7ikayat حكايات … الموقع الأول للمسلسلات العربية

Local councils are facing a new frontier

Shoreditch town hall in London and the new headquarters of Suffolk County Council in Ipswich Photograph: Alamy

The traditional role for town halls is undergoing a radical shakeup as local authorities are being forced to contemplate a seismic shift in the way they operate in the wake of massive cuts to their budgets.

Perhaps the most outlandish proposal was voted through by councillors at Conservative-controlled Suffolk county council last week. It is to proceed with plans for a "virtual" council that could outsource all public services to social enterprises, the voluntary sector or private companies.

The aim is to turn the authority from one that provides public services itself, to an "enabling" council, which only commissions them. The council hopes that off-loading services could shave 30% off its £1.1bn budget, as part of the government's drive to reduce the fiscal deficit.

Children's centres in the county will be among the first to be jettisoned, probably to social enterprises, alongside a wave of other potential "early adopter" services, ranging from libraries and parks, to youth clubs and independent living centres. The rest will be divested in three phases from April 2011.

Ultimately, only a few hundred people could remain directly employed by the council, primarily in contract management. At present, the local authority employs around 27,000 people, 15,000 of whom work in education, which is set to be taken away from local authority control as the government converts schools to academies and free schools. Many of the remaining 12,000 public servants could face either redundancy or be transferred to a social enterprise or to the private sector.

Although councils have outsourced chunks of their services before, this is the first time a local authority has considered not directly providing any services at all.

"By changing the way council services are delivered, the county council will be able to reduce costs, reduce its size, cut out waste and bureaucracy and give the people of Suffolk a better say on how they receive services," said the statement put out by the council after the vote last week. "In the future, the council will focus more on commissioning services and supporting other organisations, including the voluntary sector, private sector and community groups, to deliver services."

Suffolk is not the only council examining radical measures to address the scale of the cuts that is imminent. According to Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, cuts estimated to be 25%-30% over five years have prompted a number of authorities to adopt measures that would have been inconceivable before. "What's clearly hugely important in this outbreak of radicalism is the dawning realisation that the light at the end of the tunnel could actually be an oncoming train," he says.

Brighton & Hove city council in East Sussex intends to adopt a similar commissioning model to Suffolk, though it is taking a more nuanced approach. Barnet's "easyCouncil" model in north London would see local authority services run on the no-frills approach of budget airlines, while Lambeth's John Lewis-style approach advocates running services in the south London borough along co-operative lines.

Simon Parker, director at the New Local Government Network thinktank, says: "Some councils are now coming to the conclusion that their role is a democratic, strategic one, determining what's going to be delivered, what the outcomes for citizens should be, but that they shouldn't do the day-to-day heavy lifting themselves." Suffolk's new strategic direction is not only about managing the cuts but also about rushing to embrace the principles of David Cameron's "big society".

"The coalition requires lesser government and a bigger society, and Suffolk county council has responded to this change," Jeremy Pembroke, the leader of Suffolk county council, said last week.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Arts, which has a number of projects looking at local innovation and the government's big society agenda, believes that Suffolk's new approach may be harder to achieve than Pembroke envisions. "My own view is that, politically speaking, what Suffolk is doing is ill-advised," he says. "In setting out this ambitious vision they're almost certainly setting themselves up to underachieve.

"The danger is that they look as though they're doing this in order to prove a point rather than pragmatically seek to deal with the problems they face."

This could make implementing the plans problematic. Barnet council has recently been criticised by independent auditors for failing to develop a proper business plan for its easyCouncil model more than two years after the project began.

For Taylor, success for Suffolk, therefore, depends on getting the contracts right, and that can be costly. Far from saving money, its virtual council blueprint could end up being more expensive. "We want to avoid reaching the conclusion that on its own contracting out saves lots of money or reduces bureaucracy," he says. "Success is all about the quality of the commissioning process. Probably the biggest weakness of contracting out is the quality of commissioning."

This means the authority will have to hire staff with real expertise in commissioning and managing contracts. "Suffolk needs to invest more in bureaucrats to have good quality commissioning," he stresses.

What the council must avoid, says Parker, is just thinking about how they can reduce costs when commissioning contracts. "Then you'd get cheap and nasty services, instead of trying to get costs down through doing services differently."

