Missing girl 'found 18 years on'

There have been few clues as to Jaycee Lee's whereabouts in 18 years

A US woman found after being abducted as a girl in 1991 gave birth to two children fathered by her alleged kidnapper, police say.

Jaycee Lee Dugard and the children, aged 11 and 15, were kept isolated in a back garden in Antioch, California.

Alleged kidnapper Phillip Garrido, 58, and his wife Nancy Garrido, 54, are being held in custody.

DNA tests are being done to establish Ms Dugard's identity, but meanwhile she has been reunited with her mother.

Ms Dugard disappeared in 1991, aged 11, from outside her Lake Tahoe home, apparently taken by two people.

El Dorado County Undersheriff Fred Kollar she had lived with the couple in the Antioch property since the kidnapping, isolated from view in a "hidden backyard within a backyard."

"The tents and outbuildings in the backyard were placed in a strategic arrangement to inhibit outside viewing and to isolate the victims from outside contact."

Phillip Garrido allegedly fathered two children with Ms Dugard, police say

The three spent "most of their lives" there, he said, adding that they had never been to school or seen a doctor.

Their identities were revealed after Mr Garrido was spotted by police at the University of California Berkeley campus with the two young children.

He raised suspicions because as a registered sex offender he was not allowed to be with young children.

He was called in by his parole officer for questioning, and brought the two children and a young woman he called Alissa with him.

During questioning he revealed that Alissa was actually Ms Dugard. She also confirmed her identity to police.

At the Antioch property, there was also a vehicle hidden in the backyard which matched the vehicle originally described at the time of the abduction, Mr Kollar said.

"It's a pretty spectacular story just to find someone like that. Someone we assumed was dead," said Bill Clark, a senior prosecutor in El Dorado County.

Jimmie Lee, a local police spokesman, said Mr Garrido was also being held for investigation of rape by force, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and sexual penetration.

Under suspicion

She sounds like she's okay. I hope she's been well treated this entire 18 years Carl Probyn Stepfather

As news spread of Ms Dugard's apparent re-appearance, her stepfather Carl Probyn told ABC News in the US that her family was now convinced she was coming back to them.

"I had personally given up hope," he said, saying that he just wanted to find the people responsible.

Mr Probyn was watching on 10 June 1991, as the young girl was apparently taken away by two unidentified people.

The incident occurred as she was walking from her home to a school bus stop in the southern Lake Tahoe town of Meyers.

Her stepfather - who initially came under suspicion in her disappearance and is now estranged from Ms Dugard's mother - has described how a stranger drove up and grabbed Ms Dugard, bundling her into a grey car even as she tried to resist by kicking and screaming.

US police give details of Jaycee recovery

Mr Probyn believed a man and woman were in the vehicle. Despite several false reports of sightings in the intervening years, Ms Dugard was never seen again.

"She sounds like she's okay," he said.

"She had a conversation with my wife and she remembers things. I hope she's been well treated this entire 18 years."

"To have this happen where we get her back alive, and where she remembers things from the past, and to have people in custody is a triple win," he told the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

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Bolivia's Child Miners

Filmmaker: Rodrigo Vasquez

The Llallagua tin mine in Bolivia has been active for 100 years.

For much of that time poor Bolivians have been dying as they struggle to extract the valuable metal in appalling conditions.

In 2006 Witness travelled to Bolivia to film with child miners Jorge Mollinedo and his friend Alex Choque, soon after the country's first indigenous President Evo Morales had won elections with the promise of renationalising the mining industry.

But armed conflict between the cooperatives that extract tin and the National Miners Union broke out in October of that year.

Jorge's mining town was partially destroyed and 20 miners, among them women and children, were killed.

The cooperatives have been denied access to the pits ever since so now Jorge's father has lost his job.

But because the child miners are not part of the cooperative they've carried on working, and now Jorge is helping to support his entire family, at the age of just 13.

Rodrigo Vasquez made that first film for Witness, and in Child Miners he returns to Llallagua to ask what happened to the promised reforms, and to find out if life for Jorge and Alex has improved.

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Taliban confirm commander's death

The fate of Baitullah Mehsud has been the subject of intense speculation

The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, is dead, two of his senior commanders have told the BBC.

