It's eight o'clock on Monday the fifth of March.
There are warnings of job losses, because of a demand that councils should implement an equal pay structure for men and women.
A teenaged girl who was swept into a swollen river on Dartmoor has died in hospital.
999 calls to ambulance services have risen by a quarter in some areas.
PAY
Fewer than half the local authorities in England and Wales will meet this month's deadline to implement an equal pay structure for men and women. The information comes from the Local Government Association. The pay structure is expected to add about 4 percent to council wage bills -- and cost the authorities more than three billion pounds in back-pay. Unions fear that it will lead to thousands of job losses and mean higher council taxes. Phil Mackie reports:
MACKIE: The need to implement equal pay has left town halls across England and Wales facing a financial time bomb. For years jobs traditionally done by women have been the lowest paid, among them school dinner ladies, classroom assistants and cleaners. They should have been earning the same as men doing similar unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. Tina Kelly is a deputy cook at a Primary school in Birmingham.
KELLY ACT: We've all been angry about it because we've been just left at the bottom. You know it doesn't matter, they're only women, they'll be alright. As long as the men are okay and bringing home the wage.' It's 2007 now we're all equal.
MACKIE: She says she'll go to court to make sure she gets the money she's owed. Similar legal actions around the country mean Councils face potentially crippling bills for back pay, and will have to pay significantly higher wage bills in the future.
PAY ACT
The Labour MP Chris Mullin has raised the matter in Parliament. He told us his own local authority in Sunderland was facing severe problems because of what he described as "compensation culture gone mad." The authority, he said, had agreed a compensation package, but lawyers were now bringing further cases:
MULLIN ACT: Having paid out fifteen millions pounds, their agreements are being unpicked.These lawyers are suing both the council and the unions and the pit is potentially bottomless. It could cost up to fifty million in Sunderland alone and it will undoubtedly lead in due course, if it's followed to its logical conclusion, to the collapse of some local services and many people losing their jobs.
DARTMOOR
A teenaged girl who was swept into a swollen river during a hike on Dartmoor has died. She was with a party of school children. From the area, Sarah Ransome has just sent this report:
RANSOME: The fourteen year old was one of hundreds of teenagers out on the moor yesterday training for the annual Ten Tors Expedition, a two day survival challenge for young people. Her friends used a mobile to raise the alarm after she fell into the swollen waters of a brook near Watern Tor in the middle of Dartmoor. A major search and rescue operation got underway as torrential rain and high winds swept across the west country, and the missing girl was found within twenty minutes. The teenager was airlifted to hospital in Plymouth with serious injuries but she later died. A police investigation is now underway into the circumstances surrounding her death and a coroner has been informed.
CORNWALL
Earlier yesterday, a man and a woman died after they were washed off a harbour wall at Mullion Cove in Cornwall.
AMBULANCES
Figures obtained by BBC News suggest there's been a large rise in the number of emergency calls to the ambulance service. The increase of about a fifth in some areas is said to be placing increasing stress on paramedics. The official figures will be published in April. Michael Buchanan reports.
BUCHANAN: The number of people dialling 999 to request an ambulance has almost doubled in the past decade, with calls last year up six percent. But figures obtained by the BBC suggest that increase will be even larger this year. The Scottish Ambulance Service is reporting a twelve percent year-on-year increase, while in the West Midlands and the North East the rise could be as high as twenty percent. The reasons for the increase are unclear, though changes to GPs out of hours cover is one possible cause says Ray Carrick from the Ambulance Service Union
CARRICK ACT: There are people thinking that in the night time perhaps there is no GP facility available, which is not true. There are GP facilities available in the night time. Or perhaps people are not fully aware of that facility is available and therefore they feel that the only option they've got is to ring 999.
BUCHANAN: The union estimates that demands leading to record levels of stress among paramedics.
