Infozone Breaking World News

For those of you that say the traffic is bad in the UK (especially during bank holiday weekends!), it’s nothing compared to the one near Beijing which lasted for nine days. Local media state that a queue stretching around 100km (62miles) formed after a combination of heavy traffic, breakdowns and road works grinded the road to a holt.

The vehicles drivers, which were mainly lorries bound for Beijing complained that local people were charging them over the odds for food and water while they were stuck. State television said that the road has “basically returned to normal,” but there could be further disruptions as the road works aren’t expected to be finished till the middle of September.

The traffic jam was between Jining (in Mongolia) and Huai’an (in the Hebei Province near Beijing) and is a part of the Beijing-Tibet expressway; it is used heavily by lorries carrying coal to Beijing from Mongolia.

A Swedish driver who was caught speeding at 170km/h over the speed limit in Switzerland faces having to pay a whopping 1.08 million Swiss Francs (equivalent to $1m or £656,000) fine. The 37 year old unnamed driver was clocked going 290km/h in his Mercedes SLS AMG sports car and faces this huge fine because under Swiss law, a speeding fine is determined by the wealth of the driver and the recorded speed.

Earlier this year in January, a Swiss driver was fined $290,000 (the current world record) for speeding at 135km/h, 57km/p over the speed limit.

The Swede’s car has now been impounded and he could be forced to pay 3,600 Swiss Francs per day for up to 300 days.

A study by the Institute of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) has said that UK house prices are falling for the first time since July 2009. The report said this was because more and more houses were being put up for sale while potential buyer’s numbers had fallen for two consecutive months. Rics also added that buyers were finding it hard to get a mortgage, while others were putting off their plans for fears of unemployment.

Rics spokesman Ian Perry said, “The fall in the Rics house price measure is broadly consistent with most other recent data that has been released,” and added, “However, agents are still generally optimistic about sales activity, which should benefit from more realistic pricing of properties.”

64% of those surveyed said that they had not seen any change in local house prices for the last three months, whereas 25% had seen house prices drop with 11% saying that prices had risen. 28% of the surveyors questioned expected house prices to fall over the next few months.

A Freedom of Information report has announced that BBC staff has lost or had stolen £240,019 of laptops and mobile phones between April 2008 and March 2010. Over the two year period BBC staff reported 146 laptops, 65 mobile phones and 17 Blackberry’s lost or stolen.

The BBC said that they take any thefts seriously and computer security company Absolute Software warned staff to be more careful. David Everitt from the security firm said, “It is shocking that any organisation could lose so much equipment, but the BBC is just one of many we’ve seen recently, proving it’s all too common.” Adding that, “In this case, however, this technology is paid for by the licence payer and employees should be far more careful about how they handle it.”

The BBC aren’t the worst offenders though, as early last month a study by Lewis Communications stated that government departments had reported over £700,000 worth of technology lost or stolen over the same time period; this included 518 laptops, 104 mobile phones, 131 Blackberry’s and 932 electronic storage devices.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 84% owned by the UK taxpayers has announced that its per-tax profits for the first six months of 2010 leap to £1.14 billion, compared to just £15 million for the first six months of 2009. It also reported an operating profit of nearly £1.6 billion compared to an operating loss of over £3.4 billion in 2009.

Since 2008 RBS has cut 23,000 jobs worldwide with 17,100 jobs cuts in the UK and earlier this week announced that it would be selling 318 of its branches to Santander.

RBS chief executive Stephen Hester said that the banks restructuring was on track by saying, “We are making good progress with disposals and overall business restructuring,” adding that the plan was “a marathon not a sprint”.