British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was embroiled in a row yesterday with the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, after he telephoned her to apologize for a handwritten letter of condolence.
Brown’s office said earlier that he was “mortified” to think he had caused offense with the letter, which Jacqui Janes called a “hastily scrawled insult.”
Brown, who is blind in one eye and whose writing is known to be untidy, writes to the families of all soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
In his letter to the mother of Jamie Janes, 20, who was killed by an explosion in Afghanistan last month, he misspelled her surname, writing James instead of Janes, and also corrected an error in her son’s name.
“As soon as the prime minister was told about this he personally contacted the mother to make absolutely clear that he never meant any offense,” Brown’s spokesman said on Monday.
But Janes disputed Downing Street’s account of the telephone call and said that Brown had declined to apologize.
“He has told the country he called to say sorry for any ‘unintended mistake,’” Janes told the Sun newspaper yesterday.
“But he completely denied making any mistakes, blaming me for not being able to read his writing. And he certainly did not apologize,” she told the paper.
The newspaper published a transcript of the 13-minute conversation on Sunday night between the pair, which Janes tape-recorded.
“I wanted people to hear it so they could make up their own minds whether that was an apology — instead of the Downing Street spin on it,” she said.
The row comes amid mounting pressure on Brown’s government over Britain’s role in the war in Afghanistan as troop casualties rise and public support falls.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese