UK & USA Today Editoweb 23 August 2010

Manila hostage taker has 'shot two hostages'
Local media is reporting that a former policeman holding hostages on board a bus in the Philippines has shot two hostages. Rolando Mendoza is demanding to be reinstated as a police officer but this morning he told a local radio station: "I know they will kill me, I'm telling them to leave because anytime I will do the same here." More recently, he reportedly screamed on the same local radio station that "all the hostages are dead." It is not confirmed whether anyone has been killed, but shots were heard from the bus shortly after the driver managed to jump from the bus and run free. Mr Mendoza released at least nine hostages earlier in the day. They are thought to be mainly women and children. He is armed with an M-16 assault rifle.(itn)

15-year-old boy dies after van fall
A teenage boy died after he fell from the back of a moving van, police have said. Officers believe the 15-year-old was standing on the tow bar of a Renault Traffic panel van and holding on to the roof as it was travelling along Third Avenue in Woodlands, Doncaster, when the accident happened at around 6pm on Sunday. It is believed he fell from the vehicle and into the road, suffering serious head injuries. South Yorkshire Police said the teenager, who has not been named, was taken to Doncaster Royal Infirmary for treatment but later died of his injuries. The driver of the van, an 18-year-old local man, was not injured.(press association)

Party donations reach record high
Donations to political parties reached their highest level on record around this year's general election, the Electoral Commission has disclosed. The vast bulk of the £26.3 million-worth of gifts received by 16 political parties in April, May and June, involved the Conservative Party (£12.3 million) and Labour (£10.9 million). The Liberal Democrats took the majority of what was left, £2 million. The three main parties also took a share of more than £1 million of public funds and owed more than £31 million between them at the end of the period. Labour had the highest borrowing at the end of June, with £16,645,172, followed by the Tories on £13,128,326 and the Lib Dems on £1,600,314. The previous record for quarterly political donations was £20.6 million, received by parties in January, February and March 2005 before that year's election. The increase is even more marked than the figures suggest because the threshold at which donations have to be reported increased in January. For gifts to the central parties it rose from £5,000 to £7,500, and for those to smaller accounting units, like constituency parties, it rose from £1,000 to £1,500. Individual donations made to the central parties in the month before the May 6 general election were previously published in the weekly campaign updates. Peter Wardle, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, said: "Since 2001 we have made public details of almost 30,000 donations to political parties, with a total value of just over £433 million. "Voters have come to expect a high level of transparency about the way political parties are funded, and never more so than for the period covering a general election in the UK.(press association)

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