The Guardian World News

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• Public backs coalition on economy says poll


• Blagojevich guilty in corruption trial


• Travel nightmare as group collapses


• Afghan polling stations to stay shut


• Train and lorry collision injures 21


• US-China rift over military secrecy


• Concern in US over Ramadan timing


• Imran Khan launches floods appeal


• Murdoch gives $1m to Republicans


• Hostage alert at Tel Aviv embassy


• Iraq bomb targets military recruits


• Academies told to cut uniform cost


• Prisoner pics just 'souvenirs': soldier


• Worst coal power plants win reprieve


• From a sunnny Witney to bleak Sheffield


• The lost boys


• 'We drank, we smoked, we snogged'


• Douglas treated for throat tumour


• Scotland's floating wind farm bid


• The aviator jacket takes off


• Wyclef Jean's Haiti hopes in balance


• Brazil bans election satire


• John Harris


• Spain probes Google Street View

Public backs coalition on economy says poll Posted: 17 Aug 2010 10:31 AM PDT Guardian/ICM poll to mark 100 days of coalition shows strong support for government's cuts-based recovery strategy David Cameron's first 100 days in Downing Street have seen the coalition win the key argument over the economy, with a Guardian/ICM poll today showing that voters back austerity measures to reduce Britain's record peacetime budget deficit. The monthly snapshot of public opinion suggests strong initial support for George Osborne's controversial cuts-based recovery strategy, with the chancellor reiterating today that the government would wreck the economy if it "budged" from its plans to slash borrowing during the course of the parliament. Despite claims from Labour that front-loaded spending cuts risk a double-dip recession and will hit the poorest the hardest, 44% of those polled said the coalition was doing a good job in securing economic recovery against 37% who said it was doing a bad job. The poll also showed voters were prepared to back Osborne, who has so far been successful in blaming his inheritance from Alistair Darling for fiscal pain that will see VAT rise to 20% in January and the most sustained cut in public spending since the war. While a third of voters (33%) said the chancellor was doing a bad job, 42% said he was doing a good job. Osborne sought today to convince voters that the coalition had no alternative but to bring down borrowing. "We are all in this together," he said, repeating a key message of the government's since the election but he said the coalition's welfare cuts would be "fair and progressive". The coalition appear to be gearing up to end universal benefits and instead means-test them so that allowances such as the winter fuel allowance and child benefit will no longer go to well-off families. Osborne yesterday refused to rule out curbing entitlements to universal benefits. It was the first public comment by the chancellor since his spending row with the work and pensions minister Iain Duncan Smith was resolved. IDS had been pushing to keep some of the savings his department made by tightening up benefit payments and wanted to reinvest the money in an overhaul of the benefit system. It appears the Treasury will let the DWP keep some of the department's own savings to that end. The DWP will find the extra revenue by ending winter fuel payments to the over-65s and could also reduce the number of parents available for child benefit. While Labour believes voters' moods will change in 2011 when VAT rises to 20% and spending cuts start to bite, the poll indicates that Cameron is still enjoying a political honeymoon. It shows that 57% of voters think he is doing a good job and 52% believe he can be trusted to "make the right decisions when the going gets tough". More generally, the coalition remains reasonably popular, with 46% of voters deeming it to be doing a good job in running the country as against 36% who say it is doing a bad job, a 10-point margin in its favour, which has drifted down from the 23-point advantage recorded when a similar question was asked in June. But despite some reasonably strong personal numbers for the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, when it comes to voting intentions there are clear signs that the first peacetime coalition in the era of universal suffrage is serving his Liberal Democrats less well than the Tories. Where the Conservatives are holding on to the 37% vote share which achieved in the election, a quarter of those who backed the Lib Dems have since switched sides, leaving the third party on just 18% – down one point on the month, and six on the election. Many of these deserters have drifted towards Labour, taking its standing to 37%, and allowing a leaderless party to run the Tories level for the first time in three years.The polarising economic argument underlies this political drift. By a margin of 77% to 9% Conservative voters are emphatically behind the coalition on the economy, just as Labour voters are strongly against them on the recovery, by 63% to 22%. Osborne's personal ratings are similarly polarised. He is wildly popular among Tory voters – who by a huge margin of 76% to 7% rate him as doing a good job. But he gets the thumbs down from 58% of Labour supporters, and produces another near-even 41%-39% split among those who voted Liberal Democrat last time around. The chancellor rejected claims yesterday that his fast-track approach to deficit reduction represented a "gamble" with growth. "In fact the reverse is true," he said. "The gamble would have been not to act, to put Britain's reputation at risk, and to leave the stability of the economy to the vagaries of the bond market, assuming investors around the world would continue to tolerate the largest budget deficit in the G20." Recent economic data suggested that the pace of growth had slackened in recent weeks following the rapid 1.1% expansion in the second quarter. House prices have been slipping and consumer confidence dented by the austerity measures outlined in June's emergency budget. The chancellor insisted, however, that there would be no backsliding from the coalition. "Britain now has a credible plan to deal with our record deficit. We must stick by it. To budge from that plan now would risk reigniting the markets' suspicions that Britain does not have the will to pay her way in the world. I will not take that risk." He said the government wanted better value for money for public spending. "It is not about how much the government spends but about what the government does with the money. We want to be laying the foundations for economic growth and a fairer society." The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: "The chancellor has a different definition of fairness to the rest of us. His spending cuts are hitting the most vulnerable, his one big tax rise was VAT – the unfairest of all – and his economic policies are bearing down on the young, trapped between unemployment and an education sector with not enough places." Darling said: "There's nothing 'pro-growth' about taking a huge gamble with the recovery – with people's jobs. And nothing 'fair' or 'progressive' about George Osborne's budget hitting the poorest in our society hardest. He doesn't seem to understand that in government it's decisions, not warm words, that count." ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1,001 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 13-15 August 2010. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. Liberal-Conservative coalition Liberal Democrats Conservatives Labour David Cameron Nick Clegg Opinion polls Larry Elliott Tom Clark guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Blagojevich guilty in corruption trial Posted: 17 Aug 2010 05:30 PM PDT Sentence seen as victory for former Illinois governor, though prosecutors say they will push for retrial Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was found guilty on just one count out of 24 in a massive corruption trial that had fascinated America and potentially reached some of the most prominent Democratic politicians in the nation. Blagojevich, a colourful and outspoken character, escaped being found guilty on the 23 other counts after the jury could not decide on any other charges. That, in effect, made the verdict a sort of victory for Blagojevich and his legal team. But any celebrations were shortlived as government prosecutors immediately signalled they would push for a retrial. A new case is now set to unfold in the weeks and months ahead. "This was a definite victory for Rod Blagojevich. It may, however only be a temporary victory," said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. The verdict was read out in a Chicago court room and came after jurors had debated for 14 days over charges that Blagojevich had engaged in bribery, extortion, racketeering, wire fraud and a host of other serious allegations. However, it was clear that the jury was hopelessly deadlocked on all but a single, and minor, charge of lying to federal investigators. On that charge alone Blagojevich was found guilty, though it carries a potential prison term of up to five years. The case against Blagojevich centred mainly on allegations that he had attempted to "sell" the vacant Senate seat in Illinois left by Barack Obama's winning of the 2008 presidential election. In one conversation recorded by federal agents, Blagojevich told an aide: "I've got this thing, and it's fucking golden. I'm just not giving it up for fucking nothing." The appointment of a successor to Obama became a major political issue in US politics. Illinois' constitution effectively gave Blagojevich – as governor – the power to name whomever he wanted and he faced pressure from Democratic party bosses to favour certain candidates. Much of the case against him rests on whether Blagojevich's actions over the seat represented actual corruption or were simply an extreme form of normal political horse-trading. It was feared at one stage that top White House officials, including Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, might be called to give evidence. But, in the end, the case was much shorter than had been expected and not even Blagojevich took the stand. One name that had repeatedly cropped up was that of Jesse Jackson Jnr, the son of the famed civil rights campaigner of the same name. Jackson Jnr had been a contender for the vacant Senate seat and met with Blagojevich to discuss it. He has always denied any wrongdoing, however and during the trial an aide to Blagojevich, had testified that the two had never talked about money. After the verdict, Jackson's office issued a statement repeating his innocence and bemoaning the prospect of another trial. "Unfortunately the pain and embarrassment that this whole situation has caused our great state will not come to a close today," Jackson said. Blagojevich's failure to speak in his own defence during the trial was a rare moment of shyness from the former governor. In a state known for its outlandish and outspoken politicians Blagojevich was in a class of his own, especially after he was forced out of office. While he was awaiting trial Blagojevich appeared as a contestant on Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice reality TV show. A judge in the case also refused a Blagojevich request to go to Costa Rica take part in the US version of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. His wife, Patti, went instead and used the show to talk about how she felt the couple were being unfairly persecuted. Blagojevich also took to the talk show circuit to protest his innocence and was a frequent Twitter user. He even made a cameo appearance in a Chicago musical about his life that was called Rod Blagojevich Superstar. After the verdict, the normally vociferous Blagojevich finally broke his silence at a hastily convened press conference outside the court. "This jury just showed you that on every charge except for one they could not prove that I did anything wrong," he said and added that he was being unfairly victimised by prosecutors and the government. "This is a persecution," Blagojevich told the crowd of reporters. Rod Blagojevich US politics United States Illinois Paul Harris guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Travel nightmare as group collapses Posted: 17 Aug 2010 04:48 PM PDT Failure of UK travel group, and trading arm Kiss Travel, comes amid warnings other firms could go bust before summer is out Thousands of holidaymakers face the prospect of losing or having to rearrange their summer vacations after a third UK travel group in just over a month ceased trading. Aviation regulators were last night scrambling to ensure that all 13,000 holidaymakers already abroad when London-based Flight Options and its main trading arm Kiss Travel collapsed at 5pm yesterday got home as planned. But there were bleak warnings that other companies could go bust before the summer was out. Flight Options customers due to leave before 6pm tonight should travel to airports as planned, said the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). "Because the company has failed at the height of summer, the CAA is also putting in place arrangements to allow people to travel out on their holidays for the next 24 