A FORMER chief cashier with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to

A FORMER chief cashier with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was jailed for six years yesterday, after he admitted taking pounds 838,408 in donations. It is disfigured by odd editing, poor spelling and strange turns of phrase, such as consistently writing 'like he' instead of 'as if he'. She was pulled from her bicycle as she returned home from a friend's house and raped by three youths after being threatened with a Stanley knife.Concern has also been raised by other Irish court cases in recent days.These include the conviction of a man accused of raping a mentally retarded woman, and two cases where rape charges were dismissed when women alleging rape felt unable to give evidence.At yesterday's meeting with Mr Flynn, the delegation representing the Council for the Status of Women, Womens' Aid, the Irish Countrywomen's Association and the Rape Crisis Centre, pressed for consistency in rape sentences, mandatory therapy for sex offenders, more funds for rape crisis centres, and highlighted the lack of research into attacks on women.. Operating profits from continental Europe dropped from Ir pounds 22.5m to Ir pounds 16.5m.

While there are still important absentees - Barnes, Whelan and Stewart among them - the squad of 16 for tonight's second round, first leg is comprised entirely of senior players.Of the team which drew at Manchester United on Sunday - 24 hours after Spartak beat Lokomotiv Moscow 4-1 to take their 13th title - only Jan Molby (ankle) and Torben Piechnik (ineligible) did not travel. But that timetable may be forced back.In his privatisation announcement, Mr Heseltine said he could see no reason why it should not be privatised since most of its services were targeted at business customers.The Royal Mail, which already supplies a support service for Parcelforce in many areas of the country, could take over all domestic parcel deliveries.Post Office sources argue that Parcelforce loses overall from its VAT-exempt status since it is prevented from reclaiming VAT on goods and services it buys.Private express carriers are understood to be ready to lodge a complaint with the EC's competition directorate in Brussels, DG4, should its status be left unchanged under privatisation.Bertie Coxall, the president of the Association of International Couriers and Express Services, said: 'We have been involved in a number of negotiations with the Department of Trade and Industry, the Treasury and the Commission because we are concerned to get a level playing field.'. On the balcony above Wenceslas Square in Prague, Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak, stood shoulder to shoulder with Mr Havel, a Czech Students were joined by workers Not a shot was fired; Communism collapsed. To take the manager's job he has agreed this season to end a playing career in which he won 129 England caps, 10 national titles and five grand prix tournaments; he has volunteered to pass most of the running of his sports wholesalers business to his brother, Nick; and he has said he will perform a full-time job with a part-time salary.'He had several years when he felt most of the selectors were against him, so he knows how players can react when they feel badly treated,' his predecessor, Steve Baddeley, said Goode said: 'We do knock ourselves so much We sometimes like to see people fail. But diversity, the property that makes resilience possible, is vulnerable to blows that are greater than natural perturbations. Dan Dare is long dead, and with him goes the comic-book hero who was bluff and decent, and good enough to be the stuff of auction rooms 40 years on. They featured pictures of Hodgson and described how he had built his funeral business from one branch and pounds 14,000 of capital in 1975 to a value of pounds 90m by 1990.

- J M Mackie, Fife.What is the highest number of left- handed batsmen to have played for England in a Test match? And what is the biggest partnership for England by two left-handed batsmen?Left-handed batsmen have never comprised more than half of any England side. The Fellow, twice a short-head second in the race and a beaten favourite last season, has had more chances than most horses get in the race; the returning Remittance Man must prove both that he truly stays the distance of the Gold Cup and has recovered from a leg injury; Carvill's Hill, who has been out for even longer, has to show his buffeting experience in the Gold Cup of 1992 has not dulled him either mentally or physically.Carvill's Hill, though, like Jodami, will not fail for lack of size. Despite an expected dull sales performance - turnover was up by only 3 per cent excluding currency gains - half-year pre-tax profits have bounced up by 37 per cent to pounds 34.2m and the interim dividend has marched in step with a one- third rise to 2p a share. About half the increase in profits is because of a combination of reduced redundancy and reorganisation costs and a pounds 1.1m currency translation gain.The rest has come from an improvement in operating margins from 10.1 per cent to 10.5 per cent - the fruit of hefty cost-cutting in the past 18 months and worth pounds 3.4m extra to profits - together with an pounds 800,000 reduction in the interest bill.As promised by management, Chubb is generating safe-loads of surplus cash - an inflow of pounds 13.1m turned net debt of pounds 4.8m into a net bank balance of pounds 8.3m during the half-year. However, it is up to heads and schools to decide how teachers are deployed.'John Patten, Secretary of State for Education, has asked the chief inspector of schools to investigate why one third of schools are spending fewer hours teaching than the minimum of 21 to 24 recommended by the Government.Teachers are often required to take subjects they are not specialised in or in which they lack confidence, the Office for Standards in Education said. 'If a junior house officer is presented with a young black man in pain, making a noise and demanding large doses of pethidine or diamorphine, then in an inner-city area that rings alarm bells about drug abuse.'. Having gravitated towards the marketplace of ideas in Tiananmen Square, he was on 'most wanted' list when the troops were sent in. Though Fiennes gives Heathcliff glints of tenderness and self- knowledge, there is no suggestion here of natural nobility.

Yesterday's decision is to go the Lords for a definitive ruling.The Master of the Rolls said Mr Bland would want to be remembered as a 'cheerful, carefree, gregarious teenager, and not an object of pity .Doing my best to look at the matter through his eyes. By the end of the game he'd gone, and the boys never saw him again.'The aforementioned Devlin, now with Notts County, was spotted by Graeme Souness and given a trial with Liverpool. 'Sympathy is the obvious word which occurs to them, but it isn't sympathy, it's recognition of something deeper, more subtle and more complicated than what appears on the surface, horrendous as that may be.'Masters acknowledges the distress that his books might cause the relatives of the victims whose sufferings are so compellingly described; he argues that this must be balanced against the need for an honest attempt to understand. No other country is permitted to reduce VAT to zero on any category, so France cannot abolish VAT on art imports to achieve a 'level playing-field' with Britain.The other EC regulations alarming the London art world are designed to uphold the tough rules by which Italy, Spain and Greece seek to keep their heritage at home - rules which lead to a huge volume of art smuggling. It is only these roads that are the responsibility of the Department of Transport, with the rest controlled by local authorities.Among the complex questions that might require answers before such an agency was launched are whether it would administer any toll scheme that might be introduced.