Suffolk will find it easier to offload some services than others. Waste, libraries, parks, leisure centres, theatres and back office services are the most obvious candidates. Travers points out that outsourcing will work best where the "downsides of failure are not as cataclysmic for the council and its staff".

But he warns: "The nearer you get to children's services and, to a lesser extent, social care for the elderly, the more councils are going to want to ensure that the agencies and charities to which they hand over services are those they completely trust."

"Going too far towards minimalism is not going to be possible," Travers adds. Even if services are outsourced, the council will still be held accountable for delivery. One consequence of Suffolk's approach will be increased local regulation, he argues.

"Councils will have to become micro-regulators of those providers to ensure it functions properly."

For now, council employees are not only fearful for their jobs but also the quality of local services. Polly Smith is a domiciliary carer, one of around 350 of the council's Home First staff, who provide personal care services to people who have just come out of hospital. The service is set to be one of the first the council transfers. "If it goes to the private sector, what happens if the company goes bust? If this service goes, who's going to look after these vulnerable people?," she asks. "I'm very concerned that vulnerable people will not have as good standards of care."

Rachel Robinson is concerned about the Treehouse children's centre that she uses in south-east Ipswich being run by a social enterprise. Three years ago she started attending the centre which offers a range of services for children and parents, including health clinics, play-and-stay groups and information and advice. Robinson, 38, spent 20 years working for a factories in East Anglia, but three years ago, when her daughter Lily-May was born, the lone mother decided she wanted a career. She says that without Treehouse, she wouldn't have known where to start: "The centre was a lifeline to me."

She emphasises what a big step it was for her walking through the door the first time. "As a single parent on benefits it was a bit daunting going to the centre at first, thinking that people might judge you," Robinson explains. But the experience has been a success. Robinson now runs a toddler group and, with the centre's help, has completed a maths course, has a level 2 qualification in working with parents and hopes to study for a level 3 qualification in childcare at the YMCA. "I'd like to become a family support worker," she says.

For service users such as Robinson, the only hope for the safe future of Treehouse is that an amendment to Suffolk council's plans, requiring much more discussion with local communities, will enable her voice to be heard.

The adopted amendment, proposed by Green party councillors, means that the county council will have to embark on "proactive and wide-ranging engagement" across Suffolk to establish whether its proposals find favour with communities before any services are offloaded. Findings from this process will be reported back at the next full council meeting on 2 December.

Although the council says it wants to target children's centre funding towards the most vulnerable, Robinson says the move would be counter-productive for the future of Treehouse children's centre.

"If they change it, that's going to be very unsettling. If Treehouse goes to a charity, it's going to be a new centre."

She also thinks that services would deteriorate. "If they're cutting back now, what's it going to be like if someone else is running the centre?"

Some names have been changed

Frank Skinner's attack on free libraries is a bad joke

The comedian's anti-intellectual values will not help the fight against those who think that free libraries are dispensable

Libraries gave us power? ... Frank Skinner doesn't seem to think so. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Do you believe in a well-funded, free library service? The comedian Frank Skinner doesn't. Writing in the Times last week, he sneered at old black and white images of cloth-capped workers educating themselves for free. He's a working-class lad himself, he reminded readers, and libraries never did anything for him. These dreary hangouts are just a big joke.

I came across his column just after my daughter completed a superb summer reading programme run by Camden Libraries, which was singled out yesterday by the Reading Agency. There is a huge gulf between the reality of libraries using imaginative ideas to get kids reading and the stereotype Skinner's Times column sought to create. Apparently, he is happy to see a world of diminished literacy, full of people whose idea of mental stimulation is to watch him banter on the telly.

Skinner rose to fame in an age when ostensibly adult, university-educated males affected to like nothing better than a game of fantasy football and to thumb through Loaded magazine, while artists were recording anthems for the lads. He is an icon to a certain kind of obsessive anti-snobbish and anti-intellectual stream of thought in British modern culture that has passed, in recent decades, for the wave of the democratic future. It's interesting to see him so clearly express the views of the philistine self-made man down the ages, because, as the coalition shows its true Tory soul in cuts no progressive can defend, we should be looking again at our lazy cultural values.

