| |  | | | | | SHUTTING DOWN Feed My Inbox will be shutting down on January 10, 2013. To find an alternative service for email updates, visit this page. | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | WikiLeaks suspect's attempts to exercise and stay occupied in bare cell only perpetuated harsh anti-suicide measures Shortly before Bradley Manning was arrested in Iraq under suspicion of being the source of the vast transfer of US state secrets to WikiLeaks, he is alleged to have entered into a web chat with the hacker Adrian Lamo using the handle bradass87. "I'm honestly scared," the anonymous individual wrote. "I have no one I trust, I need a lot of help." That cry for assistance was a gross under-estimation of the trouble that was about to befall Manning, judging from his testimony on Thursday. In his first publicly spoken words since his arrest in May 2010, delivered at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland, the soldier painted a picture of a Kafkaesque world into which he was sucked and in which he would languish for almost one excruciating year. Over more than six hours of intense questioning by his defence lawyer, David Coombs, Manning, 24, set out for the court what he described as the darkness and absurdity of his first year in captivity. The more he protested the harsh conditions under which he was being held, the more that was taken as evidence that he was a suicide risk, leading to yet more tightening of the restrictions imposed upon him. He related how he turned for help to one particular member of staff at the brig at Quantico marine base in Virginia where he was taken in July 2010. He assumed that Staff Sergeant Pataki was on his side, so opened up to him. "I wanted to convey the fact that I'd been on the [restrictive regime] for a long time. I'm not doing anything to harm myself. I'm not throwing myself against walls, or jumping up or down, or putting my head in the toilet." Manning told Pataki that "if I was a danger to myself I would act out more". He used his underwear and flip-flops as an example, insisting that "if I really wanted to hurt myself I could use things now: underwear, flip-flops, they could potentially be used as something to harm oneself". The conversation took place in March 2011, some eight months into his stay at Quantico where he had been held in the most extreme conditions. He was under constant observation, made to go to the toilet in full view of the guards, had all possessions removed from his cell, spent at times only 20 minutes outside his cell and even then was always chained in hand and leg irons. Manning felt good about his interaction with Pataki. "I felt like he was listening and understanding, and he smiled a little. I thought I'd actually started to get through to him." That night guards arrived at his cell and ordered him to strip naked. He was left without any clothes overnight, and the following morning made to stand outside his cell and stand to attention at the brig count, still nude, as officers inspected him. The humiliating ritual continued for several days, and right until the day he was transferred from Quantico on 20 April 2011 he had his underwear removed every night. The brig authorities later stated that in their view the exceptional depriving of an inmate's underpants was a necessary precaution, in the light of his ominous comments about using his underwear and flip-flops to harm himself. If the marine commanders were guided in their treatment of Manning, as they said they were, by fears that he was suicidal, that assessment would certainly have been merited at the beginning of his captivity. Manning began his epic testimony by describing how he had a virtual mental breakdown soon after he was taken to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait following his initial arrest. He was clearly terrified by the uncertainty in which he suddenly found himself. He had, by his own admission, recently committed a massive dump of government information from secure military computers to the website WikiLeaks, and now he was in the hands of army jailers with no knowledge about what was going to happen to him. "I didn't know what was going on, I didn't have formal charges or anything, my interactions were very limited with anybody else, so it was very draining." He was put on a schedule whereby he would be woken up at 10 o'clock at night and given lights out at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. "My nights blended into my days and my days into nights," he told the court. The isolation also got to him. "I'm generally a pretty socially extrovert person, but being for long periods of time by myself I was in a pretty stressed situation. I began to really deteriorate. I was anxious all the time, everything became more insular." The guards stopped taking him out of his cell so that he became entirely cut off from human company. "Someone tried to explain to me why, but I was a mess, I was starting to fall apart." Military police began coming into his cell in a tent in the Kuwaiti desert two