Blackberry's message goes missing

Untold numbers of Blackberry users, first in Europe then in much of the rest of the world, found that their email either slowed or ground to a halt and the BBM service became unavailable.For the makers of the device whose name became synonymous with messaging, it was a deeply embarrassing 36 hours.

Worse, the whole incident turned into a business school case study of how not to communicate with your customers - Blackberry simply failed to get its message out. When the problems started to emerge around lunchtime on Monday, social networks were quickly populated with angry and confused customers.

Customers who turned to their mobile phone networks for advice were all directed back to Research in Motion, the Canadian company behind Blackberry. After some hours, RIM used one of its Twitter accounts @Blackberryhelp to send out this tweet:

"Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues. We're investigating, and we apologize for any inconvenience."

EMEA? Where on earth is that? I know, because marketing speak floods my inbox every minute, that it stands for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, but many people will surely have been mystified.

Of course, journalists were bombarding the Blackberry PR team with calls, demanding to know what was going on, how many people were affected, and what was the root cause. By Monday evening, we had nothing more than the brief line already seen on Twitter.

At a technology awards event in London, reporters spotted a gaggle of RIM PR people clustered around their Blackberries - they promised us more news imminently. And at 21:00 this arrived in our inboxes:

"Earlier today, some BlackBerry subscribers in the EMEA region experienced delays with BlackBerry services. The issue was resolved and services are operating normally. We apologize to those customers who were impacted for any inconvenience."

No information then about the extent of the problem or what had caused it, but reassurance that it was all over now, please move along, nothing to see here.

Then late on Tuesday morning, I started getting messages from Blackberry users that the problems had returned - emails weren't arriving, and BBM had ground to a halt again. Worse, it then emerged that users in other parts of the world were now suffering the same experience.

A one-day shutdown might just about be forgiven - especially when the company tells you it has all been sorted. But when it returns on a second day, and there's still no explanation you are trying customers' patience with your product to the limit.

Finally, at 21:53 on Tuesday evening, this arrived from RIM:

"RIM update: The messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested. As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed."

In other words, a pretty serious failure had occurred in the infrastructure on which the whole Blackberry ecosystem depends. This morning, a new statement tells us that the issue has finally been resolved.

But it took 36 hours for RIM to give the world any explanation of what had happened - and as far as I know the company still has not put anyone up for interview. I'm hearing that some PR executives argued for more openness from the start but were over-ruled by headquarters in Canada.

This strategy - say as little as possible, ruthlessly control the message from the centre - is similar to the one adopted with such success by Apple over the years. But when things go wrong, it looks like a textbook example of how to lose friends and alienate people

Euromillions £101m jackpot won by Cambridgeshire couple

Dave and Angela Dawes had only entered the lottery twice before

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A couple from Cambridgeshire are celebrating a £101m Euromillions win - the third largest lottery jackpot in UK history.

Dave and Angela Dawes from Wisbech were the only winners of the jackpot in Friday's draw, banking £101,203,600.70.

Mr Dawes, 47, is a shift supervisor, and his 43-year-old wife is a volunteer for the British Heart foundation.

Chelsea fan Mr Dawes, 47, said he now plans to buy a house near the ground - and ask Frank Lampard round for tea.

He said: "We were watching TV and the Euromillions draw show came on so we kept watching, not thinking we would win anything.

"We got our tickets out and watched in shock as, one by one, the numbers came up on the line I'd chosen.

"We couldn't believe it. It was too late to call Camelot so I kept the ticket on me all night until the morning but we didn't sleep a wink."

The ticket was bought at WH Smith on the Market Place in Wisbech.

Mr Dawes, who works at Premier Foods, said he wanted to buy a season ticket to watch Chelsea FC.

He said: "I'm not worried about getting a box - I want to stand with the real fans and watch my team play.

"I'd also love to live near the ground and have Frank Lampard come over for a cup of tea."

The couple, who have been together for four years, said they would continue with their plan to get married in Portugal next year.