The attitude that all cultural forms are equal, where watching a quiz show is as cool as reading a book and the Fourth Plinth is more fun than the National Gallery, will not help the fight against arts cuts. After all, from one point of view, Skinner is right. If TV comedy is as culturally worthwhile as poetry, who needs libraries? Only by rediscovering the deeper joy and liberation of serious culture can we find the right words to answer those who think libraries, or free museums, are dispensable

Should universities teach students how to find a job?

The class of 2009 left university knowing they were facing the toughest battle for jobs in a generation. The outlook for the 300,000 young men and women who were leaving university appeared decidedly bleak, with warnings that the number of new graduates out of work would be double that of the previous year, that students who had graduated from English universities would be the most indebted in history, and that up to 40,000 graduates would be still looking for work six months after leaving university.

That was, at least, the dire prediction, but what was the reality? I have spent the last year documenting the post-graduation lives of six students who are among the class of 2009. The six studied at the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University, and agreed to keep audio diaries throughout their year in which they recorded their hopes for the coming year as well as their reaction to the reality.

By the end of the year, the six students were scattered around the world and were far more cynical about the value of a university education than they had been on graduating. Back in the summer of 2009 they had all been reasonably clear about the type of work they were seeking. Jonathan Page, who had graduated in biochemistry, had his mind set on the sales industry. Fiona Knight, who studied neuroscience at the University of Leeds, was contemplating a shift in focus – she had decided to try to get a job in the media. Mohsin Ali, a computer studies graduate from Leeds Metropolitan, wanted to work in online research and development. Caroline Gerrard had ambitions to work in sound design. Samantha Del Core hoped to work in interior design, and Lauren Hughes wanted to be a journalist.

Hughes told me that she had been realistic about what the employment market would be like. "My expectations after leaving university were quite low," she says. "Graduating amongst the hype of the economic crisis meant that I was fully prepared to not be able to get a job easily, especially when my aspirations were to go into journalism, which is such a competitive field."

Others were less hard-headed. In an audio diary recorded soon after graduating, Gerrard predicted that within six months she would be "in a high-powered job in sound design and really loving it". Knight said that she "wanted to do something that is exciting, I am not happy just doing nine to five, I want a way of life not just a job", while Page claimed that he would not expect to start on anything less than £30,000 a year.

Inevitably, reality has taken a wrecking ball to some of these rather optimistic notions. "Initially when I graduated I thought I would be unemployed for a month or two," said Gerrard. "After a month or so I'd tried over 70 companies and I only had positive responses from two. The earliest opportunity was about five months later for a week of unpaid work."

Page and Ali both left the country to seek work in Cyprus and Saudi Arabia, while Del Core found the soul-crushing business of being rejected hard to take. "I've looked for jobs in newspapers, at the job centre, on the internet, and by word of mouth," she says. "I've had several interviews, some of which I got to the second stage, but I never got past that. It has been quite disheartening – some positions I applied for were more the dream job than a means to an end, and I was very upset when I didn't get those. I was in tears."

Having spent time with the graduates, I was struck by how much they seemed to have believed, at least at the start, that they were entitled to a well-paid and fulfilling job simply because they had been to university. "When you look at the people who are going to university," explains Professor Kate Purcell, of Warwick University's Institute for Employment Research, "they have been encouraged to think that education has given them employability skills, so as well as learning about history or English or business studies they are also learning problem solving, developing communication skills, so they are pretty confident about themselves."

This confidence is not necessarily well founded. I attended a graduate careers fair at the University of Leeds earlier this summer, where I spoke to some employers who gave me a rather different perspective on the calibre of this year's graduates. Susie Young is the recruitment manager at Waitrose and she told me that out of the 2,500 applications they had received they still could not fill the 20 graduate positions that were available. "A lot of the graduates are scared," she said. "They think there are no opportunities out there so they apply for anything and everything and they don't really invest in the time to really look into each organisation."

Will Corder, recruitment adviser at Kimberly-Clark, told a similar story. "I find that there are quite a few people who apply to us who can't even spell Kimberly-Clark – even though it is written on the application form," he says. "A lot of people go to university for the sake of it because they think it is the right thing to do. So that makes lots of graduates. Universities are still selling the idea to people that if they go to university they are guaranteed a great job at the end of it, and that is just not the case any more."

