‘Spitting vicar’ sacked
A Church of England vicar accused of intimidating and spitting at parishioners has been ordered to vacate his post by his bishop. The Rev Tom Ambrose, 61, of St Mary and St Michael Church in Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, has been disqualified from “carrying out any of the functions of his office” by the Bishop of Ely, Dr Anthony Russell. The decision comes after an ecclesiastical tribunal in London last year.

McCanns’ alert call
Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine has been missing since disappearing in Portugal last year, have urged MEPs at a meeting at the European Parliament to back an “amber alert” system of the kind successfully used in the United States, which allows authorities to put missing child information on motorway signboards within 30 minutes of an abduction, as well as triggering bulletins on radio and television stations.

Relatives of Shannon Matthews suspect questioned
Three women related to the man charged with kidnapping Shannon Matthews were questioned by police for seven hours (Russell Jenkins writes).

Caroline Meehan, 29, the niece of the child’s alleged abductor, went voluntarily with her sister Amanda Hyett, 25, and their mother, Alice Meehan, 49, to Dewsbury police station.

Detectives investigating the concealment of information that could have led to the child’s rescue said that all three were arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. They were released on bail.

Michael Donovan, 39, is charged with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment. He will appear at Leeds Crown Court next Wednesday.

War crime arrest
A Northamptonshire locksmith has been charged with war crimes over his alleged involvement in a massacre of Croatians in the Balkans war. Milorad Pejic, 39, an ethnic Serb living in Corby, was arrested in Belgrade. The charges relate to him being part of a force that allegedly killed 260 prisoners of war.

£700m exam fees
Schools are spending about £700 million a year on exams, a Qualifications and Curriculum Authority report said. At one school, annual exam fees had risen over five years from £30,000 to £100,000 for the same number of children. Ministers have ordered a review of the exams market.

Coroner backed
The coroner at the inquest of Diana, Princess of Wales, did not reach a “flawed” decision when he ruled against the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh giving evidence, High Court judges said. Mohamed Al Fayed’s legal team made a last-minute appeal for a judicial review of the decision.

TV host’s libel award
The GMTV presenter Kate Garraway, 39, accepted a six-figure sum, plus costs, in undisclosed libel damages from MGN Ltd at the High Court. The Sunday Mirror and Daily Mirror had alleged that she was having an affair with Anton Du Beke, her partner on the show Strictly Come Dancing.

Suspect cleared in ‘kebab murder’ case
The alleged killer of a 14-year-old girl feared to have been disposed of through a kebab shop mincing machine has been formally cleared of murder at Preston Crown Court (Russell Jenkins writes).

Charlene Downes, of Blackpool, has not been seen since November 2003. A jury last year was discharged after failing to reach a verdict and a retrial was scheduled to start this month. However, the Crown Prosecution Service offered no evidence against the murder suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons. Mohammed Reveshi, 50, who was accused of helping to dispose of the body, was also cleared.

Dog thrown off cliff
A woman seen throwing a pet dog off a Cornish cliff could face prosecution by the RSPCA.

Milly, a tiny Japanese Chin, was placed in a bag and thrown down into Lamorna Cove. But she became wedged on a ledge and was rescued unharmed by Gerry Whitehall, an architect. He said: “I saw a well-dressed woman with a carrier bag – but it was moving. She flung it out horizontally and it landed about 20ft down. It’s a lucky little dog.”

Web ‘helps suicides’
Surfing the internet is more likely to help vulnerable people to commit suicide than to deter them, a study suggests. Almost half of websites found by using popular search engines contain details of how a person can kill themselves, while a fifth of these sites are specifically about suicide and actively “encourage, promote or facilitate” suicide, a team from the universities of Bristol, Oxford and Manchester reports in the British Medical Journal.

Editor takes over
Roger Alton is to be the new Editor of The Independent. The former Editor of The Observer takes over from Simon Kelner, who becomes managing director and Editor-in-Chief of The Independent and Independent on Sunday. Mr Alton has twice been named Editor of the Year, as has Mr Kelner, who was appointed Editor of The Independent in 1998 and was the first broadsheet editor to switch to a compact format.

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