hours, to minimise confusion and protect passengers," it said in a statement. Those with later bookings should seek advice from their travel agents about alternatives. Most of the 60,000 other customers who had booked flights to the Mediterranean, including Greece and Turkey, Egypt and the Canaries for September and beyond are likely to receive refunds because of protection through the CAA's Air Travel Organisers' Licensing (Atol) protection scheme. But its demise means more than 200,000 people have been affected by the collapse of a travel company this summer – the latest following hard on the heels of Goldtrail Travel in mid July and the smaller Sun4U last week. Some people hit by last night's collapse may even have been caught by Goldtrail's failure and hoping for better luck since Kiss covered many of the same routes. The CAA expressed surprise when Goldtrail ceased operating, saying such a failure was unusual at peak season. But since then gloom has set in. Market-leaders Tui Travel and Thomas Cook have been downbeat, saying fewer people are taking package breaks and are delivering cautious predictions for next year. The closure of airspace due to the volcanic ashcloud, months of uncertainty over British Airways flights because of the cabin crew dispute and general uncertainty over how hard family finances will be hit by the belt-tightening demanded by the government may all be factors. Gary Ash, chief executive of Flight Options, told travelweekly website: "I am devastated by this unfortunate turn of events. Over the past nine months we have been fighting in a difficult market. "However, recent developments have made it impossible to continue the operation of the companies. He said the company's last annual results filed for the year ending 31 October 2009, revealed Kiss Flights had made an operating profit of £500,000. Bob Atkinson, a travel expert with the website travelsupermarket.com said: "Unfortunately for some, Kiss Flights catered for many of the same routes as the recently collapsed Goldtrail. It may be the case the some unlucky holidaymakers will be affected all over again. At this stage it is unclear how many passengers will be protected by the Atol scheme and we are waiting for advice from the CAA. "This is sadly yet another collapse in what could become a rash of company failures this autumn." The CAA says it believes most Flight Options customers are covered by Atol because most of its business involves selling seats on planes. But it fears many consumers hit by the summer's earlier collapses will be out of pocket because the components of their holidays were not sold in a way that the courts believe constitutes a package holiday. Only those who paid for flights, accommodation and hire car, for instance, with one credit card transaction, are protected under the Atol scheme. Those who made three separate payments are not. The authority lost a recent court case over the issue with the Travel Republic company and was not allowed by the Supreme Court to appeal. That rebuff makes swift reform of the law essential, it said last month. A decade ago, well over 90% of holidays were protected by Atol but today only around 50% of holidays are, it said. "Because of the rise of direct booking over the internet, and companies offering holidays that are not protected in the traditional way, the case for reforming Atol to simplify the scheme for holidaymakers has never been stronger." Flight Options also traded under the names Africa Options, America Options, Canada Options, Caribbean Options, Dubai Options, Elgouna Options, Elgouna Villas and Apartments, Florida Options, Florida Owners Club, Golf Options, Holidayops.com, Orlando Villas Direct, Sportops.com, Travel Options Direct and Travelplus. Customers who are currently abroad can contact the CAA for more information on 0044 161 444 5811. General advice about refunds under the Atol scheme should go to the CAA website or call 0844 571 7262. Year of collapses There have been four big holiday company collapses in the past year. 16 December 2009 Scottish tour operator Globespan and its linked airline FlyGlobespan went into administration after public warnings about its financial state. About 4,000 holidaymakers were abroad, mainly in Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Egypt. 16 July 2010 Goldtrail Travel, specialists in Turkey and Greece, ceased trading in what the Civil Aviation Authority called "a highly unusual failure". It is rare for an operator to go out of business in the height of summer. Over 20,000 people had to be repatriated from holidays while another 110,000 are thought to have had bookings. 12 August 2010 Birmingham-based Sun4U, which sold packages to Spain and other Mediterranean destinations went into administration. About 10,000 people were affected. Those with accommodation booked through its travel agency were not protected in the same way as others. They were notas it was not part of the Atol scheme designed to ensure passengers are able to fly home as planned. Even some of those who were protected faced demands from hotels to pay again for their accommodation. The CAA said if this was the case, they should send a claim to the CAA on their return home so that a refund could be considered. Those customers protected by Atol should receive one. 17 August 2010 The CAA was informed about the demise of Flight Options shortly before it was formally announced. It estimates 13,000 people are currently overseas. All can complete their holidays and return to the UK under Atol protection. Around 60,000 people have forward bookings with the firm and can claim a full refund for Atol-protected elements from the CAA. Because the company has failed at the height of summer, the CAA has allowed people to travel out on their holidays for the next 24 hours "to minimise confusion and protect passengers". Travel & leisure Consumer affairs Flights James Meikle guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Afghan polling stations to stay shut Posted: 17 Aug 2010 08:59 AM PDT Election commission says it has no option but to turn away voters in some of the most violent parts of Afghanistan Electoral officials in Afghanistan have decided not to open nearly 900 polling stations in the most violent areas of the country for next month's parliamentary election, in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the massive fraud that wrecked last year's presidential contest. Despite worries about disenfranchising large numbers of voters, the country's independent election commission is expected to announce tomorrow that it has been forced to abandon initial plans to open 6,835 polling centres, after Afghan security chiefs and Nato commanders decreed that parts of the country are too dangerous for voting to take place. According to an IEC spokesman, President Hamid Karzai and General David Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, reviewed the proposed list of polling stations on Saturday, which led to the electoral body removing an additional 100 stations that the security forces had said were safe. Hardest hit will be the south and the east where the population is largely Pashtun, the ethnic group from which the Taliban derive much of its support. "We have no option but to close these polling stations," said Farid Afghanzai, an IEC spokesman, who said the commission was acutely aware that many people would be unable to vote. Last year Karzai insisted on as many voting centres opening as possible in the insurgency-torn south, leading to so-called "ghost polling stations" in areas so dangerous that election monitors had no chance of being present to record or prevent massive electoral fraud, including ballot boxes being stuffed with crudely filled-in voting papers. A total of 2,545 candidates, including 410 women, are competing for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, Afghanistan's lower house, on 18 September. Kabul's 33 seats are being contested by 662 people, partly because candidates from insecure parts of the country have chosen to stand in the capital instead. Foreign election experts have in general been pleased with Afghanistan's preparations for this year's election. "In a sense it is a benefit that we had such a bad one last year," said one western official closely involved with monitoring elections who did not wanted to be named. "It's a sort of reference point for them to make improvements." However, even optimistic observers say there are still enormous potential problems, including a chaotic registration system that has issued some 17m voter cards – an estimated 5m of which are thought to be duplicates or fraudulently acquired. Others fear that the risks of a botched election are so great that it must be postponed, even though candidates have already spent fortunes covering Afghanistan's cities with posters. "If thousands of people in the Pashtun belt are unable to vote there will be huge questions about disenfranchisement," said Candace Rondeaux, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. "It will give the Taliban another excuse to point at this as yet another western experiment aimed at excluding large swathes of the population from the political process." She said the current record levels of Taliban violence could lead to around one-third of polling stations not opening on the day, potentially threatening the legitimacy of the new parliament. Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, told the Guardian that the movement has not yet decided whether it will launch the sort of violent intimidation campaign that kept people from the polls last year and which included threats – carried out in at least one case – to cut off the fingers of anyone who voted. This year's campaign has already been hit by violence: two candidates have been murdered and three kidnapped, and there have been reports that others have received death threats. Another concern is whether the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) will have the ability to process large amounts of fraud, particularly as the most experienced foreign commissioner has recently returned home to South Africa amid fears that he is seriously ill. Last year the watchdog was drawn into fierce political battles with Karzai and his allies after it uncovered evidence that one in three of his votes were fraudulent. The board, which was deliberately set up to be dominated by a majority of three non-Afghans, was accused of foreign interference and was deeply resented by Karzai. In a move that caused international outrage, he issued a decree giving him full power to appoint all of the commissioners. Consequently, this year two of the five are not from Afghanistan, including Johann Kriegler, the judge who has gone back to South Africa. An spokesman for the ECC said he could not say when Kriegler would return to Afghanistan or whether his departure was linked to illness. Afghanistan Hamid Karzai Jon Boone guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Train and lorry collision injures 21 Posted: 17 Aug 2010 04:45 PM PDT Two suffer life-threatening injuries and 19 others hurt in incident at Suffolk rail crossing Two people suffered life-threatening injuries and 19 others were hurt when a train and a lorry collided at an unmanned rail crossing yesterday. An air ambulance was involved in the rescue as all were taken to one of three hospitals after the accident near the village of Little Cornard, near Sudbury, Suffolk. The driver of the lorry, a sewage tanker used for farm slurry, was arrested by police on suspicion of dangerous driving. Network Rail said the user-worked crossing had gates and a telephone but its signaller had not received a phone call. The lorry was struck by the 17.31 National Express East Anglia service from Sudbury to Marks Tey. The train was believed to be carrying around 20 passengers. Superintendent Phil Trendall of British transport police said: "Clearly if the train had turned over the injuries could have been greater. We are just grateful they were no greater in seriousness or number." Jack Barnett, 65, a retired lorry driver who lives about 100 yards from the scene, said: "There was a very, very loud bang. I've never heard anything like it. I thought it was an aeroplane crash or a bomb going off." "The tanker was cut in half. There was sewage over the line … The two carriages went through the tanker, so one half was on one side of the line and one on the other. The driver of the tanker was very lucky not to have been killed." Janet Crosbie, who lives just 30 yards away, said she took blankets to help those hurt. "There were some young girls there aged about 20, who were shocked and cold. One had a bloody nose, one had chipped a bit off a tooth. There was a man who seemed to have internal injuries. At one point he seemed OK, then he deteriorated and was taken off to hospital." The ambulance service said it had dealt with 18 casualties. The two most seriously hurt had been trapped on the train while 14 were described as "walking wounded".Most of those injured were taken to Colchester general hospital but two went to Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge, and others to West Suffolk hospital, Bury St Edmunds. Transport Rail transport James Meikle guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

