29/07/2016 BBC News at Ten

Delaying the deal on Britain's first new nuclear power plant in decades -

the French energy firm building it was given no warning

The ?18 billion Hinkley Point scheme has been dogged by controversy -

some think the current plan is now in jeopardy.

I think effectively, what it means is that the deal

in its current form is dead in the water.

We'll be examining the Government's decision and what this could mean

Also tonight: Police in Scotland charge 77 people over online sex

abuse of children after finding more than 30 million images.

I accept your nomination for president of the United States!

Hillary Clinton says the US faces a "moment of reckoning"

Two British men are jailed for trying to smuggle 18 migrants

into the country in an inflatable boat which nearly sank.

And England's World Cup victory 50 years ago -

And coming up in Sportsday on BBC News,

Henrik Stenson is the early clubhouse leader at the US PGA,

continuing his Open winning form in Baltusrol.

The French energy firm EDF says it was made aware only yesterday

of the Government's plan to delay a final decision on Britain's first

The deal for an ?18 billion scheme at Hinkley in Somerset was meant

to be signed today after EDF, which is financing

most of the project, approved it yesterday.

The Government's announcement has been described as "bewildering

Our Business Editor Simon Jack reports.

Just when you think you've got there,

After EDF's board voted to give this project the green light,

This tent should have been thronging with officials

celebrating the start of construction in earnest,

with the on-site workforce growing from hundreds to thousands.

But the Government said, "Not so fast."

Deeply disappointed, and I've spoken to many people

who are really angry, people who have spent years

working to get us to the position that we've got to.

There was real celebrations yesterday when EDF's board made

and this very much felt like a slap in the face from the UK Government.

Option one, pause - think, read the small print

Option two, renegotiate - try to save money by offering EDF

a lower price for the energy from Hinkley, but this might

further delay or risk the project collapsing,

Option three, cancel - walk away, save ?18 billion,

saying, after a decade of effort from two previous governments,

But then where would the electricity everyone agrees we need

The Government says it wants to take its time

After all, this is a 50-year commitment we're talking about.

It'll lock us in a contract that could cost consumers ?30 billion

That all seems fair enough, but they didn't tell the very people

building it until the last moment, and that seems a strange way

to treat important trading partners like China, like France,

at the very time you're trying to tell the world

Remember, EDF is 85% owned by the French state.

If one of the governments, one of the sides cancels the deal,

it's going to be very bitter on the other side, and, yeah,

it could contribute to a souring of the relationships

especially in the context of the Brexit.

China agreed to put in a third of the money,

a result in part of a George Osborne charm offensive,

but changing partners or price will be very difficult.

I think, effectively, what it means

is that the deal in its current form is dead in the water.

I think the only reason for a review can be one of two factors.

First, that the Government don't like the price that is being asked.

Second, that they don't like the involvement of the Chinese

I think it's going to be very difficult

Once again, the decision on this mammoth project

this time for the Government to decide the way forward.

Hinkley Point was due to start generating power in 2025.

But with the project on pause for now, many are asking

about the Government's options for making sure the lights stay on.

Here's our Science Editor David Shukman - David,

You're right, it is complicated, and the context for this

long-running saga is that over the past decade, one government

after another has tried to balance three very different aims -

keeping the lights on as older power stations are phased out,

keeping energy bills as low as possible for consumers,

and cutting our carbon emissions to help tackle climate change.

So Hinkley, which would produce 7% of UK needs with carbon-free power,

meets two of those objectives, but it is expensive.

Even so, supporters say it's essential.

When you look at a nuclear plant, the up-front capital cost to build

the power station is very high, but you've got to look

at the through-life cost, and how long these power stations

So Hinkley Point will be generating for probably 50 years plus,

and for all of that time it's going to be giving secure

electricity, reliable electricity and clean electricity continuously.

The two reactors planned for Hinkley were picked

because they were the most modern design

The operating concept is the same as for a pressurised water reactor...

