For decades, the big oil companies and the farm lobby have been fighting about ethanol, with the farmers pushing to produce more of it and the refiners arguing it was a boondoggle that would do little to solve the country’s energy problems.
So why are technicians for BP, the giant oil company, now working at an experimental ethanol plant in this old Louisiana oil town, helping to make it more efficient?
The erstwhile enemies, it turns out, are gradually learning to get along, as refiners increasingly see a need to get involved in ethanol production. Ethanol, made chiefly from corn, now represents about 9 percent of the country’s market for liquid fuels. And the percentage is growing year after year because of federal mandates. With the nation’s thirst for gasoline, and the ethanol that is blended into it, expected to revive when the economy does, the oil companies want to be in a position to take full advantage.
The interest expressed by big oil companies is coming in the nick of time for small companies that desperately need capital and cannot find it these days in the private markets. Take the case of Verenium Corporation, a small company based in Cambridge, Mass., that here in Jennings is testing new forms of biofuels in alliance with BP. Instead of ethanol made from food crops, the partners are devising a version from grasses in the sugar cane family.
The experiments here are preparation for building a second, $250 million plant in Florida with the capacity to produce 36 million gallons a year of new biofuels — the first commercial plant of its type built with oil company money and expertise. Verenium scientists have already developed a secret sauce of enzymes and microbes that ferment and distill biomass into ethanol. Now BP is contributing technical expertise aimed at getting the temperatures and pressures in the vats just right.
Commercial success is not assured, of course. But the fact that a major oil company has even made an alliance to go commercial with Verenium is considered a breakthrough by many ethanol executives.
“Any time you get Big Oil into the game, that changes the paradigm because nobody can go large scale chemical engineering like Big Oil,” said Brent Erickson, an executive vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group.
Only two years ago, BP had only a minuscule investment in biofuels. But since then the company has committed $1.5 billion to various projects. Along with its work with Verenium, it entered a partnership with a Brazilian concern last year to produce ethanol from sugar cane.
Lessons learned in Louisiana may eventually help convert Brazilian cane into more advanced biofuels, researchers say, producing a potentially vast new reserve for BP.
BP also speaks with optimism about a partnership with DuPont to test production of biobutanol, an advanced liquid alcohol fuel that is made from the same feed stocks as advanced ethanols and is compatible with existing pipelines and car engines. Executives say they hope to begin making the fuel in large amounts by 2013.
“We can see biofuels as being a really big potential reservoir,” said Phil New, president of the company’s BP Biofuels unit. “For an energy firm to get into sugar cane farming is a pretty big move.”
Oil companies are still skeptical about conventional ethanol, especially the type made from corn, which they say corrodes pipelines and is inefficient.
The plant here is just one sign that the big oil companies are now at least grudgingly accepting biofuels — particularly those made from wastes and nonfood sources, which do not bear corn ethanol’s stigma of raising food prices.
The big change came in the 2007 energy law enacted by Congress that set ambitious mandates for refineries to blend increasing amounts of biofuels over the years. By 2022 they will be obliged to blend 36 billion gallons of biofuels, or more than three times current levels.
“If the government is going to make a market happen, we needed to be able to participate commercially in that market,” Mr. New said.
The oil companies also say that as crude oil becomes ever more difficult and expensive to find, biofuels can bolster their reserves.
“There will be a need for all these fuels,” said Graeme Sweeney, executive vice president for future fuels and carbon dioxide at Royal Dutch Shell. He predicted that the 1 percent of the world’s transportation fuels that are biofuels today “could easily be 10 percent in the next decade or so.”
Shell was the first of the big oil companies to venture significantly into the new biofuels, getting its toes wet in 2002 by providing money to a Canadian company called Iogen Corporation to research making ethanol from plant waste. Shell would not discuss how much money it is now investing in biofuels, but said it had quadrupled biofuel research spending since 2007.
Shell has also formed partnerships with a variety of small companies at work on improving enzymes that break down various plants and waste materials for ethanol, making fuels from algae and even biogasoline from sugary liquids derived from plant materials. Chevron has formed a joint venture with Weyerhaeuser to develop biofuels from wood waste.
And Valero Energy Corporation, the country’s largest petroleum refiner, has snapped up seven corn ethanol plants from VeraSun Energy in recent months since VeraSun filed for bankruptcy protection last fall. Valero has suggested that it could transform the plants for newer blends of ethanol.
Each initiative is still small compared with the companies’ multibillion-dollar oil exploration and refining budgets, prompting skeptics to say they are more interested in improving their image than producing clean fuels.
“If we depend too heavily on the big oil companies to drive the biofuel agenda,” warned Jeff Broin, chief executive of the ethanol producer Poet, “we’ll be using large volumes of oil for many, many years to come.”
But taken together, the research projects and deals are a sharp contrast to the scaled-back oil company projects in other alternative energy sources like hydrogen and solar. And the support is welcome for small entrepreneurial companies that are long on new technologies and short on capital.
“With any start-up company, people say ‘Wow, but is it going to work?’ ” said Randy Cortright, founder and chief technical officer of Virent Energy Systems. His company wants to make a biogasoline from plant sugars that is chemically similar to gasoline produced by conventional petroleum refineries.
He said Shell’s investment raised his company’s credibility with lenders “by giving their vote of confidence in this technology, spending resources and providing their own people for development.” Shell also will eventually distribute the product, he said, “and they already have the infrastructure for taking the product to the fuel pump so the consumer can use it.”
