A CONSTRUCTION worker was crushed under a disused mill in Edinburgh after his bosses failed to make adequate checks on its structure.

Gideon Irvine, 45, died when the building, 36 metres high, collapsed as he was working inside.

His body was found more than 24 hours later when emergency services were able to pick through the rubble.

Yesterday, his employers, Central Demolition, admitted the work site was unsafe because they had failed to request important information about the structure of the building.

They acknowledged that the accident could have been prevented if they had carried out the proper checks. The Bonnybridge company was fined 50,000 at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for its part in Mr Irvine’s death.

After hearing the verdict, his widow, Jacqueline, from Falkirk, insisted no punishment could console her for the death of her husband, father of their sons, Gideon, 20, and Lewis, 19.

Speaking in the week of the third anniversary of his death, she said: “Nothing they can do or say will ever bring Gideon back. But it is still outrageous that all they get is a slap on the wrist and a fine.

“Money is nothing to them; it is a drop in the ocean,” she said. “It is more important that something is done now about safety for workers, because this is happening again and again.

“Fining them does no good. It won’t help other workers who are dealing with the same situations that Gideon was.”

Mr Irvine has been working on Caledonian Mill in Leith’s Western Harbour for just over a week when the accident happened in August 2004.

He was in the cab of his hydraulic excavator and had just demolished a section of the building when another part collapsed and landed on top of him.

The court heard that essential documents, which revealed the building was made up of two separate structures and not one as assumed, were never requested by Central Demolition.

Fiscal Angus Reith said the accident could have been prevented if the papers were considered before demolition.

He said: “Looking at these drawings 24 hours after the accident occurred, it was clear that premature collapse was inevitable and that the contractors should have made attempts to see these drawings before demolition commenced.

“What makes it worse is that there was information available, but it was never requested.”

Edgar Prais, QC, acting on behalf of Central Demolition, told the courts that his client did not “shy away” from the charge and admitted responsibility in full.

He told the court that the two directors, Ross Craig and Colin Peat, had not only dealt with the severity of their mistake, but had also lost a personal friend in Mr Irvine.

He said: “We are not dealing with cowboys here.

“They admit that they should have looked through archives for structural drawings and, sadly, by the time that was done, it was too late.”

The company pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the safety of their workers by obtaining structural drawings before commencing demolition.

Steve Jobs, Apples chief executive and field general, has Napoleonic dreams of global conquest for his 10-month-old wonder gadget, the iPhone. So it may be fitting that he has encountering his most serious resistance in a city called Waterloo.

That is where, 110 kilometers, or 70 miles west of Toronto, 19 nondescript, low-rise office buildings constitute the headquarters of Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry.

RIM is the North American leader in building smartphones, those versatile handsets that operate more like computers than phones. But RIM may have trouble dominating the markets next phase. Once the exclusive domain of e-mail-obsessed professionals, smartphones are now prized by consumers who want easy access to the Web, digital music and video even more than an omnipresent connection to their in-boxes.

Since the iPhone went on sale last summer, amid long lines of shoppers and media adulation, the contours of the smartphone market have begun to shift rapidly toward consumers. An industry once characterized by brain-numbing acronyms and droning discussions about enterprise security is now defined by buzz around handset design, video games and mobile social networks.

That means RIM, which has historically viewed big corporations and wireless carriers as its bedrock customers, needs to alter its DNA in a hurry. While business is booming in Waterloo, analysts are raising an important question about RIMs future: Can a company that defined mobile e-mail for a generation of thumb-jockeys with bad posture also dominate the new consumer market for smartphones?

“The vultures are circling,” says Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a research firm in Wayland, Massachusetts. “There is this sense that the RIM franchise is under assault.”

In the short term, Apples noisy entrance into the smartphone market has elevated the visibility of smartphones and enhanced the prospects of most of its rivals. Worldwide, smartphone shipments jumped 60 percent in the last three months of 2007 over the same period the previous year, according to IDC, a research company. Of the two billion cellphones sold last year, nearly 125 million were smartphones - a share that analysts expect to inexorably grow.

RIM added 6.5 million subscribers in its last fiscal year, twice that of the previous year, and its stock hit the stratosphere, more than doubling in value as investors anticipated the coming Age of the Smartphone. And RIM has already introduced catchy mainstream gadgetry.

The BlackBerry Pearl and Curve, two phones aimed explicitly at the consumer market, have sold well, particularly during the holiday season, and account for a majority of RIMs device sales.

But there are also signs that RIM faces steeper challenges. At the end of last year, BlackBerry had a 40 percent share of the U.S. smartphone market, down from 45 percent at the end of 2006, thanks largely to the 17.4 percent share the iPhone grabbed in its first six months.

In March, Jobs announced that Apple would take the rare step of licensing Microsofts corporate e-mail technology, to allow iPhones to connect directly to business computers - a dagger aimed at the heart of RIMs strength in the corporate market.

Apple, in an effort to further increase its appeal to consumers, is also expected to introduce a new 3G version of the iPhone in June, which will work on speedier wireless networks and may further attract a new segment of customers to the iPhone in the United States and abroad.

In describing the threat that Apple poses to RIM, Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham, describes his wifes entirely common use of the iPhone, which she takes to bed with her each night to browse the Web.

“Some consumers who might have considered the BlackBerry, who dont have the e-mail urgency of a mobile professional, are going to start selecting the iPhone,” Wolf says. “This isnt going to stop RIM, but it is going to slow them down.”

Up in Waterloo, where the towering winter snowbanks finally melted this month, RIM executives appear nonplused. Though they would not reveal details, RIM itself is expected to unveil a 3G phone sometime in May and deliver it to wireless carriers throughout the year.

RIM employees and outside developers who are writing programs for the new phone, which has the internal code name “Meteor,” say that it will have faster processors, a larger screen and a better browser that more closely resembles the Web experience on a computer.

Photographs of the device, leaked to gadget news sites, also indicate that the new BlackBerry will have elegant curves suggestive of the iPhone. It will also have a physical keyboard like previous RIM devices, as opposed to the touch screen found on the iPhone.

The two Republican frontrunners came under renewed attack yesterday with Mitt Romney facing accusations of shifting his stand on abortion and Rudy Giuliani lashing out at reports that he billed the New York City mayor’s office for trips to visit his then mistress at her beach house.

Giuliani denounced reports that as New York’s mayor he billed city agencies for his security detail during visits to the Hamptons home of Judith Nathan, now his third wife. “It’s a typical political hit job with only half the story told,” Giuliani told CBS news on Thursday night.

The online magazine Politico, which broke the story, said Giuliani billed obscure city agencies - such as the New York City Loft Board - for 11 trips to the Hamptons, as well as travel during his abandoned run for the New York senate in 2000.

His aides blamed bookkeepers for the billing practices, and Giuliani told CBS the police department repaid the city agencies. However, New York officials have accused Giuliani of blocking auditors from reviewing the billing procedures.

The New York Times said that Giuliani’s expenses for travel outside the city more than doubled during his last year in office. Some expenses were incurred by detectives who went with Giuliani to Washington, upstate New York and Nathan’s Hamptons home. But the report also included the cost of security for Giuliani’s then wife, Donna Hanover, during a trip to California.

Mr Romney’s problems are just beginning with opponents in New Hampshire and Iowa set to release TV ads accusing him of flip-flopping on abortion.