In July, Colin and Chris Weir from Ayrshire won a record European lottery prize of £161m.

Rich List

UK ticketholders have banked the Euromillions jackpot more than 15 times in the past two years.

Last year two anonymous UK winners scooped £113m and £84m.

The couple's success means they are £1m better off than David Bowie, the 703rd richest person in the country, according to The Sunday Times Rich List 2011.

They move ahead of celebrity couples such as Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne (£95m) and Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin (£48m).

The winning numbers were 18, 26, 34, 38 and 42. The Lucky Star numbers were five and eight.

Nine countries participate in Euromillions - the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Austria.

Ticket sales in all those countries contribute to the Euromillions jackpot.

UK riots: Man in wheelchair jailed for role in theft

David Knott imprisoned for a year after being caught on camera carrying an Alba television stolen during the riots

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David Knott was caught on camera in a wheelchair holding a TV from an Argos store in Eltham during the UK riots. Photograph: Metropolitan Police/PA

A man in a wheelchair who was caught on CCTV carrying a television stolen during the summer riots has been jailed for a year. David Knott, 18, of Bromhedge, Eltham, south-east London, was caught on camera as an accomplice put an Alba television on his lap before pushing the wheelchair away. Knott, who had a broken leg at the time, was jailed at Inner London crown court for handling stolen goods belonging to an Argos store in Woolwich, south-east London. Police officers working on Operation Withern – the force's investigation into August's riots – are continuing to make arrests.

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This shocking NHS bill is without sense or mandate

The Lords should be affronted by the slipshod way our health system is being blown apart, before they can even debate it

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Under scrutiny … the health and social care bill reaches the House of Lords next week. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Westminster Bridge, joining parliament and St Thomas's hospital, will be blocked on Sunday at one o'clock by a UK Uncut sit-down protest against the NHS bill that reaches the House of Lords next week.

The Lords have the last chance to amend the health and social care bill's most egregious clauses. Despite its gigantic size, basic questions remain unanswered. The Tory MP and GP Sarah Wollaston once called it "a hand grenade thrown into the NHS" – and so it is proving. The Lords should be alarmed by the constitutional enormity of this largely unscrutinised bill for which there was no manifesto mandate. 

As it levers the NHS open to EU competition law, who is democratically accountable for its £120bn budget? Who is to answer for its quality or failures? Who commands its privatised fragments in times of crisis or pandemic? The Lords have a duty to scrutinise the most contentious parts of a bill railroaded through the Commons in just two days after the "pause", with 1,000 new amendments undebated. "The fundamental principles remain" boasted Andrew Lansley at his party conference: not much changed. Scrutiny of slapdash legislation is what the Lords are for.

They should be constitutionally affronted that this colossal reorganisation is already imposed on the NHS without waiting for their consent. No one can remember a similar case of pre-legislative implementation, as if parliament were irrelevant.

Without waiting for them: 300 clinical commissioning groups are taking over, nominally run by GPs. Private sector involvement is already compulsory: by this month every commissioner must find at least three outside providers for diagnostic tests, audiology, primary care psychological therapies, treatment for back pain, feet and other services.

Department of Health website instructions say: "Commissioners cannot refuse to accept providers once they have qualified." That's what "any qualified provider means" and it's happening now – forget the law. McKinsey and other consultants are already being paid millions by commissioners to work out the payment system.

How do these new providers become "qualified"? They must register with the Care Quality Commission, the regulator whose severe stress was revealed over the Winterbourne View scandal. Created from merging three bodies, plus possibly the human fertilisation authority, this bill gives it the new HealthWatch too. Can they cope? CQC has 30% less cash than the bodies it replaced. Last year it cut inspections by 70%. It has just 900 inspectors to cover 18,000 care homes, 8,000 GP practices, 400 NHS hospital trusts, 9,000 dental practices and now every new "qualified" entrant. Will the Lords really think proliferating providers will be sufficiently inspected?