It is the first time that the militant group has acknowledged his death.

The commanders, Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, said that he had died of injuries sustained in a US missile strike earlier this month.

Hakimullah has been named as successor to Baitullah Mehsud, who was Pakistan's most feared militant, accused of scores of suicide bombings and other attacks.

Hakimullah Mehsud, who is believed to be in his late 20s, said Baitullah Mehsud had been critically wounded by the missile strike but died only on Sunday.

Waliur Rehman said that Hakimullah Meshud had his support as leader, and denied reports of differences between the two men.

"There are no differences between the various Taliban faction and we are all united."

Earlier, government officials said the two factions led by Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman had taken up arms against each other.

Profile: Hakimullah Mehsud Obituary: Baitullah Mehsud

There were also claims that the newly appointed leader had been killed in a clash between the two sides.

"These are only false reports being spread by the government," Waliur Rehman said.

The fate of Baitullah Mehsud has also been the subject of intense speculation.

Senior Pakistani government officials have previously said they had information that Baitullah Mehsud was killed when a missile struck his father-in-law's compound on 5 August.

A Taliban spokesman arrested last week also reportedly confirmed Baitullah Mehsud's death to Pakistani intelligence officials.

But the Taliban have repeatedly denied these claims, despite announcing the appointment of Hakimullah Mehsud as its new leader just days ago.

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool in Islamabad says that the Pakistani government will be pleased that the Taliban has confirmed the death of Baitullah Mehsud.

It has been unable to provide tangible evidence of his death because of the remote and hostile terrain of Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan.

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Hopes raised for MS treatment

Professor Wynick set up research into the effects of galanin on MS

Scientists in Bristol claim results from a research project into multiple sclerosis (MS) could lead to treatment to reduce the severity of the disease.

The team carried out tests on mice and then on human brain tissue and found galanin, a protein within brain nerve cells, was resistant to MS.

Professor David Wraith at the University of Bristol said the results were "extremely promising".

The team said it could be at least 10 years before a drug is developed.

Professor David Wynick, who works on the function of galanin, set up the project with a group of other scientists working on the development of a vaccine for the treatment of multiple sclerosis.

He said: "It has been known for some time that galanin plays a protective role in both the central and peripheral nerve systems - when a nerve is injured levels of galanin increase dramatically in an attempt to limit cell death."

The team discovered that mice with high levels of galanin were completely resistant to the MS-like disease, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). Transgenic mice that contained no galanin at all developed a more severe form of the disease.

MS is a neurological condition that affects the transfer of messages from the central nervous system to the rest of the body.

It is the most common neurological disorder among young adults, affecting 85,000 people in the UK with 2,500 newly diagnosed each year.

There is no cure for MS, but drugs can be used to reduce the number and severity of relapses, and to reduce the number of new attacks.

Dr Doug Brown, research manager at the MS Society, said: "This is an early study and there's a long way to go before we understand what this means for people with MS, but any insight into how MS might be treated is valuable to researchers.

"This is worth further investigation."

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California jail release vote due

By Rajesh Mirchandani BBC News, Los Angeles

The riot at a south California prison has been blamed on 'racial tensions'

California lawmakers are to vote on a plan to release 27,000 prisoners early.

The proposal is part of a solution to a $26bn dollar budget deficit and the problem of chronic prison overcrowding.

It comes soon after a prison riot in which hundreds of inmates were hurt. The prison was holding well over its official capacity.

A federal court recently ruled that conditions in California's prisons were appalling and ordered inmate numbers to be cut by 40,000.

The early release of thousands of prisoners could save California more than a billion dollars as well as easing overcrowding.

Opponents of the idea say it will put dangerous criminals back on the streets.

Thanks to tough laws the state has nearly 170,000 people in prisons that were designed for far fewer.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks releasing low-level offenders - like those near the end of their sentences - would be a better use of scarce resources.

However, no politician here wants to be seen as soft on crime. So, lawmakers are divided but they must reach agreement.

Just two weeks ago, prisoners rioted at a facility near Los Angeles, setting fire to cell blocks. More than 100 were injured at the California Institution for Men in the southern town of Chino. Racial tensions were blamed.

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1,000 cameras 'solve one crime'

London is one of the world's most monitored cities

Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed.

