Latest news with #scandal
South China Morning Post
5 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong wedding firm boss arrested as closure leaves couples in lurch
Customs officers have arrested the owner of a Hong Kong wedding decoration company that closed suddenly leaving more than 100 engaged couples in dismay, with the firm revealed to have racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts. Acting assistant superintendent Ho Wai-sum of customs' unfair trade practice investigation division said officers arrested the 40-year-old male owner of a wedding decoration company based in San Po Kong on Friday after receiving 166 complaints about the firm allegedly wrongly accepting payments. 'We suspect that when the owner received prepaid sums, there were no reasonable reasons to believe the company could provide the services promised,' he said. Last month, the suspected closure of Ps Wedding and Event Decoration, which had an office in San Po Kong, sparked 31 complaints to the Consumer Council involving more than HK$337,000 (US$43,200) in losses. Ho revealed that the 166 complaints made to customs involved HK$1.9 million in total, with each contract for between HK$3,000 and HK$40,000. The acting superintendent said preliminary investigations showed that the company, which had been operating for 13 years, owed money for rent and salaries before its abrupt closure.
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Forensic lab boss is suspended in scandal over contaminated DNA samples
The director of a state-run forensic testing lab has been suspended by Queensland government in the latest scandal over botched DNA sampling. It follows a pause in testing at Forensic Science Queensland sparked by the identification of contamination issues, Attorney-General Deb Frecklington said on Friday. 'This action was taken following advice I received today that (Forensic Science Queensland) was placing a general pause on routine DNA testing after contamination issues were identified,' she said. The pause will be reviewed after seven days as the lab determines next steps and laboratory director Dr Linzi Wilson-Wilde will be asked to explain why she should not be removed. Urgent matters will progress in a limited capacity with appropriate controls, Ms Frecklington said. Forensic Science Queensland was established in 2023 following multiple inquiries, one of which revealed a 'fundamentally flawed' automated DNA extraction method might have led to offenders potentially escaping conviction for nine years from 2007. Many samples went untested while others were incorrectly ruled insufficient, an earlier inquiry found. The inquiries also elicited characterisations of a 'toxic' culture at the state-run forensic lab. More than 40,000 samples fell within the scope of a historical review process, of which close to 10,000 had been reviewed as of May. Ms Wilson-Wilde was appointed director in September after serving as interim chief executive. Dr Wilson-Wilde was stepping into 'what will undoubtedly be a very challenging role', Ms Frecklington said at the time. Following news of the testing pause, Ms Frecklington moved to immediately suspend her, pending a show cause notice for removal. 'I want to assure Queenslanders the Crisafulli government remains firmly committed to fixing the long-standing issues at Forensic Science Queensland,' she said.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
Lab boss suspended in latest DNA contamination scandal
The director of a state-run forensic testing lab has been suspended and will be asked to explain why they should not be removed in the latest scandal over botched DNA sampling. It follows a pause in testing sparked by the identification of contamination issues at Forensic Science Queensland, Attorney-General Deb Frecklington said on Friday. "This action was taken following advice I received today that (Forensic Science Queensland) was placing a general pause on routine DNA testing after contamination issues were identified," she said. The pause will be reviewed after seven days as the lab determines next steps. Urgent matters will progress in a limited capacity with appropriate controls, Ms Frecklington said. Forensic Science Queensland was established in 2023 following multiple inquiries, one of which revealed a "fundamentally flawed" automated DNA extraction method might have led to offenders potentially escaping conviction for nine years from 2007. Many samples went untested while others were incorrectly ruled insufficient, an earlier inquiry found. The inquiries also elicited characterisations of a "toxic" culture at the state-run forensic lab. More than 40,000 samples fell within the scope of a historical review process, of which close to 10,000 had been reviewed as of May. Linzi Wilson-Wilde was appointed director in September after serving as interim chief executive. Dr Wilson-Wilde was stepping into "what will undoubtedly be a very challenging role", Ms Frecklington said at the time. Following news of the testing pause, Ms Frecklington moved to immediately suspend her, pending a show cause notice for removal. "I want to assure Queenslanders the Crisafulli government remains firmly committed to fixing the long-standing issues at Forensic Science Queensland," she said.