US-China rift over military secrecy Posted: 17 Aug 2010 11:18 AM PDT US says secrecy raises potential for 'miscalculation' but experts say China cannot reach desired level of transparency China's military cannot meet Washington's expectations of transparency, scholars in Beijing warned today, after a report from the US defence department said the secrecy of the People's Liberation Army was increasing the potential for "misunderstanding and miscalculation". The annual Pentagon report was published amid frictions between the countries over US arms sales to Taiwan, US naval drills with South Korea and China's growing confidence in the South China Seas. It argues that despite modest improvements in the PLA's openness, "the limited transparency in China's military and security affairs enhances uncertainty and increases the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation." The PLA has issued reports on its work and attempted to improve links with other militaries in recent years, engaging in more joint exercises and taking part in peacekeeping missions. But Shi Yinhong, an expert on Sino-US relations at Renmin University, said: "Although China has steadily increased its military transparency over the past few years, it's currently impossible for China to reach the level that the US demands." This year China announced that the military budget would rise by 7.5% to 532.11bn yuan (£51.7bn), after two decades of double-digit annual increases. Experts suggested the slowdown reflected Chinese concerns about the way it was perceived, as well as financial constraints. China argues that spending remains well below US levels and that US capabilities remain far superior. The Pentagon believes that China's actual military spending is roughly double the stated level. Its report says China has the most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile programme in the world and that it is developing an anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of more than 1,500km, capable of attacking aircraft carriers in the western Pacific. It adds that analysts believe China will not have a domestically produced aircraft carrier and associated ships for another five years, although foreign assistance could speed that process up. It also predicts: "It is unlikely ... that China will be able to project and sustain large forces in high-intensity combat operations far from China until well into the following decade." Beijing suspended military-to-military ties between the countries in January, in retaliation for US arms sales to Taiwan. The report notes that while Beijing has improved economic and cultural ties with Taiwan, it has continued the build-up of missiles opposite the island and expanded its military advantage. Last month Beiing reacted angrily when the US secretary of state waded into the territorial dispute over the South China Sea between China and several regional powers including Vietnam and the Philippines. Hillary Clinton said resolving the row was a diplomatic priority and was in the national interest of the US. Other countries complain that China is taking a tougher line on the dispute. It recently began describing rights over the strategic waterway – which is also potentially rich in natural resources – as a "core interest". China has also complained about US plans to hold joint drills with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, between China and the Korean peninsula. "The United States appears to want to declare to the world: 'The Asia-Pacific and the oceans remain under the United States'," said a commentary in the Communist party's official People's Daily newspaper. Zhu Feng, of Peking University's School of International Studies, said the combination of issues had led to an "unprecedented surge" in tensions but that the prospect of conflict remained low. Drew Thompson, a China expert at the Nixon Centre in Washington, warned: "The US military and the Chinese military don't have a common understanding, a rules of the road, for navigation. That's a major cause for concern." China US foreign policy United States Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Concern in US over Ramadan timing Posted: 17 Aug 2010 11:48 AM PDT Celebrations to mark end of Muslim fasting could be deliberately misinterpreted to spark hostility, religious groups warn Islamic groups in the US fear an overlap between the end of Ramadan and the anniversary of 9/11 will lead to criticisms that Muslims are celebrating the 2001 terrorist attacks. Islam follows a lunar calendar, so Ramadan begins approximately 10 days earlier every year. This year, Eid al-Fitr – the festival that marks the end of fasting – falls on or around September 11. Some groups worry that the coincidence will increase suspicion and hostility towards Islam at a time when feelings towards their religion are already running high. President Barack Obama has come under intense criticism for throwing his weight behind plans to build an Islamic community centre close to Ground Zero. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, compared the planned mosque to "Nazis" erecting a sign next to the Washington Holocaust museum. Americans Against Hate have accused organisers of one Ramadan event of "spitting in the face of Americans" because they had scheduled activities for September 12. The Islamic Circle of North America decided against holding its Muslim family day on September 11 out of respect for victims and families. Founder Tariq Amanullah worked in the World Trade Centre and died in the attacks. An ICNA spokesman, Naeem Baig, said: "We took the decision not to have it on September 11 because it is not a day to celebrate. We will be mourning the deaths of all those who perished. "We wish it to be as close to Eid as possible. But we don't want it on 9/11. That would be insensitive, we had to think of that." He said that some critics would deliberately misinterpret Eid celebrations as something sinister but that the misconception was mostly due to ignorance of Islamic festivals. The Muslim Public Affairs Council, an advocacy group based in Los Angeles, is reported to have contacted police to alert them to the overlapping dates. Another has urged mosques to improve surveillance and security on their premises. Ibrahim Hooper, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said it was up to each individual community how they celebrated Eid but they might change the nature of the public events because of its proximity to 9/11. "I don't think people will change their religious observance. Eid is a prayer in the morning but they might do something about the funfairs and bazaars they hold to celebrate. "We always tell mosques to revise their security when Islamophobia is on the rise. We have a whole industry of people searching for any excuse to bash Islam and this is one of them." Haroon Moghul, the director of an Islamic outreach body, wrote: "If Eid falls on the anniversary of that day, it will be an especially difficult task for a Muslim in New York. Many of our congregations were hurt that day, either personally or through the loss of loved ones. Many good friends of mine rushed to ground zero to give aid and spent hours, even days, doing what they could for the victims and for the brave first responders who were badly wounded." September 11 2001 Islam New York Ramadan United States Riazat Butt Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Imran Khan launches floods appeal Posted: 17 Aug 2010 11:26 AM PDT Cricketer-turned-politician outlines fundraising plan while attacking government efforts to deal with crisis Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, is launching his own emergency fundraising appeal for the victims of the devastating floods in Pakistan, pitting him directly against the government's own efforts. The Imran Khan Flood Relief organisation will seek to tackle both the immediate emergency and the long-term rehabilitation work required. "The government has totally collapsed, there's no government here," Khan told the Guardian. "The government's efforts to raise money have totally failed because no one trusts the government." Khan will seek to mobilise thousands of Pakistanis behind his cause, to produce an army of volunteers to carry out the work. The floods have ravaged at least a fifth of the land mass of Pakistan and has hit 20 million people, with the waters continuing to envelop new areas. The required funding to deal with the calamity has not been forthcoming, either domestically or internationally, and there has been bitter criticism of the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, for not visiting the flooded areas for several days. Yesterday the UN appealed again for money, saying it was desperately short, having raised $160m (£100m) of the $460m required to cover just the first 90 days of the disaster. The World Bank announced it would make $900m immediately available for the crisis. Pakistan's prime minister set up an emergency relief fund two weeks ago for Pakistanis to give to, but as of Monday it had only managed to attract 117m rupees (£900,000). It is estimated that billions of pounds will be required to deal with the damage to infrastructure, housing and agriculture. "The money coming into Pakistan is peanuts, so I decided I had to do something," said Khan. He is seeking contributions from Pakistanis at home and abroad, and will run telethons on Pakistani TV, as well as leading a caravan roadshow across the nation to garner support. He said his charity would work with other non-governmental organisations. Khan has an established record as a philanthropist, having started a cancer hospital and a college in Pakistan, which he still runs. He raises about $20m a year to maintain the hospital, which gives free treatment to three-quarters of its patients. Though his politics attract much criticism, he is widely seen in Pakistan as free of corruption, which his fundraising campaign for the floods will now bank on. By contrast, Zardari has faced graft allegations in the past and stories surface daily in the Pakistani press about government corruption. Pakistan comes close to the top of international league tables for corruption, one of the reasons suggested by some for the reluctance of individuals and countries to contribute to the emergency. The Pakistan government says it is doing all that is possible for the flood victims, given the scale of the disaster and the resources it has available. "The task cannot be handled by the government alone or by any political party or institution. It can be met only through the combined effort of the whole nation," Zardari said today. Khan heads his own political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Although it has yet to make any significant inroads in elections, his work for the flood victims could become controversial and be seen as political. He is an unrelenting critic of Zardari and of US foreign policy. According to his critics, he is allied with the Islamic right. The international community has pledged $353m to the floods cause, though much of that money has yet to be delivered. The US heads the list of donors with $76m, followed by the UK, which has earmarked £31.3m. Earlier this week, Nick Clegg called the international response "pitiful". Although there has been criticism of Muslim countries not giving enough, Saudi Arabia has delivered $44m, while Turkey is to give $11m. Pakistan flood Pakistan Flooding Natural disasters and extreme weather Asif Ali Zardari Saeed Shah guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Murdoch gives $1m to Republicans Posted: 17 Aug 2010 10:52 AM PDT Media tycoon cools on support for Barack Obama to fund Republican governors and their pro-business agenda Rupert Murdoch has thrown his financial weight behind the Republican party, donating $1m (£642,000) to help its candidates in the November elections. It is one of the biggest donations to the party by any individual or organisation. The move comes in spite of Murdoch's public praise during the 2008 White House race for Barack Obama, whom he described as a phenomenon of "rock star" proportions. Murdoch's News Corporation said it supported the Republicans because the party had a pro-business agenda. Murdoch's Fox News channel, New York Post and Wall Street Journal support the Republicans editorially and he has now added a significant amount of cash to the cause. The $1m was donated to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in June, according to information given to the Internal Revenue Service. The Democrats hold a slim majority of the 50 governorships but politicians in both parties predict significant victories for the Republicans in November. Jack Horner, vice-president of corporate affairs and communications at News Corporation in New York, said: "News Corporation believes in the power of free markets and organisations like the RGA, which have a pro-business agenda, support our priorities at this most critical time for our economy." Murdoch has a tendency to support politicians who might help his business empire or that he thinks are going to win. He switched support from the Conservatives to Labour in the run-up to the 1997 UK election. He supported Obama against Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primaries, with the New York Post surprisingly coming out in favour of Obama even though Clinton was a senator for New York. But in the election, the Post, Wall Street Journal and Fox all backed the Republican contender, John McCain. Although much of the media focus on the November elections is on the Senate and House of Representatives races, the governors wield immense power. Republican optimism about success in the gubernatorial contests comes in part from their successful fundraising, having brought in $58m in the first six months of this year. The Democratic Governors Association has raised $40m. One of the other big donors to the RGA was Wellpoint, the health insurance giant, which contributed $500,000. Wellpoint opposed Obama's healthcare reform legislation passed earlier this year. Rupert Murdoch Republicans United States US politics Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Hostage alert at Tel Aviv embassy Posted: 17 Aug 2010 10:21 AM PDT Palestinian man claims he has two hostages and will blow up building Israeli security forces were tonight in place around the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv where a Palestinian man was reported to be holding hostages after shots were fired. Details of the incident were unclear but the Israeli foreign ministry confirmed there was a "hostage situation". According to Israel Radio, Turkish officials at the embassy were refusing to allow Israeli forces to enter the building. Relations between Israel and Turkey have been under severe strain since the Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla heading for Gaza on May 31, when nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed. Tonight's incident has the potential to further inflame a delicate diplomatic situation. The Palestinian man reportedly arrived at the embassy in a state of undress, saying he was being persecuted by Israeli intelligence services and demanding asylum. He called an Israeli paper, identifying himself as Nadam Injaz, and saying he had previously sought asylum at the British embassy in Tel Aviv four years ago. Shots were apparently fired in the vicinity of the Turkish embassy today and police closed surrounding roads to traffic. According to some reports, the Palestinian was shot in the legs and then taken inside the embassy. His lawyer, who was in contact with him by phone, said he was armed with pistol and a knife. An Israeli TV channel played a recording of a phone call it said came from the attacker. "I have two hostages," he said. "I will blow up the embassy." Eli Binn, director of the ambulance service, who was at the scene, said: "We were called to the scene after being informed that someone was barricading himself at the embassy. When we arrived a Turkish representative said there [was] no need for us to come in and did not allow us to enter. We know with certainty that there is one gunshot victim but we don't know his condition. "While we were at the site more shots were fired, but at this time we don't quite know what's going on inside the embassy and are waiting outside, along with other security forces, until we get our orders," he said. The Palestinian was reported to be demanding to be taken to Ankara. Police said they believed he was mentally ill. Israel Palestinian territories Turkey Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Iraq bomb targets military recruits Posted: 17 Aug 2010 02:30 AM PDT Sixty confirmed dead in central Baghdad as new entrants to Iraqi army targeted in attack At least 60 Iraqi army recruits and soldiers were killed and dozens more injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an army base in the centre of Baghdad this morning. The attack – the deadliest in the Iraqi capital for weeks – comes as the US prepares to end its combat operations in the country, and amid growing fears that al-Qaida is seeking to exploit Iraq's political turmoil to stage a comeback. The blast took place around 7.30am just outside the former Iraqi ministry of defence building that now houses the army's 11th division headquarters. The site receives about 250 new recruits each week as Iraqi forces try to bolster their ranks to fill the security vacuum created by the US military's withdrawal after seven years of war. Blown-off hands and legs could be seen among pools of blood at the scene, which Iraqi soldiers closed off. US helicopters hovered overhead as frantic Iraqis arrived to search for relatives. Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, a military spokesman, told the Associated Press that the blast was caused by a single suicide bomber who detonated his vest among the packed crowd. He blamed al-Qaida for recruiting the bomber, whose upper body was found at the scene. Moussawi said that as many as 1,000 army recruits were gathered at the division headquarters this morning as today was to be the last day for soldiers to sign up at the unit. "We couldn't get another place for the recruits," he said. "It was difficult to control the area because it's an open area and because of the large number of recruits." The first accounts of the attack were confused, with at least two witnesses saying they had also seen a car explode at the scene. A double suicide attack, which could explain the high death toll, is a hallmark of Sunni Islamist al-Qaida and its local affiliates, who often target the security forces and militia. One wounded recruit told Reuters: "We were lined up in a long queue. There were also officers and soldiers. Suddenly an explosion happened. Thank God only my hand was injured." Another recruit, who suffered minor shrapnel wounds, said he had been waiting to get into the headquarters to secure a job for four hours when the attack happened. "We were sitting there, and somebody began shouting about a parked car," said Ali Ibrahim, 21. "Then the explosion happened and I was thrown on my back. It was a tragic scene." Today's attack was the worst since 18 July, when a suicide bomber struck members of a government-backed militia waiting to be paid, killing at least 39 people. The latest incident followed a long line of attacks since the 7 March election failed to produce an outright winner, or, as yet, a new government. While overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the height of the sectarian slaughter between majority Shia and once dominant Sunnis in 2006-07, a stubborn insurgency remains capable of carrying out large-scale attacks. Iraqi and US officials say the insurgents are trying to exploit political tensions stirred up by unsuccessful coalition talks between the major Shia political factions and a Sunni-backed cross-sectarian alliance that won a narrow victory in the election. Information from the Iraqi defence and interior ministry officials suggested that July was the bloodiest month since May 2008, with more than 500 deaths. However, US military data and Associated Press estimates are lower. August, which saw the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, has also been deadly. Two bombs that set off a power generator and ignited a fuel tank 10 days ago killed 43 people in a market in the centre of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city. Iraq Sam Jones guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Academies told to cut uniform cost Posted: 17 Aug 2010 10:00 PM PDT Parents should not be asked to pay for new uniform by schools that change status, warns Local Government Association Parents should not be asked to pay for new school uniforms by schools that change status to academies, council leaders warned today . The Local Government Association (LGA) has asked dozens of schools to "show restraint" when updating their uniform. It predicts the switch to academies could otherwise result in a boom for school uniform suppliers, while hard- pressed parents are expected to invest in new sets of clothing for their children, sometimes only 12 months after buying a previous set. The LGA, which represents more than 350 councils in England, suggests schools change just one or two items of clothing or introduce replacement, sew-on logos. The average cost of a school uniform is more than £200 for secondary school students and £160 for primary, not including the kit required for sports and PE. Schools are being encouraged by the LGA to follow three principles to keep the cost of uniform down: uniform items should all be available from a minimum of two different suppliers, not counting the school itself; school symbols and logos should be available as sew-on patches; and parents should be given opportunities to buy and sell secondhand uniform from other parents. Research by Asda found that although nearly all parents want to choose where to buy their children's uniform, almost seven out of 10 are forced to buy from "preferred suppliers" that are often expensive and offer poor quality. The LGA chair, Lady Eaton, said: "The changing education landscape means dozens of schools are changing their names or identities. It is understandable that many will want to mark this, but they need to remember that parents cannot simply sign a blank cheque for new school clothing. "Parents of children starting primary or secondary school this September will be going through the expense of investing in entirely new uniforms. The last thing families want to hear is that the uniform will be completely different 12 months later. Schools changing their name or status owe it to parents to minimise extra costs. That can be achieved by staying close to an existing colour scheme, changing one item only such as a tie, or allowing parents to sew new badges and logos on to clothes. "Some councils offer grants to families struggling to pay for uniforms, but schools have the power to reduce this burden for both parents and taxpayers. "Offering uniforms from a number of retailers and making it easier to attach logos to widely-available clothing lets schools keep their individuality while bringing in the necessary competition to keep costs down. "Parents should be aware they have the power to influence schools over their uniform. Mums and dads everywhere should feel able to ask questions of their school governors and speak up if they think a uniform is too expensive or too hard to get hold of." The LGA has also urged schools to relax their rules on the clothing that children are expected to wear for sports lessons. The average cost of a games kit for children at secondary school is £130, although more for boys at £155 than girls, whose sports kit costs an average of £102. It suggests that schools opt for clothing that can be used for more than one sport, and can be bought from supermarkets and other high street retailers, while children competing in school teams could have kit provided from a central pool. Academies Secondary schools Schools Parents and parenting Family finances Jill Insley guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Prisoner pics just 'souvenirs': soldier Posted: 17 Aug 2010 09:09 AM PDT Eden Abergil brushes off criticism as veterans group says 'victory pictures' widespread practice among soldiers See more of the Israeli soldiers' 'trophy' photos A former Israeli soldier who posed for pictures with Palestinian detainees and posted them on her Facebook page defended her actions today, as more images emerged of Israeli service personel posing alongside blindfolded detainees and dead bodies. "I still don't understand what I did wrong," Eden Abergil told Israeli army radio. Abergil, a reserve officer with the Israeli army who completed compulsory military service last year, provoked outrage over photographs in which she posed next to handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinians. She told army radio: "There's no violence or intention to humiliate anyone in the pictures. I just had my picture taken with them in the background. I did it out of excitement, to remember the experience. It wasn't a political statement or any kind of statement. It was about remembering my experiences in the army and that's it." The pictures have provoked a furious rection from Palestinians, who compared them to images of US soldiers abusing of Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad in 2004 "This is not very different to what was exposed at Abu Ghraib in Iraq," said Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative. "It is not an individual act, or a personal act or a lack of judgment, but a part of the constant racist behaviour that is implanted in the Israeli army and a whole philosophy of discrimination against Arabs and Palestinians. The most important characteristic of this treatment is humiliation." An Israeli army spokesperson described the Facebook photographs as "shameful behaviour". Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group of army veterans that documents the experiences of soldiers serving in the occupied West Bank, released more photographs to demonstrate that the practice is widespread. The group said its preliminary batch of graphic pictures, some featuring Israeli soldiers posing next to dead bodies, was collated over the last decade and that a few of the images were from the Facebook pages of active soldiers. It asked the Israeli army to "clarify that this is a widespread phenomenon, not an unusual incident by one soldier". Yehuda Shaul, one of the group's founders, said: "This is commonplace. Don't you take pictures of your everyday life? For these soldiers serving in the occupied territories, this is what they see 24/7 – handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinians." Shaul described the photographs of Israeli soldiers standing next to what appear to be dead Palestinian men as "victory souvenirs". "Being in a place where you cannot see Palestinians as human beings is the default when you are serving in the occupied Palestinian territories." Khalida Jarar, a Palestinian politician and director of Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association, said: "There are many more violations and abuses of Palestinians, without photographs. The soldiers take these pictures to show that they can do anything they want to Palestinians." Israel Palestinian territories Middle East Facebook Rachel Shabi guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Worst coal power plants win reprieve Posted: 15 Aug 2010 12:59 PM PDT Exclusive: Government's decision to put pollution standards 'on hold' raises possibility of dirtiest coal plants going ahead The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead. Green groups are aghast that a flagship policy called for in opposition by both Lib Dems and Tories, and which they last year tried to force on the Labour government, will now not be implemented in the coalition's first energy bill to be published this year. Their criticism of the government's commitment to green issues follows news last week that nature reserves could be sold off as countryside protection measures also bear the brunt of budget cuts in the Department for Environment. Introducing a so-called "environmental performance standard" (EPS) for power companies would have restricted greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas plants and encouraged companies wishing to build to use more efficient technology. The introduction of an EPS was personally championed by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg when in opposition; their opposition to Kingsnorth became something of a cause célèbre – and even features in the coalition agreement – but was opposed by energy companies and Tory backbenchers. The chief executive at one coal-plant operating company warned that the UK's renewable energy technology – which would be used to help new plants meet the target – was too undeveloped to make the EPS feasible. Now government sources confirm they will not be bringing forward legislation in the autumn and will instead spend the summer working on "the larger picture". They will open a consultation on the idea in the autumn with the results being presented to parliament as a white paper in the new year. Green campaigners believe this is noncommittal for a policy both parts of the coalition said could be implemented immediately when in opposition. They believe a delay in the introduction of the standard until next year – with a few years for the legislation to pass through the house and for it to be set up – raises the possibility of new coal-fire power stations slipping through the system. Greenpeace energy campaigner, Joss Garman, said: "David Cameron made the introduction of new rules to stop the most polluting power stations one of his flagship green policies, and Nick Clegg helped ensure it was a key part of the coalition agreement. "Both Lib Dem and Conservative MPs voted for the introduction of such a measure just a few months ago, and if they U-turn on this and fail to put this measure into their new energy law, how can they claim to be the greenest government ever?" The energy company Peel Power has already come forward with a proposal in Scotland to build a largely unabated coal plant. The government's advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, said if the UK is to meet its climate targets it needs to decarbonise the whole power sector by 2030. If the EPS is abandoned it would almost certainly reopen the debate about what the industry needs to change and encourage utilities to push forward with their original plans for a whole new fleet of dirty coal stations in the UK (the first to be built here for 30 years). The consequences would be that the battle of Kingsnorth could be refought. Along with opposition to the third runway at Heathrow, introduction of the EPS to bind the construction of new power plants was a key policy for both the Tories and Lib Dems. In 2006 Cameron first proposed the idea, pointing to the experience of California. In June 2006, he said: "I can announce today that a Conservative government will follow the Californian model, and implement an Emissions Performance Standard. "This would mean the carbon emissions rate of all electricity generated in our country cannot be any higher than that generated in a modern gas plant. "Such a standard would mean that a new generation of unabated coal power plants could not be built in this country." In July 2008, Osborne repeated the pledge verbatim. When Ed Miliband's energy bill came to parliament for a vote it was Conservative and Lib Dems who worked together to amend it to enable an emissions performance standard. Though the plan had Cameron and Clegg's support during their time in opposition, Cameron's party was not convinced. At the time, the amendment put him on a collision course with his backbenchers, who remain hugely sceptical of his green agenda, and he did not impose a three line whip on them when they voted on the proposal. Coal Liberal-Conservative coalition Kingsnorth Energy Energy industry Green politics Renewable energy David Cameron Nick Clegg Liberal Democrats Pollution Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