Arnold R. Klann, chief executive of BlueFire Ethanol, a company that converts municipal waste into ethanol and is seeking financing to build plants, said lenders wanted to know that an ethanol company had credible long-term customers to generate revenues. He said he had draft contracts with two major oil companies he could not yet identify that wanted to invest in his operations and use his fuels.
“There is tremendous interest by the oil companies to invest in these first-of-a-kind projects,” Mr. Klann said. “Where they were initially investing very tentatively in new technology development, in the last year they have begun to finally invest in companies that are building commercial production facilities.”
In Jennings, BP technicians advise Verenium technicians on what types of metals to use to line their pipes, what kind of valves will last longest and how to position blades in fermenting tanks to best mix chemicals and feed stocks. It is all an effort to reduce the price of the product to quickly compete with conventional ethanol and perhaps, eventually, with gasoline.
“We are the chef, and they are more like the restaurant manager,” said Mark G. Eichenseer, Verenium’s vice president for operations. “We have the recipes, and they have the experience and know-how to select the pots and pans.”
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
In Japan, Secure Jobs Have a Cost
When the sheet metal orders coming into his small business, High Metal, fell by half last October, it never occurred to MInstead, he set about brainstorming new projects to occupy them. An indoor vegetable garden? A handicrafts workshop?
Because of government subsidies, Mr. Taruki in the last three months installed rows of parsley, watercress and other plants, using factory space that has been empty since the company disposed of unused machinery. High Metal’s staff tend the sprouts religiously, topping up the water supply, adding fertilizer and adjusting the fluorescent lights.
When sales at the machinery maker Shinano Kogyo in central Japan plunged some 70 percent late last year, the company started dispatching its idle workers to sweep the streets and pick up trash in the wider community, while remaining on the payroll.
According to statistics released Wednesday, the Japanese economy suffered its worst contraction since 1955 in the first quarter, declining 15.2 percent on an annualized basis. But a far smaller portion of workers have lost their jobs in Japan than in either the United States or the European Union. (Japan’s unemployment rate in April was 4.8 percent, compared with 8.9 percent in the United States and Europe.)
Analysts say this is because lifetime employment is alive and well in Japan, with the state playing a big role in keeping it so.
“Job tenure in Japan remains remarkably long,” said Peter Matanle, an expert on Japanese employment at the University of Sheffield in Britain. “Companies get rid of the buffers first. They’ll get rid of temporary workers, reduce overtime, reduce bonuses. They would squeeze their suppliers. They would do anything before considering cutting regular workers.”
But Japan’s obsession with keeping workers employed — even those who are not needed — comes at a cost.
Companies slash wages, which reduces consumer spending. Businesses become more reluctant to take on new recruits, shutting young people out of the labor force. And productivity plummets, hurting Japan’s competitiveness in an increasingly aggressive international market.
“By helping to maintain excess employment, you face the risk of keeping alive businesses that are no longer competitive, and perhaps whose productive era is over,” said Hisashi Yamada, an economist at the Japan Research Institute, a private research group in Tokyo. “This could hurt employment in the long run. What you need is more structural change.”
The lifetime employment system, cemented in Japan’s postwar economic boom, bound dutiful workers and paternalistic employers together, producing a mutual loyalty (and labor harmony) rarely seen in the West.
By law, employers can cut workers’ hours but must pay at least 60 percent of their hourly wages during that time. The government has budgeted 60 billion yen, or about $624 million, this year to reimburse companies for half of those payments. In March, about 48,000 companies sought subsidies for 2.38 million employees, government figures show.
Even large exporters, like Nissan Motor and NEC Electronics, have used the subsidies to keep workers employed despite shorter factory hours.
In a recent survey by the Nikkei financial daily, zero percent of large business owners said they had plans to lay off permanent staff members, compared with 39 percent in South Korea. Experts say that without subsidies, Japan’s unemployment rate would be as much as 2 percentage points higher.
Since Japanese workers are hard to lay off, companies have turned to temporary workers, who receive lower pay and fewer benefits, and can be cut more easily. Such workers now make up a third of Japan’s work force.
But keeping all those permanent staff members occupied is its own challenge.
Mr. Taruki’s factory has been abuzz with activity over the vegetable garden. Using another government subsidy, Mr. Taruki spent 5 million yen to start a handicrafts workshop, installing a laser etching machine in a tiny room that had housed employee lockers. There, an employee practiced etching patterns onto lacquerware boards, small sheets of glass and other materials.
The company wants to make key chains and other trinkets, and is exploring ways to make ornaments for Buddhist altars.
“Even if the economy starts recovering, I’m doubtful whether we’ll ever bounce back entirely,” said Mr. Taruki, whose grandfather started the factory in Osaka decades ago. “So I need to start filling in what we’ve lost. It’s the responsibility of companies to protect jobs, to grow them.”
But some analysts wonder whether the recession will be so bad that Japanese companies will have to eventually start cutting regular workers.
Labor leaders say cases are increasing in which employees are subjected to such humiliating wage or hour cuts, or demotions, that they are driven to quit.
Some analysts say a cold-eyed look at bloated payrolls is just what Japanese companies need.
