08/08/2011 BBC News at Six

There's yet more violence and looting tonight on the streets of

London. This time it's in Hackney, in the east of the capital, where

police in riot gear are being pelted with rocks and missiles and

shops are being looted. It follows more violence last night in several

parts of the capital - from Enfield in north London to Brixton in the

south. It was needless, opportunistic

theft and violence, and it is completely unacceptable.

In Tottenham, where it all started, the burnt-out carpet store - a

business gone and many homes above it destroyed.

Just couldn't believe it, our building was going up in flames. 10

minutes longer in that building and we would have been dead.

Also on tonight's programme... Global markets plummet again,

wiping billions off share prices. The sharp rise in rural crime

that's costing households and businesses nearly �50 million.

And why the TV presenter Carol Voderman wants all school pupils to

Good evening and welcome to the BBC News at Six. More violence has

broken out on the streets of London tonight. In Hackney in east London,

police in riot gear are being attacked with stones and missiles,

and shops and businesses are being looted. Extra police are being

deployed in the capital tonight to try to quell the trouble that began

in Tottenham on Saturday. More than 160 people have been arrested since

then after the violence spread to other parts of London. The violence

which began in Tottenham spread last night to Enfield, Walthamstow

and Brixton. Then this afternoon it erupted again - this time in

Hackney. Our home affairs correspondent, Matt Prodger, is in

Tottenham now. Here in Tottenham, they're still counting the cost of

the violence on Saturday night, and they're counting that cost in terms

of burnt-out buildings, gutted shops and homeless residents. And

there are fresh outbreaks of violence not far from here. This

was the London borough of Hackney this evening, youths clashing with

the police, attacking squad cars and shop fronts. This is the third

night of such scenes in the capital. In Tottenham, the flashpoint on

Saturday night, this was the remains of a building which had

housed 26 families. It was just, get away from the burning building.

This lady lived there. She is now homeless, with nothing but her

handbag and a few clothes. There was another neighbour trying to get

out of the building, in such a panic. And then we got outside and

saw the building, with flames going up the building. It was just black

smoke billowing down from the corner of the high road. 10 minutes

longer in that building, and we would have been dead. And what

makes me utterly sick to the bone is that, as we were trying to get

out of that building alive, some stupid, selfish man, white guy with

blond hair, was coming up, he obviously looted Carpet Right, and

people were coming out with their robes over their shoulder, and he

was laughing. Today, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, was in

Tottenham to hear first hand from shopkeepers and residence. They

were angry, they told him they had felt abandoned on Saturday night.

Can I ask you, is this always going to happen now because of the cuts?

No, I don't think so. Why weren't we protected? We left the flat as

the rioters were coming up the road, the buildings were on fire, and we

did not see one policeman. The fire engines could not be there because

the police were not there to protect them. On Sunday, even as

the residents of Tottenham were counting the cost of the previous

night, the violence had spread to Enfield, some four miles away. This

time the police were decisive, and the violence didn't escalate. Other

parts of London were affected, too. In Brixton, shops were broken into.

More than 100 people were arrested across the capital. The Home

Secretary, Theresa May, cut short her holiday to return to the UK.

Let's be absolutely clear, there is no excuse for violence or looting,

there is no excuse for thuggery. The police will deal with any

emergency situations as they consider most appropriate. But I am

absolutely clear there is no excuse for looters or thuggery or violence

on the streets. It was the police's shooting of a local man which

preceded the violence in Tottenham. Today, police admitted

relationships with his family could have been better handled. I have

spoken to the community representatives. We have had

meetings. Actually, we should have helped the IPCC get closer to the

family of Mr Duggan more quickly. Tonight, amid fresh outbreaks of

trouble, it seems the violence has developed a life of its own, far

removed from the original cause of the disturbance on Saturday. The

Mayor of London has announced in the past half-an-hour that he is

cutting short his holiday to return to London. Here in Tottenham, a

bulldozer has arrived to begin the process of demolishing the building

which has stood here for 80 years. In a short time, there will be a

vigil, and an expression of hope So what is behind the violence

we've seen in the past 48 hours? It started with the fatal shooting by

police of a local man in Tottenham. Our special correspondent Razia

Iqbal has been talking to residents in North London about the

underlying tensions that have come to the boil.

The aftermath of burning, looting and destruction. The grim reality

of the havoc unleashed by a few, resulting in the heart of this

suburb being severely trashed. The shock of it makes some just stop

and stare. For others, this is all too reminiscent of scenes 26 years

ago, on the Broadwater Farm estate, when some of the worst riots seen

in England erupted after a woman suffered a fatal stroke after a

police raid on her home. Then, race relations, poverty and community

policing were blamed. Now, some say it is lack of opportunity,

particularly for the young. Most youngsters look at it and say, what

are we going to have when we're older? If they are not going to

have nothing, why not go and get it ourselves? They need that help,

they need that direction. Despite considerable investment since the

1980s, Tottenham were Baines poor and socially deprived. No-one we

spoke to today condoned the violence, but many understood some

of the reasons behind it. Britain is still systemically racist.

