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Pakistan police families targeted in suicide car bomb attack
September 8, 2010
Eighteen killed and 94 wounded as militants attack residential compound of officers' complex in PeshawarA car bomb ripped through a police compound in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing 18 people, including 14 women and children and four officers, the latest in a string of attacks proving that Islamist militants remain a potent force in the country.The civilians killed were the wives and children of police officers, said Khalid Omarzai, the city's top government official. Another 94 people were wounded in the bombing yesterday, he said, adding that they had been taken to hospitals after rescuers cleared the rubble from more than two dozen collapsed houses and shops.The complex in the garrison city of Kohat houses officers' homes, a training facility and a commercial area.Officer Mohammad Arif said there was a huge explosion in the residential area of the compound soon after the evening breaking of the daily fast during Ramadan. Power to the area was cut, forcing emergency workers to search for victims in the dark, he said.Kohat, a major town on the road between the provincial capital of Peshawar and several tribal areas, has been the scene of several militant attacks this year. In April, two burqa-clad suicide bombers attacked refugees lined up to register for food and other relief supplies in the district, killing 41 people and wounding dozens more."This city is a war zone. We would always expect such attacks," said Omarzai.The Taliban has claimed responsibility for a series of recent attacks across the Pakistan aimed at destabilising the country and weakening a civilian government already struggling with massive flooding that has displaced millions and caused widespread destruction.The deadliest attacks have targeted minority Shia Muslims. A suicide bombing killed at least 65 Shia Muslims at a procession in the south-western city of Quetta on Friday. Two days earlier, a triple suicide attack killed 35 people at a Shia ceremony in the eastern city of Lahore.On Monday, a Taliban suicide bomber detonated a car in an alley behind a police station in north-western Pakistan, killing at least 17 police and civilians.About 40 people were wounded in the attack in Lakki Marwat, on the main road between Punjab province, Pakistan's largest and most prosperous, and the North and South Waziristan tribal regions.Meanwhile, two roadside bombs yesterday killed one police officer and wounded three others in the north-western district of Hangu, said Omarzai.PakistanGlobal terrorismTalibanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
France: Protests over pensions bring over a million onto boulevards
Lizzy Davies
September 7, 2010
Huge numbers turned out throughout France to demonstrate against plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62French protesters furious over the government's proposals to change the pensions system flooded the boulevards of cities from Paris to Marseille today as Nicolas Sarkozy's embattled labour minister presented the reform to a parliament echoing with jeers.Huge numbers of people – 1.1 million according to the government, 2.7 million according to the leading CGT union – turned out throughout France to demonstrate against plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. There was significant disruption caused to trains, planes and public services as a result of the strike. In the capital alone, the CGT union estimated the number of protesters at 270,000."It is about time the government reacts," said Francois Chérèque, leader of the CFDT union, last night, claiming the "massive" turnout had given the protesters moral authority to demand changes to the bill.In the Assemblée nationale, Eric Woerth, the minister seriously undermined by the scandal surrounding L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, hailed the reform as one of "courage and … reason". Fighting to make himself heard above booing from the opposition, he said the proposals were "an essential element of our social pact".For its opponents, however, the law is an affront to France's traditions of worker rights and generous post-career provision. "The legal [retirement] age of 60 years old is … a question of justice," said Martine Aubry, leader of the Socialist party. She has said she would reinstate the sacrosanct Mitterrand-era retirement age if elected in 2012. "Higher life expectancy has to be taken into account, but not like this," she told Le Parisien.Pointing to demographic and economic necessity, the government wants to trim the country's budget deficit and avoid a pensions black hole in years to come. France has one of the lowest retirement ages and most generous retirement package of any European country; it also has a £27bn deficit in its state pension fund which could more than double by 2030.To combat this, the law proposes raising the legal age of retirement to 62 by 2018, raising the age of full pension entitlement from 65 to 67, and extending the period of contributions, employer and employee, from 40.5 years to 41.5 years by 2020.Sarkozy, whose approval ratings are consistently in the mid-thirties, regards the reform as crucial for France's future financial health, while observers say its passing is crucial to his re-election.But, after today's turnout, the unions and leftwing opposition will be pushing for concessions. They say that more can be done to ease the burden on people who, for instance, started work in their teens, people – often women – with several different pensions because of disjointed careers, or those toiling in dangerous or strenuous industries.One employee at a PSA Peugeot Citroen car factory in eastern France told Le Monde his job was exhausting. "I have colleagues who have been here for 40 years. The very idea that they will be made to work two more years makes me mad," he said. "Pushing people to the limit will lead to a greater occurrence of workplace illness, which will serve merely to deepen the hole in the state health service. Where's the logic in that?"While adamant that there will be no rowing back on the main pillars of the reform, Sarkozy has indicated he is willing to consider tweaking the proposals to placate the unions. Today, in the Assemblée nationale, the opposition drew on the action on the streets to demand the government give in. "Are you going to hear the anger of the people?" asked Lionel Paul, a Communist MP, before members of his party prompted a temporary suspension of parliament by dumping their pension petitions on the desk in front of Francois Fillon, the prime minister.In remarks to MPs, Fillon goaded the Socialist opposition for having failed to act on the issue while in power and defended the government's "reasonable" choice which, he said, was "indispensable for the financing of French people's pensions".The latest opinion polls show around two-thirds of French people support today's strike, although opinions are more divided over whether the retirement age should be kept at 60.Roland Cayrol, a political academic at Sciences Po in Paris, believes the big turnout was about more than just opposition to the pensions changes, to which, he said, many French people had become "resigned". What had brought many onto the streets, he said, was a "big moment of social exasperation. Never in the history of opinion polls have French people been so convinced of social injustice," he said.FranceProtestNicolas SarkozyLizzy Daviesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Hillary Clinton calls plan to burn Qur'an disrespectful and disgraceful
Paul Owen
September 7, 2010
Obama administration weighs in against proposed burning, which state department calls 'un-American'Hillary Clinton has called an American church's threat to burn copies of the Qur'an to mark the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks a "disrespectful, disgraceful act".Others in the Obama administration joined the US secretary of state to weigh in against the proposed burning, including Eric Holder, the attorney general, who called it idiotic and dangerous. A state department spokesman called the planned protest "un-American".The Christian minister organising the Qur'an burning said yesterday he would go ahead in spite of the government's concerns. Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small, evangelical Christian church in Gainesville, Florida, said he had received more than 100 death threats and had taken to carrying a pistol. He told American television he would not back away from "the dangers of radical Islam".At a meal last night marking the breaking of the Ramadan fast at the state department, Clinton said: "We sit down together for this meal on a day when the news is carrying reports that a pastor down in Gainesville, Florida, plans to burn the holy Qur'an on September 11. I am heartened by the clear, unequivocal condemnation of this disrespectful, disgraceful act that has come from American religious leaders of all faiths, from evangelical Christians to Jewish rabbis as well as secular US leaders and opinion-makers."Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. Many of you know that in 1790, George Washington wrote to a synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, that this country will give 'to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance'. The real story of Islam in America can be found in this room and rooms across America. We write it tonight in the spirit of fellowship and the celebration of goodwill that is a hallmark of Ramadan. We will write it in the months and years to come as we continue to reach out to engage people around the world in a search for common ground, common understanding and common respect."David Petraeus, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, has warned of retaliatory action against US troops. Earlier this week, hundreds of Afghans protested outside a Kabul mosque, burning American flags and an effigy of Dove World's pastor and chanting "Death to America". Members of the crowd pelted a passing US military convoy with stones before being ordered to stop by protest organisers.On Saturday, thousands of Indonesian Muslims demonstrated outside the US embassy in Jakarta and in five other cities to protest against the church's plansDove World made headlines last year after distributing T-shirts that said "Islam is of the Devil". The church has been denied a permit to set a bonfire but has vowed to proceed with the burning.United StatesIslamHillary ClintonReligionPaul Owenguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Memorial service for Alan Ruddock next week
Roy Greenslade
September 8, 2010
A memorial service is to be held on 16 September at St Bride's Church for Alan Ruddock, whose death at the age of 49 I reported in May.Sunday Times editor John Witherow will give a reading. Ruddock started work at the paper in 1992 and two years later oversaw the launch of its Irish edition.He had brief spells with Express Newspapers and the Mirror Group before being appointed in 1998 as editor of The Scotsman.After departing from Edinburgh in 2000, he spent the following 10 years as an economic and political commentator for Ireland's Sunday Independent. He also wrote a well-received book about the Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary: A life in full flight. The memorial service starts at 11.30am. More details laterMedia events and conferencesNewspapersSunday TimesJohn WitherowThe ScotsmanExpress NewspapersIrelandRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
A re-balancing is needed | Jo Confino
Jo Confino
September 8, 2010