It was at the Labour party conference in 1999 that Tony Blair announced that by 2010 50% of school leavers would be enrolled in higher education. Although the Labour government quietly abandoned that target last year, the latest numbers from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills show that they actually came pretty close to meeting it: by 2009, university participation rates among 17- to 30-year-olds had risen to 45%. But while the numbers may be up, the consequent rise in social mobility that this policy was intended to help with hasn't been achieved. According to a report last year called Fair Access to the Professions, a graduate's chances of getting into one of the top professions – such as law, medicine, politics or the media – are still heavily influenced by background, as today's young professionals in these areas come from families with an income that is up to 27% higher than average.

The increasing number of graduates entering the job market has meant that employers are often insisting that prospective employees pass psychometric tests as a way of selecting candidates, and it has also led to claims that too many young people are being herded into university.

"When I think about a university course, I think of something that teaches people a skill so that they are qualified to do a certain job," says Gerrard. "But, in reality, after my degree I don't feel qualified for anything – degrees don't indicate someone's common sense or people skills, and I don't think you can get through many interviews without a little of both."

All our students left university with large debts and they had strong views about how university education should be funded in the future. The prospect of a graduate tax, recently floated by the business secretary, Vince Cable, was met with some scepticism. "I can see the rationale behind a graduate tax," said Hughes, who currently has debts of around £11,000. "But I cannot see the benefit in the current economic climate. It seems unfair to charge a higher tax rate on graduates without providing enough jobs to enable them to be able to pay. And it may make people less serious about going to university as the tax is imposed after graduation."

One year after graduating none of the students is quite where they hoped to be. Hughes is spending two months travelling around South Asia before she returns to Britain to save money for a post-graduate course in journalism she wants to start next year. Page is soon to start work at a headhunting agency in London. Del Core is still sending out her CV to interior design companies and trying to set up her own website. Knight is still working as a receptionist. Gerrard is working in a local theatre in Newcastle, and Ali is in Saudi Arabia contemplating a return to Britain.

Like the 14.9% of graduates who are unemployed, our graduates haven't had the best of years, at least in terms of getting a job. Some of them told me they felt that university had not properly equipped them for the hard world of work. "We were meant to be taught about CV writing and how to do job interviews but it was all self-learning," says Del Core. "When I would ask questions I wouldn't get an answer so I don't feel I was taught anything new. I felt more patronised than anything else."

"The only career guidance we got was to write a CV each year for their records," says Page. "I was taught nothing about how to succeed in interviews."

Despite these complaints, perhaps the most surprising, and heartening, thing I discovered in following the graduates over the last year was that, for all the talk of debt and recession, they would not have given up the chance to go to university. "Living away from home and having to fend for myself taught me to use my own initiative," explained Hughes. "It made me a lot more independent."

The class of 2009 may have entered the job market at a bleak time but, one year on, they were grateful for their chance to spend three years studying and socialising. Gerrard spoke for the entire group when she reflected: "I probably didn't get what I thought I would out of my course, but I can't say I wish I hadn't done it, as that would mean I wouldn't have met some of my best friends."

• Sarfraz Manzoor was following the students for The Graduate, a series on BBC Radio 4. The next programme will be at 11am on Monday. You can hear the first episode, broadcast yesterday, via BBC iPlayer

Iran: Fuel rods ready in August 2011

Salehi says Iran has now produced 20 kg (44 lb) of nuclear fuel with an enrichment level of 20 percent.

Iran will complete the production of fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor by August next year, says the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

"Iran has now produced 20 kg (44 lb) of nuclear fuel with an enrichment level of 20 percent," Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by IRNA as saying on Sunday.

"In view of the making of fuel rods, we hope to deliver them [to the Tehran Research Reactor] by Shahrivar next year," he added, referring to the Iranian calendar month, which begins in August 2011.

Salehi said in June that Iran would produce its own nuclear fuel after the West failed to provide the country with 20-percent enriched uranium for its research reactor.

Iran also announced in May that it was ready to swap its low-enriched uranium on Turkish soil for nuclear fuel.

However, the West cold-shouldered the move and the UN Security Council approved new sanctions against Iran in June.

The US, Israel and their Western allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military objective in its nuclear program.

Iran has stressed that its nuclear program is peaceful and argues that, as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it has the right to enrich uranium based on the country's needs.

