Gary Connery: stuntman completes 2400ft skydive without a parachute

       The 42-year-old daredevil plunged from a helicopter in a death-defying feat before landing in an area containing 18,600 cardboard boxes. The father-of-two, a veteran of 880 sky dives, 450 base jumps and dozens of film and television roles, jumped this afternoon above Ridge Wood, Bucks to become the first person to jump from such a height and live without deploying a parachute. The entire flight of nearly a mile took less than a minute and was only given the green light because the weather conditions were “perfect”. Mr Connery, from nearby Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, dropped for three seconds before reaching speeds of more than 80mph in a specially developed wing suit that "started to fly". He landed on a strip measuring about 350ft (100m) by 45ft (15m) - and at its highest point 12ft off the ground - at Temple Island Meadows, on the Buckinghamshire and Berkshire border.

        In order to survive the audacious stunt, he had to flare his wing suit about 200ft from his target in order to bring his gliding speed down to 50mph and his vertical falling speed to 15mph. He landed to cheers from thousands of people who watched his feat and was met on the ground by his wife Vivienne, who gave him a kiss. He celebrated his achievement with champagne on the ground. Mr Connery, whose films include Die Another Day, The Beach, Batman Begins and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, said it had been an "amazing feeling". "I feel absolutely wonderful, I am overwhelmed," he told reporters afterwards. "I am in a strange zone at the moment. It is an amazing feeling. I feel incredible, just completely elated. "I am so choked with the turnout. It was so comfortable and so soft. I got my calcualtions absolutely right. There was some turbulence."

        He added: "The fear comes before you get into the helicopter. You don't get in before you have dealt with that. "These suits are amazing. There is so much support in them. I could just go with it. "I have been training and planning for this record attempt for many years now and I am so proud to have achieved a world first." He continued: "I want to thank everyone involved for their support and belief in me because this really has been a team effort." Tonight will be all about celebrating with friends and family, tomorrow I will be plotting my next daring challenge." Mrs Connery, 45, who owns a cafe in Henley, added: "I am just so relieved it is all over." Before the jump he insisted he would survive, as performing stunts was "his life" but admitted to being “a bit scared”.

         “I'm 100 per cent confident I can achieve this jump,” said the former paratrooper, who has trained for the jump in the Swiss and Italian alps. “I know I can fly, I know I can hit the target, I feel I've assessed the risk that I'm presented with and I've put everything in place to minimise that risk. "This stunt will get great recognition and will be a post in the runway of aviation history. I'm sure plenty of people will think I'm bonkers but that's OK, I take that as a compliment." He added: "Now we have the green light, I can't wait to go for it. "The last few days have been a whirl of activity making sure everything is in place for flight. "There has been so much interest in my world first attempt and a huge amount of support from the British public." He admitted his wife and children Kali, 15 and Lydia, 19, were worried. He made his first parachute jump as an Army recruit at the age of 23 and has since become a professional stuntman. He has leapt from the top of London’s Tower Bridge, the London Eye, Nelson's Column and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Patrick De Gayardon, the French aristocrat inventor of the modern wing suit, died when his parachute malfunctioned over Hawaii in 1998.

US cuts $33 million in aid to Pakistan over Osama bin Laden doctor sentence

      The US is to cut $33 million from the aid it sends Pakistan over the jailing of the doctor who helped the CIA hunt for Osama bin Laden, in a fresh blow to the battered relations between the two states.

      Congressmen on the powerful Senate appropriations committee voted to cut $1 million from the $800 million annual budget for each of the 33 years that Dr Shakeel Afridi has been told he must serve in jail for working with a foreign intelligence agency. Dr Afridi set up a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad in an attempt to obtain blood samples from bin Laden's family, as the CIA tried to confirm the al-Qaeda chief's presence in a nearby villa. Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina who helped push through the measure, said: "We don't need a Pakistan that is just double dealing." Senators including John McCain, the former Republican presidential nominee, have described Dr Afridi as "courageous, heroic, and patriotic," and demanded that he be pardoned. Their intervention came as a retired Pakistani army officer familiar with the case told The Daily Telegraph that Dr Afridi had told his interrogators that his handlers never disclosed their target's identity. Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier who has been given access to interrogation transcripts, said yesterday that Dr Afridi was initially asked to work in two neighbourhoods.