“Companies have hardly shed workers so far in this episode,” Carl B. Weinberg, who runs the economics analysis firm High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients this month. “Massive layoffs are imminent, but they won’t come soon enough.”
asaaki Taruki to lay off his workers
Because of government subsidies, Mr. Taruki in the last three months installed rows of parsley, watercress and other plants, using factory space that has been empty since the company disposed of unused machinery. High Metal’s staff tend the sprouts religiously, topping up the water supply, adding fertilizer and adjusting the fluorescent lights.
When sales at the machinery maker Shinano Kogyo in central Japan plunged some 70 percent late last year, the company started dispatching its idle workers to sweep the streets and pick up trash in the wider community, while remaining on the payroll.
According to statistics released Wednesday, the Japanese economy suffered its worst contraction since 1955 in the first quarter, declining 15.2 percent on an annualized basis. But a far smaller portion of workers have lost their jobs in Japan than in either the United States or the European Union. (Japan’s unemployment rate in April was 4.8 percent, compared with 8.9 percent in the United States and Europe.)
Analysts say this is because lifetime employment is alive and well in Japan, with the state playing a big role in keeping it so.
“Job tenure in Japan remains remarkably long,” said Peter Matanle, an expert on Japanese employment at the University of Sheffield in Britain. “Companies get rid of the buffers first. They’ll get rid of temporary workers, reduce overtime, reduce bonuses. They would squeeze their suppliers. They would do anything before considering cutting regular workers.”
But Japan’s obsession with keeping workers employed — even those who are not needed — comes at a cost.
Companies slash wages, which reduces consumer spending. Businesses become more reluctant to take on new recruits, shutting young people out of the labor force. And productivity plummets, hurting Japan’s competitiveness in an increasingly aggressive international market.
“By helping to maintain excess employment, you face the risk of keeping alive businesses that are no longer competitive, and perhaps whose productive era is over,” said Hisashi Yamada, an economist at the Japan Research Institute, a private research group in Tokyo. “This could hurt employment in the long run. What you need is more structural change.”
The lifetime employment system, cemented in Japan’s postwar economic boom, bound dutiful workers and paternalistic employers together, producing a mutual loyalty (and labor harmony) rarely seen in the West.
By law, employers can cut workers’ hours but must pay at least 60 percent of their hourly wages during that time. The government has budgeted 60 billion yen, or about $624 million, this year to reimburse companies for half of those payments. In March, about 48,000 companies sought subsidies for 2.38 million employees, government figures show.
Even large exporters, like Nissan Motor and NEC Electronics, have used the subsidies to keep workers employed despite shorter factory hours.
In a recent survey by the Nikkei financial daily, zero percent of large business owners said they had plans to lay off permanent staff members, compared with 39 percent in South Korea. Experts say that without subsidies, Japan’s unemployment rate would be as much as 2 percentage points higher.
Since Japanese workers are hard to lay off, companies have turned to temporary workers, who receive lower pay and fewer benefits, and can be cut more easily. Such workers now make up a third of Japan’s work force.
But keeping all those permanent staff members occupied is its own challenge.
Mr. Taruki’s factory has been abuzz with activity over the vegetable garden. Using another government subsidy, Mr. Taruki spent 5 million yen to start a handicrafts workshop, installing a laser etching machine in a tiny room that had housed employee lockers. There, an employee practiced etching patterns onto lacquerware boards, small sheets of glass and other materials.
The company wants to make key chains and other trinkets, and is exploring ways to make ornaments for Buddhist altars.
“Even if the economy starts recovering, I’m doubtful whether we’ll ever bounce back entirely,” said Mr. Taruki, whose grandfather started the factory in Osaka decades ago. “So I need to start filling in what we’ve lost. It’s the responsibility of companies to protect jobs, to grow them.”
But some analysts wonder whether the recession will be so bad that Japanese companies will have to eventually start cutting regular workers.
Labor leaders say cases are increasing in which employees are subjected to such humiliating wage or hour cuts, or demotions, that they are driven to quit.
Some analysts say a cold-eyed look at bloated payrolls is just what Japanese companies need.
“Companies have hardly shed workers so far in this episode,” Carl B. Weinberg, who runs the economics analysis firm High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients this month. “Massive layoffs are imminent, but they won’t come soon enough.”
asaaki Taruki to lay off his workers
To Get a Business Loan, Know How the Bank Thinks
To hear some small-business owners talk, getting a loan remains all but impossible. And yet, many bankers claim that their small-business loan volume is up significantly. So, is the small-business credit crisis over or not?
At first blush, the evidence seems contradictory. On one hand, many national banks have drastically cut back small-business lending. In addition, Advanta, a major issuer of small-business credit cards, declared on May 12 that it was closing customer accounts to new charges.
On the other hand, the Federal Reserve’s April survey of lending practices showed credit conditions have loosened. The Small Business Administration says the weekly volume of loans to small businesses is up more than 25 percent since March. And community banks, those smallish, old-fashioned institutions that make up the vast majority of the country’s 8,300 banks, say that they are ready to take back customers from the national lenders.
Much of the confusion has its roots in contrasting banking strategies. Big national banks are much more likely to have been drawn into the morass of securitized loans, credit-default swaps and the like, which has forced them to preserve capital by curtailing lending.
The smaller banks, meanwhile, have traditionally made their livings off of loans that they carry on their own balance sheets to individuals and small businesses. For them, despite the economic crisis, the current situation is more or less business as usual.
Indeed, a May survey of 1,500 small businesses by Barlow Research Associates found that companies that applied to small banks for loans in the past year were three times as likely to get credit as those who applied to large banks.