The British Acupuncture Council was first respondent on the department's site, asking for its members to be registered as qualified to offer back pain treatment. How will the CQC know which pins are qualified pins? Second respondents were audiologists warning that private sector cowboys will "manipulate the facts", pretending they have better hearing aids, and older people will be tricked out of using NHS hi-tech audiology. 

GPs will have small say in this market: forget the cosy image of them choosing the best for you. This week's scandal of the Haxby GP practiceshows what Professor Alan Maynard calls the "overwhelming temptations" in the system for GPs to set up their own services and urge patients to use them, even charging them. In the US and New Zealand doctors cannot refer patients to any service in which they have a financial interest: no such caveat is in this bill.

Commissioning services will not be done in your cosy GP surgery: the 300 CCGs will be cut back to many fewer, commissioning from afar and often outsourced to private companies. Professor John Appleby says the Treasury is right to worry about control of the cash. The NHS Confederation warns that finance directors, highly employable elsewhere, have been walking away, unwilling to take financial responsibility for the coming mayhem at a time of the most severe cutbacks ever in the NHS.

The Lords should scrutinise Monitor, the regulator whose first duty is to stop "anti-competitive behaviour". Already competition challenges are filed against GPs for purchasing from familiar NHS hospitals. With more hospitals in financial trouble, losing more funds when services are soon cherry-picked by outsiders, nothing in the bill says what happens when some go bust. Big companies will soon gain monopoly muscle.

NHS community staff are being forced, not invited, into friendly sounding social enterprises, as a fig leaf for privatisation. Central Surrey Health, an enterprise run by nurses, was hailed by Cameron as Big Society Award winners. But they failed to win their first genuinely competitive contract, losing out to private group Assura. Surrey nurses could only raise a £3m bond, while the winners reportedly raised a £10m bond. So much for social enterprise and NHS staff security when up against big capital.  

The Lords should be alarmed that no one in parliament will be accountable for the NHS. The NHS Commissioning Board, a gigantic £80bn quango, will run it with the secretary of state forbidden by law from interfering. MPs will be shocked when the Speaker has to rule out of order any questions about hospital scandals, closures, waiting lists and all the imminent NHS crises. Re-imposing some duties on the secretary of state may be conceded in the Lords to Shirley Williams: let's hope she will not be satisfied with that.

Few Lords can explore the thicket of clauses in this vast bill. Lords Owen and Hennessy are bidding for two key sections to go to committee for thorough scrutiny: this is not a wrecking delay, but a chance to examine the bills most alarming aspects.

It's the best to be hoped for, ever since Nick Clegg folded in the Commons. David Owen makes a telling comparison with the privatisation of the railways. There are not, he says, many Tories who are not shamefaced about the slipshod way that was done. Do they really want to do that to the NHS?

France, Germany to Discuss Greek Bankruptcy, Contagion, JDD Says

Q

By Francois de Beaupuy - Oct 9, 2011 9:43 AM GMT

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will talk about a Greek bankruptcy, the country’s future in the euro area and contagion risks, Le Journal du Dimanche said, citing an unidentified person in Sarkozy’s office.

Sarkozy wants to save Greece and strengthen aid mechanisms for troubled European nations, the newspaper said. A Greek default would sink some banks and send the euro area back into recession, while Greece’s exit from the euro would deter investors from Europe, leading to the same results, according to Le Journal du Dimanche.

The French government believes creating a firewall with a public entity to take Greece’s debt would reassure markets, the newspaper said, adding that Merkel remains to be convinced of that.

To contact the reporter on this story: Francois de Beaupuy in Paris at

Abramovich v Berezovsky: When oligarchs attack

In a small courtroom in the City of London, two of the world’s richest men are spending a fortune to settle a £3.5 billion point of principle. For once, the Russian tycoons Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky are having to play by someone else’s rules.

Mr Abramovich (right) denies the allegations, disputes that 'oral agreements' were made and denies that Mr Berezovsky (left) is entitled to damages  Photo: Geoff Pugh

By Cole Moreton

7:00AM BST 09 Oct 2011

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Roman Abramovich arrives in a silver Mercedes with blacked-out windows. He steps out of the car and is immediately flanked by massive men who make sure nobody gets in his way. But when the oligarch walks through the revolving doors of the Commercial Court in the City of London, even he has to play by somebody else’s rules.