      However, after being ordered to focus his efforts on one house in the days before the May 2 raid to kill bin Laden, he asked his CIA handler "Peter", via satellite phone, for a payment of $10,000. "He knew they were looking for someone. When the search homed in on one house he asked for more money, which he was paid," said Brigadier Qadir. "So he knew it was someone important and he may have had suspicions but he was never told it was bin Laden." Dr Afridi is expected to appeal against his sentence, which was handed down under Pakistan's tribal justice system, a hangover from British colonial rule. The handling of the case has been criticised by the US, where many suspect that at best Pakistan has dragged its feet over seeking out foreign militants and at worst has protected al-Qaeda figures. Dr Afridi is being held in solitary confinement at Peshawar Central Prison, in north-west Pakistan. Officials said he was "weak and depressed", and was given medicine for a stomach complaint by doctors.
      Samad Khan, a prison official, said: "He has been kept away from other prisoners to avert any danger to his life." Dr Afridi's wife and three children have disappeared from their home in the Khyber tribal area and are believed to be in hiding. Congressman Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Obama administration had doomed Dr Afridi by leaking details of the vaccination ruse to the media. "They put him out there," said Mr King. "I'm focused on that they disclosed his identity." The countries also remain at loggerheads over allowing Nato supply convoys to use Pakistani roads to reach Afghanistan. Pakistan has blocked passage since a US air strike killed 24 of its soldiers in November. A Pakistani government spokesman yesterday insisted that the US should respect the conviction because "it was in accordance with Pakistani laws and by the Pakistani courts".

Egyptians choose their leader for first time in 5,000 years

       It never used to be like this. The moment Egyptians finally lost their respect for President Hosni Mubarak, whose joyless grin dominated their lives for three decades, came when a state newspaper carried a photograph of Middle East leaders at the White House grotesquely photoshopped to show him standing not behind but in front of President Obama. Now men like Amr Moussa, used to receiving sheikhs and monarchs with due pomp and ceremony as head of the Arab League, and Mohammed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood have waited decades for their chance at power, had to wait behind their fellow citizens, like everybody else. There were few overt signs of celebration on this, the first of two days of voting in Egypt's presidential elections, at how everything had changed. There was enthusiasm that voters would get to choose their leader for the first time in 5,000 years of glorious history, but no whoops or fireworks. Some of the excitement of the Tahrir Square revolution last year has undoubtedly worn off, and voters are nervous too about what lies in store.

       It has not been a clean transition of power, and there is not even as yet a constitution laying out what powers the new leader will have. Many voters are disappointed with the choice of candidates, even though there are 13 of them - none would be said even by their supporters to have both the hoped-for charisma and a detailed plan to rescue Egypt from poverty and chaos. But many also seemed to realise this was not such a bad thing - that having a choice at all was as important as how to exercise it; and that, barring some new dictatorship, they would have second chances, to vote out the man they now vote in should he disappoint them. Some of the young liberals who brought this day about by fighting the police, their rifles and their tear gas, chose to boycott the vote, complaining it had become a contest between "felloul" - remnants of the old regime - and Islamists who did not share their modern values. They also feel that, whoever wins, the military will not give up its power lightly. Though there were no official figures, turn-out was reported to be significantly lower than at the parliamentary elections in December and January.
        The performance of parliament, which often appears to television viewers to be little more than an argumentative rabble, has been held to damage the chances of the Brotherhood, which is the largest party. It may have dented democratic confidence altogether, and certainly far more voters than last year's revolutionary fervour would suggest said they were voting for Ahmed Shafiq, the "felloul" candidate, a former air force general and Mr Mubarak's last prime minister. But most who did turn out thought a boycott a wasted opportunity. "If you boycott the elections now, when will you participate?" asked Bassem Mohammed Sayed, 38, an accountant. "This is something we have never seen before - the first time we have had an election and we don't know the winner in advance." Mohammed Abdul Aziz, a teacher, said it was a celebration. His main concern was that whoever won, the choice would be respected. "I think the election will be fair," said Omar al-Sioufi, 25, at a polling station in the middle class Cairo district of Mohandessin. "I don't trust the army, but the Egyptian people know how to protest." No-one thought the vote would be perfect.
        There have been several reports of vote-buying, particularly by the campaigns of Mr Shafiq and Mr Morsi. There were breaches of an election law banning active campaigning in the two days of voting, with Mr Shafiq giving press conferences and interviews in his own cause. Farouk Sultan, the head of the presidential election commission, said these two campaigns and that of the "moderate Islamist" Abdulmoneim Aboul Fotouh would be referred to the prosecutor's office, though he also stressed the alleged breaches were not serious. People often did not know what to do.
        One complainant to Mr Sultan was an elderly man whose hand was shaking so much he asked the polling station's presiding judge to mark his ballot for him - and then claimed the man had ticked the wrong box. Oliga Yusef, 80, coming out of a polling station in Cairo, said: "I cannot read or write. I asked the man inside what to do, and he said I should mark whoever I liked - so I ticked a box, but I have no idea who I voted for." By no means perfect, then. But even those who did not know how to vote, knew why it was important. "I came here for my sons, so that they can have a better future," Mrs Yusef said, walking off proudly.

