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Police have come face to face with the man suspected of shooting Yvonne Fletcher after the Libyan authorities allowed officers to interview suspects for the first time since her murder more than 20 years ago.

Scotland Yard detectives in Tripoli have taken a series of statements as part of the investigation into the killing of the 25-year-old policewoman outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984. Her mother, Queenie, described the latest developments as ‘promising’.

During previous visits to Tripoli by Met officers investigating Fletcher’s death, detectives were prevented from talking to the chief suspects by President Muammar Gadaffi’s regime. However, the present Met inquiry has the personal support of the Libyan leader. Scotland Yard has refused to comment on whether it has identified the killer.

The co-operation confirms a warming of relations between Britain and Libya, a trend likely to be strengthened this week with the expected announcement that the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber is to be referred back to the High Court as an alleged miscarriage of justice. The dramatic decision could see Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi - who was sentenced to life imprisonment after his conviction for the murder of 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in 1988 - free to return to Libya in weeks.

Five detectives from the Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command have returned to London after seven weeks spent gathering evidence in Tripoli. As well as interview testimonies, they are also believed to have taken fingerprints and possible DNA traces as part of a fresh concerted attempt to bring Fletcher’s killer to justice.

A Scotland Yard source said that ‘dialogue with the Libyan authorities’ over the case would be continuing. He added that officers would be returning to Libya in the near future to continue with the inquiry.

Queenie Fletcher, 74, of Semley, Wiltshire, who visited Libya 12 years ago in search of answers about her daughter’s killing, said: ‘The interviews of a suspect are very promising. I just hope that we are not going to be disappointed and that they don’t build it all up then for some reason it all drops down again.’

Her daughter was policing a demonstration against Gadaffi’s regime outside the embassy in London’s St James’s Square when she was hit by a volley of shots believed to have been fired from a first-floor window. The bullet was fired by a sniper and was intended for the protesting Libyan dissidents. The shooting resulted in an 11-day siege of the embassy which only ended when the killer and 21 embassy staff were allowed to leave the building and Britain. The gunman was smuggled out of the building with embassy staff under diplomatic immunity laws and flown back to Libya.

The death of WPC Fletcher triggered a lengthy breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Now news that Gadaffi’s regime has helped Scotland Yard to identify the suspect is seen by diplomats as evidence of a blossoming relationship between the two countries. The breakthrough comes after Tony Blair met the Libyan leader for talks in his tent near Tripoli last month.

Among evidence submitted to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body that examined the safety of Megrahi’s conviction, are claims that a Palestinian group funded by Iran was responsible for the attack.

Libya returned to the international fold after it abandoned efforts to acquire nuclear weapons in late 2003 and agreed to pay compensation to families affected by the Lockerbie bombing.

The Libyan embassy would not comment on the Fletcher case.

Hugo Chбvez condemned Venezuela’s last remaining opposition-aligned TV station yesterday, two days after pulling the plug on another critical broadcaster. The president called cable news channel Globovisiуn an enemy of the state, and accused it of fomenting violence and attempts to assassinate him.

“Enemies of the homeland, particularly those behind the scenes, I will give you a name: Globovisiуn. Greetings gentlemen of Globovisiуn. You should watch where you are going,” he said, in a speech all stations were obliged to air. He accused it of distorting reaction to the closure of RCTV, a network which closed on Sunday after the government refused to renew its license. “I recommend they take a tranquiliser, that they slow down, because if not, I’m going to slow them down.”

Tens of thousands of mostly youthful protesters have marched through the capital, Caracas, and other cities for four days chanting slogans accusing the government of drifting towards Cuba-style authoritarianism. Clashes with police have left dozens injured.

State TV depicted the marchers as vandals and fascists. Most private networks, which allegedly have been cowed by the government, ignored or played down the protests. Globovisiуn, in contrast, depicted them as a battle for free speech and blamed the police for the violence.

By moving so swiftly, Mr Chбvez showed he was not deterred by international outcry over RCTV’s closure, a decision he defended as sovereign, legitimate and overdue, given its backing of a coup which briefly ousted him in 2002.

Communications minister Willian Lara asked prosecutors to investigate Globovisiуn for inciting attempts to kill Mr Chбvez, citing its airing of footage of the 1981 assassination attempt against John Paul II in Rome accompanied by This Does Not Stop Here, a salsa song by Ruben Blades, now Panama’s tourism minister.

In Venezuela’s political climate this was a coded message to kill Mr Chбvez, said Mr Lara, adding that he had consulted semiologists. “The conclusion of the specialists is that [in this segment] they are inciting the assassination of the president,” he told a press conference.

Alberto Federico Ravell, Globovisiуn’s director, said the accusation was “ridiculous”. He said the station had shown the Pope’s shooting as part of a week-long airing of RCTV archive footage accompanied by songs with farewell themes. He expressed concern at sharing RCTV’s fate: “If this government, with one stroke of the pen, closed the oldest TV station in the country, that has been on the air for 53 years, how will it not be able to shut this station which is far smaller?”