“Court will rise,” says the clerk, and one of the world’s richest men stands, with his bodyguards, lawyers, translators, advisers and hangers-on, in deference to Dame Elizabeth Gloster, the 62-year-old judge who is the law in this room.

She will be in charge for the next three months, or as long as it takes to settle a dispute worth £3.5 billion. Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club, is being sued for breach of trust and breach of contract by his former friend Boris Berezovsky, after allegedly breaking an agreement they made in the 1990s. “I trusted him. I believed he was like my son,” says the small but pugnacious claimant. “He betrayed me.”

Dressed in a dark blue suit and open-necked white shirt, the 63-year-old Berezovsky looks like a well-groomed Danny DeVito. Just before the session opens, he reaches up to put an arm around the neck of his much taller and younger girlfriend, Yelena Gorbunova, and plants a kiss somewhere below her ear.

Earlier this year, Berezovsky, who has been with Ms Gorbunova for 15 years, agreed to the most expensive divorce settlement in British history, paying at least £100 million to his second wife. Ms Gorbunova resembles the first lady of France, Carla Bruni, as she sits in a black suit among the lawyers.

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On the other side of this low room, hidden among his team, sits Roman Arkadievich Abramovich. If his opponent can be loud, then Abbram-oh-vitch – as his lawyers pronounce it – is quiet to the point of silence. In a dark suit and light-blue tie, with a silver beard, he looks no more prosperous than a good accountant – but is actually worth an estimated £10 billion, compared with his opponent’s half a billion.

Close up, you see the bags under his eyes, and the strange expression he wears most of the time: a bashful sadness. His lawyers say he is “domiciled in Russia” even though he has a home in Chelsea, a mansion in Kensington, and is knocking through townhouses in Knightsbridge to make the most expensive property in the country. His ex-wife, Irina, kept the estate in Sussex.

Abramovich lives in a parallel reality – Roman Britain – where hospitals aren’t closing and belts aren’t being tightened, but lawyers are paid fortunes to settle a point of principle. And one of the most prominent figures in British society listens to the whole thing with headphones on, for a Russian translation.

“This is a wholly Russian dispute,” say his lawyers. “Their quarrel has no relevant connection with England.” So why is it being heard here? The obvious answer is that Berezovsky can’t go back to Russia, where he faces fraud and corruption charges and would fear for his life. There have reportedly been at least two assassination attempts since Berezovsky fled Russia in 2000, before claiming political asylum in this country. He has made himself comfortable, with a home at Wentworth Park in Surrey and a taste for Mayfair restaurants.

There is also the Hermès moment, one of the many ways in which this story resembles an episode of Spooks. Berezovsky was out shopping in Sloane Street four years ago when he happened to see his rival in the luxury goods store. Seizing the moment, he apparently served a writ on Abramovich with the words, “I have a present for you.” Abramovich agreed to fight the case here because of that encounter and “in the absence of any practicable alternative forum”.

This is exactly the kind of lucrative international dispute the Government hoped to attract when it built the £300 million Rolls Building, off Fetter Lane. The legal fees on the first day alone were said to be worth £1million, which can’t be bad for the economy.

It’s just a shame that Court 26 is so cramped it would embarrass a local magistrate. Reporters who have to stand for hours cast jealous looks at mysterious Russians in jeans and leather jackets, who have nabbed the press seats but spend all day playing games on their phones. Both camps copy their boss – Berezovsky arrived in an armoured black Maybach limo and his followers are a bit flash, while the opposition supporters are indistinguishable from their lawyers.

Even when he’s being attacked, Abramovich sits there impassive. He is happy to leave the attack to Jonathan Sumption QC, an elegant but incisive former Oxford don, who paces back and forth as he questions the witness. His wild white hair suggests the unexpected, and, indeed, he writes medieval history books on the side.