But projects to build these EPR reactors have struggled.

I saw one in Finland which is running nine years late,

and there isn't yet one working anywhere.

Renewable energy produced 25% of UK power in the

It is carbon-free, and costs are falling, but wind

and solar are intermittent, which really matters

It provided 37% of our power earlier this year.

It is the cleanest fossil fuel, but either we import it,

which creates uncertainty, or get it by fracking -

and we've seen the opposition to that.

So a serious home-grown supply could be years away.

A third option is to be more efficient.

Modern appliances use less power than older ones,

so demand fell 6% over the past three years, nearly as much

So critics say nuclear power is a costly mistake.

If you look at the cost of Hinkley to the consumer,

astronomical, I mean they're now talking about consumers paying

?30 billion above the wholesale price of electricity

during its lifetime, a huge sum of money,

and then you've got to deal with the nuclear waste.

You've got to store this waste for hundreds of thousands of years,

They don't yet know what they're going to do with that waste.

Ultimately, there are no easy options - no single source of power

meets all of those objectives of being reliable,

Big decisions about energy are always hard, and this one

Our Political Correspondent Eleanor Garnier is at

Are we any closer to knowing why this decision was taken?

Well, those around the new Prime Minister want it to be known that

she will take her decision once she has made it. Frankly, she is not

going to be pushed around. EDF might have wanted the UK Government to

make its position clear ahead of their board meeting, but I am told

Mrs May was not going to be bounced into that. And we no one of her

closest advisers has previously raised concerns about Chinese

investment in areas that could threaten Britain's security. And of

course, a huge project like this would have implications not just for

energy policy and national security, but foreign relations as well, so

the government thinks it warrants this level of scrutiny. Theresa May

has only been in the job just over two weeks. The whole business

department is being restructured, and David Cameron's government might

have taken a particular attitude and approach to the Hinckley project,

but it has been pointed out to me that Theresa May's government will

not be a mirror image of her predecessor's. In terms of what this

looks like for potential foreign investors and whether Britain is

still open for business post that Brexit vote, we shouldn't over

interpret this review. It's more a case of reassurance rather than

policy being ripped up to start all over again.

Police in Scotland say an investigation has identified

more than 500 victims, or potential victims,

At least 77 people have been arrested and charged

after a six week police operation in which 30 million

Our Scotland correspondent Steven Godden reports.

It is the sinister side of the online world.

This summer, Scottish police concentrated their efforts

on tackling the sexual abuse of children, six weeks that revealed

Codenamed Operation Lattise, detectives identified more

They recovered more than 30 million images of children as young

On one computer alone, 10 million pictures and videos were discovered.

These individuals want to be wherever children are,

so they're using websites, forums, chat rooms

These men, predominantly, are using the profiles of children,

pretending to be children, effectively, to communicate

with younger children, to groom them online,

In this crime lab, the grim task of unpicking

In the worst case, it'll take a team of four officers six months

By targeting their resources, Police Scotland's aim was to shine

As they suspected, the more they looked,

So far, the operation has led to more than 70 people being charged

Those arrested ranged in age from 14 to almost 90.

Behind every image is a crime scene, a child who has been subject

to abuse, and every time that image is shared,

that child is re-victimised, and we need to make sure that both

we tackle the crimes that are being committed,

but also prevent them from happening in the first place.

Young people are spending more and more time online.

For parents at this gaming festival in Glasgow,

My daughter is six, so she's really young just now, but when she gets

to that age, who knows where social networking is going to be,

online, the internet is not going to go away,

it's potentially going to become more of a safety issue.

Anybody can make up stories, they can kid

If you don't hear their voice, if they're just typing,

You need to constantly check and constantly monitor

what your kids are doing, or it will take something

wrong to happen for you to figure that out.

Your reputation, safety and responsibility...

While enforcement continues, so do efforts to warn children

Those catching the abusers say prevention is their

Hillary Clinton has formally accepted

the Democratic nomination to run for the White House.