Manuel Noriega goes on trial in Paris

Manuel Noriega, 76, is accused of using money from a Colombian cocaine cartel to buy luxury properties in the French capital in the 1980s. Photograph: US District Attorney's Office/EPA

The former Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega, will appear in court in Paris today at the start of his trial on charges of laundering drug money in France.

The 76-year-old general, who spent 20 years in jail in the US before being extradited to France in April, is accused of using money from a Colombian cocaine cartel to buy luxury properties in the French capital in the 1980s.

He and his wife Felicidad were convicted of money laundering in absentia by a French court in 1999 and sentenced to 10 years in prison and a €11.2m (£9.2m) fine. He was extradited from Miami in April on an international arrest warrant.

Now the general is being retried on the same charges: that he laundered €2.3m from the Medellin cocaine cartel through the BCCI bank in the 1980s. The money was allegedly used to buy three luxury apartments in Paris that have since been seized by the French authorities.

At the time, Noriega, who ruled Panama from 1981 to 1989, was welcomed in France at the highest levels of state. He was decorated with the Légion d'honneur - the country's highest award - by the then president François Mitterrand during an official visit in 1987 and allowed to open accounts with large French banks.

His wife is living in Panama and faces no charges. She and the couple's daughters were known in Paris for spending tens of thousands of euros in one day's shopping.

Noriega, who waged a long battle from his Miami cell to fight extradition to France, denies the money came from drugs. He says the fortune came from his brother's inheritance, his wife's own personal fortune and from payments made to him by the CIA.

"I would like to say that I disagree with the accusations being laid against me," Noriega, speaking in Spanish, told the French court during his first appearance in April.

The once-feared and reviled dictator invoked his immunity as a former head of state. He also spoke of health problems saying he suffers from hemiplegia, a condition that causes partial paralysis and high blood pressure brought on by a stroke.

Since his extradition to France, his lawyers have lodged several appeals for his release on bail. These have been turned down, with judges fearing a strong risk that he may flee the country.

His lawyers have also appealed to the Red Cross, citing that their client should be treated as a prisoner of war and not be held in what they described as inhumane conditions at the La Santé prison in Paris. They also complained he has been deprived of his medals and his uniform and that he has no access to a Spanish-speaking doctor.

The trial will last for three days, but a verdict is not expected for several months.

Once backed by the CIA, Noriega fell out with the US in the late 1980s when it was reported he had become involved in drug trafficking and amid claims he was collaborating with Fidel Castro's Cuba.

In 1989, US president George Bush Sr sent American troops to Panama to capture the general and bring him to the US to stand trial in Operation Just Cause.

When the dictator sought refuge in the Vatican embassy, US troops surrounded the building and blasted it with heavy metal music around the clock to force him out.

The standoff lasted 10 days until Noriega surrendered. An American court sentenced him to 40 years in prison, later reduced to 17 years for good behaviour

The French trial is not the end of the former dictator's legal worries. Panama has asked France to send him back to his home country to face trial for human rights abuses for which he faces a 54-year jail sentence if found guilty.

Police to pay compensation to Kingsnorth climate camp protesters

Police have faced criticism from MPs and protesters over their tactics at climate protests. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Three activists at the Kingsnorth Power Station protest in 2008 are to receive compensation after Kent Police admitted they had been unlawfully stopped and searched.

The three, including two 11-year-old twins, were stopped under laws requiring police officers to have 'reasonable suspicion' that an individual is carrying prohibited weapons or articles that could be used to cause criminal damage.

However, during the case, brought against the police by the three protesters, it has now emerged that police had been conducting a blanket stop and search policy. Kent police now admit that search policy was 'unlawful' and 'should not have happened'.

An internal police review last year had initially said Kent police's widespread use of stop and search at the protest was only 'disproportionate'.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the three protesters say it was a 'massive violation of the human right to protest', and that the police should have admitted their errors earlier.

'That human rights breaches occurred on this scale, were not identified by the two internal police investigations into the operation, and ultimately had to be exposed by the activist and two tenacious children who brought this case says something very worrying about policing of peaceful protest about vital issues like climate change,' said John Halford from Bindmans LLP.

Other protesters who were at the Kingsnorth Camp say the stop and search tactics were not the only unlawful actions taken by police and that protesters were met with 'harassment, intimidation and violence'.

'Hundreds of people's possessions were seized, from walking sticks to crayons to health and safety supplies,' said protester Sarah Horne. 'Riot police burst onto the site on a number of occasions and started beating people with batons, without warning or provocation.'

