Polar challenge which rewrote British record books
Running dangerously short of food, the duo were forced to break into their emergency rations
The Week That Was: May 17 to 23, 2000
HAVING BRAVED brutal conditions on as little as half a cup of porridge a day, two Royal Marine commandos were the first Britons to reach the North Pole unaided this week.
Marine Charlie Paton, 29, and Corporal Alan Chambers, 31, had spent 70 days dragging 250lb sledges across 700 miles of ice. Running dangerously short of food, the duo were forced to break into their emergency rations a few days before the end of the expedition – and ran out of supplies the day before they reached the geographical North Pole.
Having reached their goal, the delighted but exhausted pair were flown to the Team Polar 2000 base at Resolute Bay, northern Canada, where a warm welcome and hot food awaited them.
A tent fire and minor frostbite in temperatures that dipped as low as -30C were just two of the setbacks they’d experienced during the epic journey.
At home, police were to lose their powers to probe serious complaints against their colleagues under proposals unveiled by the Home Office. The plans were broadly backed by opposition parties, senior officers and civil rights campaigners, who published their own similar proposals for an independent investigating body in a joint announcement.
Both reports said police should continue to examine the vast majority of the 18,000 to 20,000 complaints made against officers each year. But independent investigators would in future oversee all probes and head investigations into the most serious cases, such as deaths in custody, shootings, fatal accidents and allegations of corruption.
At the Old Bailey, nurse Kevin Cobb was facing the prospect of life behind bars when he was convicted of manslaughter after killing a nursing sister whose drink he had spiked with a date rape drug. He was also convicted of drugging three female patients at Crawley Hospital in West Sussex.
Cobb, 38, of Yateley, Hampshire, was remanded in custody awaiting psychiatric reports, but Judge Martin Stephens warned: “I have to make it clear that this defendant can only expect an extremely long sentence.”
Violence flared for the second successive day among rival English and Turkish football fans in Copenhagen, just hours before the Uefa Cup final between Arsenal and Galatasaray. Two fans – one Briton, one Turk – suffered stab injuries, and a British Embassy spokesman said a second British supporter had been seriously injured after being attacked with an iron bar.
In the local government elections, an “unholy alliance” between Labour and the Conservatives denied the Liberal Democrats power in Kirklees. The authority would be without a political leader for another two months and was left with no clear administration as political wrangling continued. The final count had left the Lib Dems with 29 seats, Labour with 25, Conservatives 15 and Greens three, so no single party had a clear mandate to form an administration.
As leader of the largest party on the council, Liberal Democrat Kath Pinnock was expected to take the helm, but then a motion for a shared Labour/ Conservative administration was carried by 40 votes to 30.
Two underworld feuds were believed to be behind a spate of shootings in West Yorkshire. Champion boxer Denzil Browne, 29, was named as the latest to be gunned down in the 11th firearms crime in Leeds and Bradford in a two-month period. Mr Browne was shot with an automatic weapon outside the Shoulder of Mutton pub near his home in Leeds.