In a speech at the party's convention in Philadelphia,

she said the election was a "moment of reckoning" for the US.

And she laid into her rival, Donald Trump, accusing him

of having neither the character nor the experience to be President.

Our North America editor, Jon Sopel, reports.

Ladies and gentlemen, our next president, Hillary Clinton!

She's spent a quarter of a century in public life,

but no speech has mattered as much as this one.

First, though, the historic formalities.

and boundless confidence in America's promise

They cheered themselves hoarse, some cried as Hillary Clinton

sought to reintroduce herself to the American public.

It was personal, but she set out detailed policies too -

some influenced by Bernie Sanders' insurgent campaign.

Bernie Sanders and I will work together

to make college tuition free for the middle class and debt-free for all.

by someone who shouldn't have a gun in the first place.

And she promised to raise the minimum wage.

If you believe the minimum wage should be a living wage

should have to raise their children in poverty, join us!

to make about temperament and experience,

why she was fit to be commander-in-chief

Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis.

is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

This has been an optimistic and upbeat vision of America

presented by Hillary Clinton as the fireworks go off,

a sharp contrast to the bleak and dark picture

Politics is normally conducted in shades of grey,

but the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

Oh, my God, that's excellent, it's...!

it's the chance of a lifetime to be here, I'm so thankful!

We're excited for the first woman President.

What did you think of her? I liked her!

If conventions and razzmatazz won elections,

but with Donald Trump in the fight, they don't -

A brief look at some of the day's other news stories.

The charity Save The Children says a maternity hospital that

it supports in the Syrian province of Idlib

has been hit by an air strike in a rebel-held area.

and a number of patients and staff have been injured.

The US state of Florida has confirmed the first four cases

of the Zika infection to be contracted from local mosquitoes.

The Zika virus, which can cause birth defects,

first gained public attention in Brazil last year.

have been connected to people catching Zika abroad.

BBC News has learned that an NHS trust under scrutiny for failing

to investigate the deaths of hundreds of patients

to companies owned by associates of its chief executive.

The trust says the contracts had provided value for money.

are being made available to NHS patients in England today,

due to the relaunch of a special fund.

which had closed because of spiralling costs,

will make treatments for lung, bowel and skin cancer available.

Up to 4,500 patients are expected to benefit.

The BBC has tonight been given access to key court judgments

the six-year-old girl from South London murdered by her father

less than a year after she was returned to her parents' care.

Her father Ben Butler, who's lodged an appeal

against his conviction, is serving a 23-year minimum term.

The BBC and other media organisations went to court today

to force the publication of these documents.

Our home affairs correspondent June Kelly is with me now.

What is it in these documents that is so significant?

Well, Reeta, just a bit of background to this case. Ben Butler

was convicted she King Ellie when she was just six weeks old. The

conviction was overturned on a technicality, and he and her mother

went to the family courts and succeeded in having Ellie returned

to them. Within a year, he had murdered a Ellie, and he was jailed

last month for the killing, and Jennie Gray was sentenced for child

cruelty. This document shows that three months before he kills Ellie,

he was up before magistrate and a probation report was done on him,

and that report described him as violent. It was a housing benefit

offence, I should say. That report described as violent and said he

posed a medium risk of causing serious harm to people when he was

under stress. Now, tonight, Sutton Council said the report was not

shared with them, and they said that the judge in the family courts, Mrs

Just as Hogg, was aware of his violent past.

Two men, one of them a former British judo champion,

for trying to smuggle 18 Albanian migrants into Britain.

None of the migrants had been given a life jacket,

and they believed they were minutes from death.

Our correspondent Duncan Kennedy reports.

This was the ghostly image of the migrants' boat adrift,

Closer up, you can see the two smugglers in their red clothing.

Robert Stillwell and Mark Stribling had life jackets on.

including two children and a woman, did not.

you can see one migrant desperately trying to bail out water.

The judge today said that everyone here

Stillwell and Stribling were each paid ?2,000 to smuggle migrants in.