Increasing numbers of people in the west recognise that capitalism as it is now does not answer our core needsThe question: Is capitalism a spiritual failure?I remember many years ago meeting the then head of British Telecom's futures department who talked about the serious possibility of computers taking over the world.I scoffed at the time, imagining a science fiction storyline with giant robots scuttling over the earth scooping up people and forcing them into mass slavery.But looking back, he was not so far from the truth. I am sitting on the train home after a long day of meetings and activities, checking emails and phone messages on my "crackberry" while trying to finish this article to deadline.Like millions of others, I am running full pelt desperately trying to keep up with the multiple demands that technological advances and globalised economic development have brought.It may be an age thing, but I am increasingly bewildered by the amount of choice on offer. The other day I rather stupidly ended up in a Tesco hypermarket and came out feelings stressed and tired. The argument goes that we need shops like this where we can save time by buying everything under one roof. Where did our time go?That's one side of the story. On the other side of the equation, there is ample evidence to show that in return for our busy lifestyles, western societies have more wealth than at any other period in history. For those of us "lucky" to have good jobs, this means we tend to live longer and don't even have to think about meeting our basic needs such as having a roof above our heads.Many appear to enjoy exciting lives moving effortlessly between exotic holidays, new gadgets, restaurants and the latest fashions.But we do not seem to be happier for all these luxuries. In fact when I look around, I see that under the veneer of our "sexy" lifestyle, is a dark undercurrent of mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, obesity and the like. The statistics are quite frankly terrifying and point to the fact that millions upon millions of people are seeking an escape from what they experience as a painful reality.This addictive mentality extends to the idea of economic growth. We are so ensnared in consumer capitalism that we cannot any more envisage a way of life that does not rely on GDP going ever upwards, despite the fact that it now clear we live in a resource-constrained world.We have become like a bottomless pit of needs. However much we consume, it will never be enough. We don't know how to get by without the next fix, yet the more we have, paradoxically, the more painful our lives become.On one level that's because, as Thich Nhat Hahn points out, we are all interconnected. At an unconscious level we feel the exploitation and injustice caused to other people and the planet from this mentality of "more". He uses the metaphor that this over-consumption is equivalent to "eating our children". It is simply not sustainable, yet we seem unable or unwilling to change.But there is another reason for our varied addictions, which I have sensed from my years as a coach and counsellor. When you get under the surface of peoples' problems what you often find is that they lack true meaning in their lives.Dig a little further and you get closer to the heart of the matter. We experience a deep and enduring pain that we are alone and that God, or spirit, or Buddha, or whatever else you may call our divine nature, is outside of us and in the future.This dualistic thinking is the feeding ground of our ego. We search endlessly for love and recognition but we are always looking in the wrong direction. This search for unity cannot in a truly meaningful way come from our work, partners, friends or belongings or an external god, whom we may join in the afterlife if we are good enough.Where love originates from is the divine nature which is and always has been within ourselves. Thich Nhat Hahn and other spiritual teachers correctly point out that we can only truly love others when we have learnt to love ourselves.That sounds easy in principle but for most of us seems nigh on impossible. In the west we can seem to be very good at giving, but we are often very bad at receiving, because our sense of separation is so strong that we don't believe we deserve it. I remember coaching one senior teacher, who was completely committed to his pupils and colleagues but who literally could not find a single good thing to say about himself, and suffered terribly for it.There are increasing numbers of people in the west who are starting to recognise that capitalism as it is currently constructed does not answer our core needs and that we must find a new global ethic and a return to a simpler way of life in which we have time to appreciate ourselves and all that we have. This does not mean a return to a pre-industrial agrarian society. It does mean a re-balancing.As an antidote to rampant consumption, religion has an enormous amount to offer in supporting this process. What is needed though is not dogma or preaching but a reminder that the beauty and majesty of life comes from the journey inside to find the spark of the divine.What I like so much about Thich Nhat Hahn is that he is able to so simply articulate this: "We have such a vague idea of what Buddha or God actually is. In the Buddhist tradition, Buddha resides in us as energy – the energy of mindfulness, the energy of concentration and the energy of insight – that will bring about understanding, compassion, love, joy, togetherness and non-discrimination."ReligionBuddhismJo Confinoguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Ian Tomlinson postmortem withheld from authorities
Matthew Weaver, Paul Lewis
September 8, 2010
Coroner is among those denied access to results of examination commissioned by lawyers for policeman who hit G20 bystanderA separate postmortem into the death of Ian Tomlinson carried out on behalf of the policeman filmed hitting him at the G20 protests last year has been withheld from the authorities, it has emerged.The postmortem, the third on the newspaper seller's body, was jointly conducted by the forensic pathologist Ben Swift at the request of lawyers for PC Simon Harwood, who is shown striking Tomlinson in a video revealed by the Guardian.Harwood's lawyers have withheld Swift's report from the Crown Prosecution Service and the Independent Police Commission, citing legal privilege, according to the BBC.The CPS confirmed it had not been handed a copy of Swift's report by Ben Swift as it was defence material, so the CPS was "not entitled to see it".Paul Matthews, the City of London coroner who carried out the inquest into Tomlinson's death, was also denied access, the BBC reported."I have not so far obtained sight of it," Matthews said of the report. "I simply wish to marker down that I wish to pursue this."The BBC said Matthews was pursuing gaining access to the report and claimed he had "doubts" about the decision to withhold it.Matthews has defended the use of the controversial pathologist Freddy Patel, who carried out the first inquest. Last week Patel was suspended from practice for three months by the General Medical Council after being found guilty of misconduct in three earlier autopsy cases.Matthews said he was unaware of the proceedings against Patel when he was appointed. "He was a fully registered medical practitioner and was also on the Home Office list of accredited forensic pathologists," he said in a statement.Patel said Tomlinson died of a heart attack. Swift's joint examination and a second postmortem suggested he died from internal bleeding.In July Keir Starmer QC, the director of public prosecutions, announced that no charges would be brought against Harwood, citing complications surrounding Patel's evidence.Ian TomlinsonG20ProtestPoliceMatthew WeaverPaul Lewisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Eyewitness: Flexing their pecs
September 8, 2010
Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series -
Charitable giving by country: who is the most generous? Full data
Randeep Ramesh
September 8, 2010
The world giving index is out. Are the Chinese more generous than the Irish? In which country do people give most to charity? Where are you most likely to be helped by a stranger or volunteer your time? Find out here• Get the dataThe United Kingdom is the eighth most charitable nation in the world while the world's fastest growing major economies - China and India - rank among the least altruistic, the largest study ever carried out into social conscience reveals today. The World Giving Index - published by the Charities Aid foundation - used Gallup surveys of 195,000 people in 153 nations, and asked people whether they had given money to charity or volunteered or helped a stranger in the last month. It also asked respondents to rank how happy they are with life. The results gave an indication of a "global Big society" with a fifth of the world's population had volunteered, almost a third of the world's population had given money to charity, and 45% of the world's population had been "good samaritans" and helped a stranger.The UK came eighth on the index and finished joint third, alongside Thailand, in terms of giving money, with 73% of the population having donated to charity. However its former colonial possessions - Australia, New Zealand and the United States - were far more charitable. In Europe only Switzerland and Holland fared better. Rich countries dominated the top positions yet around half of the top twenty most charitable were developing nations such as as Guinea, Guyana and Turkmenistan. Strikingly India ranked at 134 and China at 147 - with Chinese people among the least likely on the planet to volunteer. Only 4% said they would.The full data is below - what can you do with it?Download the data• DATA: download the full spreadsheet (inc country codes)World government data• Search the world's government with our gatewayCan you do something with this data?Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk• Get the A-Z of data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow us on TwitterData summary Charitable givingVoluntary sectorVolunteeringChinaIndiaRandeep Rameshguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Philippine clan planned massacre over dinner, court hears
September 8, 2010
Ampatuan clan members accused of killing 57 people including 30 journalists in convoy of election rival Esmael MangudadatuA servant of the politically powerful clan accused of last year's massacre of 57 people has told a Philippine court the family plotted the killings of rivals and journalists over dinner six days before the ambush.The witness, Lakmudin Saliao, took the stand on the first day of the trial nearly 10 months after the 23 November massacre in southern Maguindanao province. Among the 57 dead were 30 media workers travelling in an election convoy – making it the deadliest single attack on reporters in the world.The patriarch of the clan, Andal Ampatuan Sr, had gathered his family over dinner to ask them how they could stop their political rival from running for provincial governor, one of the key regional posts that the Ampatuans had held and exploited for years, Saliao said.Saliao told the court that former town mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr, the prime suspect in the massacre, had replied: "That's easy. If they come here just kill them all."Saliao said the elder Ampatuan then asked his children if they agreed with the plan and "everybody laughed, saying it's OK for everybody to be killed".Saliao said the Ampatuan patriarch ordered that his rival, Esmael Mangudadatu, be stopped on a highway where he was supposed to pass on the way to file his candidacy papers.It was at that spot that troops recovered the 57 bodies gunned down and hastily buried in mass graves dug by a backhoe. Mangudadatu, who was later elected governor in the May elections, was not in the convoy. He had sent his wife, sisters and other female relatives accompanied by journalists in the belief that their lives would be spared.The Ampatuans have denied the charges. Andal Ampatuan Jr and 16 policemen were the first to be arraigned and were led in handcuffs into a packed courtroom inside a Manila maximum security prison.Black-clad sharpshooters patrolled the premises while dozens of heavily armed police stood guard.The carnage drew international condemnation and prompted the then-president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to impose martial law for a week as troops cracked down on the Ampatuans, her political allies.A prominent senator, Joker Arroyo, has recently warned that the sheer volume of the case – at least 227 witnesses are listed by the prosecution and another 373 by the defence – means it could drag on for "200 years".Officials would not comment on how long the trial will last but cautioned it would take time.An average criminal trial takes about seven years to complete due to lack of prosecutors and judges and a huge backlog of cases. The Maguindanao massacre is considered to be the country's largest criminal prosecution since the war crimes trials that followed the second world war.The New York-based Human Rights Watch has urged the government to protect witnesses and round up more than 100 suspects still at large, most of them linked to the Ampatuans' private army. The watchdog said five people with knowledge of abuses by the Ampatuans had been gunned down."With fewer than half of the suspects in custody, witnesses, investigators, and others who might be deemed to be a threat to the Ampatuan family are at risk," the group said."It's hard to fight the devil," said Monette Salaysay, mother of Napoleon Salaysay, one of the slain journalists. "So many were killed and yet the justice is exceedingly slow for helpless people like us."Philippinesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