Relations between the police and the black community are still by

and large bad. They have tried to improve them, but they are bad.

Before the weekend, many in this community thought Tottenham was a

more hopeful place than it had been in 1985. But just as many say the

fundamental issues of poverty and hopelessness have not been tackled.

It only takes one flashpoint to expose deep fault-lines. Criticism

of the delayed police response over the weekend just adds to the

feeling that relations between the police and the African-Caribbean

community in particular remain problematic. The way they do stop

and search, the way they attack, I would say, the kids, the youth, in

the areas, is ridiculous. This is what needs to come through, the

frustration from the youth, it has because of the way they dealt with

by the police. They are angry with the police. As politicians decide

how to respond, the people in this part of London are absorbing the

enormity of what has happened to their neighbourhood.

Our home affairs correspondent, June Kelly, is at New Scotland Yard.

There are even more police out on the streets tonight - what is the

latest? This is a difficult time for Scotland Yard. It is just three

weeks since the Commissioner and his deputy resigned. The man

currently at the helm, the acting commissioner, paid tribute to the

officers who have been out on the streets over the past couple of

nights. 35 officers have been injured. Tonight they are facing

fresh challenges in Hackney, where we know there are disturbances.

Police are trying to get officers there in large numbers. We're also

getting reports of trouble in Lewisham in south London. We're

told that tonight the Met will have 30% more officers on the street

than last night. The Met have been criticised over events in Tottenham

at the weekend, criticised for their slow response. Here, they say

they were not on the back foot, it was just a failure of intelligence.

They say a peaceful march simply degenerated into violence. Just as

a footnote, obviously, social networking sides have played a big

part in events over the past few days. Today there was a warning

from senior police officers that anybody inciting violence using

social networking sides could face Stock markets have fallen in London,

across Europe and in the United States, despite efforts to calm the

markets. Investors appear to lack confidence in attempts by world

leaders and the European Central Bank to bring stability to the

eurozone. Our business editor, Robert Peston, has the story.

The ringing the bell for more investor misery. Shares on Wall

Street fell, hard on the heels of a similar falls in Asia and Europe.

But these declines are the symptom, not the cause. This is where Royal

Bank of Scotland trades not shares, but debt. It is in places like this

that this great drama is being played out. The financial crisis is

all about the growing doubts over whether the governments of giant

economies like Italy, Spain, even economies like Italy, Spain, even

the US, can repay all their debt. What you can see here, the rising

cost of borrowing for the Spanish and Italian governments, is

investors saying they are increasingly worried about lending

to those countries. Today there has been a sharp fall in the interest

rates paid by those governments. That is because this body, the

European Central Bank, has taken the historic decision to buy

Italian and Spanish bonds, an Italian and Spanish bonds, an

indirect way of lending to those countries.

This is exactly what the markets were looking for, somebody trying

to stabilise the bond yields of Spain and Italy. These countries

are too big to bail out. European central bank is owned by

the passengers on the tram outside the office, and the other people of

the eurozone. So how much financial risk are the Germans and the French

taking? It is about 2.5 billion Euros each day, which could

potentially add up to a big number, around 800 billion euros of

sovereign debt from Spain and Italy. American investors have been blue,

too. That is since Standard and Poor's took the decision, seeing as

many -- seen by many as shocking, to downgrade their credit rating.

It shows terrible judgment. They have handled themselves very poorly,

showing a stunning lack of knowledge about the US. I think

they drew exactly the wrong conclusion. The big story for many

is that governments, households, banks and businesses of the Western

economies, including the UK, have borrowed far more than is prudent,

and in pain down the debt, there is less spending and investment, so

economic growth slows to a trickle. Commodities such as oil have been

falling, too. So, here's a silver lining - if you for the driver, the

price of petrol and other essentials could come down. You

have to wonder what more can be done, Stephanie Flanders... As we

were hearing, there's two big concerns, there's the strength of

the dollar's recovery, which is so crucial for all of us, and also

what is ultimately going to happen in the eurozone. I think investors

are looking at these issues and wondering what governments have

left to throw at them. In the case of the US, we have a big

disagreement between Congress and the President, it is not likely

that they will be able to throw much more at the problem. And the

central bank in America also has less room for manoeuvre. If you

look at the eurozone, we have got this very short-term solution today,

with the European central bank buying this debt, but in the long

term, most people think we will need to have Germany agreeing to

stand behind these debts, and may be a much bigger bail-out facility.