SCIENCE
Heads of the bodies that fund British science have told BBC News they'll have to cut the amount they provide for young scientists and cutting edge research --because of a sudden withdrawal of 100 million pounds in funding. Their comments follow an announcement by the Department of Trade and Industry that it's reduced science spending for one year. It blames the collapse of the Rover car company and the unexpected increase in the cost of covering British Energy's nuclear liabilities. More details from our science correspondent, Pallab Ghosh:
GHOSH: No one in government likes having their funds cut, but three heads of the research councils affected and the President of the Royal Society say their comments are prompted by more than sour grapes. They've told BBC News that they're concerned about what they regard as an alarming shift in financial policy. For the first time the DTI has used money that's been specifically protected and earmarked for investment in science to pay for departmental failures. Although this may seem like an arcane administrative point, these research council heads say that this breach in principle damages the government's credibility among leading science-based industries. These will think twice, they say, about investing in the UK if the Chancellor's promised science spending is raided every time there's a short term crisis.
CHINA
The Chinese parliament has been hearing a report on the government's plans from the prime minister, Wen Jiabao. He addressed nearly three-thousand delegates to the National People's Congress. The congress is a symbolic organisation that meets once a year to endorse the policies of the ruling Communist Party. From Beijing, Daniel Griffiths:
GRIFFITHS: In a speech that lasted more than two hours, Wen Jiabao laid out the government's plans for the year ahead. He told delegates that China should do more to reduce the growing gap between rich and poor, between wealthy cities and the under-developed countryside. He promised action to help protect the environment, which has suffered in the rush for economic growth. These issues go to the heart of this administration's pledge to build what it calls a harmonious society, focusing more on sustainable development than rapid economic progress at any cost. It's an ambitious wish list, and China's politicians have made similar promises in the past without much success.
BAILIFFS
Groups which try to help people in debt are concerned by proposals to increase the legal powers that bailiffs have. It's being suggested that bailiffs should be given a right, in certain circumstances, forcibly to enter people's homes. Peter Tutton of Citizens Advice told us there were already problems with intimidation, bad practice and over-charging -- and vulnerable people needed to be given better safeguards to protect them:
TUTTON ACT: The thing that concerns us is that say if someone is in genuinely financial difficulties, has fallen behind or something, or perhaps something like council tax or a parking fine or something like that as well, you can find very quickly you may have a bailiff coming to you, knocking on you door or worse than that going through your door to take goods. People are trying to pay something; they are trying to pay something they can afford towards their debt. So what we are worried about is bailiffs who will refuse to negotiate, who will come back again with this power.
STAMP DUTY
Research by the Halifax says that nearly a fifth of all homebuyers are paying stamp duty at the higher rates of 3 per cent and above, due to house price inflation. It wants the government to increase thresholds. The Treasury said five out of six homebuyers paid stamp duty at 1 per cent -- or none at all.
SNOW
Ski resorts on the lower slopes of the alps are being warned that they risk going out of business unless they adapt to climate change. The report -- by some of Switzerland's most famous resorts -- is the first attempt by the Alpine skiing industry to begin planning for the effects of global warming. Climatologists predict there will be much less snow in future -- and that rising temperatures will lead to rising snow lines. Imogen Foulkes reports from Berne.
FOULKES: The report published today tells lower lying resorts diversify or go to the wall. Popular Swiss destinations like Gstaad and Wengen just won't have enough snow in the future to live off skiing. So alpine resorts must do something different and try to attract tourists all year around. The report does offer a note of optimism. In the wake of Europe's heatwave in 2003, the Alps saw an increase in visitors as tourists decided a beach in Greece or Spain would be simply too hot. So, as the planet heats up, alpine resorts are hoping to offer cool mountain air to summer tourists.
WOOLDRIDGE
One of the most highly regarded sports journalists of his generation, Ian Wooldridge, has died. He was seventy five. He worked at the Daily Mail for nearly half a century covering every major sporting event including ten Olympic Games. Ian Wooldridge won numerous accolades for his writing and was made an OBE for his services to journalism.
PILOT
A blind man is preparing to fly from Britain to Australia in aid of charity. He's relying on the latest technology to let him know exactly where he is. Stephen Evans has more:
EVANS: Miles Hilton Barber is fifty-eight, blind and a qualified pilot of a microlight aircraft. He's flying across Europe and then onto Syria, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Australia in five hundred mile hops. He's got a sighted pilot sitting behind in case things go wrong, but the blind man will do the flying helped by technology which lets his navigating sensors and other machinery talk to him. On top of that, Mr Hilton Barber will punch in the coordinates of the airfields into his computer on the way.
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