BP to admit partial blame for Deepwater oil spill
Graeme Wearden
September 8, 2010
Report likely to show BP workers misread crucial pressure readings hours before explosion, but will accuse rig owners Transocean over integrity of blowout preventerBP is expected to admit today that it was partly to blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but will also claim that other companies must accept some responsibility.The oil giant is due to publish its own report into the spill at noon today. This follows an internal investigation into the events leading up to the explosion on 20 April that killed 11 workers and began a devastating oil leak that spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for almost three months.The report, which will run to around 200 pages, was led by BP safety chief Mark Bly. It is likely to report that BP workers on the rig misread crucial pressure readings in the hours before the explosion, which meant they did not spot that oil and gas was starting to leak into the well bore.BP had hired the rig from Swiss-based Transocean, whose staff operated it, while US firm Halliburton was subcontracted to cement the wellhead into the sea floor. The three firms have already pointed the finger at each other at a hearing in the US Congress in May.Bly's report will also focus on the blowout preventor, the piece of equipment that failed to cut off the well when the leak began. It was seized by US authorities last weekend after being brought back to the surface, following reports that it had been modified in China."We believe the investigation could shift the focus of culpability back towards Transocean and in particular the integrity of the blowout preventer which should have acted as the ultimate fail safe. If our view is correct then BP's shares could rally this afternoon as expectations of gross negligence litigation is eroded," said City analysts Evolution Securities.Laywers have warned that releasing this report could be a gamble. If BP shoulders most of the blame then its potential liability could increase, but if it is seen to be shirking responsibility then this could face yet more criticism.BPOil and gas companiesEnergy industryOilBP oil spillOilOil spillsUnited StatesPollutionGraeme Weardenguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Bodies found in Mexico could be those of massacre investigators
September 8, 2010
Papers found on bodies in Tamaulipas suggest they are those of local police who were investigating massacre of immigrantsTwo bodies found in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas appear to be those of a state detective and local police chief who investigated the massacre of 72 immigrants in August, prosecutors have said.The killings, if confirmed, would be one of the most brazen signs of defiance yet by the drug cartels: not only are the gangs willing to commit wholesale massacres, they are apparently unafraid to kill officials who try to investigate such crimes.The Tamaulipas state attorney general's office said identification documents found on the bodies matched those of the missing officials: state detective Roberto Suarez Vazquez and Juan Carlos Suarez Sanchez, who was head of the public safety department of the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, where the massacre occurred.The bodies were found in a field about 30 miles north-east of San Fernando.The officials have been missing since 24 August, when they participated in the initial investigations into the massacre, which was apparently committed the previous day at a ranch outside San Fernando.The office said in a statement that it was conducting DNA tests to confirm the identities.Suarez Vazquez filed the initial crime report on the bodies of the massacre victims and Suarez Sanchez accompanied him during that task.The killings appeared to demonstrate that the Zetas drug gang – which authorities have said was apparently responsible for killing the 72 mainly Central American migrants – did not flee the region even after Mexican marines swarmed the area, found the bodies and engaged in a firefight with suspects, killing three and detaining another.Instead, the gang appears to have closely followed the investigation, perhaps seeking to impede it.On Monday federal authorities said an anonymous tipster called marines last week and told them where to find the bodies of three men whom the caller said participated in the massacre. A Honduran man who survived the slaughter and is currently under police protection in Mexico later identified the three dead men as having been among the killers.Prosecutors' spokesman Ricardo Najera said authorities had no information on who made the call. But in the past suspects in especially brutal killings that draw too much attention to drug gangs have been "handed over" to authorities, apparently by the cartels themselves.Seven men have been identified as suspects in the massacre. The only one still alive was caught in the 24 August raid at the site of the killings and identified by a survivor. Three other suspects died in a shootout at the scene of the killings.Najera said "the evidence and testimony suggest very strongly that the Zetas were involved", referring to the violent drug gang.Of the witnesses, only two men, an Ecuadorean and a Honduran, are confirmed to have survived.Meanwhile, pieces of the dismembered bodies of two men had been found scattered around a children's park in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, authorities said.Guerrero state police said the victims' heads were left next to each other, along with a handwritten message. Police did not reveal the text of the message.One of the heads was wrapped in packing tape. Such execution tactics are frequently used by drug gangs in Mexico.In the northern border city of Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, gunmen attacked a vehicle carrying inmates from the city's prison, killing two guards and wounding a prisoner.The gunmen made off with another inmate who was serving a nine-year sentence for drug trafficking and weapons possession. The two inmates were being returned from a hospital visit when the attack occurred.Also in the north, about 200 family members and friends wept as they filed past two open caskets at the funeral for a father and son mistakenly killed by Mexican troops on Sunday in the city of Monterrey.Vicente de Leon Ramirez, 52, and his 15-year-old son, Alejandro Gabriel de León Castellanos, were shot by soldiers in their car on a highway on the outskirts of the city.Authorities said the troops opened fire after De Leon failed to heed signals to pull over at a roadblock. But Joel González, the boyfriend of De Leon's daughter, said passengers in the car told him they had seen only a military convoy, not a roadblock."They were in a convoy with four vehicles, some behind and some overtaking them," González said, recounting the witnesses' reports. "When he [De Leon] passed and returned to his lane, they started shooting, and shooting and shooting."We often applaud the efforts of the army, but this time it was the opposite," González said. "It does not seem right that they, the defenders of the nation, act like cowboys."The Mexican army officially apologised for the killings and the Nuevo Leon state government paid the family's funeral costs.MexicoDrugs tradeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Now advance, Australia | Julia Baird
Julia Baird
September 7, 2010
The country's first female prime minster must leave small politics behind and show her true substance'So let's draw back the curtains and let the sunshine in," said Julia Gillard on hearing of her narrow victory in Australia's general election. "Let our parliament be more open than it was before."Australia's first female prime minister scraped back into power with words which might make one imagine that she was a woman, like many others before her, who was determined to change the parliamentary system: to make it more transparent, honest and accountable; to enter a chamber that a former leader of the Democrats called "awash with testosterone", and bring in a stern, but comforting female presence.This is, after all, something women have promised – or threatened – to do for well over a century, from the suffragettes onwards. The irony is that this is something Gillard did not promise: she did not campaign on the grounds of her gender, and she did not claim to do politics any differently.But, strangely enough, a different kind of politics was what voters wanted after all. Now she has been forced into promising greater accountability after an excruciatingly close election, and 17 days of pleading, begging and deal-making before three independents decided who they would support, leaving Gillard's Labor party with 76 seats, the Coalition 74.Before becoming party leader, Gillard, a former lawyer with a record of fighting for the rights of workers and women, was seen as a true political operative – a party player and a knife-sharp debater. She is, primarily, a pragmatist who played the political game to perfection before grasping the top job. She was straight with the media, did not pander to any of the stereotypes Australia's political women have been trapped by before – of saints, seductresses, wide-eyed housewives who stumbled into parliament, or "steel Sheilas" who wanted to be like Margaret Thatcher.She also batted down personal criticism with humour. Gillard told biographer Jacqueline Kent, when she was once standing next to a board with a large photo of her: "This old guy comes out of the supermarket, looks at me, looks at the photo, then turns back at me and says, 'Taken on a good day wasn't it, love?' I said, 'And you'd be bloody Robert Redford, would you mate?'"Initially, the public warmed to someone who seemed authentic and real. During the election, the fact that Gillard was a woman was irrelevant and only ever a vague distraction when the snipes about the fact that she had not married her boyfriend, had no children and did not cook emerged.But overall she ran a poor election, and lost much ground to the more disciplined leader of the Liberal party, Tony Abbott. Her uninspiring rhetoric, gaffes, and a foolish remark about allowing the "real Julia" to emerge halfway through the campaign (who were we seeing before?) played into often sexist smears that she was a puppet of the hard-right men of her party.The greatest problem of this election, and the reason it was so close, is that voters stopped caring; many leaving ballot papers blank. It was, in essence, the failure of small target politics, where both parties were scrambling for the middle ground and focused on attacking the other side.The time for smallness in Australian politics has surely gone. The Labor party needs to articulate a compelling worldview, to appeal not to the fearful demons but the "better angels of our nature", as Lincoln said. To quell racism in immigration debates, not stir it up. Unlike the US and Britain, the economy has not been the predominant concern for voters – the country almost coasted through the financial crisis – but Australians are looking for a leader who might capture their imagination.This is Gillard's challenge. She needs to show leadership on climate change and allow the conscience vote on gay marriage that the newly muscular Greens, who now hold the balance of power in the senate, would like. Australia needs a more clearly articulated foreign policy and to acknowledge its enormous dependence on exporting to China.Gillard should also make the prime minister she deposed, Kevin Rudd, the minister for foreign affairs – given his aptitude and knowledge of the subject, his popularity, and the lingering resentment at how cynically he was toppled.Gillard has to show her substance, and demonstrate, even with such a slight majority, that her party is about more than the pursuit of power. It should not matter that she is a woman. But it does matter that voters are sick of the old boys' way of doing politics. She must show she is capable of responding to the electorate's desire for politics to be done with the transparency and openness she has promised. Perhaps she also needs to show, as Thatcher said: "It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs."AustraliaJulia Bairdguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
'Good Samaritan' survey shows charitable giving trends
Randeep Ramesh
September 7, 2010
