England and Wales are treated after

they are taken into police custody. It has been brought by a children's

charity which says that a legal anomaly means that 17 year-olds are

classed as adults, not children, when in police detention, meaning

they don't automatically receive the guidance of a parent or

guardian to help them. In the early hours of the 9th of

August last year, this couple's 17 year-old son Joe was stopped by the

police for drink-driving, held for several hours before being charged

and released. Two days later he was found dead at the family home, he'd

killed himself. If he had been 16, his parents would have been

informed of his arrest and allowed to be with him at the police

station. When he was asked if he wanted to inform anybody his answer

was, not really, there was nothing anybody can do. Well, there was a

lot that we could have done. If we had been contacted then we really

firmly believe that Joe would be with us now. 17 year-olds detained

in police custody in England and Wales are treated as adults,

meaning they don't automatically receive a range of supports that

anyone under 16 does get, including a parent or appropriate adult being

informed of the arrest and attending a police station. Lawyers

bringing today's legal challenge say that has to change. It is the

only place, at the police station, that 17 year-olds are treated as

adults, nowhere else in the criminal justice system. If they

were charged they would go back to being children and sent to youth

courts. Northern Ireland change its law to include 17 year-olds in 2009,

today's High Court challenge concerns a 17 year-old held at a

London police station overnight on suspicion of robbery. According to

the Home Office, each year 75,017 year-olds in England and Wales are

taken into police custody. -- 75,000 17 year-olds. They can be

allowed an appropriate adult, but in practice it often does not

That is little comfort for Nick and Jane, still in touch with Joe's

friends. These children have such - - have still been visiting us in

the six months since he died, they have changed a massive amount and

you can see already they are becoming more mature and turning

into young adults. At 17 years of age, you are not an adult.

The collapse of the contractor -- contract to run the West Coast Main

Line has cost the taxpayer at least �50 million. First Group were

awarded the franchise last year, but the deal fell through because

of errors by the Department for Transport. The Government says

major changes have been made to ensure such mistakes don't happen

again. Now, from smartphones to Smart

Homes, the latest hi-tech handsets and household gadgets are being

unveiled in Barcelona this week. What could the future look like?

Rory Cellan-Jones is there for us now.

This event is like the motor show for phones, you get to see the

latest handsets, they are incredibly sophisticated miniature

computers. They are beginning to all look much the same to me. What

is more interesting is what you will be able to do with them. I

have been looking at exactly where mobile technology is heading.

At Mobile World Congress this year they are determined to show that

mobile technology reaches into every area of our lives, and this

exhibit is meant to demonstrate that. The mobile phone experience

we are used to is being taken into the car? As far as I understand it,

the android phone system is being linked direct to this screen?

have an untried system and the car, smart link, it copies the screen

from your smartphone -- and android system. What is this giving me that

Sat Nav and access to my music generally would not give me?

safer and better experience. It is easier to navigate and control the

system. And there is one sector Rasham. Say I wanted to listen to

Bruce Springsteen? -- and there is a voice recognition. The boss.

I have seen an awful lot of smart homes over the year, but they are

getting smarter and more connected to on the move. This one can be

controlled by a tablets on various software platforms. I am at work

and I want the fire on before I come home. Yes, it is turned on. I

am also a bit worried about the actual temperature of the house. 13

degrees strikes me as a bit hot -- bit cold, let's push it up to 21

degrees. Maybe I am out and I want to feed the pet. Let's see if I can

do that. 1, two, three. Excellent. Happy pet.

One other thing that is big here this year it is near field

communications, technology built into phones allowing them to do all

sorts of stuff. I can touch this scooter and cities unlocked, I can

rent it and take it away. But I think I would rather have an app

And now the weather: Not long before we get some apt to predict

all the weather conditions! There is some good news on the horizon if

you are longing for sunshine, there is sunshine on the way for places

that perhaps have not seen much over the last few days, and it will

not be as cold. The temperature -- high pressure is in charge, so lots

an awful lot is changing, though weather pattern is about the same.

-- so not an awful lot is changing. Where we have the wind coming from

the east, that is where we have the clout. Closer to the scent of a

high pressure. Where the winds are much lighter in Scotland, that is

where we have those fine and sunny conditions all the way from Orkney

and Shetland across the Western Isles and through the central

islands. So some lovely weather across Scotland and north of --

most of Northern Ireland. Further south, winds coming from

the east or the North-East, we have dank, cloudy conditions and a

really drizzly and unpleasant start to the day. Five or six degrees,

temperatures in Norwich around four degrees. Top temperatures today

around five degrees in England and Wales, staying cloudy this evening

so temperatures will not be much different. In Scotland with a

beautiful blue skies, once the sun sets, but temperatures will take a

real dip down to around minus eight. So we are at the time of the year

whether contrasts between daytime and night-time temperatures are

very big the given clear conditions. Frost in Scotland first thing on

Wednesday, for the rest of the UK, temperatures generally above

freezing. Towards the south tomorrow we have

most of the cloud, but there is a sliding your ones in the weather

forecast. Across Yorkshire and maybe into parts of East Anglia

there is more sunshine coming through. Towards the south we have

cloudy conditions. High pressure with us on Thursday, but the

difference with Scotland this time as we have a weather front crossing

Scotland, meaning it will be a bit more cloudy. All the sunshine in

the north will basically be shunted a little bit further south. Sir

towards Thursday I think the chances are we will get a bit more

brightness across Wales and England. This is the outlook for the end of

the week, temperatures hovering at about five or six, but in some

about five or six, but in some places we will finally get to see

some brightness. Our top story: A hot-air balloon