Nobody is expecting to see this any time soon. So it is a question of

how we can get through this investor malaise, a malaise which

And there's more on the crisis and what it might mean for you in a

Crime in rural areas has risen dramatically in the past two years,

according to new figures from an insurance company. They estimate

that so-called "agri-crime" has cost householders and businesses

more than �49 million in the last year. Our rural affairs

correspondent, Jeremy Cook, has the It is a world away from the

problems of urban Britain, but in the heart of the countryside, crime

is rising dramatically. Modern tractors, for instance, can cost in

excess of �70,000. Security out here is often lacks. Before, we

used to just leave the key in. farmer has had two tractors stolen,

both of them eventually tracked Not many years ago you would leave

the tractor in the field with the key in it. There seems to be a

key in it. There seems to be a crime wave here. The numbers are

We've had a big shock this year, the figures are well up over 60% in

cost in just two years alone. The major impact is tractors that are

being stolen and exported across the globe and also a big rise in

livestock theft from farms. Rural police forces are tracking down

some of the what's been stolen. This just one of many recovery

sites with row afro of stolen machinery and vehicles. -- row

after, row of stolen machinery vehicles. The range of items

disappearing from our farms is extraordinary. It's a crime wave,

sweeping across rural Britain. It's not just farms being targeted. In

rural Oxfordshire, a bell weighing 150 pounds, was stolen from St

James's church. 140 years of history now almost certainly scrap

metal. It's just after 6.15pm, the top

story tonight: More violence and looting, this time in Hackney,

where police are being pelted with missiles and shops are being looted.

And coming up: Look, no hands - the world's longest guided busway opens

in Cambridgeshire. Later on the BBC News Channel, I'll

have more reaction to a volatile day on the markets, as Europe ends

the day in the red. All eyes are on the United States as President

Obama prepares to address the They are one of the world's most

controversial commodities, diamonds from the Marange district. There

are prison camps near the diamond fields, where miners employed to

dig illegally, have been subjected to beatings. Sales of the diamonds

are banned by international agreement, but the European Union

is pushing for a partial lifting of the ban. The names of people in

this report have been changed to protect their it tiz.

-- their identities. Zimbabwe's diamond fields are

shrouded in allegations of killings and abuse. We headed into the

remote mountains nearby to meet witnesses. They told us about a

camp in the diamond area run by Zimbabwe soldiers and police.

TRANSLATION: They would tie to you a tree and assault you severely.

They would not give any food. That went on for a long time. Other

people died as a result of the injuries and soldiers would throw

their bodies away. We deployed our undercover camera team to the

location the witnesses had described. There they found this

camp, active and guarded. They couldn't stay long. Witnesses said

prisoners are held in a razor wire enclosure near these tents and are

mauled by dogs, raped and beaten. They're civilians recruited to mine

ill lel legal -- illegally. But they're punished for demanding more

pay or mining for themselves. Zimbabwe's government hasn't

responded to our findings. Down the road is this mine. President Mugabe,

whose friend runs it, could benefit from a new proposal to partially

lift the sales ban so they could export. Some of the these diamonds

are hitting world markets due to disagreement within the Kimberley

Process, the world's policemen on diamonds about the status of the

ban. Could you buy one in the UK? We went down to hatton garden in

London to find out. I'm going into this shop. They've been selling

diamonds since 1875. They're very established and proper. I'm going

to ask them if they or any High Street jewellery, for that matter,

knows where the diamonds come from. There are sanctions in place that

should prevent some Zimbabwean diamonds being sold here. I have no

idea where it would come from. Not even the shop people would have any

idea. Even the supplier wouldn't know. We must have had a thousand

customers coming through and I don't think one of them has ever

asked where this diamond has come from. They don't even care. They

just want some bling on their finger. The British jewellers

association has called on jewellers to tell their suppliers they don't

want Marange diamonds. If the EU deal goes ahead, many more Marange

diamonds could hit the world's markets and it seems, the average

person, looking for an engagement ring, might not know what they were

buying. You can see more on the Marange

diamond mines on tonight's Panorama at 8.30pm on BBC One.

The Ministry of Defence is investigated reports that a soldier

took fingers from the bodies of dead Taliban fighters to keep as

souvenirs. It's understood the allegations have been made against

a soldier from The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Our

Scotland correspondent, Lorna Gordon is outside Stirling Castle

wha. More can you tell us? This part of Scotland is traditionally

one of the main recruiting grounds for the The Argyll and Sutherland

Highlanders. Soldiers from the battalion returned in April after a

six-month tour of duty. During that tour, it's claimed this abuse took

place. It's alleged one soldier chopped the fingers off dead

Taliban fighters as some kind of gruesome souvenir. We don't know

the soldier's name, rank or age. We don't know whether or not they've

been suspended. It's thought if they are found guilty of

desecrating a body, they could be detained, dismissed or demoted from

their position in the Army. An investigation is still ongoing, but

the Ministry of Defence say they take these allegations very

seriously. Carol Vorderman's report found the current system is failing

young peming with almost half of all 16-year-olds failing to get

grade C at GCSE level. Our Carol Vorderman says there should

be two GCSE exams, run on arithmetic and the other on

geometry. Maths is the killer subject always. Even those with a

GCSE at grade C approximately three quarters of them, so the colleges

are telling us, still cannot calculate fractions and percentages.