The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals.

In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers.

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent."

The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV David Davis MP

He added: "CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.

"It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

"The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV."

Nationwide, the government has spent £500m on CCTV cameras.

But Det Sup Michael Michael McNally, who commissioned the report, conceded more needed to be done to make the most of the investment.

He said: "CCTV, we recognise, is a really important part of investigation and prevention of crime, so how we retrieve that from the individual CCTV pods is really quite important.

"There are some concerns, and that's why we have a number of projects on-going at the moment."

Among those projects is a pilot scheme by the Met to improve the way CCTV images are used.

Officers from 11 boroughs have formed a new unit which collects and labels footage centrally before distributing them across the force and media.

It has led to more than 1,000 identifications out of 5,260 images processed so far.

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'Oscar's miraculous recovery'

By Jane Elliott Health reporter, BBC News

Oscar is now fully recovered

Oscar Parry has had leukaemia twice, three bone marrow transplants and five brain haemorrhages.

His doctor says it is a "miracle" that the 10-year-old Essex boy is still alive and is back at school as well as fundraising for the hospital that saved him.

His mother Yvonne said: "Even by Great Ormond Street Hospital standards he is doing well."

Oscar was born with a genetic syndrome called Noonan's Syndrome which left him with a minor heart condition and slightly small for his age.

Treatment regime

Doctors thought these were the only side effects, but no one knew that the condition had also made him vulnerable to leukaemia and at the age of three he developed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) - one of the most common forms of the disease

To begin with, Oscar was treated with low doses of chemotherapy, which worked well.

However, after three years of treatment his blood counts dropped and he was diagnosed with a rarer, more aggressive, type that could only be cured by a bone marrow transplant.

A lot of special stuff goes on here and a lot of sick children get better, but he is probably at the top of our list Dr Paul Veys

After three months a good match was found and Oscar had his first transplant. But his blood counts remained low and he needed an operation to remove his spleen. For some time this made a difference.

But just as he was set to go home, his leukaemia came back and a second, more experimental, type of transplant was needed.

Oscar's doctor at Great Ormond Street, Paul Veys, head of the bone marrow transplant unit ,said they gave him just a 10% chance of survival.

His mother said this was one of the worst times for the family.

More battles

But Oscar's battles were not over as he then developed a very virulent version of graft-versus-host disease, where the new donor cells start to fight the patient's body.

This is not uncommon following a transplant, but Oscar was very ill and spent weeks in intensive care with infections.

"There were times when Oscar was in intensive care and we thought he wouldn't make it," said his mother.

"It was numbing.

Oscar had leukaemia twice

"The first time he went into intensive care and had brain haemorrhages I was making his funeral arrangements."

Dr Veys agreed that things had been fraught.

"He had one genetic disease and two, or possibly three, leukaemia at various times," he said.

"He needed three transplants, the third with slightly specialised cells - he was the first child to be treated in the UK with this treatment.

"The bottom line is you do a transplant to try and cure the leukaemia, it comes back, you do the second transplant in a different way making the new cells fight like crazy but then they fight too much so we have to switch them off and that is the the reason for the third specialised cells, and the chances of his coming through that were extremely small.

"The horrible irony is that it's often not the leukaemia that gets you, it's the heavy treatment or the after-effects of it, either the infections or the graft-versus-host disease."

Yvonne said things are now looking very rosy, although Oscar does have osteoporosis due to two years on steroids.

His growth also halted while he was taking the drugs, and his teeth were not replaced as he lost them.

This is all starting to improve and Oscar, aged 10 is now even boasting that he's taller than his four year old brother, Finn.

"We came home June 2007 and have not been back since and his immune system is running at about 75%," said Yvonne.

"He went back to school in February 2008 and is absolutely loving it and joining in with everything.

"He is great and we have a normal family life now."

'Not a dry eye'

Dr Veys, said Oscar is a star.

"A lot of special stuff goes on here and a lot of sick children get better, but he is probably at the top of our list.

Oscar is now back at school

"Not many children survive three procedures, but his outlook is very good now and he is helping fundraising by giving presentations to major donors.

"He is very good and will stand up in front of a crowd.

"He looks younger than he is, and when he tells his dramatic story there is not a dry eye in the house."

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