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BRITAIN:ROBERT MURAT, the British expatriate property consultant libelled in more than 100 articles in the British tabloid press over the disappearance in May last year of Madeleine McCann from Praia da Luz, the Portuguese resort where he lived, accepted more than £600,000 in damages from 11 UK national newspapers yesterday.

At a hearing in the high court in London lasting less than seven minutes, the media organisations (the Daily and Sunday Express and Daily Star from Express Newspapers; the Daily Mail, Evening Standard, and Metro of Associated Newspapers; the Daily and Sunday Mirror and the Scottish Daily Record of the MGN group; and News Group's Sun and News of the World acknowledged that the stories they had run about Mr Murat were entirely untrue.