'Kent police have offered compensation to three people – but thousands of members of the public were searched, attacked or otherwise harassed at the 2008 Camp. Are Kent Police going to compensate and apologise to them all?'

The next Camp for Climate Action protest will take place near Edinburgh in August for a week of action against the Royal Bank of Scotland and its funding of fossil fuel projects around the world.

BP stocks fall on clean-up costs

BP's share price has plunged to a 14-year low as the US threatens to impose new penalties on the British energy giant.

BP depository shares, trading in New York on Wednesday, fell nearly 16 per cent to close at $29.20, the lowest level since August 1996, amid growing concerns over its ability to meet mounting costs of the giant Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

BP said last week it had "plenty of" cash to deal with the problem and the Obama administration has made similar comments.

A BP spokesman said "nothing has changed" since Friday and restructuring experts agreed that on numbers alone, BP looked able to handle the financial damage.

But such confidence was not evident in the market.

"It seems that shares are under pressure from the fear of whether BP can survive … Now it's about the survivability of the company," said Jon Najarian, a founder of web information site optionmonster.com in Chicago.

'BP should pay'

Barack Obama's administration has toughened its rhetoric as polls show public disapproval over its handling of the worst oil spill in US history.

Ken Salazar, the US interior secretary, told a senate hearing on Wednesday that he would ask BP to repay the salaries of workers laid off because of a six-month moratorium on deepwater exploratory drilling imposed by the US government in the wake of the BP spill.

in depth

The White House echoed Salazar's comments, with spokesman Robert Gibbs telling reporters that "the moratorium is as a result of the accident that BP caused. It is an economic loss for those workers, and ... those are claims that BP should pay".

And turning up the heat on the beleaguered company, a senior US justice department official said after the markets closed that the department was "planning to take action" to ensure BP had enough money on hand to cover damages from the spill.

BP's total bill so far, including cleanup costs, has reached $1.25bn and the US government has already said it will have to pay billions more in penalties.

The company has said it will pay for the clean-up and direct damages to those affected by the spill, but the moratorium was a government decision and costs related to it were a different matter, a BP source said, adding that the company believes it may be heading for a showdown with the White House over widening liability demands.

Contingency planning

In another sign of the government stepping up the pressure on BP, the oil company was given a 72-hour deadline from Tuesday to produce improved plans on containing the giant spill.

Rear-Admiral James Watson, an on-scene co-ordinator for the US Coast Guard, has ordered the company to produce contingency planning for its "top hat" containment system and explain how it intends to recover the remaining crude and natural gas still leaking.

The current procedure, which began on Saturday, involves a cap placed over the leak that gathers the oil, allowing it to be siphoned up via a pipe to a container ship.

Tuesday's letter, which was addressed to Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, highlighted concerns about the capacity of the ship processing the oil and fears that operations could be derailed during the ongoing hurricane season.

"The system[s] established must have appropriate redundancies to maintain complete collection rates in the event that operational problems are encountered in any part of the system," it said.

"For example, if multiple oil recovery vessels are employed for collection/recovery efforts, redundancies must ensure that the failure of a vessel[s] does not reduce the capacity of the system for continuous recovery of oil.

"Further, plans and processes must be put into place to ensure that, in the event that a hurricane or other severe weather causes recovery vessels to go off station, those vessels [or alternate vessels] can be brought back on station as quickly as possible after the storm passes and that collection efforts can resume without delay," it said.

Coastline fouled

By the most conservative estimate, 26 million litres of crude have spilled into the Gulf - though US officials say the actual tally could be much higher - fouling the US coastline, coating birds and other wildlife, and severely affecting the fishing industry.

With Wednesday's share price drop in New York, BP has given up more than half its market value since the crisis began when its offshore drilling rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.

And the cost of protecting BP's debt against default hit new highs on Wednesday.

"The confidence in BP being able to stop the oil leak and deal with the ecological aftermath has disappeared," said Joe Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade.

Couple hurt in crash married at Ind. hospital

INDIANAPOLIS — A bride and groom who were among 14 people injured in a shuttle bus crash that killed a member of their wedding party were married Saturday at an Indianapolis hospital just hours after the accident.