# Maths, glorious maths... # While effort is put into making

maths fun at trinity primary, Carol Vorderman says teachers require

more knowledge of the subject. Teaching unions point out that

means money and training. Many of the teachers coming in, say to us

where they need more training it would be in the field of maths.

this summer school at Imperial College, the engineers of the

future, are getting access to experts who know why maths matters.

Practical maths is everywhere. If these students vent -- haven't done

calculations right when it comes to volume and area, the shelter won't

stand up. Have you done it correctly? Yes. Are you sure it

won't fall down? Yes. Government welcomes the report but

say there are no plans to make maths compulsory up to the age of

Now, it runs on its own track and is guaranteed not to get stuck in

traffic. The world's longest guided busway route has just opened in

Cambridgeshire. It's hoped the service will ease congestion.

Critics of the scheme, which cost more than �100 million and opened

two years late, claimed journey times won't be cut. Richard Scott

is in St Ives now. We're at one end of the guided

busway. Cambridge is about 12 miles in that direction. That's where

this bus has come from. If you did that journey by car, on the roads,

at the height of rush hour, it would probably take about 60

minutes. By bus it's about 20 minutes. Despite that, opponents

say it's the misguided busway. Welcome to Cambridge. For many who

work in the city, their first task of the day is to sit in traffic.

This is part of the city solution, it might look like an ordinary bus,

but it has a trick up its sleeve. It's a guided busway. Wheels on the

side of the bus keep it locked to the track bypassing the congestion

on the A14. Now this stretch of the guided busway is 12 miles long.

There are stops at various points along the route for communities and

park and ride schemes. But one aspect which might take a bit of

getting used to is the driver doesn't have to keep his hands on

the wheel. We looked at all the options. This came out by fart most

sensible option and the most sensible way forward. This will get

you onto a reliable service. route follows a disused rail line.

Opponents thought it would be better to reinstate that instead.

The council thinks it's a good idea to cover the route in concrete,

costing in excess of �100 million. The journey end to end is no faster

than existing bus services. It's the public who will use the busway.

We asked what they thought. I think it's fabulous. Why? It's long

overdue. We're not coming down the A14. It's going to be into

Cambridge, you know, in a lovely countryside. It's beautiful. What

if one of the buses breaks down and you're in the bus behind, how do

you get off? The council says buses can divert onto normal roads to go

around any break downs, which trains can't do. Other cities will

be watching now to see how successful this is and whether they

should follow suit. There are already shorter bus ways

in use in Leeds and Bradford as well as a bigger scheme planned for

Leigh to Manchester. People involved with that scheme will be

watching to see how well this does. Let's get the latest weather now

with Matt. It may be August, but a distinct

chill in the air for some of you tonight. Whilst most of you will

have a dry night, one or two will have a dry night, one or two will

see heavy showers. The heaviest of the showers are across Yorkshire,

Lincolnshire. The risk of minor flooding here. It fades away during

the night. Showers continue continue around the north and west.

For most it's a dry night and chilly as I mention. Eight to 12

degrees in towns and cities. In Scotland, you could be waking up to

temperatures of four or five degrees tomorrow morning. Most

start on a dry and bright note on Tuesday. We could showers running

through the north channel, affecting the South West of

Scotland, eastern parts of Northern Ireland, Isle of Man into Liverpool

pal -- bay and the Midlands. It should be a reasonably sunny start.

Most hold onto the sunshine through the day. Sunny spells through the

afternoon, showers in the west easing, one or two close to the

east. For most it's a dry afternoon. Whilst temperatures similar to

today's 18 to 20 degrees it's warmer with winds lighter. Tuesday

will be last of the dry days this week. This area of low pressure in

the Atlantic is big enough to extend its influence through

Tuesday night into Wednesday. Rain spreading in through Northern

Ireland, Scotland and northern England. Areas with saturated

ground and high river levels. We'll keep an eye on that. The rain

across western areas. The far north of Scotland and England and Wales

predominantly dry. We drag in milder winds. Into Thursday we hold

on to a lot of cloud, outbreaks of rain, most will be light and patchy.

Temperatures around 18 to 20 degrees. More details coming up

degrees. More details coming up next.

Tonight's main news: More violence on the streets of London tonight.

This is the scene live in Hackney in the east of the city, where

earlier skirmishes erupted between gangs of hooded youths and police.

It's the third day of rioting in the capital. Shop windows have been