From a sunnny Witney to bleak Sheffield Posted: 17 Aug 2010 04:02 PM PDT North-south divide apparent in attitude towards coalition's hard times economy In the 100 days that David Cameron has been Britain's prime minister, the people of Witney in Oxfordshire have grown used to television crews and Japanese tourists. Residents are often stopped in the street and quizzed about their MP. Most have an approving anecdote in their back pocket. Allyson O'Brien, a shopworker in Badgers Menswear, the clothes store beneath his constituency office, was ready and waiting. "He bought ties from here once, and he was very nice," she said. "And it was me who nearly poked his eye out with the pole that pulls the blinds down. But that was before he was prime minister." There is clearly enthusiasm for Cameron here but 56-year-old O'Brien added: "God help him with the country he has inherited ... He's got an uphill battle ‑ we're all going to have to struggle." That sentiment - that Britain is on the brink of hard times - was echoed across the country over the last 48 hours, when the Guardian undertook a 168-mile journey from Witney to the Hallam constituency of the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, in Sheffield. The route through coalition Britain was from the gentle Cotswolds up to the hills of the Peak District, but in terms of public mood, it was a journey that went downhill. A new dawn of spending cuts and tax rises has begun, and people in middle-England counties such as Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Derbyshire are bracing themselves. Few people seem to query the need for drastic spending cuts. But the further one travels away from Cameron's constituency, the more support for his government appears to be wavering. In the summer of 1997, the upbeat mood of the nascent Labour government was summed up in Tony Blair's electoral slogan that "things can only get better". The opposite is true of the country under Cameron and Clegg, where the consensus, if there is one, is that things are almost certainly about to get worse. On the trip the most optimistic voters were found in the first 20 miles of country lanes that meander out of Witney, past hamlets like Barnard Gate, Hampton Poyle and Weston-on-the-Green. There are few public services to cut in these tiny villages; the only evidence of the new era of frugality are the speed cameras, abandoned by Oxfordshire council to save money. The roads led to a field north of Oxford, where several hundred locals had gathered for the Bicester and Finmere show, an annual event to raise money for spinal injury charities. Patrons came in wellies and tweed, despite the sunshine, for an event that boasted a foxhound parade, warm beer and the chance to place a £1 bet on the dubiously titled gambling game "ferret in a bin". There was a sense here that after 13 years of perceived neglect of rural England under Labour, the time for the countryside had finally arrived. And it was Cameron, who during the election campaign spoke fondly of fox and rabbit hunting during his childhood, who people said they instinctively trusted. Repeal of hunting ban "The Labour government abuses the countryside," said Nick Reynolds, 45, a local farmer. "The Conservatives look after it, in a nutshell." He was among a majority expressing concern that the Lib Dems would "water down" Tory policies in the coalition, not least the commitment for a free vote on the repeal of the hunting ban. Roy Herring, 66, from the haulage yard across the road and the proud owner of a 1916 steam tractor, was Bicester's equivalent of a heretic. "I think maybe the Lib Dems will hold the Conservatives back a bit, which isn't a bad thing," he said. Expressing an opinion that was to be repeated at almost every stop between Oxfordshire and South Yorkshire, he added: "Vince Cable is the one that shines for me." Britain is being governed by two parties that claim to have overcome their differences, but it is not hard to find division among its people. One such battle was brewing later in the afternoon, 50 miles north, on the outskirts of the village of Meriden, near Coventry. As evening fell, locals gathered under a marquee in their continuing battle to turf out their new Gypsy neighbours who, five days before the general election, occupied a secluded piece of green-belt land they had purchased with trailers. The timing of the invasion, as locals call it, was no coincidence. Under Labour, Traveller communities tended to be favoured in planning disputes. That is now changing. Eric Pickles, the communities and local government secretary, wants to revive elements of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act that turned trespass from a civil into a criminal offence. His ministers have already reversed incentives for local authorities to make land available for Gypsy sites, and cut funding. All bids to fund new sites and refurbish existing ones across England and Wales have been cancelled. All this is met with approval by Meriden's Residents Against Inappropriate Development (Raid), the group that oppose the Gypsy site. They have elected a former Lib Dem councillor as chairman and – without a hint of irony – constructed their own makeshift camp along the lane leading up to the Gypsy site. A dozen fold-up chairs surround a gazebo with fairy lights, log fire and television, from where they take turns to maintain a 24-hour watch on the Gypsies. Doug Bacon, 44, a retired pest controller and the group's spokesman, said: "The community really has gelled together. This is not about hating Gypsies - it is purely about saying this development is not appropriate." Across the hedge, Noah Burton, 45, a scrap metal trader and de facto leader of Meriden's Gypsy community, described himself as one of the coalition's "losers". He and the 10 other families who want to live on the land are seeking retrospective planning permission, but fear that Britain under the coalition government is becoming hostile toward people on the margins of society. Cracks in support But even Burton expresses a surprising sympathy for the challenge for the coalition. "I don't know where we're going to end up. But for the country in general, I think the government are doing the right thing with these cuts," he said. "It's going to be very hard, and people will need to stand on their own two feet, but in the long run we're going to be a lot stronger for it." Not everyone agrees. North along the A38 dual carriageway, green fields give way to terrace houses, and the first cracks in support for the government begin to show. Derby sits in the middle of Britain, and contains a three-way marginal constituency which Labour held during the election with just 500 votes, despite a swing to the Tories. There are pockets that seem to share the government's vision of a self-starting society less reliant upon the state. In Normanton, a deprived borough, a group of Muslim parents have already raised £100,000 to set up a primary school under education secretary Michael Gove's free school initiative. But most parents expect the state to provide for their children's educational needs, and Derby was one of the main casualties of the coalition's decision last month to scrap Building Schools for the Future, a £55bn school building programme. A total of £231m was pulled from 14 out of 18 school building projects in the city, many of which were due to begin as soon as Christmas. "As a Conservative, it is a devastating blow," said Evonne Williams, the city council cabinet member for children and young people. "People have started pointing the finger and saying: 'it's your government, apologise'." The M1 leads to the place with the most visceral anger towards Westminster. It is, ironically, the home of the chief architect of the first coalition government since the second world war. In contrast to the Cameroons of Witney, it is a struggle to find anyone willing to publicly back Nick Clegg in his constituency of Sheffield Hallam, where one in three jobs are dependent on public funding. It has not been a good three months for Clegg, his party, or it seems, his constituents. An £80m government loan for Sheffield Forgemasters, promised by Labour in March to enable the company to manufacture components for nuclear power stations, was one of the earliest victims of spending cuts. In addition, the shelving of a £13m grant to redevelop a former steelworks in the city along with a £600m project to regenerate the centre of Sheffield have left it like an abandoned victim of the coalition efficiency drive. On a recent constituency visit to Ecclesall infant school fete, Clegg was berated by three constituents in front of shocked schoolchildren. One father came in a T-shirt emblazoned with the message: "Nick Clegg ‑ Sheffield will remember Forgemasters." "He's not liked at the moment," said Chris Weldon, a 50-year-old former steelworker and Labour councillor. "A lot of it comes down to people having lived through the 1980s. We lost 100,000 jobs in this city in about four years, and anyone who lived through that will be worried now." Two miles across the the city, around 30 young people had gathered at the town hall to protest against local authority cuts. Many had been brought up in local authority care, and demanded a meeting with officials over plans to slash the budget of Sheffield Futures, an agency that provides advice and support to young people. The local authority argues it is only passing on cuts imposed by central government, which have reduced its payment of area-based grants directed at deprived communities. "I've not had the best start in life," said Augusta Wilson, 24, her voice trembling. "If they take this away it feels like they're setting me up to fail." She pledged to take the fight to central government, and "that Nick Clegg". "He's not very popular around here, you know," she added. "Except with himself." Liberal-Conservative coalition Economic policy Conservatives Liberal Democrats David Cameron Nick Clegg Public sector cuts Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The lost boys Posted: 17 Aug 2010 02:46 PM PDT They threw impromptu gigs, pulled beer-soaked all-nighters and tattooed their fans. As the Libertines reform, Tim Jonze salutes the band that put the madness back into pop It's summer 2004 and a motley crew has gathered outside Buckingham Palace. At the centre, a pale-skinned Pete Doherty – exiled frontman of the Libertines – holds court with an army of bands who look like fans, or is it fans who look like bands? This is for an NME feature, headlined London's Burning, that will declare: the music scene is changing and if you don't like it then see you later, Grandad. This was the Libertines' true legacy: not a series of finely honed albums for the rock canon, but a loud reminder that rock'n'roll bands could still be sexy, chaotic, poetic and dangerous. That's why hordes of bands formed – and still do form – in their wake. And that's why, when the reformed Libertines play Reading and Leeds festivals next weekend (after a warm-up show at Kentish Town Forum in London), it will mean more to a certain generation of music fans than every other band on the bill put together. "I guess the band were an accurate snapshot of the time, which became a soundtrack," Carl Barât, Doherty's songwriting partner in the Libertines, said earlier this year. "Their friends told their friends and then it all swirled round into one big pop nebula." The Libertines legend is action-packed. The full story involves inter-band burglary, toe-curling TV documentaries, Thai monasteries and EastEnders' Dot Cotton, but the basic facts are thus: group form in 1997, around the fraternal friendship of Doherty and Barât (along with bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell); write songs indebted to both the Clash and Chas and Dave; break down the barriers between artists and fans like no British group since punk; then fall apart when Doherty's drug intake becomes too much to handle; Barât boots his best friend out of the band until he cleans up his act; the ensuing drama (involving burglary, jail and more drugs) captivates fans until they begin to realise that the Libertines story was all over before it had even begun. "They burned brightly and quickly and were gone long before they ever had the chance to do anything mediocre or half-arsed," says NME editor Krissi Murison. "They were scandalous and outrageous, treated their fans like they were in the band, and wrote two albums that more people really should get around to listening to." The NME calls the Libertines "the band of our generation". Other groups sold out bigger venues, had more hits and made better albums – but no other band gave music fans something to believe in quite like the Libertines. Fans such as Richard Day, who discovered the band aged 19 when he saw them play Derby's Vic Inn during their second Tour of Albion in 2002, and ended up hanging out with Doherty. "They blasted a really raw, punky, sweaty set out for half an hour," he recalls. "Up until then, the only gigs I'd been to were bands like Travis. But at home I'd be listening to the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Joy Division, and it seemed like there was a band right here in front of me who were giving us the same raw, unpolished rebellion." As so often happened at Libertines gigs, Doherty invited fans – including Day and his friends – along to a club after the show. It wasn't long before Day was immersed in the singer's world, getting to know him properly after a solo gig in Doherty's own flat: "After the gig, a few of us were sat around having a drink," says Day. "I mentioned that I had to catch the last train home when Pete said not to bother as he had a spare mattress behind his fridge! We sat listening to [the Smiths'] Hatful of Hollow and the Velvet Underground. I remember Pete reading through a journal of my writing I carried around and complimenting it, which I was chuffed about." Day remembers countless nights with the Libertines: from climbing through broken windows to watch impromptu gigs, to the band offering free Libertines tattoos to anyone who met them in Chinatown the morning after an all-nighter. It's tales like these that make it foolish to judge the Libertines on the strength of their recorded output alone. Although the clattering melodies of Horrorshow, Can't Stand Me Now or Time for Heroes (about the May Day riots, with the memorable line: "There are fewer more distressing sights than that/ Of an Englishman in a baseball cap") are classic British pop songs, it's more that the Libertines were just as much about the adventure. You could draw parallels with the Sex Pistols or the early Manic Street Preachers, but what separated the Libertines was their understanding of the internet. Day remembers Doherty handing him a blank CD-ROM at his flat and then leaving him alone with his laptop, which was full of demos of the Libertines' second album (the implication being: record them, upload them, I didn't see you do it, OK?). These demos, along with last-minute gig announcements, were posted at thelibertines.org, which became a hub for diehard fans. "A real community evolved," says Day. "At one time, I posted on the forum asking what Libertines-related books people could recommend. Pete replied with a list of his 10 favourite books." By using message boards and forums as well as the traditional music press, the Libertines increased the pace of band/fan interaction and helped create a generational divide in which older, less tech-savvy music fans with less time on their hands were largely left on the sidelines. It didn't take long before this emerging community started forming their own groups and a scene (the same Whitechapel scene scaring the tourists outside Buckingham Palace) was born, featuring bands such as the Paddingtons, Thee Unstrung and the Others. When he was 13, another fan, Sam Wolfson, encountered Doherty while he was having a fight with a bouncer before a show. "We'd follow him everywhere after that. We used to go to his court cases and watch from the gallery. I'm still close with people I met at Libertines gigs and Pete's flat." Wolfson is now 19 and writing for the Observer and NME, a career path he thinks was due to his involvement with the band: "Not least because the Libertines made reading the music press worthwhile. They were a band who proved that there are stories that should be told about music that aren't on record." It's taken more than five years for the Libertines' story to approach anything remotely like a happy ending. Doherty's relationship with Kate Moss, along with court cases and drug problems, gave the tabloids license to create a cartoon villain far less interesting to music fans than the troubled but gifted free spirit Doherty once was. The new dates may help erase some of these memories as well as serving as a nostalgia trip for those who were there first time around. Day remembers his time fondly but doesn't think the demands of being a full-time devotee suit adulthood. "Announcing gigs at the last minute, or giving away music online, may have been lost on older generations who just didn't have the time or inclination," he says. "The Libertines rarely took to the stage before midnight, which was no good for someone who had a job. It was all about catching the train home at 9am in beer-soaked jeans and a T-shirt you picked up off the floor from whichever house party you ended up in – and still being in the same outfit the following night." On YouTube there's a charming clip of a teenage Doherty – before the drugs, before the drama – queuing outside an HMV in Oxford to buy Oasis's Be Here Now. Asked if he'd mind speaking to MTV, Doherty rises to the occasion claiming that he "subscribes to the Umberto Eco view that Noel's a poet and Liam's a town-crier". A couple of years earlier, that same poet advised listeners: "Please don't put your life in the hands of a rock'n'roll band." But it seems that neither Doherty nor an entire generation of fans bothered listening – a fact their reunion will celebrate. The Libertines Pete Doherty Pop and rock Tim Jonze guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

