She was abandoned partly clothed three-and-a-half hours later.A psychological profile of the Blakelaw attacker was compiled, but police have not sought further advice on the abductor’s characteristics.The girl abducted on Monday suffered no physical injury other than inflicted by the sexual assault.”She has so far been too distressed to be questioned,” Det Supt Wilson said. “The whole experience of being taken away from her family, sexually assaulted, and dumped miles away from her home is a particularly traumatic experience.”. STEPHEN GOODWIN

The frustration of a Cumbrian housewife trying to cross-examine the company that wants to dump radioactive nuclear waste a kilometre beneath her home welled up yesterday as the public inquiry into UK Nirex’s plan for a rock laboratory settled in for a long haul.
Ann Lowry, 57, whose house is over the road from the Longlands Farm site Nirex hopes will become its pounds 2bn deep repository wanted to question one of the company’s specialist witnesses on the extra traffic which will be caused by the scheme.But Chris McDonald, the planning inspector chairing the inquiry, explained that traffic flows were not part of the brief of Arthur Smith, the mining engineer giving evidence for Nirex. “He is selecting his victim before he strikes and, in doing so, may be spending some time in the areas these young girls are from. Both were abandoned 40 miles away in the same area of Darlington, Co Durham, after enduring similar sexual assaults.”We are obviously dealing with a very dangerous man,” Det Supt Wilson said. JONATHAN FOSTER

A sexual assault against a four-year-old girl abducted in Newcastle upon Tyne on Monday resembled the attack on a five-year-old snatched in the city exactly four months earlier, police said yesterday.
A woman detective trained in coaxing information from traumatised victims was with the child and her parents last night as Detective Superintendent Dave Wilson, leading the investigation, drew five parallels between the abductions.Both children were young girls from the city’s west side, abducted in the early evening on the fourth day of the month, he said. Mr Hunter predicts that prices of alternative feed stuffs, such as sugar beet, will rise through the winter..

“That’s twice what I was paying this time last year, and that was for top-quality hay which was delivered here,” she said.Cattle are fed largely from silage, made from grass cut while it is still moist, and this year’s production has also been greatly reduced by the drought. One customer, Gilly Luff, is hoping to secure a stock of 200 bales this weekend for the five horses she looks after – at pounds 4 a bale, and she will have to collect it herself. The last hay cut of the summer is usually made in July, but this year the absence of rain has meant there was little or no grass to cut. What little was harvested has to last through until next year’s growth.
As a result the price of a bale has doubled – or even trebled – to more than pounds 6, partly due to panic buying.Hay, not usually traded over long distances, is being brought to the worst affected areas in the South and East of England from the West Country and Scotland.Jimmy Hunter, who farms near Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire and grows his own hay for his dairy cattle and local horse owners, has had to tell his customers that he will have no hay to supply them through the winter.”The horsey people are now the biggest consumers of hay, and they are the hardest hit,” he said. The drought has sent the price of hay soaring, and now horse owners and stables all over England face a winter of discontent eking out stocks and searching for affordable feed, writes Nicholas Schoon. the fact that the children’s life jackets were not distributed, all suggest that safety and safety training was poorly managed.”Despite the criticism in the report, Capt Bullen said the crew had saved lives. “The fact that passengers were crowded around both exit doors before any of the crew had arrived to take charge at each exit, the fact that the evacuation procedures and documentation had bot been modified …

Within seconds, the vessel had grounded on La Frouquie rock and was taking in water.No charges have been levelled at Capt Peneau, and it is up to the French authorities to decide whether to revoke his master’s certificate. But his French employers, Channiland, were held up for criticism.”Safety management within the Channiland company needs to be improved,” the report said. It criticised the muster lists for being out of date, and the fact that the hostess read the safety announcement one line at a time, alternating between French and English. Fifty-five people were injured, including many elderly people who broke limbs while jumping 17ft into liferafts. Ladders which were supposed to help in evacuation of the catamaran turned out to be too difficult to use.The report, conducted by the Department of Transport’s marine accident investigation branch, criticised the catamaran’s lifejackets – saying they were too cumbersome – its evacuation procedures and its liferafts, recommending that they should be covered.Although the liferafts complied with safety requirements, rescuers found that some elderly passengers were suffering from hypothermia because the rafts were open to the elements.Contrary to reports at the time, investigators established that Capt Peneau had not been taking an irresponsible short-cut, but chose the commonly- used “boat passage” route because it would be calmer for passengers, many of whom had become seasick during the journey from St Helier to Sark.Problems arose when he steered to starboard to avoid a number of fishing marker bouys. Once the catamaran began taking on water, it took the crew 77 minutes to evacuate the passengers instead of the recommended 30 minutes.Yesterday, Captain Roy Bullen, the Jersey harbourmaster, said it was “miraculous” that no one had died in the accident on 17 April. STEVE BOGGAN

A ferry captain who grounded his vessel at full speed on rocks off Jersey “recklessly” endangered the lives of his 300 passengers, according to an investigation into the accident.
Captain Philippe Peneau failed to slow the Saint-Malo from 37mph, even though he knew it was off course in a narrow stretch of water.

Before this summer, they had tended to agree with the rivers authority that only a few major new water resources would have to be developed: mains leakage could be cut and the gradual spread of water metering would curb household demand.Now they believe privatisation and rising bills may have changed public attitudes, with customers less willing to listen to calls for restraint during long dry spells.. An increased flow of water through the canals would also improve their water quality and benefit wildlife, he added.In a report on water resources published last year, the rivers authority also questioned whether building pipelines might not be cheaper than using the canals.But the drought has prompted the the water companies to reassess their demand forecasts for the next two decades. They would have to be deepened by dredging to carry more water, and pumping stations would be needed to move it up flights of locks. Mr Taylor said the capital costs of one scheme for moving water from the North-west to the Midlands were pounds 20m. ”That is a flea bite compared to the sums the big water companies are investing.”The National Rivers Authority, the Government’s water pollution and resources watchdog, has serious doubts. Moving water from one river into another could change the latter’s water quality, possibly harming aquatic life.

It could also spread wildlife diseases across the country.”There is some work to be done on that, but I think the environmental problems could be overcome,” said Mr Taylor. It would then be pumped into rivers such as the Thames, where it would be taken out at existing bankside purification plants, treated and put into supply. ”It would be a way of moving towards a water grid relatively cheaply,” said Mr Taylor.Boating and fishing on the canals would continue. Bristol gets half its supply through the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal. The engineering consultants Binnie and Partners have produced a study for the board on how the canals could move water taken from rivers, reservoirs or boreholes across England. The state-owned British Waterways Board believes the drought has made its plans for turning canals into aqueducts more attractive to the privatised water companies.Water would flow from Wales and the North-west of England via the Midlands into the Anglian and South-east regions, where rainfall is lower and demand for water is growing with the number of households.John Taylor, the board’s water development manager, said canals already carried more than 100 million gallons a day for industries and water companies, earning pounds 3m a year.