The News Matrix: Thursday 14 April 2011

Mubarak arrested over protest deaths

Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president who was forced from office two months ago, has been detained by prosecutors investigating the deaths of protesters. He was taken to hospital after his arrest, suffering from a “nervous breakdown”. MORE

Young left on shelf as jobless total falls

Unemployment fell by 17,000 to 2.48 million in the three months to February. The jobless rate stands at 7.8 per cent, a fall of 0.1 percentage points compared with the previous quarter. But youth unemployment is still almost 1 million. MORE

Public urged not to ‘snitch’ over shooting

Police are powerless to act over “no snitching” leaflets posted to properties near the food shop in south London where Thusha Kamaleswaran, 5, was shot on 29 March. MORE

France calls for more Nato bombing raids

French foreign minister Alain Juppé stepped up the rhetoric against Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi yesterday, saying Nato bombing raids against the embattled dictator must be increased to convince him that “there is no way out”. MORE

Ouattara: Gbagbo will face charges

Alassane Ouattara, Ivory Coast’s president, said that his predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, will face charges “on a national level and an international level”. The comments came as new footage emerged of Mr Gbagbo’s arrest on Monday. MORE

Police turn focus on Rooney ‘bugging’

Police investigating the News of the World phone hacking scandal are studying whether Manchester United star Wayne Rooney was targeted by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and NoW journalists. The inquiry comes after it emerged that Rooney’s agent, Paul Stretford, is set to sue the newspaper for allegedly illegally accessing his voicemails. MORE

BP braced for trouble at AGM

Angry interest groups will confront the BP board at its AGM in London’s Docklands. Fishermen from the Gulf Coast in the US, hit by the oil spill from BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, will join protests by indigenous communities angry at BP’s tar sands extraction in Canada. MORE

UK’s stillbirth rate as bad as Belarus

Eleven babies are stillborn in the UK every day, ten times more than die in cot death, experts said yesterday. The UK ranks 33rd in the world, level with Estonia and Belarus. Rates have fallen in Norway, Australia and the Netherlands, but in the UK they have remained unchanged in a decade.

First Mafia boss to turn rat in court

Joseph Massino, a New York Mafia boss, has made mobland history by becoming the highest ranking member of a Mafia family to break his vow of silence and testify against Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano. MORE

Brewer fights tax ruling on its ‘beer’

A family business is to take the taxman to a tribunal over its ruling that an artisan “beer” made from stinging nettles is an alcopop. HM Revenue and Customs ruled that Cornish firm Foodswild’s Stingers were a “made wine” and ordered owner Miles Lavers to pay £10,000 in back taxes.

TV celebrity Hulot to run for president

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s domestic headaches got worse yesterday, when popular French TV celebrity, Nicolas Hulot, said he was going to run in next year’s presidential vote on a green ticket. Current polls suggest that Mr Sarkozy will not make the second round of voting. MORE

David Jason comes back to BBC comedy

Sir David Jason has signed up to star in a new BBC1 comedy series. The actor, who bowed out of the ITV detective series A Touch Of Frost last year, will play Captain Guy Hubble, a floundering chief of Buckingham Palace security, in The Royal Bodyguard. It will be filmed in the summer. MORE

Constituency home out of reach of MP

A Liberal Democrat MP says he cannot afford to buy a home in his constituency despite a salary of almost £66,000. Stephen Gilbert, 34, who won St Austell and Newquay, Cornwall, in May said that while his salary went up when he was voted in, deposit requirements have rocketed.

Residents fail to stop boxing and wrestling

Wrestling and boxing are back on at the Royal Albert Hall. The Court of Appeal has overturned an order that quashed a new licence permitting the sports. The venue’s neighbours in west London, who won the initial court action, feared the events would attract “antisocial elements”. MORE

Restaurant serves alcohol to toddler

The US restaurant chain Applebee’s has vowed to retrain its staff after a waiter at a Detroit outlet served a toddler an alcoholic margarita instead of an apple juice. His mother noticed when her 15-month-old son “kind of laid his head on the table and dozed off”.

Another egg for the UK’s ‘oldest osprey’

The UK’s oldest breeding female osprey has laid her first egg for this year, Scottish Wildlife Trust said yesterday. The osprey laid the egg – her 59th – after coming back for the 21st consecutive year to the Loch of the Lowes Wildlife Reserve last month.