'We drank, we smoked, we snogged' Posted: 17 Aug 2010 12:30 PM PDT Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw won a writing prize in 1980 – and won a five-star European tour to remember It is high summer in London, and we are starting to see something the mayor once promised us, the so-called "Boris bikes": quick-hire pushbikes for zipping around town for a quid. For me, just at the moment, these bikes, with their unmistakable flash of corporate pale blue, are a strange madeleine. They are sponsored by Barclays Bank, an entity which will always have a claim on my past. In 1980, along with around 50 other earnest, fresh-faced young persons, I was the winner of the bank's mind-bogglingly lavish essay prize for post-A-level teenagers: a fully fledged tour of Europe, in two coaches, taking in five European cities – Paris, Brussels, Heidelberg, Brunnen and Venice. Five-star hotels all the way: a colossal Club 18-18-and-a-bit holiday for precocious hormonal teenagers. We had had to write a 1,500-word essay on one of the following subjects: "If I were chancellor of the exchequer . . .", "The energy crisis – necessity is the mother of invention". "Rock music has been going downhill since the death of Buddy Holly, discuss" or "Write a short story set in England in the year 2001." I had chosen the short story, which I remember was about a captured terrorist – neatly chosen subject, horrifically pretentious in execution. This Friday, Barclays Bank is hosting its 30 Years On reunion for that fateful Class of 1980 — whose modest high jinks, it is rumoured, put paid to the tour — and those saucer-eyed teen tourists included Ali Smith, now a Whitbread-winning novelist; Jerry Foulkes, now a Bafta-winning TV producer; Andrew Lane, now the bestselling author of the Young Sherlock Holmes series; and my Guardian colleague Mark Lawson. Barclays ran this tour every year from 1974 to 1981 and the idea – surely one of the least cost-effective in the history of marketing – was to promote banking as a career, and to ingratiate Barclays with young people who were going up to university and looking for somewhere to deposit their big, meaty grant cheques. It was also to counteract the bank's embarrassing associations with apartheid-era South Africa. How incredible to think that students, in those days, were a distinct social class with spending clout. But what timid little country mice we were compared to teenagers now: there were no cheap flights or internet deals in those days. Many of us had never been out of the country before, or even to a restaurant. Suddenly, we were getting very drunk, smoking sophisticated cigarettes, discussing Camus and getting off with each other in the Grand Hotel, Paris and the Hotel Danieli, Venice — under the tolerant gaze of Barclays Bank executives who were theoretically in loco parentis, but some of whom were hardly older than us, and hardly less excited. Anissa Suliman, now head Of journalism at Leeds Metropolitan University, recalls: "I'd lived in a house with an outdoor loo. When I stepped into our bathroom at the Grand Hotel in Paris, I couldn't believe my eyes – it was the size of our front room: it boasted a bath, a shower, bidet and gold plated phone!" There was no listening to iPods or iPhones – even the Sony Walkman was years away from being invented – and no tearful texting our mums from our mobiles. We didn't tweet and we didn't upload loads of digital pictures to our Facebook pages. We were going abroad, cut off utterly by the Channel, taking pictures with Kodak instamatic cameras that would take a month to develop. There was no nonsense about making sure we didn't get dehydrated, or giving us water bottles etc. We just sweated southward through Europe in those non-aircon coaches, got out, did some sightseeing and partied after-hours in our hotel-rooms — although using the word "party" as an intransitive verb was something else no one did in 1980. In Paris, I hosted a party in my hotel room dressed stylishly in only the room's terry-towelling dressing gown which extended precisely one quarter down my unlovely nude thighs. Two fellow unimpressed tourists, Mark Brookes and Nigel Douglas, told me later it was only their innate charity which prevented them from throwing me over the balcony. And in Brunnen, a full bottle of Better was knocked out of a seventh-floor window, smashing on the pavement below. The street was deserted, but the police were called. The management were livid. And this incident reportedly soured the bank's top brass against the tour, though it continued for another year. There were no easy credit facilities or ubiquitous ATMs in 1980. One of the tour chaperones, Clive Black, literally had to carry all the group's money, in various pre-Euro currencies, around with him in an attache-case chained to his wrist, like a presidential aide with the nuclear strike codes. This wasn't Life On Mars — it was Life On Alpha Centauri, Life On Betelgeuse. And not just in retrospect. Everything was richly, gloriously strange: each nation was madly different from the next: from France to Germany to Switzerland and then the extraordinary encounter with Venice. It was thrilling, fascinating. Touristy it may have been, but we were challenged to make sense of Europe, to understand it, to try the languages. It left me with a lifelong love of Italian and a contempt for Europhobes. But the parties continued in Venice. Romances flowered. There was widespread snogging. Even I copped off. Many were woozy with heat exhaustion and delirium. One coach driver was checked into hospital with a suspected heart attack. And then, on the 2 August 1980, hard reality broke into our fun. The central train station at Bologna was destroyed by a fascist terrorist bombing, killing 85 people. Italy was in mourning and the staff of the Danieli Hotel in Venice curtly informed us that our sweaty-faced, giggling, selfish and very annoying larking about was inappropriate, and cancelled the last night "gang-show" party that they were due to host for us in the hotel. Our extraordinary European summer was ending on a subdued note. Why haven't I got off my backside and written a bittersweet Rosenthalian TV drama about this? I just don't know. But that gang-show was due to feature a Python-esque skit on Blue Peter, starring Mark Lawson, Ali Smith and Mark Newman – now a National Trust archaeologist. This remarkable theatrical event never took place. But perhaps, like Briony Tallis, the heroine of Ian McEwan's Atonement, whose girlish stage-play is finally performed for her at the age of 77 at the very end of the novel, Lawson, Smith and Newman will do this sketch at the reunion, 30 years on. Europe Peter Bradshaw guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Douglas treated for throat tumour Posted: 17 Aug 2010 02:46 AM PDT Oscar-winning Wall Street actor faces eight weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, but spokesman does not confirm reports that Douglas has cancer The Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas is being treated for a tumour in his throat, according to US reports. In a statement issued to the people.com website, the star of Wall Street and Romancing the Stone, 65, said he hoped to make a full recovery. He was due to undergo eight weeks of radiation and chemotherapy. "I am very optimistic," he said. Douglas's spokesman Allen Burry said doctors expected his client to recover, but would not confirm whether the tumour was cancerous – it was reported as being so by the New York Daily News website. The son of Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas will reprise his role as (former) corporate raider Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's forthcoming sequel to his own Wall Street and will also appear in Steven Soderbergh's action thriller Haywire next year. But he is not reported to have any impending acting work lined up. Douglas won a best actor Oscar for playing Gekko in the first Wall Street, in 1987. As a producer, he won a best film Oscar for 1976's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He is married to British actor Catherine Zeta-Jones, with whom he has two children. His son from a previous marriage, Cameron Douglas, 31, was jailed for five years in April for drugs offences. Douglas's other films include The American President, Basic Instinct, Falling Down and Traffic. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is due out in the UK and the US on 24 September. Catherine Zeta-Jones United States Ben Child guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Scotland's floating wind farm bid Posted: 17 Aug 2010 02:13 AM PDT Scotland, Norway and US in the running for cutting-edge demonstration project The Scottish government yesterday revealed it is in talks with Norwegian energy giant Statoil about hosting the world's first floating windfarm at two potential sites off the Scottish coast. Statoil is currently testing a prototype version of its Hywind floating turbine 10km offshore at Karmøy in Norway and, after a successful wave of tests, is now assessing potential sites for a full-scale floating windfarm. The company is planning to deploy between three and five floating wind turbines to demonstrate the commercial viability of the technology and senior executives at the firm met yesterday with Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond to discuss the viability of two prospective sites – one off the coast of Lewis and one off Aberdeenshire. The talks are at a fairly advanced stage with Scottish Development International and Marine Scotland having already worked with Statoil to undertake feasibility studies at the proposed sites. Speaking following the meeting in Norway, Salmond said that the talks had been "very positive", adding that the project had the potential to revolutionise the offshore energy industry. "The Hywind II windfarm project would see a Scotland-Norway collaboration push the boundaries of deepwater offshore wind beyond the 100m mark and open up vast areas of the world's oceans to the development of wind energy for the first time," he said. A spokesman for Statoil told BusinessGreen.com that the latest talks had gone well, although he added that the company was also looking at potential demonstration sites in Norway and the US. "We are considering different countries and hope to be able to make a final decision in 2011," he said. Offshore wind turbine foundations typically account for a sizable chunk of deployment costs and supporters of floating wind turbines are hopeful that the emergence of floating structures will allow developers to slash the overall cost of windfarms. "The tests we have undertaken look good so far," said the Statoil spokesman. "Now we are looking to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs through the demonstration project." Wind power Renewable energy Scotland guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The aviator jacket takes off Posted: 17 Aug 2010 04:04 PM PDT One of autumn's trends has launched early. We marvel at the sudden rise of the flying jacket – in leather, sheepskin or shearling Apart from a few eccentric olde worlde types who still believe it has something to do with leaves or conkers or something (I know, crazy!), everyone these days knows that autumn begins in August. With the kind of logical thinking the fashion world is blessed with, the all-important September issues of the major glossy magazines go on sale during the first weekend of the previous month, and the new fashion season begins around the same time as the Premier League. At this early point in the season, pundits are duty-bound to couch every observation in the caveats of early days. Nonetheless, it is very clear that of all the autumn trends, one in particular has got off to a flying start. The aviator jacket has kicked off with the equivalent of Chelsea's 6-0 drubbing of West Brom. Camel