The migrants each paid ?5,000 to make the journey.

We often see that people smugglers treat human beings as a commodity.

In this instance, they were treated as cargo.

Robert Stillwell was a former British judo champion

and was today given four years in jail.

Mark Stribling also received four years.

The court heard the two men were given the boat as hired hands

who aimed to make around ?90,000 from this one single trip.

Today's sentencing brings to an end one of the biggest people-smuggling

cases ever to reach the British courts.

There have been warnings for months

about the vulnerability of the UK coastline,

given the numbers of migrants reaching northern France.

The Government says it's aware of the problem

and is now increasing the number of maritime patrols.

In a separate but almost identical case today,

this man, Steven Jackson, was also jailed

for people smuggling along the south coast.

to bring in 17 Albanian migrants into Chichester Harbour.

35 migrants were involved in today's two cases.

All but nine have now been sent back.

This has been a success for the Home Office,

but also a warning about British coastal defences.

Pope Francis has visited Auschwitz, the death camp in Poland

where more than a million people were murdered by the Nazis.

He spent much of his visit in silent contemplation.

The Catholic Church has faced criticism

against the persecution of Jewish people and other minorities.

The Pope met Holocaust survivors, and Polish Christians

who risked their own lives to protect Jewish neighbours.

Russia's weightlifting team has been banned

from competing at the Rio Olympics because of doping offences.

The International Weightlifting Federation described

the team's record as "extremely shocking and disappointing".

The Olympics' governing committee, the IOC,

has told individual sport federations to rule on whether

Russians can compete at the Games, which begin in a week's time.

It's considered to be a masterpiece of the English Renaissance,

and now, for the first time, it will be owned by the public.

This historic portrait of Queen Elizabeth I

celebrating the defeat of the Spanish Armada

will be kept in Britain after a successful fund-raising campaign.

It will hang in the Queen's House in south London,

since England won the football World Cup.

But despite the expectations of millions of fans,

the team have never come close to repeating the feat since.

Our special correspondent Allan Little reports for us now

on the significance of that victory, and what it revealed

about the sort of nation that England was in the summer of 1966.

Why does this moment still resonate so powerfully

50 years on, it looks like a moment of transition -

from the monochrome grime of post-war recovery

to the Technicolor explosion of '60s modernity.

Post-war Britain was a country in retreat from global power.

Internationally, there had been little cause to cheer.

There's a different stadium now as well, mind,

without the twin towers. Yeah.

Alf Howe and Brian Jones, brothers-in-law from Teesside,

walked down Wembley Way to that match half the century ago.

When you come back here now and think of that day,

I think just the elation. The success.

The fact that we won something, the elation, yeah, definitely.

I came out and stood against one of the twin towers and just

slid down like a cartoon figure, completely drained, and I thought,

You know, that's it, what have we achieved now?

with a by then fading sense of British greatness,

the idea that this was still an exceptional nation.

This replica of the original World Cup

was used by the team doing the victory celebrations in 1966.

It is now in the National Football Museum in Manchester.

To my generation, children who grew up in the 1960s,

the Jules Rimet Trophy was probably the most glamorous,

most thrilling 12 inches of metal anywhere in the world.

There was something almost mystical about the power of it,

and five decades on, I can still feel it, even now.

It had seemed like we had done nothing but lose,

it was defeat after defeat, whether that be out in the Empire,

you know, getting reports from Malaya,

somewhere in Africa, Borneo or whatever.

The British were on the retreat, and the same went for football.

The flags in the stadium that day were Union flags -

English and British identity were still fused,

All the players were white and mostly working class.

They lived the same lives as those who cheered them from the stands,

for this was the tail end of an older Britain,

not yet the age of the super-rich sporting celebrity.

Geoff Hurst's third goal secured victory.

The next day, he went home and mowed his lawn.

After his football career, he took a job selling insurance.

Now on BBC One, it's time for the news where you are.