Telegraph
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
See a whole new side of the ‘fascist' Mitford sisters in this Outrageous TV drama
The title says it all: a TV drama about the Mitford sisters – based on Mary Lovell's definitive biography of the 1930s aristocratic brood – Outrageous is exactly that, the ne plus ultra of frothing family sagas that just happens to be true. With a cast including Bessie Carter, Joanna Vanderham, Anna Chancellor and James Purefoy, it's a tale of six siblings who, between them, turned interwar societal rebellion and scandal-mongering into a fine art. To take one example, on set just south of Oxford, deep in Mitford country, Toby Regbo – who plays Tom, the single Mitford brother, killed in Burma late in the war – and Diana (Vanderham) are discussing her forthcoming wedding… to one Oswald Mosley, the British fascist leader. It is grim to hear Diana singing the praises and potential of the party her fiancé represents. But it is also grimly fascinating, and reminds me of one of Diana's most famous lines, written in a letter to her sister Deborah in 1985. 'I must admit,' she said, ''The Mitfords' would madden me if I didn't chance to be one. How ghastly [they] all sound…' That's the thing with any Mitford drama – see the word 'Mitford', and all kinds of ghastly preconceptions spring to mind. Yet, all of the sisters led remarkable lives (see right), and their stories keep resurfacing: it was only in January this year that they were in the headlines once again, with the discovery of youngest sibling Unity's diaries that revealed her relationship with Hitler, whom she idolised. But according to the Bafta-nominated The Long Song screenwriter Sarah Williams, who has adapted Lovell's biography for this new series, even what we know is not the half of it. 'I was really blown away by the true story,' she says, as we sit for lunch at The Duke of Monmouth pub, half an hour from Asthall Manor, where the Mitfords grew up. 'It seemed to me more dramatic, more exciting than Nancy's novels [both The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate contain fictionalised accounts of the family's lives]. I knew they were semi-autobiographical, but they were all done in a kind of jovial tone.' Williams wanted to remove that blithe spirit and get back to the facts, but when she first went to pitch to TV executives in 2005, she says that she encountered the same problem – people thought they already knew the family's story. 'I would say, 'No, you don't. The real story is so much more gripping.' But six women on a TV show was perhaps a harder nut to crack than it is now. I think everyone was a bit wary of it, saying, 'Hmm, they were all fascists, weren't they?'' Of course, the Mitfords weren't all fascists. 'That's the fascinating thing,' says Williams. 'They offer up such a broad, diverse picture of politics at the time.' It wasn't until Williams came up with the title that she says she started to believe her passion project might get greenlit. 'Outrageous: not a dry historical look at the 1930s, but something about a group of rebellious, transgressive women. And that felt commissionable.' The drama's tone is as punkish as the title demands, but its plot is still linear. It tells the Mitford story by focusing on each of the sisters in turn, giving all of them, their lives and their marriages, due screentime and context. Nancy, played by Bessie Carter (Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton's daughter), is the narrator, but that's because she is the primary writer of the group. 'Nancy wrote under her own name,' says Carter, speaking to me later in London, 'which at that time was pretty revolutionary. And yes, she was the eldest of this brood of six who were all incredibly different and unique. They all took very, very different paths, let's say!' Beginning in September 1931, the series is set in the shadow of the Wall Street Crash and charts the family's fortunes through the interwar period. It is a time of great unrest, old certainties crumbling and new forms emerging. Although it introduces the Mitfords at their country seat, it stresses how their aristocratic parents, Lord and Lady Redesdale, were suffering financially. As the Depression cast a pall over the West and the spectre of fascism grew in its wake, the world was about to shift. And then, as Carter adds: 'On to that scene plunge these six rebellious, headstrong, passionate sisters who were very hungry to change the world in their own ways.' 'It kind of reminded me of Succession,' she continues. 'Although I know it's sacrilege to mention another show when you're talking about your own. It has that thing Succession captured brilliantly about a family dynamic being played out on a global scale. I'm an only child, but I think that sibling rivalry explains some of the Mitfords' thinking – if your sister is going to go that way, you're probably quite likely to head in the opposite direction.' It's a story of ideological divergence that was best told by Mary Lovell, the author of The Mitford Girls on which Outrageous is based. Lovell met four of the Mitfords researching her 2001 book and got to know 'Debo' (The Duchess of Devonshire) particularly well. She joins Williams and me at lunch. What, I ask, made this one family such a hotbed of scandal, like a better-educated, literary Kardashians? 'They just didn't recognise walls,' says Lovell, who points out that the Mitfords found a fierce intellectual independence from their home-schooling. They saw the world differently and acted accordingly. Lovell is 83 and terrific company. She has first-hand experience of the political fault lines that split the Mitford family just as they divided the world. 'I grew up during the war and I felt the fallout of what those sisters were arguing about,' she says. 'I mean, in the 1930s, there was a worldwide depression and so you had two possible solutions... or what they thought were solutions. One was fascism – and, don't forget, they had a very good model that fascism worked in what Hitler had done to Germany. We can forget about Hitler being the big bad wolf, because at the time he wasn't, he was just a politician with an extreme right-wing view.' At the other end of the spectrum, Lovell says: 'You had what Dad, or Favre [as the Mitfords named their father], called 'the Bolshies'. It was only a few years before they had actually murdered the Tsar and his family. I should think the upper-classes in England were shaking in their boots at the thought that communism would come to their country, as it had swept the continent. I think that's the reason why a lot of aristocrats were hoping that Hitler and fascism were the answer.' With that context, no matter how uncomfortable, it's not hard to discern why the arguments of the 1930s are once again replete with relevance. 'Life was just polarised,' says Lovell. 'In the same way that in 2016 we had Brexit. I don't know about you, but I lost friends over that. People were really fired up one way or the other. It's a minor thing, of course, compared with what they were arguing about in the 1930s, but people were forced to take a side.' The irony, and a bizarre coda for Outrageous, is that it is produced by Matthew Mosley. As his name suggests, he is the great-grandson of Oswald Mosley, who married the fourth Mitford sibling, Diana. 'I did almost meet Diana once in Paris, but it didn't happen in the end,' says Matthew Mosley, speaking in the production office as the grips busy themselves with the Diana and Tom scene on set. 'It's a very strange inheritance because, obviously, he [Oswald] is such a national hate figure. And rightly so, as he was peddling terrible ideas. For my generation, it's so far away, it's almost like he was someone from a different planet. But for my father's generation and my grandfather, it was a big thing to grapple with.' It may be far away, but today it is, oddly, also very close – just minutes from the production truck, Vanderham, as Diana, soon to be Mosley, is discussing her nuptials. And this being the Mitfords, there is always a drama to come: the wedding is to take place in Joseph Goebbels's home in Berlin – with Hitler as one of the guests. 'Maybe this will be something of a cautionary tale about the allure of the far Right,' says Williams. 'I would like to think that might be the case.'