coats, capes and Mad Men circle skirts are yet to find their form. Amelia Earhart is the Didier Drogba of the fashion world right now. On Net-a-porter.com, the shearling-lined, chocolate leather Burberry aviator jacket has sold out already – despite both a £1,895 price tag and the fact that a shearling-lined leather jacket is going to be unwearably warm even in an inclement August. Browns and Mytheresa.com have also sold out of the Burberry aviator – most, in fact, were snapped up weeks ago, when the piece first appeared on the sites. (If you've got two grand to spare, you'll be encouraged to hear that Browns is currently pleading with Burberry to supply another shipment.) On the high street, Oasis has had such a phenomenal response to its £150 version (real leather, fake fur collar lining) after putting it in flagship stores and online, that it will be rolled out to all stores in September. At Asos.com, where there are several styles, buying director Caren Downie says they have been selling – "and selling in volume" – since they first went on sale. The most expensive Asos aviator, with a price tag of £350, has a waiting list right now. The catwalk show most responsible for global aviator-mania was the Burberry collection, entitled Burberry Cadet Girls, which closed London fashion week in February. The luxurious, unabashedly expensive-looking lambskin-lined aviators, cosy shearling boots and lined military coats had the audience instantly hooked – but the flying jacket was the breakout star. The seeds of the flying jacket revival had already been sown. "Funnily enough, even before the Burberry show, we'd been looking at that early 1930s era, that Amelia Earhart look," remembers Downie. Jeff Banks, the brand director of Matalan – which has a £30 fake-leather aviator in store from October – says that "this year is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and I think that somehow entered the designers' psyches"; Erin Mullaney, womenswear buying director for Browns boutique, says: "Amelia Earhart is a powerful icon for this season, because she's such a strong, independent woman and that's what a lot of fashion is about at the moment." Melanie Rickey, editor-at-large of Grazia, recalls the moment she knew the aviator trend would take off (ahem!), several days before the Burberry show. "The Christopher Kane show finished, and Carine Roitfeld literally ran backstage and pulled the flying jacket from that show off the hanger to try it on. I thought, OK, something's happening here. And then Burberry did them, and Pringle, and we all wanted one. Then this summer when I got back from holiday, I went to check out the new Acne shop, and there was this incredible aviator jacket; I tried it on and the guy told me it was the last one they had." Reader, she bought it. All of this is very puzzling, because last time I looked, sheepskin-lined jackets were worn by old men at greyhound races and lower-division football managers. What happened? According to Downie: "It's the cold-weather version of that idea of throwing a parka over a dress, to wear to a festival." The explosion in popularity of summer festivals has meant that a whole new generation is learning to square style with the realities of British weather: see, for instance, the rise of Hunter wellies. So it makes sense that it would be Burberry, a global luxury brand essentially built around how to look smart in the rain, should be the label to really nail the new coverup. Personally, I have yet to be convinced. In the wake of Burberry mania, I excitedly tried one on (not Burberry, I must admit, but a cheapy version) and was somewhat startled to see in the mirror a scruffy-looking woman dressed for a stint selling fruit and veg on a market stall. According to Rickey, I just need to put my hair up. "You need definition around the jaw, so you've got to do an updo, or have your hair super flat and straight." Trend forecaster Yasmin Sewell, who is sporting her grey Acne aviator in her Twitter portrait ("I LOVE that jacket") is, like Rickey, adamant that the look works with slim trousers or over dresses. "It looks good whether you have an androgynous style, or you're a girly-girl. Personally I'll be wearing mine with 90s style loose dresses, and Chelsea boots." I probably need to get with the programme, because the aviator jacket looks like it will stick around. For the Burberry "resort" collection, which bridges the gap between the collection already in store and the one which will be debuted at London fashion week in September, Christopher Bailey told American Vogue that he "really wanted to continue the feel of the aviator collection", looking at 30s and 40s colonial uniforms. Oh, and there's one more reason the smart money has been snapping up the aviators so early. This is a piece that gets better with age, so the earlier you get hold of it, the better it will look over your cocktail dress come December. But I have a style tip to help you out here, from none other than Ms Earhart herself. As a novice flier, she slept in her jacket for the first three nights to give it the right worn-in look. If that's not what the guys on the Match of the Day sofa call giving 110%, I don't know what is. Women's coats Fashion Jess Cartner-Morley guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Wyclef Jean's Haiti hopes in balance Posted: 17 Aug 2010 09:37 AM PDT Wyclef Jean due to learn whether he is on electoral council's list of candidates who meet constitutional requirements for office Wyclef Jean's Haitian presidential hopes hang in the balance as electoral officials prepare to announce whether he is eligible to run in November's election. The electoral council is scheduled to publish a list of candidates who meet constitutional requirements to lead the earthquake-hit country – requirements that could disqualify the rapper and former Fugees star. If approved, Jean will be a frontrunner, but the fact he has lived in the US since he was a boy could rule him out of what promises to be a tumultuous contest with dozens of candidates. The 40-year-old registered as a candidate at the council's Port-au-Prince headquarters two weeks ago amid a cavalcade of dancers and supporters and much hype. But legal requirements and political intrigue – few believe the decision will be based on entirely technical reasons – could sink his hopes of swapping a recording studio for power in a broken country. Jean was born in Croix-des-Bouquets, outside the capital, and at the age of nine moved with his family to New York, then New Jersey, and made only fleeting return visits to the Caribbean. Opponents said his history violated constitutional requirements that a candidate must have his or her "habitual residence" in Haiti and have resided in the country for at least five consecutive years before election day. Jean said his appointment as a roving ambassador by President Rene Preval in 2007 exempted him from residency requirements. The race has drawn 34 candidates from diverse backgrounds, including veteran political operators and one-man band neophytes. The electoral council is due to reveal the results of a two-week review at a media conference today. "This is a very volatile situation. The easiest thing they can say is 'You are all candidates'. But I don't know if they will do that," Robert Fatton, a Haiti-born political expert at the University of Virginia, told the news site Haitian Truth. "It's going to be fascinating to see how many are in the race after August 17." The Unity party of Preval, who is stepping down as president, has backed Jude Celestin, head of the government's primary construction firm, as his successor. The party had been expected to back a former prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, who instead registered with a different party, the Mobilisation for Haitian Progress. The horse-trading suggested that murky deals as much as votes could determine the election outcome. Fresh doubts about Jean's fitness for office arose today from a New York Times investigation into apparent mismanagement and questionable accounting at his charity, Yele Haiti. The newspaper alleged the charity had failed to deliver water as it had claimed to several camps of earthquake survivors, and that some donations vanished into blurred lines between Jean's business, political and charity endeavours. He denies any wrongdoing. Yesterday his public relations representative, Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, announced without explanation that it had resigned from all public relations work for Yele and Jean's presidential campaign. This week the rapper, seeming upbeat, told AP that if elected he would work to change Haiti's constitution to allow dual citizenship and give Haitians living abroad – a source of large remittances – the right to vote. "If they are the ones who keep this country alive, they should have some kind of say on what kind of government structure there is." He said he would fight corruption – a big problem in Haiti – by fighting for a minimum wage and paying public servants on time. "I will exercise my right as commander in chief to fight all forms of corruption," he said. Jean batted away doubts about his suitability for office. "Celebrity has taught me that politics is politricks. The fact that I'm coming with this with fresh eyes but not naive ears, I think that's a good start." Haiti Wyclef Jean Rory Carroll guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Brazil bans election satire Posted: 17 Aug 2010 10:12 AM PDT Protests planned over ban on broadcasters making fun of candidates in three months before presidential vote Make no joke about it, Brazil's presidential election is a serious affair. Brazilian TV and radio broadcasters are legally forbidden from making fun of candidates ahead of October's vote. With the first wave of on-air political ads starting today, Brazil's comedians and satirists are planning to fight for their right to ridicule, with protests planned in Rio de Janeiro and other cities on Sunday. They say the anti-joking law – which prohibits ridiculing candidates in the three months before elections – is a draconian relic of Brazil's dictatorship that threatens free speech. Proponents say the restrictions keep candidates from being portrayed unfairly and encourage candour. "Do you know of any other democracy in the world with rules like this?" said Marcelo Tas, the host of a weekly TV comedy show that skewers politicians and celebrities alike. "If you want to find a bigger joke, you would have to look to Monty Python." Breaching the law is punishable by fines up to £72,000 and a suspension of a broadcaster's licence. Only a few fines have been handed out, but Tas and others say that has been sufficient to cause TV and radio stations to self-censor their material during elections. Under the law, TV and radio programmes cannot "use trickery, montages or other features of audio or video in any way to degrade or ridicule a candidate, party or coalition". The internet is not licensed by the government and so is not covered, but if a TV or radio programme were to ridicule a candidate online, a complaint could be judged by the supreme electoral court. Fernando Neves, a former head of the electoral court, defended the law as fair-minded. "A broadcaster cannot make jokes that make one candidate look bad," he told the O Globo newspaper recently. "That's the way it is. The law doesn't permit it and I think it has its reason for being." With no comic relief in sight, Brazilians are in for weeks of deadpan news coverage of some quirky candidates. Dilma Rousseff, the governing party candidate who tops all polls, has a lumbering speaking manner and a tough management style that earned her the nickname Iron Lady. Her main opponent, José Serra, is widely seen by Brazilians as lacking charisma. Brazil Freedom of speech guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