Jesse Chacуn, the telecoms minister, said Globovisiуn would be allowed to broadcast if it did not break the law.

Mr Lara also accused CNN, which has a bureau in Caracas, of smearing Mr Chбvez by juxtaposing his face with that an al-Qaida leader and an image of unrest in China. He also complained that it used footage of violence in Mexico to illustrate a story about Venezuela.

The network denied that the juxtaposition had signified hostile intent, and also said that it had publicly apologised weeks earlier for the Mexico footage gaffe.

Has Matsushita Electric Industrial’s («www.businessweek.com») growth engine started to sputter? It’s a question that a growing number of financial analysts are asking about the company’s TV business, and CEO «investing.businessweek.com» will be hard-pressed to come up with answers.

On July 25, the Japanese technology giant reported first-quarter profit gains for the sixth straight year. But that was almost an afterthought to bad news a day earlier, when the company revised downward its forecast for full-year earnings after announcing the sale of part of its stake in ailing Victor of Japan («www.businessweek.com»). The revision spooked investors and triggered a sell-off that left the company’s shares 3.6% lower.

Among the biggest worries: lower-than-expected flat-screen TV sales in North America. Ohtsubo himself had expressed concern earlier this year that plasma TV makers were forfeiting ground in the face of a marketing blitzkrieg from liquid-crystal displays, the rival flat-panel technology. That observation from the man whose company has one-third of the global plasma TV market now seems prescient. Yen’s Weakness Helps

Of course, nobody thinks plasma is about to get ousted completely by LCDs. Plasma producers still rule in big-screen TVs because they can make large panels at a lower cost than LCD producers can. But the market outlook doesn’t seem as sunny as Matsushita had hoped, and LCD makers are quickly closing in.

In the fiscal first quarter, Matsushita’s operating profit rose 13%, to $615 million, despite a modest 5% gain in sales, to $18.6 billion. Strong sales of digital cameras, video cameras, DVD recorders, and household appliances, along with the yen’s weakness, were behind the gains (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/1/07, «www.businessweek.com»). But full-year profit and sales forecasts were revised down 5%, to $3.97 billion, and $73.1 billion, respectively, due to the accounting change after Matsushita issues $290 million worth of JVC shares to Japanese consumer electronics company Kenwood («www.businessweek.com») and Kenwood’s biggest shareholder, the «investing.businessweek.com», a fund.

At first glance, the TV business doesn’t look bad. From April to June, Matsushita sold 800,000 plasma TVs, a 31% improvement over the 610,000 sets it sold in the same three-month period last year. Overall flat-panel TV revenues were up 2% as well. But the company needs to pick up the pace if it’s to reach its target of shipping 5 million sets this year—a 43% gain from 3.5 million. ‘On Track’ for Targets

Another troubling trend: a fall in first-quarter TV revenues in Japan and North America. Matsushita’s chief financial officer, Makoto Uenomura, blamed competitive prices, and said prices had fallen 29% in the quarter from the same period a year ago. But Uenomura said he was confident Matsushita was “on track” to hit its targets, and dismissed rising inventories. “We’re just switching to a new lineup of high-definition TVs in Europe and the U.S. so the inventories you’re seeing are new products, not old,” Uenomura told reporters. “We’re not worried.”

Maybe they should be. Even before Matsushita’s first-quarter numbers were released, some analysts had already lowered their volume sales estimates. Morgan Stanley («www.businessweek.com»), for one, challenged Matsushita’s forecast that the global plasma TV market would expand to 12.5 million sets this year, from around 9.7 million in 2006. The brokerage has global plasma TV sales at between 10 million and 11 million.

IT USED to be the scourge of the summer party, reserved for the hoi polloi and definitely not for connoisseurs.

But now a Frenchwoman living in Scotland is aiming to do for boxed wine what Volkswagen did for Skoda, with a new range targeted at just the kind of discerning drinker you would expect to shudder at the very idea.

Valerie Blanc, who worked for Glenmorangie, is hoping to put a box on the dining tables of the most picky connoisseurs with a new company that will sell what is known by wine buffs as ‘chateaux-bottled’ wine - but in a bag.

She hopes the concept will appeal to eco-friendly wine lovers weary of visiting the bottle bank and restaurants who want to serve customers by the glass.

Her firm, Provenance Boutique Wines, offers a range of wines sourced directly from the vineyards of France.

Packaging and shipment are reduced as the boxes are lighter and cheaper to produce than glass. Hefty merchants’ fees are also waived as they are shipped direct from the vineyard.

Improvements in technology mean that the vacuum-packed bags-in-boxes can keep the wine fresh for up to six weeks after opening. Prices start at around 41 for a five-litre box - the equivalent of 6.15 a bottle.