Survey found that a third of the world's population had given money to charity in the last month, and 45% had helped a strangerA third of the world's population has given money to charity in the past month, the largest study ever carried out into global social conscience reveals today.The "World Giving Index" used Gallup surveys of 195,000 people in 153 nations and asked people whether they had volunteered or given money or help in the last month. It also asked respondents to rank how happy they are with life.It found that a fifth of the world's population had volunteered, almost a third had given money to charity, and 45% had been "good samaritans" and helped a stranger.The UK came eighth on the index overall and finished joint third, alongside Thailand, in terms of giving money, with 73% of the population having donated to charity. However Australia, New Zealand and the United States were far more charitable overall. In Europe, only Switzerland and Holland fared better than Britain.Rich countries dominated the top positions – yet around half of the top 20 places were taken up developing nations including as Guinea, Guyana and Turkmenistan. Strikingly, India ranked at 134 and China at 147 – with Chinese people among the least likely on the planet to volunteer. Only 4% said they had done."What this shows is that in countries with a well established culture of giving supported by tax breaks and regulation, people will give more," said Richard Harrison, director of research at the Charities Aid Foundation, a charity which promotes giving and which produced the report. "There are some factors like in the US where there is a limited welfare state there is a feeling charity steps in but we think the survey establishes the need for a framework for giving.""I think with China we know that when Unicef asked ordinary people, 'Why give to charity?' the response was 'Yes, why give?' This plus the fact the Communist party has only just allowed charities to begin to flourish means that in such a nation we do not see a culture of giving."The report also said that happier countries were likely to be bigger givers than those who were simply wealthy, which Andrew Oswald, professor of behavioural science at Warwick Business School, said confirmed the results of "small-scale laboratory experiments which have shown that when people are asked to spend money on others they feel happier than people who are asked to spend money on themselves. This goes against conventional economic wisdom, and indeed human intuition, that says that spending money on ourselves will make us happier."CharitiesCharitable givingEuropeChinaIndiaTaxRandeep Rameshguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Vodafone sells stake in China Mobile
Graeme Wearden
September 7, 2010
Buyers sought for $6.7bn holding as Vodafone turns its back on aggressive strategy of worldwide acquisitionsVodafone has begun cutting its stakes in mobile networks around the world by selling its shareholding in China Mobile for £4.3bn. The company announced last night that it has sold its 3.2% stake in the world's biggest mobile operator. Around 70% of the proceeds will be returned to shareholders through share buyback.This is the first act in a drive to cut Vodafone's "non-strategic" assets and focus on Europe, India and Africa, following pressure from investors. Chief executive Vittorio Colao said the company would still co-operate with China Mobile through network sharing and joint work on green technologies. He added that Vodafone had made a sizeable profit, having paid $3.25bn (£2.11bn) for the stake.Under its former management team, Vodafone pursued an aggressive expansionist policy worldwide. This strategy is now discredited after the Wall Street research firm Sanford Bernstein estimating that it has caused Vodafone, which has a market capitalisation of £84bn, to be undervalued by up to 40%.VodafoneTelecommunications industryChinaGraeme Weardenguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Rahm Emanuel to run for Chicago mayor, says Washington rumour mill
Richard Adams
September 7, 2010
Richard Daley's decision not to run for re-election as Chicago mayor opens up possibility of graceful exit for Rahm EmanuelFor more than 20 years Richard Daley has served as mayor of Chicago – and his announcement that he is stepping down next year may herald a shake-up in the West Wing involving Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and one of President Obama's closest aides.Obama, a Chicago resident, paid tribute to Daley, saying: "No mayor in America has loved a city more or served a community with greater passion than Rich Daley. He helped build Chicago's image as a world class city, and leaves a legacy of progress that will be appreciated for generations to come."At a press conference in Chicago's City Hall, Daley said: "It's time for Chicago to move on ... The truth is I have been thinking about this for the past several months. In the end this is a personal decision, no more, no less."Speculation in Chicago and Washington DC quickly turned to Emanuel, who has long made public his interest in the job – while the timing could not be better from the White House's point of view. With a crushing defeat in the US midterm elections looming, the need for Obama to reshuffle his senior staff after November was growing.Emanuel refused to comment on the speculation, saying in a statement: "While Mayor Daley surprised me today with his decision to not run for re-election, I have never been surprised by his leadership, dedication and tireless work on behalf of the city and the people of Chicago."In the White House Emanuel has been a formidable operator, although deeply disliked on the left of the Democratic party, but the chance of a fresh start for Obama and the strains of the job would add up to an easy equation for both men.Emanuel was born and raised in Chicago, and served in Congress as the representative for Illinois's fifth congressional district – a constituency in the city of Chicago. As a talented fundraiser and well-connected politician – he also served in senior positions in Bill Clinton's White House – Emanuel would start the race for the Democratic nomination as the clear favourite, should he choose to enter.Back in April this year, Emanuel told the interviewer Charlie Rose: "I hope Mayor Daley seeks re-election. I will work and support him if he seeks re-election. But if Mayor Daley doesn't, one day I would like to run for mayor of the city of Chicago. That's always been an aspiration of mine."But there was a warning for Emanuel from Bobby Rush, the veteran Chicago congressman who defeated a young Barack Obama in a Democratic primary. "I must admonish the media to end its coordinated commentary on who will be the next mayor of the city of Chicago," Rush said, "before anyone is deemed an imaginary front runner."Daley was first elected in 1989 but his popularity has dipped in recent years, because of the city's crime problems, economic stagnation and failure to capture the 2016 Olympics. Daley's father, also named Richard Daley, was mayor of the city for 21 years from 1955 and a hugely influential figure in the Democratic party nationally.An editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times today described Daley as "one hell of a mayor," adding: "Though his dictatorial style at times offended us, Chicago flourished during his two decades at the helm."Rahm EmanuelObama administrationUS politicsIllinoisDemocratsUnited StatesRichard Adamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Reza Khan and the pictures that went around the world
September 7, 2010
The picture of Reza Khan with his twin brother Mohammad Khan was published in the Eyewitness slot of the last week's Guardian. Reza, a victim of the Pakistan floods, was found in a refugee camp in Azakhel -
The health goal that is a dirty word
Sarah Boseley
September 7, 2010
The UN summit on the Millennium Development Goals takes place in New York in just under two weeks. WaterAid and its supporters argue that the unnecessary deaths of children will not stop until the neglected issue of sanitation is addressedReports are coming thick and fast from NGOs marking the slow progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, ahead of the UN summit in New York in less than two weeks' time - Unicef yesterday and Save the Children the day before, for instance. But none of them can match, for shock value, the verdict today of WaterAid.The hope embodied in the declaration of 2000 is mired in excrement.That is WaterAid's policy and campaigns director Margaret Batty. Strong language indeed, but this concerns the most unsexy subject in development - sanitation. This is how Batty continues:The ongoing neglect of the sanitation MDG target represents a damning failure by governments and the aid community to promote an integrated approach to international development.WaterAid says that billions "are living and dying in their own faeces for want of somewhere clean and safe to go to the toilet". The phraseology reflects the frustration of those who believe they are failing to be heard. The MDG is to halve the proportion of people living without sanitation. At the current rate of progress, that will take until 2049. But in sub-Saharan Africa, astonishingly, it will not happen until the 23rd century.Diarrhoeal disease kills more children than Aids, malaria and measles combined, they point out. The report, Ignored: the biggest child killer – The world is neglecting sanitation, points out that there are consequences for many MDGs.* Repeated diarrhoea are associated with 50% of childhood malnutrition.* Poor sanitation and hygiene impact maternal and newborn health – a recent study shows that washing hands with soap by mothers and birth attendants can reduce the risk of neonatal deaths by 41%.* Without sanitation, safe water and good hygiene practices, patients with already lowered immune systems have their recovery and survival chances radically reduced, particularly those living with HIV/AIDS.* Diseases related to unsafe sanitation and water and poor hygiene place a huge burden on under-resourced health systems: at any one time half the hospital beds in developing countries are filled with people suffering from diarrhoea. WaterAid's outspoken pitch is a bid to secure more action on sanitation at the summit. They have rounded up some impressive advocates for the cause. This is the British Medical Association's Vivienne Nathanson on the issue:The millions of premature deaths in infants will continue until safe sanitation and water is readily available and excreta is removed from the living environment. These are avoidable deaths; we have known their cause and the means to reduce them for generations. Watching children die who we can help to flourish is simply unacceptable.SanitationMillennium Development GoalsInternational aid and developmentUnited NationsSarah Boseleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Protest in France: Reform and reaction | Editorial
September 7, 2010
This is a make-or-break moment for the unions and for Nicolas Sarkozy, who sees a pensions victory as the centrepiece of a range of reformsFrench unions were out on the streets yesterday hoping to repeat their past success in defeating plans to reduce the pension entitlement of French workers. After all, they forced a previous president, Jacques Chirac, to retreat on pensions, as well as bringing down one of his prime ministers on the issue. So this is a make-or-break moment for the unions and for Nicolas Sarkozy, who sees a pensions victory as the centrepiece of a range of reforms which will transform his faltering presidency.As the French assembly begins an extraordinary session to decide on changes to the pensions system, while the senate considers budget cuts, a new security law and a law to ban the burqa, there is a sense that France faces dangerous choices. If the reforms go through unmodified the country will have diluted welfare state achievements and cut its responsibilities to citizens, at the same time as it becomes a more hard-faced society for migrants and minorities. On the other hand, if Sarkozy's reforms are derailed, that could wreck what remains of his presidency and might even bring about the credit downgrading which all European governments fear so much.Sarkozy wants to raise the age at which workers can choose to retire by two years to 62 and the age when they get a full pension from 65 to 67. France's pension provisions are more generous than those of most of its neighbours. Trimming them a little might seem to outsiders not unreasonable, given that the pensions burden is steadily becoming less sustainable as the ratio of retirees to people in work worsens, which it is doing everywhere in Europe. But that is to ignore the French left's fear that any change would be the thin end of the wedge, as well as the French view that most work is a burden from which an early release is, or ought to be, a right. Le Monde this week reported on steel workers who speak of the hell of being at the furnace head and chemical industry employees who complain that they will have to breathe in toxic fumes for another two years. Nearly 700 amendments have been tabled in the assembly, and exemptions for workers in dangerous or dirty occupations are one of the areas where there is room for manoeuvre.But the French do not confine their notion of the hard slog to factory work. Le Monde also quotes a shop assistant who explains that by 60 you are completely ground down, and a teachers' leader who sourly offers that the teacher who retires with tears in his eyes is something found in films and not in real life. Francois Chérèque, leader of the Confédération Francaise Démocratique du Travail, has made sensible suggestions for compromise which the government should consider with care.FranceProtestguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Bob Diamond: When investment bankers rule | Editorial