Nick Sarillo, owner of two Chicago-area pizza restaurants called Nick’s Pizza & Pub, says he recently found himself on the wrong side of that divide when he sought to borrow $2.3 million to open a third location.
In late 2007, he was engaged in the loan review process with LaSalle Bank — historically a popular regional lender for Chicago-area small businesses — when LaSalle was acquired by Bank of America, the financial giant.
Bank of America told Mr. Sarillo it wanted 20 percent down, twice what LaSalle had been requesting. Then, he said, after two months of slow sales last year at his restaurant in Elgin, Bank of America doubled the required down-payment again, forcing him to postpone the deal.
Now, he said, he is shifting his business to the First Community Bank in Elgin. A spokeswoman for Bank of America said the bank does not comment on individual customers. But she said, “We continue to develop small business relationships and are committed to the small business customer and space.”
Bankers say that some of the confusion in the marketplace has been caused by ill-founded complaints by small-business owners. Consider that most small companies are not looking for loans: the Barlow survey found that 70 percent of small businesses had not applied for any credit in the past year. That, said Bob Seiwert, head of the American Banker Association’s Center for Commercial Lending and Business Banking, is because fewer businesses see opportunities to grow in a down economy — and the businesses that do come looking for loans tend to be financially vulnerable and thus most likely to be turned down for sound banking reasons.
“The fact is, a lot of borrowers just aren’t creditworthy,” said Sherrill Stockton, senior vice president of Sonoma Bank, which is part of Sterling Savings Bank in Spokane, Wash. “But it’s human nature, if you get turned down, to go around saying that there are no loans available.”
Bankers say that small-business owners looking for a loan should start by knowing which business measures — debt-to-equity ratio, for example, or net margins — lenders focus on when evaluating loan applications in their industry. Bankers say would-be borrowers should demonstrate exactly how they plan to use the money and why the plan makes sense.
This month, for instance, Chandan Patel borrowed $3.7 million from Sonoma Bank to buy her second hotel property, a Comfort Suites hotel in Castro Valley, Calif. She said she had demonstrated to her banker that she would be able to increase the property’s average daily rate, a critical yardstick in the hotel industry, by raising room prices while improving customer service and adding amenities. It helped that she was able to point to a track record of maintaining an unusually high daily rate at her other property.
Both bankers and borrowers say the human side of lending requires as much attention as the technical aspects. Small-business owners should cultivate a relationship with a local banker — ideally, long before they need a loan — and treat that relationship as a long-term partnership.
Bob Davis, chief executive of Virtual Driver Interactive, which makes driving simulators, benefited from a personal banking relationship when he was looking to buy his California business from his former employer late last year in the early days of the financial crisis. For tax reasons, the deal had to happen in just 90 days, or it would not happen at all. And because the business had been part of a larger operation, its financial performance was difficult to demonstrate. “It wasn’t an easy sell,” Mr. Davis said.
He happened to meet Greg Patton, the chief executive of Sierra Vista Bank in Folsom, Calif., at a local golf course, and Mr. Patton invited him to spend a couple of hours talking about the business. “No numbers, no spreadsheets, let’s just talk,” Mr. Patton told him.
After the talk, Mr. Patton became an advocate for the deal, Mr. Davis said. He asked for a set of financials and a two-year projection for the business. More important, though, he coached Mr. Davis through the loan review process. More than once during the process, issues came up that could have scuttled the deal. Each time, Mr. Davis says, huddled with his bankers and found a solution. The $900,000 loan went through in February, just ahead of the deadline.
Still, business loan applicants should expect to be closely scrutinized, especially by smaller community banks that have generally eschewed the formula-based lending practices many national banks adopted in recent years.
But Ranjit Kushwaha, who recently borrowed in the high six figures to buy the building in Monterey, Calif., that houses his Indian Summer Restaurant, was glad to see his bank being careful. “They made me jump through all kinds of hoops,” he said. “They’re very cautious — but that’s good. Otherwise, we’d all end up with the same problems again.”
At first blush, the evidence seems contradictory. On one hand, many national banks have drastically cut back small-business lending. In addition, Advanta, a major issuer of small-business credit cards, declared on May 12 that it was closing customer accounts to new charges.
On the other hand, the Federal Reserve’s April survey of lending practices showed credit conditions have loosened. The Small Business Administration says the weekly volume of loans to small businesses is up more than 25 percent since March. And community banks, those smallish, old-fashioned institutions that make up the vast majority of the country’s 8,300 banks, say that they are ready to take back customers from the national lenders.
Much of the confusion has its roots in contrasting banking strategies. Big national banks are much more likely to have been drawn into the morass of securitized loans, credit-default swaps and the like, which has forced them to preserve capital by curtailing lending.
The smaller banks, meanwhile, have traditionally made their livings off of loans that they carry on their own balance sheets to individuals and small businesses. For them, despite the economic crisis, the current situation is more or less business as usual.
Indeed, a May survey of 1,500 small businesses by Barlow Research Associates found that companies that applied to small banks for loans in the past year were three times as likely to get credit as those who applied to large banks.
Nick Sarillo, owner of two Chicago-area pizza restaurants called Nick’s Pizza & Pub, says he recently found himself on the wrong side of that divide when he sought to borrow $2.3 million to open a third location.
In late 2007, he was engaged in the loan review process with LaSalle Bank — historically a popular regional lender for Chicago-area small businesses — when LaSalle was acquired by Bank of America, the financial giant.
