Victory for Barclay twins

The millionaire twins, David and Frederick Barclay, have won an appeal in a French court for "public slander" damages against the Observer journalist John Sweeney arising out of a British radio broadcast last July.

A court in Rennes ordered Mr Sweeney to pay damages of pounds 2,200 to the twins after being judged to have acted "in bad faith" towards the Barclays during a BBC Radio Guernsey interview. The BBC and John Birt, its director general, were cleared of all blame.