Half of the meat samples tested by a local authority food safety team last year contained species of animals not identified on their labels.

Beefburgers and sausages sampled by Leicester Trading Standards contained undeclared chicken, while samples of lamb curry were found to contain cheaper beef or a mix of beef and lamb or turkey.

Leicester city council is the latest authority to publish results from a targeted survey of meat products on sale in its area in 2013, which shows that gross contamination of meat is widespread.

The findings follow similar results from West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and West Sussex councils that also found consumers were regularly being misled about the contents of their food.

Minced beef samples were found in Leicester that were a mix of meat from three species; beef, chicken and lamb. Lamb mince samples contained not only lamb but also beef, chicken and turkey. Twelve out of 20 samples of doner kebab meat also failed to meet legal requirements because the species of animals used were misdescribed.

In total, 105 samples of meat products were collected from butchers, retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, fast food shops and caterers in Leicester and tested by the public analyst. Of these, 50 samples failed to meet legal requirements for composition and labelling, 47 of them because they contained undeclared species of animal.

Leicester council says deliberate deception is likely to be the cause in several cases, while in others failure to clean machines properly between processing batches of different meats may be the explanation.

In 18 samples, meat of an undeclared species was a major ingredient, accounting for levels of between 60% and 100%. The rest of the failed samples tested positive for the presence of at least one type of undeclared meat at medium (30-60%) or minor (5-30%) levels.

One sample returned no DNA result in the tests as the meat ingredient had been so heavily processed it was marked down as denatured.

Last month the Guardian revealed that hundreds of food tests carried out by West Yorkshire councils had also found the routine adulteration of food and drink. Over a third of nearly 900 samples collected in that area were not what they claimed to be or were mislabelled in some way.

The regulator, the Food Standards Agency, which defines any level of DNA of undeclared species of over 1% as "gross adulteration", said the failure rate found by Leicester and West Yorkshire is higher than the picture overall because its sampling programmes were targeted at categories of produce where problems are already suspected. The overall failure rate for meat in 2013 in local authority testing held by the FSA was 13.5%, it said.

It added: "The Food Standards Agency and Defra are helping target local authority resources through greater central coordination of intelligence, giving additional support for complex investigations, and additional funding. The government has increased support to the national coordinated programme of food sampling by local authorities from £1.6m to £2.2m in 2013-14."

READ MORE: Half of meat product samples contained DNA of wrong animals, council finds

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The High Court on Monday moved to invoke the Geneva Convention in its efforts to continue investigating the alleged April 2003 killing of Telecinco cameraman José Couso by US soldiers during the invasion of Iraq.

The decision by Judge Santiago Pedraz sidesteps the Popular Party (PP) government's recent modification of the Judicial Powers Act, which limits the Spanish courts from investigating international human rights abuse cases under the universal jurisdiction doctrine.

Pedraz's ruling is the first legal maneuver to skirt the limitations imposed by Congress last month when it approved the restrictions after a heated debate that pitted the ruling PP against all opposition groups. Under the new rules, judges will only be able to open investigations against a suspected human rights violator if the defendant "is Spanish or a foreigner who frequently resides in Spain," or who is currently in the country and Spanish authorities have refused to allow their extradition.
The Socialists have vowed to appeal the reform before the Constitutional Court.
Pedraz believes that the High Court can continue investigating the Couso case because the Geneva Convention prevails when it comes to protection of civilians during times of war.
Couso was reportedly covering the conflict from the Hotel Palestine in Baghdad when US army troops opened fire on the building. Scores of foreign journalists had been staying at the hotel but the US military later said that soldiers were attacked by sniper fire coming from the Palestine. Ukrainian journalist Taras Protsyuk was also killed in the attack.
Specifically, Pedraz has issued international summons in his murder investigation for Lieutenant Colonel Philip de Camp, Captain Philip Wolford and Sergeant Thomas Gibson, who reportedly opened fire as Couso was recording from his hotel room balcony.
The United States has refused to cooperate in the inquiry.

READ MORE: High Court invokes Geneva Convention in Telecinco cameraman’s murder inquiry

An investment banker has been found dead in an apparent suicide in Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Kenneth Bellando's death is the latest in a spate of suicides by finance professionals both around the globe and in New York.
He was found dead in a neighboring backyard after jumping off his six-story building at around 10.20pm on Wednesday March 12.
Police investigators told MailOnline that the case is still technically under investigation but there was no immediate suspicion of foul play and he was dead on arrival.
Bellando, 28, worked at Levy Capital Partners and was previously an investment bank analyst at JP Morgan and Paragon Capital Partners.
He was raised in Long Island before attending and graduating from Georgetown University in D.C.
He returned to New York after graduation and launched his career in finance.
Kenneth was not the only one in the family to work in the business world.
Because of his role and involvement in risk exposure valuations, some of John Bellando's emails were used as evidence in the Senate Finance Committee's hearings about the 2012 'London Whale' trading scandal.
Kenneth's friends have begun posting photos and condolences on his Facebook page since his March 12 death, including some of Kenneth posing with his two sisters.