Bank of America told Mr. Sarillo it wanted 20 percent down, twice what LaSalle had been requesting. Then, he said, after two months of slow sales last year at his restaurant in Elgin, Bank of America doubled the required down-payment again, forcing him to postpone the deal.
Now, he said, he is shifting his business to the First Community Bank in Elgin. A spokeswoman for Bank of America said the bank does not comment on individual customers. But she said, “We continue to develop small business relationships and are committed to the small business customer and space.”
Bankers say that some of the confusion in the marketplace has been caused by ill-founded complaints by small-business owners. Consider that most small companies are not looking for loans: the Barlow survey found that 70 percent of small businesses had not applied for any credit in the past year. That, said Bob Seiwert, head of the American Banker Association’s Center for Commercial Lending and Business Banking, is because fewer businesses see opportunities to grow in a down economy — and the businesses that do come looking for loans tend to be financially vulnerable and thus most likely to be turned down for sound banking reasons.
“The fact is, a lot of borrowers just aren’t creditworthy,” said Sherrill Stockton, senior vice president of Sonoma Bank, which is part of Sterling Savings Bank in Spokane, Wash. “But it’s human nature, if you get turned down, to go around saying that there are no loans available.”
Bankers say that small-business owners looking for a loan should start by knowing which business measures — debt-to-equity ratio, for example, or net margins — lenders focus on when evaluating loan applications in their industry. Bankers say would-be borrowers should demonstrate exactly how they plan to use the money and why the plan makes sense.
This month, for instance, Chandan Patel borrowed $3.7 million from Sonoma Bank to buy her second hotel property, a Comfort Suites hotel in Castro Valley, Calif. She said she had demonstrated to her banker that she would be able to increase the property’s average daily rate, a critical yardstick in the hotel industry, by raising room prices while improving customer service and adding amenities. It helped that she was able to point to a track record of maintaining an unusually high daily rate at her other property.
Both bankers and borrowers say the human side of lending requires as much attention as the technical aspects. Small-business owners should cultivate a relationship with a local banker — ideally, long before they need a loan — and treat that relationship as a long-term partnership.
Bob Davis, chief executive of Virtual Driver Interactive, which makes driving simulators, benefited from a personal banking relationship when he was looking to buy his California business from his former employer late last year in the early days of the financial crisis. For tax reasons, the deal had to happen in just 90 days, or it would not happen at all. And because the business had been part of a larger operation, its financial performance was difficult to demonstrate. “It wasn’t an easy sell,” Mr. Davis said.
He happened to meet Greg Patton, the chief executive of Sierra Vista Bank in Folsom, Calif., at a local golf course, and Mr. Patton invited him to spend a couple of hours talking about the business. “No numbers, no spreadsheets, let’s just talk,” Mr. Patton told him.
After the talk, Mr. Patton became an advocate for the deal, Mr. Davis said. He asked for a set of financials and a two-year projection for the business. More important, though, he coached Mr. Davis through the loan review process. More than once during the process, issues came up that could have scuttled the deal. Each time, Mr. Davis says, huddled with his bankers and found a solution. The $900,000 loan went through in February, just ahead of the deadline.
Still, business loan applicants should expect to be closely scrutinized, especially by smaller community banks that have generally eschewed the formula-based lending practices many national banks adopted in recent years.
But Ranjit Kushwaha, who recently borrowed in the high six figures to buy the building in Monterey, Calif., that houses his Indian Summer Restaurant, was glad to see his bank being careful. “They made me jump through all kinds of hoops,” he said. “They’re very cautious — but that’s good. Otherwise, we’d all end up with the same problems again.”
Baby P sentences to be reviewed by attorney general
The attorney general is to ask the court of appeal to increase the sentences handed down in the Baby Peter case after several complaints from child welfare organisations and the public that they were disappointingly short.
Lady Scotland has intervened in the case, using powers which allow her to ask the court of appeal to look again at "unduly lenient" sentences as long as she acts within 28 days of them being passed.
The mother of Baby P, or Peter, as he can now be named, was given an indeterminate sentence of "imprisonment for public protection" with a minimum term, or tariff, of five years to be served before she can be considered for release. However, she will be able to apply for parole in just over three years because she had already spent 644 days on remand awaiting trial.
Jason Owen, the mother's lodger, was also given an indeterminate sentence for public protection with a minimum tariff of at least three years. He had already spent 289 days in custody when the sentences were handed down by the Old Bailey judge last Friday and so could, in theory, be out in just over two years. The mother's boyfriend was given 12 years for Peter's death and ordered to serve a life sentence for the rape of a two-year-old girl, serving a minimum of 10 years.
Peter was 17 months old when he was found dead in a blood-spattered cot in August 2007 having suffered a broken back and fractured ribs. He had more than 50 injuries despite having been on the at-risk register and visited 60 times in eight months by social workers, doctors and police. Neither the mother or her boyfriend can be named for legal reasons.
Passing sentence, the Old Bailey judge, Judge Stephen Kramer QC, stressed that the minimum terms he had specified did not mean that they would be automatically released at that point: "The making of a direction will be for the parole board to determine when or if you are deemed no longer to be a risk to the public and in particular to children."
But the minimum terms provoked confusion and anger with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in particular saying they were disappointed that the minimum tariffs were so low that two of those found guilty could be freed within a few short years: "It raises the question of how bad the abuse has to be before offenders get a longer minimum time in prison," asked the NSPCC's chief executive, Andrew Flanagan.