September 7, 2010
This is the man who was described by the former business secretary Peter Mandelson as the 'unacceptable face of banking'Even without a once-in-a-lifetime banking crisis, Bob Diamond would still have been a rum choice to run Barclays. After all, this is the man who was described by the former business secretary Peter Mandelson as the "unacceptable face of banking" – and that architect of New Labour has rubbed shoulders with more than a few financiers. Mr Diamond was also perhaps the most influential voice within Barclays urging its board to snap up ABN Amro in 2008. In the end, he was beaten by Fred Goodwin and RBS. That acquisition of a Dutch bank loaded up with toxic assets destroyed RBS and wrecked Mr Goodwin's reputation – and yet Mr Diamond had the poverty of judgment to whip his employer to chase after it. This is not the sort of business savvy that normally catapults staff to the top job, let alone that of a large, world-famous institution that used to boast of its reliability.No one could doubt that Mr Diamond has been a hugely successful investment banker – but he has not displayed the roundedness of skills and background that would normally be expected of someone taking the helm of a FTSE 100 company, let alone one that has been in business for over three centuries. If, to use the metaphor of the moment, investment banks are casinos and good old-fashioned banks utilities, then what Barclays has done is make a Vegas high roller the boss of a water company.Set aside all the usual corporate intrigue, such as the fact that, before yesterday's confirmation of his promotion, Mr Diamond had clearly signalled that he was settled in New York for good, and was perfectly happy running Barclays Capital. Ignore the admittedly intriguing oddity that this is one of those rare business handovers where the successor is actually older (at 59) than the incumbent (John Varley is not yet 55). The fundamental fact is that a company synonymous with current accounts, business lending and all the other bread and butter of high-street banking is now run by a man whose entire 30-year financial career is in high-risk trading, flashy mergers and acquisitions, and arcane financial instruments.That fact becomes even more striking when it is borne in mind that next Wednesday marks the second anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers – with all the chaos that was then unleashed on the financial system and the world economy. More than any other professional group, it was the reckless investment bankers that helped push the entire system off its cliff edge – and now one of their number is in charge of one of Britain's most important businesses. Nor is he alone: it is an odds-on bet that Stuart Gulliver, the top investment banker at HSBC, will be promoted after the exit of Stephen Green (who, it was announced yesterday, will become David Cameron's trade minister). While the British public will see their public services slashed, Mr Diamond will now be on a package worth up to £11.5m.What this changing of the guard in bank boardrooms indicates is that financiers now calculate that public anger and political resolve to punish the class that brought the world economy to its breaking point two years ago has all but gone. A private-sector disaster has turned into a public-sector cleanup operation, and the banks are free to go back to their old ways. Witness the news last month about how Credit Suisse will award its top bankers millions now that the government levy on outsize bonuses has expired. Or heed last week's comments from HSBC that, if the government comes down too hard on giant banks, it will leave Britain. Finally, there is the elevation of Mr Diamond (who reportedly refers to City regulators as from "Little England"). This is a statement of defiance, according to bankers; to others, it may seem a two-fingered gesture. It is up to the government to show that the lessons of the crash have not been forgotten; otherwise we really will be back to business as usual.BarclaysBob DiamondBankingUnited Statesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Cambridge ousts Harvard as world's best university
Jeevan Vasagar, Rachel Williams
September 7, 2010
US college knocked off top spot for first time in seven years, while UK institutions 'struggle to compete on funding'• Get the full listBoth of them have earned fistfuls of Nobel prizes, have educated enough statesmen to table a string of international summits, and inspired eminent scientists, philosophers and poets.But Harvard today forfeits first place to Cambridge in a league table of the world's top universities, the first time in the list's seven year history that the Ivy League institution has been knocked off the number one spot.British universities made a strong showing, with University College London, Oxford and Imperial all appearing in the top 10, while King's College London and Edinburgh appeared in the top 25.American institutions dominate the list, however, taking 31 out of the top 100 places in the QS world university rankings. The list also features 15 Asian universities, lead by the University of Hong Kong at 23. The QS table is based on measures of research quality, graduate employability, teaching and how international the faculties and student bodies are.Harvard, which takes its name from John Harvard, an alumnus of Cambridge who was its first benefactor, was still most popular among the 5,000 employers polled worldwide.However, Cambridge was voted best for research quality in a survey of 15,000 academics. It has an outstanding pedigree: famous minds who pushed back the frontiers of knowledge there include Newton, Darwin and Wittgenstein. Cambridge took overall first place in the rankings, which also use citation counts from a database of academic publishing.Professor Steve Young, senior pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Cambridge, said: "While university league tables tend to over-simplify the range of achievements at institutions, it is particularly pleasing to note that the excellence of the transformative research – research that changes people's lives – carried out at Cambridge is so well regarded by fellow academics worldwide."A Harvard spokesman said: "Harvard University is always honoured to be recognised among such high calibre institutions of higher learning. However, we also continue to believe it is important that students select the college or university that best suits their individual needs."John O'Leary, executive member of the QS academic advisory board, blamed a hiring freeze for Harvard losing its top spot. "Cambridge has gone top because it has improved its citations. Harvard has taken more students and had a hiring freeze amongst its academics. That's the reason these two have swapped around."The impressive showing of British and US universities is because English is the favoured language of academia, O'Leary said. "In general terms, UK universities, like American ones, benefit from being English-speaking. If you're publishing in a language most researchers aren't using, you're not going to be picked up and cited ... in the mainstream journals."However, a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released yesterday shows the UK lagging behind competitors in public investment in higher education. The sector is facing cuts of more than £1bn by the end of 2013. The share of public spending in British higher education is 0.7% of GDP, below the OECD average of 1%, and places Britain behind the US, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Slovenia.Announcing the OECD's results in London, Andreas Schleicher, the head of its indicators and analysis division, said Finland, Canada and Japan were now major players in higher education. "For many years the UK was very much at the forefront," he said. "But now you do not see that competitive advantage."The vice-chancellors' body, Universities UK, questioned how long the country's higher education system could maintain its world-class position in the field given its comparative "under-investment".The Times Higher Education magazine, which is publishing its own global university rankings next week, is no longer collaborating with QS. It is concerned that the careers advice company's rankings rely too heavily on subjective surveys of scholars and employers, and not enough on hard indicators of excellence. The THE's rankings are expected to contain disappointing news for some prestigious British institutions.Ben Sowter, head of research at QS, said: "Unlike other rankings systems which rely heavily on statistical indicators of university research, QS also takes into account the most up-to-date views of employers and academics, reflecting the broader interests of students and parents. QS rankings reflect the highly competitive environment of global higher education."The QS rankings are weighted 40% to academic reputation, 10% to employability, 20% to citations, 20% to the staff-student ratio and give a further 10% weighting to how international the make-up of the faculty and student body is.Dr Wendy Piatt, the director general of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, which includes Oxford and Cambridge, said: "We are pleased these latest figures show that Russell Group universities still rank among the world's leading universities. However, two health warnings should be heeded. First, this latest league table, like all others, has its limitations and there can be no single correct way of measuring university performance or quality."Second, our world-class status is under threat from other countries who are ploughing billions into their top institutions in a determined bid to overtake the UK in the rankings. Data released by the OECD only yesterday shows once again that UK leading universities are already under-resourced in comparison with their international competitors. But now, while our competitors are investing in their future skills and knowledge base, UK universities are threatened with further cuts which will make it more difficult than ever to maintain their world-class status."Not only North America but, increasingly, countries like China and Korea are investing massively in their universities and as a result their best institutions are rising rapidly up international rankings."How they compareCambridgeFounded in 1209 when scholars taking refuge from hostile townspeople in Oxford migrated to Cambridge. King Henry III took the scholars under his protection in 1231. Peterhouse, the first college, was set up by the Bishop of Ely in 1284.Location Cambridge, England.Famous alumni Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Milton, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Charles Babbage.In numbers 11,815 students, including 1,257 from overseas, 1,590 academic staff.Fees This year, the tuition fees for British and EU undergraduates are £3,290 a year on all courses.HarvardFounded in 1636 by a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the local legislature. Named after first benefactor John Harvard, a minister and Cambridge alumnus who bequeathed his library and half his estate to Harvard.Location Cambridge, Massachusetts.Famous alumni TS Eliot, John Updike, Barack Obama, John F Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Alfred Kinsey, Robert Oppenheimer.In numbers About 6,700 students at Harvard college, 2,100 faculty members and more than 10,000 academic appointments in affiliated teaching hospitals.Fees For 2009-10, tuition fees were $33,696.University of CambridgeHigher educationUniversity fundingUniversity teachingLecturersUnited StatesJeevan VasagarRachel Williamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Psychologists identify killer dance moves for men