John Harris Posted: 17 Aug 2010 01:00 PM PDT Blair is beset by public opprobrium and his own apparent guilt. Now his gift only highlights New Labour's toxic legacy First, it was The Journey – then, supposedly for fear of seeming messianic, the definite article became indefinite. There again, just to prove that Tony Blair perhaps thinks of himself as being that bit closer to the Almighty than most of us, last week brought news that A Journey will be available in a super-expensive edition – £150, if you're interested – said to be suggestive of a religious text. Should you want either a bog-standard or biblical edition signed by the man-god himself, you should be at the Piccadilly branch of Waterstone's on 8 September, but please bear in mind the already legendary restrictions: no bags, no mobiles, no photos, no personal dedications – and no guarantee that, even if you buy your book and get your special wristband, you will get to meet him. And now this: with assurances from his PR people that the money was always destined for a good cause, sudden news that "all proceeds" from the book will be going to a Royal British Legion facility for injured soldiers. Though Blair answered the Chilcot inquiry's question about any Iraq-related regrets in the negative, the move surely points up a much more complicated set of feelings – or, if you want to be truly cynical, a shallow calculation about how the public might start to view him in a more sympathetic light. Whichever, it is some token of how damaged Blair is that any supportive responses have been all but drowned out by something else entirely: massed marvelling at his post-Downing Street existence. So, in no particular order: five homes, including the Blairs' £3.7m pad in Connaught Square, expanded when an adjacent £800,000 mews property was "knocked through"; two other high-end London pads occupied by Nicky and Euan Blair; and that £5.75m home county seat. High-paying roles with JP Morgan and Zurich Financial Services. Six-figure fees for after-dinner engagements and millions received in return for "global strategic assistance", under the auspices of something called Tony Blair Associates. Tied up in those terrifying complex financial arrangements: wealth already estimated to be as much as £60m. Whether his fabulous existence brings him endless joy or Midas-like emptiness is an interesting question. But a more important point is that in this case, the personal is inevitably political, because Blair's lifestyle also serves to undermine his own government's record. Never mind the schools, hospitals, children's centres and whatever else – or, to cut him some slack, the time he now finds for diplomatic and charity work: each time he crash-lands in the headlines New Labour is once again a byword for excess, the blurring of public office and private privilege, and mere mortals forced to chase the dream by living on tick. This is the version of the recent past used by the coalition to convince the public that there is no alternative to austerity, and it's all Labour's fault; the dissection of Blair's riches is simply grist to their mill. Back in Fife, I imagine Gordon Brown is biting his nails to the quick. Meanwhile, Blair's donation highlights the other toxic part of his story, and the tragedy therein. Plenty may see his gifts as the stuff of sophistry and cynicism, but he was once a true wizard, such a brilliant politician that, as his celebrated "masochism strategy" proved, he was at his best when things were going south. In his first term he led a government whose programme pointed to a modest kind of social democracy, buried when he chained himself to the Bush administration and discovered the marketising school of public service reform, also championed by that new coalition helper Alan Milburn, and taken to its logical conclusion by Michael Gove, Andrew Lansley et al. Had his gifts been accompanied by a belief in those quaint relics known as Labour values, who knows where things would have gone? But now, where is he? Jet-lagged in some departure lounge, beset by public opprobrium and his own apparent guilt, his talents largely frittered away, and his surviving policy legacy embraced by the very people he once so capably defeated. Quite a journey, all told. Tony Blair Military Labour John Harris guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Spain probes Google Street View Posted: 17 Aug 2010 08:17 AM PDT Google representative due before judge in Madrid over Wi-Fi data inadvertently collected by mapping cars Spain has become the latest country to launch an investigation into data collected by Google's Street View mapping cars. A Google representative will appear before a judge in Madrid, Raquel Fernandino, on 4 October. Google has admitted to collecting fragments of personal data through Wi-Fi networks when its Street View cars mapped various towns and cities in 34 countries around the world. In May this year, Alan Eustace, a senior vice president in engineering and research at the Mountain View company, said Street View cars had been "mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products". A string of code in the production systems of Street View cars allowed Google to retrieve and store information about the networks' location, names and Media Access Control (MAC) addresses on wireless networks that were not password-protected. The Madrid lawsuit, filed by an association promoting the rights of internet users, Apedanica, is made under an article of the Spanish penal code relating to the interception of communications without permission. A Google spokeswoman told Spanish daily newpaper El Mundo that the company is cooperating "in all countries with institutions and judicial authorities to answer any questions they have". "Our ultimate goal is to remove the data in accordance with our legal obligations and in consultation with the relevant authorities." Last week police officers in South Korea raided Google's Seoul headquarters, seizing computers and hard drives, as the country's authorities investigate the data collected by Street View cars. The UK's information commissioner set something of a precedent last month, saying that an investigation by the commissioner's office had found that Google is unlikely to have collected "significant amounts of personal data", and that there is "no evidence as yet that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment". The UK is one of many countries where the Wi-Fi data – amounting to 600MB – is being investigated. Google Street View Data protection Internet Google Privacy Spain Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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