He said two of Peter's abusers could walk free at a time when their victim should be a schoolboy with a new world in front of him: "These three caused or allowed the torture and death of a defenceless baby. They may be behind bars now but when released from prison they must be put under the most stringent monitoring so they can never harm another individual."
In setting the minimum tariff of five years in the case of the mother, Judge Kramer said the maximum sentence for the offence of causing or allowing the death of a child was 14 years. He would have given her a 12-year sentence for that offence but since she had pleaded guilty he would have reduced it to 10 years, of which she would have spent half of it in custody. So he set her minimum tariff for the indefinite sentence at five years, less the 644 days she had already spent in custody awaiting trial.
For the lodger, Jason Owen, the judge said he had set a minimum term of three years because if an indefinite sentence had not been appropriate he would have given him a fixed term sentence of six years, of which he would spent half in prison.
The attorney general's office said they had called for the papers from the case since Baroness Scotland has the power to refer certain sentences to the court of appeal for review if she thought the sentence was unduly lenient.
"Within this power, the attorney general can look at minimum tariffs imposed on life and indeterminate sentence prisoners. However, it is important to understand that such prisoners are not released automatically after the minimum term has been served – they are only released when the independent parole board is satisfied that their continued detention is no longer necessary to protect the public."
There has been an explosion in the use of indefinite sentences since their introduction in 2005 with more than 5,000 prisoners now without a definite release date. Concern up until now has centred on more than 1,000 prisoners who were given a very short tariff but have remained in prison long after because of the lack of courses inside to address their offending. Fewer than 50 prisoners have been released after their minimum tariff date.
Lady Scotland has intervened in the case, using powers which allow her to ask the court of appeal to look again at "unduly lenient" sentences as long as she acts within 28 days of them being passed.
The mother of Baby P, or Peter, as he can now be named, was given an indeterminate sentence of "imprisonment for public protection" with a minimum term, or tariff, of five years to be served before she can be considered for release. However, she will be able to apply for parole in just over three years because she had already spent 644 days on remand awaiting trial.
Jason Owen, the mother's lodger, was also given an indeterminate sentence for public protection with a minimum tariff of at least three years. He had already spent 289 days in custody when the sentences were handed down by the Old Bailey judge last Friday and so could, in theory, be out in just over two years. The mother's boyfriend was given 12 years for Peter's death and ordered to serve a life sentence for the rape of a two-year-old girl, serving a minimum of 10 years.
Peter was 17 months old when he was found dead in a blood-spattered cot in August 2007 having suffered a broken back and fractured ribs. He had more than 50 injuries despite having been on the at-risk register and visited 60 times in eight months by social workers, doctors and police. Neither the mother or her boyfriend can be named for legal reasons.
Passing sentence, the Old Bailey judge, Judge Stephen Kramer QC, stressed that the minimum terms he had specified did not mean that they would be automatically released at that point: "The making of a direction will be for the parole board to determine when or if you are deemed no longer to be a risk to the public and in particular to children."
But the minimum terms provoked confusion and anger with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in particular saying they were disappointed that the minimum tariffs were so low that two of those found guilty could be freed within a few short years: "It raises the question of how bad the abuse has to be before offenders get a longer minimum time in prison," asked the NSPCC's chief executive, Andrew Flanagan.
He said two of Peter's abusers could walk free at a time when their victim should be a schoolboy with a new world in front of him: "These three caused or allowed the torture and death of a defenceless baby. They may be behind bars now but when released from prison they must be put under the most stringent monitoring so they can never harm another individual."
In setting the minimum tariff of five years in the case of the mother, Judge Kramer said the maximum sentence for the offence of causing or allowing the death of a child was 14 years. He would have given her a 12-year sentence for that offence but since she had pleaded guilty he would have reduced it to 10 years, of which she would have spent half of it in custody. So he set her minimum tariff for the indefinite sentence at five years, less the 644 days she had already spent in custody awaiting trial.
For the lodger, Jason Owen, the judge said he had set a minimum term of three years because if an indefinite sentence had not been appropriate he would have given him a fixed term sentence of six years, of which he would spent half in prison.
The attorney general's office said they had called for the papers from the case since Baroness Scotland has the power to refer certain sentences to the court of appeal for review if she thought the sentence was unduly lenient.
"Within this power, the attorney general can look at minimum tariffs imposed on life and indeterminate sentence prisoners. However, it is important to understand that such prisoners are not released automatically after the minimum term has been served – they are only released when the independent parole board is satisfied that their continued detention is no longer necessary to protect the public."
There has been an explosion in the use of indefinite sentences since their introduction in 2005 with more than 5,000 prisoners now without a definite release date. Concern up until now has centred on more than 1,000 prisoners who were given a very short tariff but have remained in prison long after because of the lack of courses inside to address their offending. Fewer than 50 prisoners have been released after their minimum tariff date.
John Butterfill claimed £17,000 MPs' expenses for servants' … er, staff quarters
In the beginning there was the viscount's moat. Then, as the expenses saga developed, there was a floating duck island funded by the taxpayer on behalf of a knight of the shire.
And now, just as the nation was beginning to tire of the great 2009 expenses scandal, we have servants' quarters paid for out of the public purse.
Sir John Butterfill, a Conservative grandee hoping to serve out his last year as the MP for Bournemouth West, Dorset, in some style, was last night having to embark on the rather vulgar business of explaining how the taxpayer paid for an extension which housed the gardener and the gardener's wife.