Ian Sample
September 7, 2010
Psychologists have used avatars to pinpoint the killer moves that can make men great dancersThe enduring mystery of why men rarely flatter themselves when they take to the dancefloor may finally have been solved.A team of psychologists used video footage of men strutting their stuff to pinpoint the killer moves that separate good dancers from bad.Men who were judged to be good dancers had a varied repertoire and more moves that involved tilting and twisting the torso and neck.But the majority of men displayed highly repetitive moves that used their arms and legs, but not the rest of their bodies."It's rare that someone is described as a good dancer if they are flinging their arms about but not much else," said Nick Neave, a psychologist at the University of Northumbria, who led the study."Think about a head banger. Their head movement has a large amplitude, but it's not changing direction or showing any kind of variability. That's a bad dancer. Or someone who is just twisting and turning left and right? That's a bad dancer too."While features such as body shape and facial symmetry are well known indicators of healthy development, a person's dance moves may send out more subtle clues about their potential as a mate, Neave said.Neave's team recruited 19 male volunteers aged between 18 and 35 and asked them to dance to a simple drum beat in front of a video camera for 30 seconds. To capture the dance moves, 38 infra-red reflectors were attached to their clothing. These produce bright spots that allow the movement of every limb and joint to be tracked and studied in detail.The researchers used software to transfer each man's dance routine to an avatar on a computer screen. This ensured that the judges ranked the dancers according to their moves and not their height, looks or other physical features.The dancers were judged by 37 straight women, also aged 18 to 35, who watched the avatar perform 15 seconds of each man's routine before ranking them on a scale of one to seven, where one was very bad dancing."The head, neck and upper body come out as the key features that are important for good dancing and that surprised us," said Neave, whose study is published in the journal Biology Letters. "When you see brilliant dancers, you'll see their bodies, heads and necks are all doing ever so slightly different things in time to the music."Will Brown, a psychologist at the University of East London, said more work was needed to disentangle why dancing is attractive and its biological significance."When you have so much movement data from a relatively small sample of dancers, you might get chance associations between certain moves and dance attractiveness," he said."Flexing the trunk while dancing may be attractive, but we need to show it is indicative of a better quality male using an independent measure of biological quality."Neave said his group is working through the results of blood tests on the men, which appear to show that the better dancers are healthier.PsychologyReproductionBiologyEvolutionDanceIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Response: These Nazi Nuremberg documents were no gift. General Patton pocketed them
Tony Platt
September 7, 2010
The US army chief had racist sympathies – as did the library trustees he gave his Hitler war loot toI welcome your report on the decision made by a private California library to donate its iconic Nazi materials to the United States' repository of official documents (Nuremberg laws General Patton stole given to US National Archives, 26 August). But the article tells only part of the story.The Nuremberg laws, as you point out, "stripped German Jews of their citizenship". The three laws, including the infamous blood law, were rubber-stamped by the Reichstag in an atmosphere of fascist pomp on 15 September 1935, and widely publicised by the world's press the next day. In retrospect, the legislation acquired historical significance as a popular marker of the beginning of the end for European Jews.By chance I was a visiting fellow at the Huntington Library in 1999 when it announced its ownership of the Nuremberg law documents. This news received worldwide attention due to the priceless value of the four hastily typewritten pages, in particular the presence of Hitler's illegible signature that associates him with the genocide he later ordered.You are right to emphasize how at the end of the second world war General Patton "filched" the one and only original copy of the laws. But it's not accurate to say that Patton "gave" them to the Huntington Library during a visit to his home town at the end of the war; nor to claim, as does the Huntington's president in your article, that General Patton "had received the documents from his staff as a gift".In fact, Patton pocketed the Nuremberg laws for personal use in violation of Eisenhower's explicit order to collect official Nazi documents for use in trials of war criminals. When he confidentially deposited the laws at the Huntington for safekeeping in the summer of 1945, he made up the lie that his men had given them to him in "a great public presentation". After Patton's unexpected death in 1945, Huntington officials kept the laws off the books for 54 years, preserved in a bombproof vault, without disclosing their presence.That the library possessed the laws and that their provenance was tainted was not a secret to the Huntington's board of trustees. In 1991 a senior curator reminded her boss in an internal memo that the documents "seem pretty clearly to be war loot". But officials kept that information to themselves when they went public in 1999.It's also little reported that Patton and several Huntington academics – openly from the 1930s until US entry into the war, and privately through the 1950s – shared the Nuremberg laws' ideological assumptions. Patton was a lifelong white supremacist who flirted with fascism. He remained convinced during the war that "a colored soldier cannot think fast enough to fight in armor", and believed that Jews were "lower than animals".Meanwhile, back at the Huntington, leading members of the board of trustees enthusiastically supported the Human Betterment Foundation, a rightwing eugenics thinktank in Pasadena with close ties to Nazi "racial scientists" which closed in 1942. Hopefully, the Nuremberg documents will be displayed as more than a captured trophy or symbol of Nazi injustice. There are also lessons to be taught about home-grown racism and the thin line between fascism and democracy.Second world warAdolf HitlerGermanyUnited StatesRace issuesTony Plattguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
The world's top 100 universities, 2010
Jeevan Vasagar
September 7, 2010
Cambridge is now the world's top university, according to a new report, which knocks Harvard from the top spot. See how it compares with the world's top 100 universities here• Get the dataHarvard today forfeits first place to the University of Cambridge in a league table of the world's top institutions, the first time in the list's seven year history that the Ivy League university has been knocked off the number one spot.The QS table is based on measures of research quality, graduate employability, teaching and how international the faculties and student bodies are. Harvard was still most popular among the 5,000 employers polled worldwide, but Cambridge was voted best for research quality in a survey of 15,000 academics and took overall first place. The rankings also use citation counts from a database of academic publishing.The Times Higher Education magazine, which is publishing its own global university rankings next week, is no longer collaborating with QS. The magazine is concerned that these rankings rely too heavily on subjective surveys of scholars and employers and not enough on hard indicators of excellence. The THE's new rankings are expected to contain disappointing news for some prestigious British institutions.Some of the key UK losers this year are:• University of Oxford down to 6 from 5 last year• University of Edinburgh, down two places to 22• University of Lancaster, down from 161 to 182However, some are doing better, notably University of Durham, up to 92 from 103 last year.Thanks to QS, we've got the top 100 for you to play with - you can download it below. What can you do with the data?Download the data• DATA: download the full spreadsheetWorld government data• Search the world's government with our gatewayCan you do something with this data?Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk• Get the A-Z of data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow us on TwitterData summary University guideHigher educationNew universitiesUniversity of CambridgeUniversity of OxfordUniversity of EdinburghLancaster UniversityDurham UniversityJeevan Vasagarguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Steven Slater may escape prison over his emergency slide exit | Richard Adams
Richard Adams
September 7, 2010
Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendent who stormed off a plane down its emergency slide, may avoid a jail sentenceSteven Slater, the US flight attendant with JetBlue who livened up the summer with his spectacular decision to quit by sliding down an inflatable emergency slide after an altercation with a passenger, may be able to avoid going to jail for his antics.Appearing in court today on charges of criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing – carrying sentences of up to seven years in prison – Slater was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation while his lawyers try and negotiate a settlement.The hearing at Queens Crimnal Court in New York City lasted just four minutes. Slater remained silent and did not enter a plea while lawyers on both sides indicated to the judge that a deal was in the works. Slater may have to undergo counseling and anger management, under an alternative sentencing programme that would allow him to avoid prison if found guilty of the charges.Slater's lawyer, Daniel Horwitz, said Slater was taking the matter very seriously and had been under tremendous pressure because of the recent death of his father, his mother's terminal illness and and his own struggles with HIV.It was also revealed that Slater has resigned from JetBlue, having been suspended by the airline after the incident at New York's JFK airport on 9 August, when Slater captured the world's attention after grabbing two cans of beer, shouting expletives over the plane's intercom and activating the plane's emergency chute – before sliding down and driving away.The New York Daily News reports that assistant district attorney Benjamin Mantell said Slater could have killed anyone on the ground underneath the plane at the time the emergency chute was activated. "We continue to focus on the seriousness of the acts of the defendant," Mantell said.While the event earned Slater an online army of fans, the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, said Slater's dramatic exit was not funny. "Employing an emergency chute from a plane filled with passengers is no laughing matter," said Brown, pointing out that an inflatable slide cost the airline $25,000 to replace.Air transportAirline industryUnited StatesNew YorkRichard Adamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
William Morris | Visual art review
Alfred Hickling
September 7, 2010
Blackwell, Bowness-on-WindermereWithout William Morris, there would be no Blackwell – built on the shores of Windermere by Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott in 1900 and regarded as one of the most harmonious examples of Arts and Crafts architecture in the country. It makes the ideal location for an exhibition examining Morris's love affair with the north, which he described as "the loveliest part of all England".Morris was a frequent visitor to Cumbria, where he "sniffed the smell of the moors and felt in Iceland again". He was so enraptured with Iceland that he taught himself the language in order to translate the literature. The exhibition contains a monumental, hand-printed edition of the Volsung saga, which Morris believed to be as central to northern civilisation as the fall of Troy to ancient Greece.Further evidence of Morris's hands-on enthusiasm comes in the pestle and mortar with which he ground his own pigments, having apprenticed himself to a dyer's workshop in order to "learn the practice of dying at every pore". A sketch of a condemned church in York bears witness to Morris's pioneering work as a conservationist (the church is still there).Amid all the examples of Morris's profuse range of interests, the flora and fauna of his ubiquitous textile designs seems almost incidental. But even Morris realised that his attempt to transform middle- class interiors into a medieval vision of Eden was a chimera: "a vision of England as it never was and never will be". Blackwell, with its murals, banqueting hall and minstrels' gallery, is perhaps the fullest realisation of Morris's idea of an England that never was.Rating: 4/5ArtExhibitionsArchitectureIcelandAlfred Hicklingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
