A British man accused of murdering his wife in rural France eight years ago in order to claim her life insurance was found guilty tonight of involuntary homicide and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Robert Lund, who was originally from Darwen, Lancashire, had claimed that his wife, Evelyn, drove into a lake by mistake during a storm.

But a jury of five men and four women in the southern French town of Albi rejected his argument.

Lund was cleared of murder but convicted of involuntary homicide, indicating that the jury believed he had not intended to kill her.

Mrs Lund went missing from the farmhouse she shared with her husband in the remote village of Rayssac, south-west France, on December 29 1999.

Her body was found two years later on the back seat of her Toyota Land Cruiser in a lake 15 miles away when a drought caused water levels to fall.

Rupert Murdoch hosed down a shareholder rebellion today as almost a quarter of News Corporation’s investors voted for greater democracy within the Australian billionaire’s media empire.

At News Corp’s annual meeting in New York, some 23% of shareholders backed a resolution tabled by an Australian activist calling for a shake-up in the company’s dual class voting structure to create a “one share, one vote” system.

Such a move would loosen Mr Murdoch’s tight grip on the company which is the parent of newspapers such as The Times and The Sun and is the controlling investor in BSkyB.

“We’re running a corporate structure which is frankly embarrassing - which is a gerrymander,” said activist Stephen Mayne, who accused Mr Murdoch of being paranoid about takeover. “Trust yourself, back your record. You’re a legend - nobody’s going to sack you.”

Such a change has little chance of success because the Murdoch family controls a 30% voting block. Wall Street critics point out that the present structure keeps News Corp’s mainstream “B” shares out of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, consigning them to a lower rating.

Defending the status quo, Mr Murdoch said protection from takeover bids was beneficial to shareholders because it allowed the management to take more risks: “It’s certainly enabled the board to take a longer term view in decision-making and planning.”

During the meeting at New York’s Hudson Theatre, the Australian media mogul faced questioning from ethics campaigners over sexual content in programming on his Fox television network and about the depiction of smoking in Twentieth Century Fox movies.

He was quizzed by reporters about News Corp’s social networking website, MySpace, which is facing intense rivalry from Facebook.

Mr Murdoch ruled out buying Facebook at mooted valuations of between $10bn and $15bn and he insisted that MySpace had more potential, comparing its rival to a telephone directory.

“We’re going in slightly different ways. They [Facebook] are more of a utility - I won’t say a phone book - for friends to connect with each other,” he said, describing MySpace as more “cultural” and as a forum for making new friends or similar interests.

Investors overwhelmingly backed Mr Murdoch’s re-election as chairman of the company, with 99.5% supporting him.

Inappropriate content

A note of dissent, however, came from Crystal Madison, representing a body called the Parents TV Council. She complained that prime-time drama series on News Corp’s Fox television network showed inappropriate content at peak times, listing several shows as regular offenders - Family Guy, American Dad, Bones and Dirt.

Ms Madison said there was regular humour about prostitution, masturbation, and infidelity, adding that Bones recently showed a maggot-infested dead body with its feet severed at prime time: “Is this entertainment, Mr Murdoch?”

The News Corp chairman replied that “a lot of people think so”, adding: “People have a couple of hundred channels to choose from - they don’t have to watch this.”

Shareholders heard that News Corp’s acquisition of the Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones, was likely to be finalised by the end of the year with a vote of Dow Jones shareholders expected to be held in “early December”.

Injecting a note of irony to the proceedings, Mr Mayne asked whether News Corp had considered inviting Tony Blair to join its board, pointing out that the former Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar is already a director.

Mr Mayne suggested the company could continue a pattern of “giving defeated leaders of the ‘coalition of the willing’ a seat on the board as a consolation prize”.

HE COOKED venison for the Queen’s birthday, pops up regularly on our television screens and charges guests up to 300 a day to master the culinary arts.

But Nick Nairn, one of the UK’s foremost celebrity chefs, has been forced to eat an exquisitely prepared portion of humble pie by a team of health and hygiene inspectors.

Unannounced visits to the chef’s cook school at Port of Menteith near Stirling between 2003 and last year resulted in no fewer than 13 recommendations to improve standards of cleanliness, equipment and food storage.

Perhaps most embarrassing of all, officials invited the Aston Martin-driving chef and his staff to attend a cleanliness seminar.

Nairn last night insisted the criticisms were minor and did not affect food safety, and revealed his cook school was shutting for a week this summer for a major refurbishment that would exceed health standards.

The 48-year-old has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame, becoming in 1990 the youngest Scottish chef to win a Michelin star. Four years ago he quit the restaurant business to concentrate on his cook school, which attracts around 6,500 paying customers a year.

But while the vast majority of trainee chefs no doubt thoroughly enjoy their day, documents obtained from Stirling Council under freedom of information laws show environmental health officers were not entirely happy on any of their three visits.

Although they found the overall standard of hygiene was “very good”, the issues raised included:

A fly killer was coated in dead insects and inspectors demanded more frequent cleaning;

Specialist advice needed to be sought on how to store smoked salmon produced on the premises to stop it going off. Staff were given a five-point, step-by-step plan on how to make sure the fish was kept safely.

Part of the kitchen had a damaged floor covering, which could make it difficult to clean away bacteria;

A thermometer used for food temperature monitoring did not appear to have been checked for accuracy, and a record of checks was asked for;

Containers with tight lids were required to store open packets of food;

Clothes which had been worn outside were not kept away from kitchen areas and inspectors ordered that lockers be installed.

In one letter to the school of cookery, inspectors offered an invitation to a 10-a-head seminar on keeping to kitchen hygiene regulations.

Last night Nairn

told Scotland on Sunday: “We take these recommendations very seriously and we act on all of them. We have had a lot of dialogue with the health and safety officials and we employ a consultant to come in and check on a regular basis and advise us.

“We are going to close for a week in July for major work and we want to exceed, not just meet, all the rules. I would also point out that the faults, although they shouldn’t have happened, are very, very minor and don’t affect food safety, which is always at the highest standard.”

Andrew Fairlie, Scotland’s only two-Michelin-star chef, said he sympathised with Nairn: “It’s just one of these things: every restaurant, every hotel, every hospital, is going to have something. I don’t know anywhere which will be absolutely perfect, the rules and regulations are so strict.

“And it raises the issue of whether these records should really be public. People can look at a record and come to the conclusion that if there’s one or two failings then it’s not safe, which is completely wrong.”

For 300, a customer can learn from Nick Nairn how to cook the ultimate luxury “modern Scottish” meal. One menu consists of filo basket of mussels with bacon and brie, followed by roast rump of lamb with spinach gratin and tomato basil sauce, then bramble and almond tart with custard.

Other Nairn specialities include spaghetti with crab, and honey and whisky ice cream.

Guest chefs, whose classes are typically cheaper, include John Webber, formerly of Kinnaird Country House in Perthshire, and Alan Mathieson, the former head of executive dining for the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The issue of food safety and cleanliness has become increasingly important in recent years. In 1996, 21 people died after eating contaminated meat supplied by a butcher’s shop in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, in the world’s worst-ever E.coli epidemic.

The most recent statistics on notifiable cases of food poisoning show that cases rose from 6,804 in 2004 to 6,918 in 2005. As well as E.coli, which is linked to red meat, other notorious food bugs include salmonella, typically found in eggs, and campylobacter in poultry products.

If environmental health inspectors do find something seriously wrong with a restaurant or takeaway, then they have the ultimate power to close premises down if necessary. However, in most cases, they will insist on a detailed action plan to make sure premises literally clean up their act.