To the horror of the Tory leadership, which believes the expenses claims of grandees are reviving old stereo-types, Butterfill appeared slightly confused as he explained that today's Daily Telegraph had mistakenly claimed that he had servants. "It is a gross misrepresentation of what I said to the young lady at the Telegraph," he told the BBC Newsnight programme as he denied having built servants' quarters from his parliamentary allowance.
"I purchased a house in Woking in derelict condition. I gutted and rewired it. I extended the living room, I extended the kitchen, and made a family room off the kitchen; and I extended it to make a wing for my gardener and his wife."
Then, with a slip of the tongue, he indicated that he did have servants' quarters. "The mistake I made was that, in claiming interest [from the expenses allowance] on the home, I didn't separate from that the value of the servants' … er the staff … wing. I claimed the whole of that and the whole of the council tax related to that.
"I cleared that with the fees office and wasn't told that I didn't need to separate out the part of the house that was being occupied by my gardener and his wife from the whole house. I understand that I should have done that."
Butterfill's claims came to light after the Daily Telegraph noticed that he failed to pay capital gains tax on the sale of his country house for £1.2m in 2005.
He will repay £40,000 to cover the tax, after designating the property to the inland revenue as his main residence but designating it to the Commons authorities as his second home, allowing him to claim allowances.
As for the servants' quarters in Woking, Butterfill will be handing back £20,000.
Together, it will cost him a mere £60,000 to leave Westminster with a clean bill of health at the general election.
And now, just as the nation was beginning to tire of the great 2009 expenses scandal, we have servants' quarters paid for out of the public purse.
Sir John Butterfill, a Conservative grandee hoping to serve out his last year as the MP for Bournemouth West, Dorset, in some style, was last night having to embark on the rather vulgar business of explaining how the taxpayer paid for an extension which housed the gardener and the gardener's wife.
To the horror of the Tory leadership, which believes the expenses claims of grandees are reviving old stereo-types, Butterfill appeared slightly confused as he explained that today's Daily Telegraph had mistakenly claimed that he had servants. "It is a gross misrepresentation of what I said to the young lady at the Telegraph," he told the BBC Newsnight programme as he denied having built servants' quarters from his parliamentary allowance.
"I purchased a house in Woking in derelict condition. I gutted and rewired it. I extended the living room, I extended the kitchen, and made a family room off the kitchen; and I extended it to make a wing for my gardener and his wife."
Then, with a slip of the tongue, he indicated that he did have servants' quarters. "The mistake I made was that, in claiming interest [from the expenses allowance] on the home, I didn't separate from that the value of the servants' … er the staff … wing. I claimed the whole of that and the whole of the council tax related to that.
"I cleared that with the fees office and wasn't told that I didn't need to separate out the part of the house that was being occupied by my gardener and his wife from the whole house. I understand that I should have done that."
Butterfill's claims came to light after the Daily Telegraph noticed that he failed to pay capital gains tax on the sale of his country house for £1.2m in 2005.
He will repay £40,000 to cover the tax, after designating the property to the inland revenue as his main residence but designating it to the Commons authorities as his second home, allowing him to claim allowances.
As for the servants' quarters in Woking, Butterfill will be handing back £20,000.
Together, it will cost him a mere £60,000 to leave Westminster with a clean bill of health at the general election.
DNA 'proves Argentine's incest'
An Argentine man accused of incest fathered seven children with his daughter, officials have said.
DNA tests showed that Armando Lucero, 67, was the father of the children, according to Ricardo Puga of the Mendoza provincial legislature.
The alleged incest with the 35-year-old woman started when she was eight.
Officials are waiting for the results of psychological tests on Mr Lucero, also accused of raping two of his other daughters. He remains in custody.
Mr Lucero faces a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.
His daughter's seven children are aged between two and 19.
They all lived together, with Mr Lucero's second wife and stepmother, AFP news agency reported.
The daughter, who has not been publically named, went to local authorities for help after her father threatened to sexually abuse one of her daughters.
DNA tests showed that Armando Lucero, 67, was the father of the children, according to Ricardo Puga of the Mendoza provincial legislature.
The alleged incest with the 35-year-old woman started when she was eight.
Officials are waiting for the results of psychological tests on Mr Lucero, also accused of raping two of his other daughters. He remains in custody.
Mr Lucero faces a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.
His daughter's seven children are aged between two and 19.
They all lived together, with Mr Lucero's second wife and stepmother, AFP news agency reported.
The daughter, who has not been publically named, went to local authorities for help after her father threatened to sexually abuse one of her daughters.
Taliban blamed for Lahore attack
Pakistan's government has blamed Taliban fighters for a bomb attack in Lahore which killed 23 people and left hundreds more injured.
A group of men shot at police officers before detonating a powerful car bomb, damaging buildings belonging to the police and intelligence agency the ISI.
Rescuers are searching the rubble and warn that the death toll could rise.
Officials said the Taliban carried out the attack in revenge for a military offensive against them in Swat valley.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters: "Enemies of Pakistan who want to destabilise the country are coming here after their defeat in Swat.
"There is a war, and this is a war for our survival."
A group calling itself Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab claimed responsibility for the bombing in a Turkish-language statement posted on jihadist websites, the SITE monitoring group said.
The claim could not be verified and the group's relationship to the Taliban, if any, was unclear.