US Tea Party in London to spread low tax message
Phillip Inman
September 7, 2010
In an event organised by the Taxpayers' Alliance and sponsored by US lobbyists, the group will also promote small governmentLobbyists behind the rightwing Tea Party group in the US will arrive in London today to spread their message of low taxes and small government at an event organised by the UK's controversial Taxpayers' Alliance.The event, the largest of its kind in Europe, is heavily sponsored by US lobby groups that have backed the Tea Party grouping as its challenges moderate Republican party candidates in congressional elections.Critics of the event said it established a clear link between British rightwing groups and aggressive American lobbyists who pursued low taxes, loose regulation and widespread privatisation of public services.The Taxpayers' Alliance aggressively promotes an anti-tax, anti-state, anti-Europe agenda and many of its leading figures have close links with the Tory party and the rightwing press. Its chief executive, Matthew Elliott, will lead the "no" campaign against the adoption of the alternative vote system in next May's referendum.Today's conference will be attended by Americans who have lobbied in the US to overturn Barack Obama's healthcare plan and maintain tax breaks for the rich. Several of the groups have close links to the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, prominent tormentors of the Obama administration.US groups sponsoring the event include the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, which came to prominence in the 1970s as Ronald Reagan's favourite thinktank. The Kochs, whose private company owns oil rigs and pipelines in the US, founded the Americans for Prosperity Foundation and have spent tens of millions of dollars supporting the Cato Institute. They also channel funds into causes through their business empire and one Koch-owned firm, Flint Hills Resources, has donated $1m (£650,000) to the campaign against California's anti-global warning proposition being voted on in November.The Cato Institute, which promotes its views on Fox News and other rightwing media, is one of the Tea Party's main backers.Prominent Tory supporters are also backing the conference. Stanley Kalms, the former chairman of Dixons, is a key sponsor of the event along with investment banker Howard Flight. Flight was a Tory MP and frontbench Treasury spokesman before David Cameron became leader, while Kalms was Tory treasurer and one of its main backers.Campaigner Richard Murphy, who wrote a report for the TUC showing how companies and wealthy individuals avoid billions of pounds of tax, said: "It's clear the Taxpayers' Alliance receives a huge amount of support from the US, where there is serious money behind the lobbying for low taxes. The conference is billed as a debate among European thinktanks, but it is a barely disguised front for the most aggressive lobby tactics championed on the other side of the Atlantic."A spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance said the conference had a long history of links with US thinktanks, along with free market groups worldwide."It is a place for people who believe in the free market to debate ideas and how to influence events," he said.The European Resource Bank conference, also billed as the Taxpayers' Conference and Free Market Roadshow, which will be held at various venues in the capital and includes a dinner at the Guildhall, is a spinoff from the American Resource Bank conference.The spokesman said only that UK residents were among its 60,000 supporters. He said sponsors supported the conference with cash and help in kind, but he refused to say how much individual sponsors needed to contribute to be listed on the conference agenda.Speakers from Norway, Italy, Switzerland and the UK will debate alongside US representatives about how to persuade governments that the answer to the recession and the financial crisis is an extension of privatisation policies and greater freedom from state controls.The World Taxpayers Associations, which represents low tax groups in more than 60 countries, will present its audited accounts at the conference.Murphy said: "The Taxpayers' Alliance has done a fantastic job of presenting itself as a representative of the poor downtrodden taxpayer."It regularly grabs slots on the BBC and other media to argue that taxpayers are hard done by. But the freedoms it wants is freedom from taxes for a tiny minority of wealthy people."The lobby groupsThe Cato InstituteA thinktank dedicated to individual liberty, limited government and free markets funded by oil majors such as Chevron, Exxon and Shell, as well as the David and Charles Koch, who made their millions from oil pipelines.FreedomWorksFormed after a merger between Citizens for a Sound Economy, headed by former House majority leader Dick Armey, and Empower America, co-founded by Jack Kemp, the rightwing former gridiron star whom was a prominent Reagan-era Republican.Americans for Prosperity (AFP)Started by oil billioniare David Koch, AFP aims to disrupt the Obama presidency and has opposed health care reform, stimulus spending, and cap-and-trade legislation. AFP has also taken a lead role in the Tea Party and its director is Art Pope, an ex-legislator who has been dubbed "The Knight of the Right".Ronald Reagan Presidential FoundationCreated by the former president and charged by him with continuing his legacy and sharing his principles – individual liberty, economic opportunity, global democracy and national pride.Krieble FoundationEstablished in 1984 by the family of Professor Vernon Krieble, the scientist who developed Loctite glue. Committed to using its assets "to further democratic capitalism and the preserve and promote a society of free, educated, healthy and creative individuals."Heritage FoundationThinktank co-founded in the early 70s by rightwing activist Paul Weyrich to counter liberal views. Became very influential in the Reagan era and was closely linked with support for anti-communist wars in central America and Afghanistan, and the "star wars" plan.Tea Party movementUS politicsUnited StatesConservativesPhillip Inmanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Hideously diverse Britain: Wrongs and rights for whites
Hugh Muir
September 7, 2010
Professor David Gillborn says we are in an incredibly dangerous place at the moment.So what's going on, I ask Professor David Gillborn. "Aggressive majoritarism," he says emphatically. What's that? "'Rights for whites' dressed up as an anti-political correctness agenda," he says. "We are in an incredibly dangerous place at the moment. It's 'let's focus on the white people'. It's deeply worrying." And how do the other white academics react when you put it like that, I ask him. It's not about me, he says.We are talking because the learned professor has a theory. That stuff about the white working class being cut adrift because of official preoccupation with minorities – it's nonsense, he says. The anecdotal evidence doesn't support it. Neither do the stats. The argument, put simply, is that much angst over the relative condition of working-class whites stems from statistics that purported to show that working-class white boys were performing significantly worse at school than working-class blacks. We've got to act and quickly, was the widely-voiced conclusion, not least from ministers terrified by the BNP."I was immediately suspicious," says the professor. So, sitting at his desk at the Institute of Education, he examined the stats and found that what defined the "working class" here was eligibility for free school meals. "But that's just 13% of the population, just 10% of white kids." Furthermore, the comparison had set the worst performing white boys on free school meals against the best performing black boys in that category, the black Africans. As for white boys not in receipt of free school meals – ie, the overwhelming majority – they easily outperformed their black schoolmates.It's true that many white working-class communities are struggling, I tell him. Yes, he says, and there are many reasons for that. "But what we have here is an attempt to deny the fact of continuing racial inequality. It's been pretty successful."A prickly message? It has been on occasion, he tells me. "I remember one student looked me in the eye and said, 'Are you white?' If I said 'No', she could accuse me of special pleading; 'Yes' and she could say, 'What do you know about racism anyway?' I said yes. Sometimes you just can't win."Hugh MuirRace issuesHugh Muirguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Kenya mobile price war cuts calling costs
Xan Rice
September 7, 2010
A drop of 50-75% in cost of making calls has even affected the country's inflation rates – but customers aren't complainingMike Mutuha is the master of cheap talk. He has two mobile phones, both holding two sim cards. By subscribing to each of Kenya's four mobile providers, Mutuha ensured he never had to pay the exorbitant off-network rates that have long frustrated consumers here.But his thrift may now be redundant.In recent weeks a brutal price war has broken out between the mobile operators, slashing the cost of calls between networks by at least 50%, and in some cases 75%. The cuts have come so fast and are so deep that they caused Kenya's August inflation rate to drop, along with the jaws of some mobile executives complaining that they are now losing money.Customers, meanwhile, are celebrating by talking longer and switching networks to take advantage of the best deals. "What we had before was exploitation," said Mutuha, a salesman in downtown Nairobi. "The mobile companies weren't even selling anything physical – just air."The arrival of cheap calls is the latest chapter in the extraordinary story of mobile phones in Kenya. From just 15,000 subscribers in 1999, there are now more than 15 million registered customers. Census figures last week showed nearly two in three households own a mobile – twice as many as have access to piped water. Only 1% of homes have fixed line phones.Besides enabling millions of people to easily communicate over distance for the first time, the mobile phone has spurred a host of other life-improving innovations, including a money transfer service that allows people to send cash instantly across the country via text message.Although call charges have been decreasing, until last month costs remained too high for many Kenyans, forcing them to rely heavily on text messaging."Even if you were talking to your mum you had to cut short the story because of funds," said George Okoth, a book vendor, as he queued for a new sim card in town.The fast-growing market has attracted international mobile giants to Kenya in recent years, including Indian firms Bharti Airtel and Essar, as well as France's Orange, which are all now trying to break market dominance of Safaricom, part-owned by Vodafone. Bharti, which recently purchased Zain's Africa-wide network, is relying on its homegrown model of high volumes and low charges to expand its business.Taking advantage of the Kenyan government's decision to halve the interconnection fee that operators can charge each other, Zain cut its rates for all calls from six shillings to three shillings (2p) per minute a few weeks ago.As long queues of new customers formed outside its shops other networks were forced to match the offer. Orange has even resorted to giving away new Nokia, Samsung and Motorola phones – unaffordable to many people just a few years ago – to anyone buying £8 worth of airtime.The new tariffs mean that off-network call charges have decreased by more than 93% since 2003."Just like nobody expected the exponential growth in mobile subscribers, nobody thought prices would come down so much now," Eric Musau, an analyst at African Alliance investment bank. "It is great news for consumers, though it will hurt the companies' profits." To make up for it, the mobile operators are eyeing the internet as the next area of growth.With the arrival of three undersea fibre-optic cables in Kenya over the last year, data speeds have increased dramatically.Although just 4% of households own a computer, ever-increasing numbers of people are accessing the internet on their handheld devices, including Blackberries and iPhones sold by some of the mobile operators."Internet on the phone in the next big thing, but we need smartphone prices below $100," said Aly-Khan Satchu, a financial analyst in Nairobi. "The day that happens things will really surge."KenyaTelecommunications industryMobile phonesTelecomsXan Riceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
