Bonus for mandarins

Senior civil servants received bonuses averaging £7,000 last year, with the Ministry of Defence paying out £41.3 million of a total of £128 million. Mandarins in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport pocketed £11,000 each, with colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office both averaging more than £9,000 each. Bonuses for staff at the Department for Work and Pensions totalled £36.6 million, including £3.7 million to workers at the Child Support Agency, which is soon to be scrapped.

Loch search called off

A search was called off last night for a 20-year-old man who vanished while swimming in Loch Assynt in Sutherland. The alarm was raised on Saturday night, and police were joined in searching the loch and surrounding area by coastguard teams and the Stornoway helicopter, which has a heat-seeking radar. No trace was found and the search resumed yesterday at 8am.

100 amputees a week

About 100 people a week in Britain have a limb amputated as a result of diabetes, a charity has said. The disease, which affects more than two million Britons, causes damage to blood vessels to the limbs. Douglas Smallwood, chief executive of Diabetes UK, said: “This situation is shocking, given that most amputations can be prevented with better awareness and management of the condition.”

Dictionary growing

The English language will celebrate its one-millionth word within a year, experts say. At present there are 995,844 official words, with the millionth word predicted to arrive on April 29, 2009. Paul Payack, founding president of the Global Language Monitor, said that the average person uses fewer than 14,000 words. Even a linguistically gifted person would use only about 70,000 words, he said.

Osborne forfeit call

George Osborne is facing calls to forfeit the £10,000 he received for speaking at a private event with business leaders. The Shadow Chancellor denied breaching his party’s rules after he accepted the sum for his appearance at the Institute of Directors’ annual conference in Jersey. Mr Osborne insisted that he had done nothing wrong and had not contravened any rules on registration of interests.

Transplant denial

King’s College Hospital, London, has been referred to the Healthcare Commission amid concerns that it has given too many liver transplants to foreigners. Livers were given to 72 non-British EU nationals over four years, of whom 37 were Greek and Cypriot nationals, whose transplants were classed as private operations. The hospital denied that foreign patients could buy a transplant.

Two Lotto winners

Two people shared the lottery jackpot of £4.5 million on Saturday. The winning numbers were 2, 22, 26, 28, 30 and 39. The bonus ball was 12. The Dream Number was 0081391. In the Thunderball draw the winning numbers were 3, 6, 7, 8 and 12. The Thunderball was 8. The estimated jackpot for the main lottery draw on Wednesday is £2.5 million.

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