A decade ago, Sumption described his income as “puny” compared with that of, say, footballers. Then it was £1.6 million a year. Now it must be considerably more, although this is his last commercial case before he trades wealth for status and becomes a judge in the Supreme Court. There are even a couple of Sumption groupies, law students who beg to have their photograph taken with him.

He declines, politely, but is less polite to Berezovsky, accusing him three times on the same day of lying on oath: “I put it to you that you have just made that up ...” Faced with evidence that what he’s saying in court is not what he said in his witness statements, Berezovsky frowns: “It is not correct.”

The story they are arguing over began when the two oligarchs first met, in 1994, on a cruise in the Caribbean organised by a fellow Russian. Roman Abramovich was a 28 year-old who’d been a soldier and an importer of toy ducks, but was now doing well in the oil industry. His lawyer wrong-footed the opposition on the first day of this case by admitting that his wealth had been built up at a time when Russia was in chaos: “There was no rule of law. Police were corrupt. The courts were unpredictable at best – at worst open to manipulation by major political or economic interest groups. Nobody could go into business without access to political power.”

Meanwhile Berezovsky had also profited from the fall of Communism, turning himself from a maths professor into the owner of the largest car dealership in Russia. When they met, he was in the process of buying up newspapers and broadcasters with a view to supporting the re-election of his friend Boris Yeltsin. A member of the sport-loving president’s exclusive tennis club, he was also a close friend of Yeltsin’s daughter Tatiana and her husband.

Berezovsky told the court that Abramovich was “not smart”– but admitted he had still been impressed by the young man. “He is a genius in one respect: if he wants to convince someone, then you really believe in him and trust him.”

They discussed a plan to merge and privatise an oil-drilling company and a refinery in Siberia – and this is where their stories differ wildly. Berezovsky says it was agreed that he and his friend Arkady Patarkatsishvili – the richest man in Georgia – would get a quarter of the shares of the new business, which became known as Sibneft, and Abramovich the rest. Abramovich says there was no such agreement, and his opponent never had any shares at all.

He does admit to paying Berezovsky £800 million, but says this was in return for the older man acting as a political godfather, “indispensable to the construction of any major business”. The Russian term for it – krysha – translates literally as “roof”. Berezovsky says the word puts him in a bad light – and he once sued the magazine Forbes for suggesting he was a “corrupt gangster and murderer” – but Abramovich’s lawyers say he provided “not mob violence but political influence and patronage”.

The godfather persuaded President Yeltsin to hold an auction for rights in the two oil companies, then arranged to be the only bidder. “He then sold the benefit of that arrangement to Abramovich for money, which he used to fund [his media empire] and pay for a palace on the Côte d’Azur and other emblems of an exuberant lifestyle,” says the Abramovich team. “This may fairly be described as corrupt, but it has nothing to do with criminal violence.”

This is a startling admission – that a substantial part of their client’s wealth was achieved as a result of corruption. It also appears to put him in conflict with the Premier League’s rule that anyone who owns a football club should be a “fit and proper” person. In any case, Abramovich eventually sold his interests in Sibneft for £7.4 billion. Berezovsky has spent years trying to gain some of that, but in these early exchanges the defence seems to have the upper hand.

As another day comes to an end, Sumption puts the direct question: “The truth is, you never reached any agreement, did you?” And Berezovsky snaps back: “Everything. Completely. Wrong.”

The calm voice of Mrs Justice Gloster suggests they stop there for now. Out in the corridor, Roman Abramovich has torn off his tie. He doesn’t have to play by someone else’s rules any more.

The truth is, though, that choosing to settle the argument here opens up a rare portal for the rest of us into Roman Britain. For the next three months, any member of the public can go into Court 26, with no more security than might be found at an airport, and sit within touching distance of a man who spends his life out of reach. It’s no wonder that, as he walks back to his car with its tinted glass, Abramovich looks relieved.

What's Behind Congress Taking on China's Currency Policy - The Atlantic

What's Behind Congress Taking on China's Currency Policy - The Atlantic