Lauren Magee and Tom Hanley were among seven people taken to Methodist Hospital for treatment, said Clarian Health spokeswoman Holly Vonderheit. After tending to the injured, she said, staff prepared a conference room for the wedding.

"It was an emotional ceremony," Vonderheit said.

About 100 people, including guests who had planned to celebrate the wedding at a downtown event center, gathered for the hospital ceremony, Vonderheit said. A nurse's husband brought a suit for the groom and other staff helped clean the bride's wedding dress before they exchanged vows, she said.

The crash happened about 2 p.m. Saturday, killing James Douglas, 29, police Lt. Jeff Duhamell said. The injured were taken to two hospitals with what were described as non-life threatening injuries.

Wishard Memorial Hospital spokesman Todd Harper said seven others were taken to that hospital. Security officers from Methodist picked up crash victims from Wishard to attend the ceremony, Vonderheit said.

The bus was knocked on its side by the crash, which happened as the wedding party was apparently heading to take photos downtown, Duhamell said. The driver of a sport utility vehicle that collided with the bus wasn't hurt.

One of the vehicles ran a red light, but Duhamell said police are still trying to determine who is at fault.

A Horse With No Name

On the first part of the journey,
I was looking at all the life.
There were plants and birds. and rocks and things,
There was sand and hills and rings.
The first thing I met, was a fly with a buzz,
And the sky, with no clouds.
The heat was hot, and the ground was dry,
But the air was full of sound.

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.

After two days, in the desert sun,
My skin began to turn red.
After three days, in the desert fun,
I was looking at a river bed.
And the story it told, of a river that flowed,
Made me sad to think it was dead.

You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.

After nine days, I let the horse run free,
'Cause the desert had turned to sea.
There were plants and birds, and rocks and things,
There was sand and hills and rings.
The ocean is a desert, with its life underground,
And a perfect disguise above.
Under the cities lies, a heart made of ground,
But the humans will give no love.

You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be out of the rain.
In the desert you can remember your name,
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain

Pakistan makes Times Square-linked arrest

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistani officials have detained a 10th person in connection with the investigation into the failed May 1 car bombing of New York's Times Square, a Pakistani intelligence source told CNN Tuesday.

The intelligence source, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media, identified the man as Shoaib Mughal.

He is suspected of having served as an intermediary between the bombing suspect, Faisal Shahzad, and the Pakistani Taliban, the source said.

Mughal's uncle, who also asked not to be identified, told CNN that Mughal, who is married, owns and operates a computer parts store in Islamabad.

The uncle said six men dressed in civilian clothing detained Mughal, who has never been outside Pakistan, at his shop on May 6.

In addition, a Pakistani intelligence source told CNN that detainee Muhammad Shahid Hussain was a friend of Faisal Shahzad when the bombing suspect was studying in the United States.

The two men met frequently last year, when Shahzad returned to Pakistan, the source said.

Hussain's brother, Muhammad Khalid, told CNN that Hussain traveled to the United States in 2000 to participate in an MBA program and remained there until 2004.

Hussain's brother and father, Muhammad Ramzan, have denied he has any links to terrorist groups or the attempted bombing in Times Square.

The intelligence official added that another suspect, Major Adnan, resigned from the Pakistani Army last year. The official said Adnan contacted Shahzad by e-mail at least once but the official did not disclose when the e-mail was sent or what it contained.

This month, a senior administration official said Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, was looking for help from the Pakistani Taliban in carrying out a bomb attack during his last visit to Pakistan.

"The question is: Did he go there looking for help or did he fall in their lap? It seems the former. It appears he went seeking help for this attack," the official said. "He had an attack in mind when he went there."

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because this person wasn't allowed to speak publicly about the investigation.

Top advisers to President Barack Obama said early this month that Shahzad worked with the Taliban movement in Pakistan.

"The evidence that we have now developed shows the Pakistani Taliban directed this plot," Attorney General Eric Holder told NBC's "Meet the Press" on May 9.

John Brennan, assistant to the president for counterterrorism and homeland security, told CNN that the Pakistani Taliban -- also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP -- is "closely allied with al Qaeda."

Shahzad was arrested while trying to fly out of New York on May 3, two days after federal authorities say he left a vehicle filled with explosive materials in Manhattan's Times Square. The makeshift bomb failed to detonate.

Shahzad had traveled to Pakistan several times in recent years, Brennan said.