Telegraph
a day ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Jonathan Reynolds risks ban from practising law over CV scandal
Jonathan Reynolds risks being barred from practising law after the scandal over false claims on his CV, The Telegraph can reveal. The solicitors' watchdog decided not to prosecute the Business Secretary over allegations that he lied about his legal career after it found a lack of evidence to justify the move. However, The Telegraph has learnt that several concerns raised about Mr Reynolds's claims were investigated 'no further' because the incidents in question took place more than two years ago. If those 'time-barred' matters were ever substantiated, they could be held against Mr Reynolds if he tries to qualify as a solicitor in future. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said the revelations proved that the Business Secretary had not been cleared of wrongdoing. He said: 'Reynolds hasn't been cleared of breaking the law. The SRA [Solicitors Regulation Authority] have just decided not to investigate because it happened more than two years ago. 'The evidence of his persistent false claims over many years is clear for everyone to see. If the SRA investigated, they would have found him bang to rights.' 'Safe on a technicality' Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said: 'The Business Secretary repeatedly lied about being a solicitor and was caught out. In the private sector he is destroying he would long have been sacked. 'He may think he's safe on a technicality, but it's unclear how any hard working businesses can trust him now.' Backlash over the Business Secretary's CV erupted in February after it emerged he had said on several occasions that he worked as a solicitor before becoming an MP. In fact, he did not qualify for the title because he never finished his training contract with Addleshaw Goddard, a law firm, having quit in 2010 to run for Parliament. The SRA initially said it would not be taking any action after Mr Reynolds updated his online CV to remove a claim he held the legally-protected role. But it launched a fresh investigation for 'further information' about the Business Secretary's conduct after Mr Jenrick demanded action with a 'view to prosecuting'. Under Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974, it is illegal for any unqualified person to take or use 'any name, title, addition or description' implying they are qualified to act as a solicitor. Prosecutions for breaches of this kind are subject to strict time limits, meaning the case must be brought within two years of the alleged offence or six months from its first discovery by the prosecutor, whichever expires first. Insufficient evidence for prosecution The SRA confirmed last week that it had closed its investigation into Mr Reynolds, arguing it was neither proportionate nor in the public interest to bring criminal proceedings. In a letter to Parliament's standards watchdog in May, seen by The Telegraph, the regulator said it had found insufficient evidence to justify a prosecution. But it revealed that it had not looked 'further' into some of the concerns raised because they related to matters that occurred more than two years ago. If substantiated, it said these incidents could be 'relevant' if Mr Reynolds tries to qualify as a solicitor in future. The letter said: 'A number of the concerns investigated demonstrably occurred earlier than the two year period stated in section 26. 'As such matters are time-barred and could not be the subject of a lawful prosecution under section 21, the SRA has determined to investigate and consider them no further for this reason. 'Time-barred matters, if substantiated, could however be relevant should Mr Reynolds apply in the future to be admitted as a solicitor.' Mr Reynolds previously claimed on his website and in the Commons that he worked as a solicitor in Manchester before becoming an MP, and implied that he had held the role in a post on Twitter, now X, in 2011. He made the same claim in a campaign leaflet for the 2015 general election, at which he was re-elected as MP for Stalybridge and Hyde. He also previously stated on his LinkedIn profile that he was simultaneously a 'solicitor' and a 'trainee solicitor' between 2009 and 2010. The Telegraph revealed that he was warned a decade ago not to lie about his legal career, but dismissed the concerns, accusing the complainant of 'reading too much' into his comments. In its letter to Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary standards commissioner, the SRA said any unqualified person wilfully referring to themselves as a solicitor was 'potentially a serious issue'. However, it said: 'Taking account of the explanations offered, our investigation did not find evidence sufficient to justify the bringing of a prosecution in evidential terms. Nor was it considered that a prosecution would be proportionate or in the public interest. 'Generally, the SRA would be more likely to regard the public interest as justifying a prosecution (if justified by our analysis of the evidence and explanations offered) where the person has engaged directly with consumers of legal services, public protection being a fundamental aspect of our regulatory remit; or where there were a material risk of repetition.' A source close to the Business Secretary said: 'Mr Reynolds was happy to cooperate with an investigation by the SRA, which has now concluded with no further action. He is pleased to continue working hard on the post-Brexit trade deals the Conservatives failed to deliver.'
