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DEPUTY BRITISH High Commissioner to Jamaica Phil Sinkinson has made outrageous claims that one in ten people on flights from Jamaica are smuggling cocaine. He used this to justify his demand for a crackdown and harsher sentencing. British customs and excise officials rubbished Sinkinson's comments. They revealed that there were no figures on the number of "drugs mules" to support Sinkinson's claims.

OVER A million people tried to log on to the new 1901 census internet site. The History of Britain series presented by Simon Schama was a huge success. It was followed by the popular Timewatch and Blood of the Vikings series which showed the massive audience interested in historical events. Faced with the growing popularity of history, BBC2 has come up with the four part series Civil War to be screened on Mondays at 8.30pm.

RIVER PILOTS on one of Britain's busiest waterways are continuing their all-out strike. The strike by the 130 pilots, all members of the TGWU union, centres around a dispute with the giant ABP firm which runs ports along the Humber.

PEOPLE IN the poor African country of Somalia feared this week that they were to become the latest targets in the US "war on terror". The US, and key allies Britain and France, have increased surveillance flights to four or five a day over Somalia in the last week.

AN ASYLUM seeker deported by the British government has been beaten and tortured in Zimbabwe. Gerald Muketiwa, who supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, was deported from Britain on 16 December last year after his plea for asylum was turned down.

NEW LABOUR looks set to bail out Britain's air traffic control network less than six months after it was privatised. The government sold off 46 percent of the National Air Traffic Service for £750 million to a consortium of airline companies last July.

MORE THAN 20,000 elderly people died from cold-related illnesses in England and Wales last winter, despite the government's claims to be helping the poorest elderly people. Mervyn Kohler of Help the Aged says the number of winter deaths among old people is a "peculiarly British problem.

THE government quietly gave the go-ahead to the Sellafield mixed oxide (mox) nuclear plant in Cumbria just before Christmas. British Nuclear Fuels Limited opened the plant just hours after gaining an operating licence from the government.

THE PUBLIC funds the luxury lodgings of judges to the tune of £5.6 million a year. That is £900 for each night a judge spends away from home. These lodgings have servants, smoking rooms, wine cellars and even a tennis court.

WAR, RECESSION, resistance. The three notes which marked last year will ring through the coming 12 months too. In Britain, 2001 began with job cuts and resistance, as 10,000 people marched in defence of Vauxhall workers' jobs, threatened by multinational General Motors.

WHITE RIOT is the new book by co-editor of the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine Nick Lowles. It tells the terrifyingly true story of the assorted racist psychopaths and crackpots who make up the Nazi terrorist group Combat 18. Combat 18 was formed in the early 1990s out of the gangs of thugs who guarded the meetings of the Nazi British National Party (BNP).

Families that become homeless could have their children taken away from them by councils trying to save money. Councils across Britain are exploiting a new legal loophole which says they only have to offer housing to homeless children, not families.