'Attack on the state'
At least one ISI agent, 12 police officers and one child were reported killed in the attack, at about 1030 local time (0530 GMT).
Local officials have speculated that the military intelligence agency could have been the target.
The ISI's offices were damaged by the bombing, and a police emergency-response building was flattened.
The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones, in Lahore, says it is not clear which organisation the perpetrators were attacking - but it is clear that they were attacking the Pakistani state.
A least two arrests were made, but police officials later told the BBC that those detained appear to have been innocent bystanders.
Meanwhile, the military says it expects the main town in the Swat valley, Mingora, to be cleared of Taliban insurgents within two or three days.
The military said two other areas away from Swat which have also seen heavy fighting - Mohmand and Sultanwas - were now safe enough for residents to return home.
Sustained violence
Lahore, in Punjab province near the Indian border, is known as Pakistan's cultural capital and is far from the Swat valley.
But in March militants laid siege to a police compound in the city, killing eight people, and weeks earlier the Sri Lanka cricket team was attacked there.
The BBC's Shoaib Hasan, in Pakistan, says Lahore is facing a sustained campaign of violence unlike any it has seen before.
He says security officials believe the city is under attack because it is seen as a stable home for Pakistan's Punjab-dominated army.
The army is claiming sweeping victories against Taliban insurgents in the Swat valley, near the Afghan border - saying more than 1,000 militants have been killed in the past month.
Militants had threatened revenge attacks in Pakistan's cities after the military stepped up its operations in the Swat valley.
Global condemnation
After the latest attack, television footage showed rescue workers sifting through the debris, pulling half-conscious police officers from the rubble.
Bulldozers and other heavy lifting equipment have been brought in as many people are feared trapped under the debris.
Officials told reporters a car pulled up near the police headquarters and a group of gunmen got out and opened fire.
When police returned fire, the gunmen's car exploded.
BBC News website readers in the city described hearing a huge explosion.
Zubair Bukhari, who was in his office about 500m away from the blast, said it rocked the entire building.
"Glass windows shattered to pieces and the ceiling came down on the floor," he said.
Another reader, Matthias Gattermeier, said: "I ran out of the building and saw a surreal huge ring of white smoke rise into air."
Politicians from around the world have condemned the attack and offered condolences to Pakistan.
US ambassador Anne Patterson said the attacks "show the lengths extremist elements are willing to go to as they attempt to force their agenda on to a people who only wish to go about their daily lives in peace".
A group of men shot at police officers before detonating a powerful car bomb, damaging buildings belonging to the police and intelligence agency the ISI.
Rescuers are searching the rubble and warn that the death toll could rise.
Officials said the Taliban carried out the attack in revenge for a military offensive against them in Swat valley.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters: "Enemies of Pakistan who want to destabilise the country are coming here after their defeat in Swat.
"There is a war, and this is a war for our survival."
A group calling itself Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab claimed responsibility for the bombing in a Turkish-language statement posted on jihadist websites, the SITE monitoring group said.
The claim could not be verified and the group's relationship to the Taliban, if any, was unclear.
'Attack on the state'
At least one ISI agent, 12 police officers and one child were reported killed in the attack, at about 1030 local time (0530 GMT).
Local officials have speculated that the military intelligence agency could have been the target.
The ISI's offices were damaged by the bombing, and a police emergency-response building was flattened.
The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones, in Lahore, says it is not clear which organisation the perpetrators were attacking - but it is clear that they were attacking the Pakistani state.
A least two arrests were made, but police officials later told the BBC that those detained appear to have been innocent bystanders.
Meanwhile, the military says it expects the main town in the Swat valley, Mingora, to be cleared of Taliban insurgents within two or three days.
The military said two other areas away from Swat which have also seen heavy fighting - Mohmand and Sultanwas - were now safe enough for residents to return home.
Sustained violence
Lahore, in Punjab province near the Indian border, is known as Pakistan's cultural capital and is far from the Swat valley.
But in March militants laid siege to a police compound in the city, killing eight people, and weeks earlier the Sri Lanka cricket team was attacked there.
The BBC's Shoaib Hasan, in Pakistan, says Lahore is facing a sustained campaign of violence unlike any it has seen before.
He says security officials believe the city is under attack because it is seen as a stable home for Pakistan's Punjab-dominated army.
The army is claiming sweeping victories against Taliban insurgents in the Swat valley, near the Afghan border - saying more than 1,000 militants have been killed in the past month.
Militants had threatened revenge attacks in Pakistan's cities after the military stepped up its operations in the Swat valley.
Global condemnation
After the latest attack, television footage showed rescue workers sifting through the debris, pulling half-conscious police officers from the rubble.
Bulldozers and other heavy lifting equipment have been brought in as many people are feared trapped under the debris.
Officials told reporters a car pulled up near the police headquarters and a group of gunmen got out and opened fire.
When police returned fire, the gunmen's car exploded.
BBC News website readers in the city described hearing a huge explosion.
Zubair Bukhari, who was in his office about 500m away from the blast, said it rocked the entire building.
"Glass windows shattered to pieces and the ceiling came down on the floor," he said.
Another reader, Matthias Gattermeier, said: "I ran out of the building and saw a surreal huge ring of white smoke rise into air."
Politicians from around the world have condemned the attack and offered condolences to Pakistan.
US ambassador Anne Patterson said the attacks "show the lengths extremist elements are willing to go to as they attempt to force their agenda on to a people who only wish to go about their daily lives in peace".
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