The idea came to Blanc on a visit to her family in Bordeaux. “I went to stay with my parents and they served a delicious red wine,” she says. “When I asked my father what it was, he produced a box - I couldn’t believe it. But he told me that in France there is a huge market for bag-in-box wine. Over there it doesn’t carry the same stigma as it does in the UK.

“When I returned to Scotland, I found that the only wine I could find that was sold bag-in-box was basically cheap plonk or co-operative wine. I thought this is crazy, as in America and Australia it is massive.”

Travelling back to Bordeaux, Valerie went in search of a number of small, independent producers, picking a handful from the Loire and Cotes de Blaye.

She also realised the concept would attract interest because it is environmentally-friendly.

“In this country we have a real problem with green bottle recycling. At the moment you have to get in your car and drive to the recycling point,” she says.

A recent report by Vinexpo found that the wine industry risks losing a generation of customers if it doesn’t get better at capturing the attention of younger drinkers.

The survey found that many young drinkers were curious about wine, but deterred by too many choices and styles, complex labelling and wine’s stuffy image.

Nick Room, wine buyer for Waitrose, said the new concept would succeed in the British market.

He said: “They sell well in France, and I see no reason why they couldn’t take off over here. The market trend is towards environmental packaging and bag-in-box is the best alternative. It just takes something to convince consumers that the wine in the bag is as good as the wine in the bottle.”

But others were less convinced. Neil Beckett, editor of the World Of Fine Wine, described the idea as interesting, but said it would still face resistance from some quarters.

“In terms of viability and integrity of the wine it makes much more sense than it would have done in the past. There used to be great problems with oxidation and contamination. A lot of those issues have been resolved.

“But it is a similar issue to screwcaps, there will always be people who are attached to the romance of using a corkscrew and drawing a cork and the whole of ritual of it.”

And Philip Larue, the Scottish director of Friarwood fine wine merchants, thought the concept was ridiculous. He said: ”

“I know it is very popular in France but I think this sort of thing should be kept to camping. Wine is all about romance and occasion. To some extent presentation is as important as the quality of the liquid that is in the bottle.”

Related topic

- http://living.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1237
http://living.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1237

(07-25) 13:40 PDT Los Angeles (AP) —

Target Corp., the nation’s second-largest retailer, will start selling a Sony Blu-ray high-definition DVD player during the critical holiday shopping period and feature the player along with DVDs in the format in store displays, dealing a potential blow to the rival HD DVD format.

The move, which the companies will formally announce Thursday, is another step in resolving a format war that has kept confused consumers from rushing to buy new DVD players until they can determine which format will dominate the market.

Target will sell the Sony BDP-S300 for $499 in October and display it along with Blu-ray DVDs from three studios, including Sony and The Walt Disney Co., at the ends of store aisles.

The Target announcement came five weeks after a decision by video rental chain Blockbuster Inc. to offer only Blu-ray titles when it expands its high-def offerings this fall.

Blu-ray is backed by Sony Corp., which developed it. Most Hollywood studios are releasing films either exclusively in Blu-ray or together with the rival HD DVD format, which is backed by its developer, Toshiba Corp.

Only Universal Studios, a unit of General Electric Corp., is releasing films exclusively in HD DVD.

Both formats offer a crisper, brighter high definition picture as well as more storage that allows interactive features and games to be packaged with movies.

Consumers have been slow to embrace either format, worried they might get stuck with a losing technology.

Target does not sell high-def DVD players in its stores, although it does sell a Toshiba player for $299 on its Web site

Target stores do sell an HD DVD add-on for the Microsoft X-Box 360 as well as Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, which comes with a Blu-ray player built in.

Target would not say why it decided to sell only Blu-ray players. Sony is paying a fee to have their products featured in the end-of-aisle display, called an endcap, although Sony executives said the retailer contacted them about the decision.

“We are not proclaiming one format vs. the other as the preferred consumer technology, and software will continue to be available to our guests in both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD format,” Target spokeswoman Brie Heath said.

Target will track customer feedback and adjust offerings as necessary, Heath said.

The HD DVD camp was not fazed by the Target decision, pointing out that HD DVD players continue to outsell Blu-ray players, which are at least twice the cost. They also point out that HD DVD players and DVDs are featured in endcap displays in Circuit City and Best Buy stores.

HD DVD promoters also contend that consumers are more influenced by price than product selection.

“HD DVD players are the most affordable,” said Ken Graffeo, co-president of the North American HD DVD Promotional Group. “It’s one thing to have a player featured, but it’s another if it doesn’t sell.”

While more titles are available in the Blu-ray format, this fall should provide a head-to-head contest between the two formats.

Two blockbuster films Д “Spider-Man 3,” from Sony and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” from Disney Д will be available exclusively on Blu-ray.

The HD DVD camp will be counting on sales of the blockbuster film “300,” from Warner Bros., which will be released in both formats, and the first season of the popular sci-fi TV show “Heroes,” which will be available exclusively on HD DVD.

___

AP Business Writer Joshua Freed contributed to this story from Minneapolis