READ MORE: Banker, 28, kills himself in TWELFTH finance suicide this year

MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Crimea signed a treaty Tuesday reunifying the Ukrainian breakaway region with Russia after 60 years as part of Ukraine.
Putin signed the treaty with Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov and other Crimean leaders after addressing both houses of parliament, as well as heads of Russian regions and representatives of public organizations at a special assembly in the Kremlin.
The Russian parliament is expected to ratify the treaty imminently.
Putin signed a decree Monday recognizing Crimea as an independent state, following a referendum Sunday that saw voters on the peninsula overwhelmingly support secession and reunification with Russia.
In his address, punctuated by loud applause, the Russian leader justified Moscow's decision to protect Crimea, saying Russia's inaction would have been regarded as treason.
"The residents of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to Russia with a request to protect their rights and their lives. We could not have rejected their appeal and left them in trouble," Putin said.
Putin criticized the West for its containment policy against Moscow which he said has been conducted throughout history, particularly during the Cold War, and is continuing unabated.
"They always try to drive us into a corner for our independent stance, for our move to defend it and for calling a spade a spade, without showing a false face," Putin said.
Putin said Russia's Western partners crossed the line when dealing with events in Ukraine, while ignoring the fact that Crimea is home to a predominantly Russian ethnic majority.
"Russia found itself on the brink, from that point it could not have retreated," the president said.
He also called the gift of Crimea to Ukraine by Soviet leaders in 1954 a "robbery" and said the Black Sea peninsula has always remained an inseparable part of Russia in the hearts and minds of Russians.
Putin praised the results of Sunday's referendum in Crimea which he said was held "openly and fairly."
"Crimeans clearly voiced their will. They want to be united with Russia," he said.
The Russian leader's address was good news for Russia's ruble Tuesday, which rose to 36.30 to the dollar and 50.54 to the euro after falling to a historic low earlier this month.
Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, which is to have a special status within the republic, are to be considered Russian territory as of Tuesday, the Kremlin said, adding that the transition period for the breakaway region's fully joining Russia will last until 2015.
Crimea will have three official languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar.

READ MORE: Russia, Crimea Sign Historic Reunification Treaty

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WASHINGTON -- In a major discovery for understanding the origins of the universe, U.S. scientists said Monday they have detected echoes of the Big Bang 14 billion years ago.
The "first direct evidence of cosmic inflation" was found with the help of a telescope at the South Pole, and was announced by experts at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The detection of these gravitational waves represents the last untested element of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, filling in a major gap in our understanding of how the universe was born.

The gravitational waves are ripples that move through space and time, and have been described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang." Their detection confirms an integral connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

"Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today. A lot of work by a lot of people has led up to this point," said John Kovac leader of the BICEP2 collaboration at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The telescope targeted a specific area of sky known as the "Southern Hole" outside the galaxy where there is little dust and extra galactic material to interfere with what humans can see with the potent sky-peering tool.

By observing the cosmic microwave background, or a faint glow left over from the Big Bang, small fluctuations gave scientists new clues about the conditions in the early universe.

The gravitational waves rippled through the universe 380,000 years after the Big Bang, and these images were captured by the telescope.
Harvard theorist Avi Loeb said the findings provide "new insights into some of our most basic questions: Why do we exist? How did the universe begin?

READ MORE: Scientists Detect Echoes of Universe's Big Bang

Scientists find echoes of the Big Bang

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A persistent warning light is flashing for U.S. electric utilities. The utilities -- big and small, for- and not-for-profit -- are facing serious disruptive technology. The old business models are in danger.

The unlikely disruptive technology that is causing the trouble is rooftop solar power.
Back in the energy turbulent 1970s, solar was a gleam in the eye of environmentalists who dared to dream of renewable energy. It looked like a pipe dream.
Very simple solar had been deployed to heat water in desert homes since indoor plumbing became the norm. Making electricity from the sun was many orders of magnitude more complex and it was, anyway, too expensive.
The technology of photovoltaic cells, which make electricity directly from the sun, needed work; it needed research, and it needed mass manufacturing. Hundreds of millions of dollars later in research and subsidies, the cost of solar cells has fallen and continues to go down.
Today, solar certainly is not a pipe dream: It is looking like a mature industry. It is also a big employer in the installation industry. It is a player, a force in the market.
But solar has created a crisis for the utilities.
In order to incubate solar, and to satisfy solar advocates, Congress said that these "qualifying facilities" should be able not only to generate electricity for homes when the sun is shining, but also to sell back the excess to the local utility. This is called "net metering" and it is at the center of the crisis today -- particularly across the Southwest, where solar installations have multiplied and are being added at a feverish rate.
Doyle Beneby, CEO of San Antonio, Texas-based CPS Energy, the largest municipal electric and gas utility in the nation, said, "The homes that are installing solar quickly are the more affluent ones." The problem here, he explained, is that the utility has to maintain the entire infrastructure of wires and poles and buy back electricity generated by solar in these homes at the highest prevailing rate -- often more than power could be bought on the market or generated by the utility.
Steve Mitnik, a utility industry consultant, said that 47 percent of the nation's electric market is residential and the larger, affluent homes -- which use a lot of electricity, and generally pay more as consumption rises -- are a critically important part of it. Yet these are the ones that are turning to solar generation, and expect to make a profit selling excess production to the grid.
But who pays for the grid? According to CPS Energy's Beneby, and others in the industry, the burden of keeping the system up and running then falls on those who can least afford it.
The self-generating homes still need the grid not only to sell back to but,more importantly, to buy from when the sun isn't shining and at night.

READ MORE: Solar Power Threatening Future for U.S. Electric Utilities