Taxes and inequality (and Lady Gaga's meat bikini) |Michael Tomasky
Michael Tomasky
September 7, 2010
Peter Orszag, Obama's former budget director, wrote a buzzy column (as in, it's getting some) in the Times today in which he came out for extending the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, upper-bracket ones included, through 2013, and then letting them all expire (middle- and lower-brackets included).Robert Gibbs came out today and said no, the president doesn't agree, and he still supports letting the cut expire (which it will do next year, under the rules of how it was passed) for households earning more than $250,000 a year. So Obama is prepared to stand in the fire on this one.I'm well aware that this is completely impossible, but it would be nice to think that Obama and the Democrats who are with him on this one could hold the line and actually not suffer much politically on this. Something like that could start to change the politics of taxes in this country.Why does that need to happen? Oh, this:In 1915, a statistician at the University of Wisconsin named Willford I. King published The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date......King was somewhat troubled to find that the richest 1 percent possessed about 15 percent of the nation's income. (A more authoritative subsequent calculation puts the figure slightly higher, at about 18 percent.)......Today, the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income. The above comes from Tim Noah's week-long look at income inequality in the US. The picture is about as bleak as you might imagine:All my life I've heard Latin America described as a failed society (or collection of failed societies) because of its grotesque maldistribution of wealth. Peasants in rags beg for food outside the high walls of opulent villas, and so on. But according to the Central Intelligence Agency (whose patriotism I hesitate to question), income distribution in the United States is more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador. Income inequality is actually declining in Latin America even as it continues to increase in the United States.And of course it wasn't always this way:Incomes started to become more equal in the 1930s and then became dramatically more equal in the 1940s. Income distribution remained roughly stable through the postwar economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have termed this midcentury era the "Great Compression."Hmmm...wonder if this had anything to do with the fact that top marginal rates on high earner were substantially higher then? Really, ya think? Yes, I think.The evidence couldn't be clearer. Income inequality shrank or remained stable at tolerable levels in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and again (a little) in the 90s. That's five decades. Democrats were making policy in four of them. In the other one, the Republican president was an economic moderate who'd embraced the New Deal and did nothing to lower top marginal tax rates.In the 1920s, 70s, 80s, and 2000's, income inequality increased. Republicans in charge in every decade, except for the Carter four-year stretch. Could this really be an 80-year coincidence?Unfortunately, these days in America, you run this by people and instead of agreeing that this is interesting and possibly concerning, they'll say so what, I got mine, Jack. Well, not most of you clear-thinking souls, but alas most people, it seems.And finally, Lady Gaga: I wrote the headlines "taxes and inequality" and decided as I looked at it that it had to be one of the all-time boringest headlines, so I decided to spice it up a bit. Have you seen the photo? Call me a traditionalist, but I think this was a lot more shocking, and it was 44 years ago, back when we taxing people at rates that could sustain a civil society.Obama administrationUS economyMichael Tomaskyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds -
An economy kept afloat by mafia cash is not just the stuff of Le Carré thrillers | Jonathan Freedland
Jonathan Freedland
September 7, 2010
Until we find the political will, the establishment will be happy to ignore the dirty crimes behind today's dazzling fortunesHe is bull-necked and barrel-chested, bald and foul-mouthed, the owner of a bejewelled Rolex and the hundreds of millions – perhaps billions – that go with it. His English is Russian-accented and salted with expletives. He is holidaying in Antigua, on a peninsula that he owns in its entirety. He is the kingpin in a brotherhood of Russian super-criminals, a financial whiz who until now has acted as a human Laundromat, expertly washing clean his fellow crooks' soiled fortunes. But now he has made covert contact with the British authorities: he wants to be an informant, a mega-grass who will reveal the secrets of the dark underworld he has inhabited for so long.If that sounds like the plot of a thriller, that's because it's the set-up of the new and utterly riveting John le Carré novel, Our Kind of Traitor. The Russian gangster is Dima, whose fate we follow as a rogue unit in British intelligence seeks to reel the would-be defector in to safety on England's shores.Now here's another storyline. Leading banks around the world, desperate for cash in the financial crisis, turn to the proceeds of organised crime as "the only liquid investment capital" available, eventually absorbing the greater part of a staggering $352bn of drugs profits into the global economic system, laundering that vast sum in the process.Sounds far-fetched, but that's no fiction. That tale was published in the Observer in December 2009, when the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime admitted that colossal piles of drugs money had kept the world financial system afloat when it looked dangerously close to collapse.The story broke long after Le Carré had finished Our Kind of Traitor, but it confirmed everything the new novel is saying: that a huge slice of the global economy, as much as a fifth on some estimates, is made up of the fruits of organised crime; that the criminals behind that money have found a thousand ingenious ways to disguise its origins – and those we might expect to stand in the way, including reputable banks and elected politicians, instead help smooth its path out of the black economy and into the white.The problem is so vast, people somehow fail to see it. "Nobody picked it up!" a still incredulous Le Carré said of that UN statement when we met in his Hampstead home today. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I really did have the feeling that it had been suppressed." He sees too many unanswered questions, starting with how exactly that $352bn came to pass into the legitimate economy. "What buttons do you press, who do you call? Whose consent do you seek?" Did someone in government wink to the super-crooks, telling them they no longer had to keep their money in cash in, say, the Cayman Islands, but could now buy government bonds? If so, who and on whose authority?If this seems arcane, a matter for forensic accountants, it shouldn't. Balzac had it right: "Behind every great fortune, there lies a great crime." And behind today's dazzling fortunes lie some very dirty crimes indeed: if it's not selling guns or hooking the vulnerable on drugs, it's trafficking young women as sex slaves and would-be economic migrants into servitude. When the profits of evil deeds like these are laundered, the world is saying that crime – even the gravest crime – does indeed pay.The scale is enormous. The Serious Organised Crime Agency – Soca – puts revenue from organised crime in the UK alone at £15bn and admits that is likely to be a very conservative (and dated) estimate. Add in profits from Russia, India and beyond and the numbers reach the stratosphere.None of that wealth would be much use to the gangsters if it stayed in telltale cash, betraying its tainted origins. So these real-life Dimas devise ever more ingenious ways to pass it off as legit. Property is a favourite: buy a house, sell it on and the proceeds become clean. A department store works just as well, as does a football club. Or create a series of shell companies registered behind a brass plate in faraway Vanuatu or the Solomon Islands, one owning another owning another, financial Russian dolls that "exhaust and bamboozle investigators", according to Misha Glenny, whose book McMafia is the go-to guide to this new realm of international, multibillion-dollar crime.Sadly, he includes London in that roll call of safe havens, places attractive to those with illicit fortunes to bleach clean. Once Gordon Brown set his heart on London outstripping New York as the world's financial capital, Glenny argues, the inevitable result was lighter regulation, "no stress entry" for big fortunes, non-dom arrangements and an entire legal architecture hospitable to the mega-wealthy.That's not to say the authorities are doing nothing. Soca boasts of denying criminals assets of £317.5m in the last year: but the words "drop" and "ocean" come to mind. Brown certainly tightened some rules in trying to crack down on terrorist finance after 9/11 but, the experts agree, the regime still tends to catch the minnows while leaving the sharks to roam free. As Hector Meredith, the principled spy in Our Kind of Traitor, puts it: "A chap's laundering a couple of million? He's a bloody crook. Call in the regulators, put him in irons. But a few billion? Now you're talking. Billions are a statistic."What might explain the institutional blind eye turned towards these enormous, ill-gotten fortunes? Political influence. The Russian oligarchs, for example, have been tireless in their cultivation of political friends, sparing no expense. Le Carré passes on speculation that there is a substantial body of peers sitting in the House of Lords "singing for the Russian choir". His novel features an ambitious British politician who mingles with high-rolling members of the Russian criminal fraternity on a yacht, though no doubt the resemblance to any real-life figure is purely coincidental.And sometimes, in some places, it's more than a blind eye. Glenny reports that in Italy following the financial crisis the mafia has been allowed to assume the role of the banks, lending at reasonable rates to small businesses. The mafiosi can do it because they are cash rich – and in return their money is washed clean. For organised crime, a recession is good for business.What can be done? A kind of defeatism stalks Le Carré's novel, as if this dragon is too powerful ever to be slayed. The author admits that he can't see how any country can "get on terms with it". Others suggest action will be possible only when Russia – where the white and black economies are entangled in a permanent shade of dark grey – chooses to join the international struggle against organised crime.But there's more that can be done now. The US has set a good lead, regarding any transaction done in dollars as within its jurisdiction (which is why the US authorities are pursuing the Saudi/BAE episode long after Serious Fraud Office investigators abandoned it in Britain). To go further, governments would have to find the political will to chase the big villains, not just the small ones. Ending the non-dom regime would help too.One reform is both surprising and easy. Oligarchs and their ilk don't come to London for the weather: a big draw is our draconian libel laws, which keep them safe from scrutiny. Change those, so that at last we can start debating this enormous criminal racket out loud – in the newspapers rather than on the pages of a novel, no matter how riveting.CrimeCrime booksJohn Le CarréMafiaDrugs tradeLibel reformBankingFinancial crisisJonathan Freedlandguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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