US Cargo ship saved from pirates by Iran Navy

Iran's navy says it has saved a US-flagged cargo ship that was under attack from pirates in the gulf.

          An Iranian warship responded to a distress signal from the US-flagged Maersk Texas, a cargo ship of 500 feet and 14,000 tons, which was besieged by "several pirate boats," the navy said in a statement reported by the official IRNA news agency. The cargo vessel "was saved by the navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran" on Wednesday, IRNA added. The pirates "fled the scene as soon as they spotted the presence" of the warship. Maersk Texas "thanked the Iranian navy and sailed towards its destination safely," it added. It was the first time the Iranian navy protected a US ship from pirates. Maersk had sailed from the UAE port of Fujairah, south of the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance of the Gulf, and was headed for the United States.
         Iran's navy keeps a presence in Gulf of Oman to protect cargo ships and transiting oil tankers and also defend the country against potential threats. According to Iranian commanders, Iran's navy have carried out hundreds of antipiracy operations, engaging in hundreds of armed clashes with pirates in the past three years. The US navy patrolling the area have on a number of occasions rescued Iranian ships. The latest incident was in January when a US warship secured the release of 13 Iranian fishermen near the entrance to the Gulf who had been held captive by pirates for 45 days.

UK falls deeper into recession

       UK GDP has been revised down to -0.3pc after a sharp drop in construction output, putting pressure on the Bank of England to restart its quantitative easing programme.

The Bank of England looks set to pump more money into the economy, having paused its £325bn quantitative easing programme earlier this month

Analysts say;

Simon Hayes, Barclays Capital: We were expecting the downward revision because of the ONS's announcement a couple of weeks ago about the weak construction data but I think the interesting thing is looking at the spending side of the equation. In actual fact, final demand for supply to consumers, business investment and government were all actually reasonably firm and the weakness seems to have been in stock building, which is a very erratic item, and probably indicates that the weak first-quarter number isn't so much a reflection of weak demand but rather firms becoming very cautious about the outlook for demand and so running down their stocks.


Amit Kara, UBS: I think the numbers were disappointing but expected. As far as policy is concerned the MPC was aware of the risks to the Q1 GDP print at the time of its decision and as such, we do not expect them to embark on a further QE programme at the next meeting at least. That's not to say that the committee will not expand on QE but I think the key will be the state of the wholesale funding markets for banks and any flare up in the euro area. But for now we expect the MPC to stay on hold.

Jane Foley, senior currency strategist at Rabobank: The downward revision to UK Q1 GDP, yesterday's dire retail sales data, the downward trend in UK CPI inflation, worrying German survey data and strengthening headwinds from the euro zone all suggest the case for more QE from the BoE is mounting. Sterling will remain well supported vs the EUR for now given the even worse risks facing the euro, but downside potential in cable is opening up some more.

 Marc Ostwald, Monument Securities: While we note a large drag from inventories on first-uarter GDP, which tends to indicate that ONS statisticians are struggling to identify the source of some spending (be that expansion or contraction), we still think the really striking element is the clear lack of austerity that is evidenced by a whopping 1.6pc quarter-on-quarter increase in government spending.


Philip Shaw, Investec Given the recent construction data it's not surprising to see GDP having been revised down a touch to down 0.3pc in Q1. Our reading is the construction sector was not as weak as the official data suggests, implying that overall the economy performed better than today's release shows. Nonetheless the economy is not recovering properly and with the uncertainty over Europe hanging over the outlook as well our suspicion is the MPC will sanction further QE at some point later on this year.


Nikesh Sawjani, economist at Lloyds: Looking forward ... As a precursor of (second-quarter figures) it's not looking too great. The (Bank of England) minutes suggested the committee is firmly leaving the door open on more QE. The trigger point could be further weakness in the euro or lack of action from EU policy makers. (The GDP revision) probably makes QE a little bit more likely. I think it does raise the prospect of QE marginally, but to be honest i think it was on the table anyway.

Source : www.telegraph.co.uk