or three times a day doing what they called a "shakedown": searching the cell and tearing it apart in the process. Then the breakdown happened. He was found to have made a noose out of bedsheets, though he told the court he doesn't recall that now. He was found one day screaming, babbling and banging his head against his tent cell. "My world just shrank to Camp Arifjan and then my cage. I remember thinking: I'm going to die. I'm stuck here and I'm going to die in animal cage." He remembers telling the camp psychiatrist in Kuwait that he had contemplated suicide. "I didn't want to die but I wanted to get out of the cage. I conveyed to him that if I could be successful in committing suicide, I would." When he was asked to fill out a form by the camp guards, he answered a question on whether he had any suicidal thoughts with the comment: "Forever planning, never acting." Amid such alarming signals of potential self-harm, he was put on anti-depression and anti-anxiety drugs and put on suicide watch. By the time he was moved from Kuwait to Quantico on 29 July, he told the court, he was already feeling substantially better and well on the way to recovery. It is one of the great ironies of his story that when he arrived at Quantico he was at first delighted. "It wasn't the ideal environment in Quantico," Manning said to chuckles around the court. "But it had air conditioning, solid floors, hot and cold running water. It was great to be on continental United States soil again." His buoyant spirits soon received a knock, he went on. He was submitted to what he called a "shark attack" by the reception officers at Quantico. Though he was an army soldier, he had been transferred to a marine base, part of the navy, and he didn't understand any of their routines or vocabulary. "They were trying to show you they were in charge. 'Face the bulkhead!' they ordered, but I didn't know what a bulkhead was. Everything I did was wrong because I didn't know." Given his behaviour in Kuwait, Manning was put on suicide watch when he arrived at Quantico. He was under permanent observation from guards who sat in a booth right outside his cell, most of his possessions were removed, he was made to sleep on a pillowless suicide mattress with only a suicide blanket – one that could not be used to cause self-harm – to lie under at night. In a theatrical move, Coombs had placed white tape on the floor of the court room in exactly the dimensions of Manning's cell throughout the nine months he stayed in Quantico – 6ft by 8ft (180cm by 240cm). The cell contained a toilet that was in the line of vision of the observation booth, and he was not allowed toilet paper. When he needed it, he told the court, he would stand to attention by the front bars of the cell and shout out to the observation guards: "Lance Corporal Detainee Manning requests toilet paper!" As Manning walked around the diminutive virtual space of the cell, the thought occurred that in this regard at least he was lucky to be so small. At 5ft 2in (157cm) he was towered over by Coombs as they circled each other in the courtroom. Manning related how he tried to keep healthy and sane within the tiny confines. For the first few weeks of his confinement in Quantico he was allowed only 20 minutes outside the cell, known as a "sunshine call". Even then whenever he left his cell – and this remained the case throughout his nine months at the marine brig – he was put into full restraint: his hands were handcuffed to a leather belt around his waist and his legs put in irons, which meant that he could not walk without a staff member holding him. "I'm not a great fan of winter, it's the solstice and it's dark," Manning said at one point. "I'm a fan of sunshine." So it was particularly hard for him that there was no natural light in his cell. "If you took your head and put it on the cell door and looked through the crack, you could see down the hall the reflection of the window," Manning told the court, adding that "there was a skylight. You could see the reflection of the reflection of it if you angled your face on the door of the cell." At night the light situation was even worse. Because he was considered a possible risk of self-harm throughout his time at Quantico, he was under observation throughout the night, with a flourescent light located right outside the cell blazing into his eyes. While asleep he would frequently cover his eyes with his suicide blanket, or turn on to his side away from the light, and on those occasions, sometimes three times a night, the guards would bang on his cell bars to wake him up so they could see his face. He sought solace wherever he could find it. Occasionally he was allowed to read a book his family had sent him. "I read a lot of philosophy, a lot of history. I'm more of a non-fiction reader though I like realistic fiction like John Grisham. Richard Dawkins would be an interesting author." He was forbidden from taking exercise in his cell, and given that he was allowed out of the cell for at most one hour a day for the entire nine months at Quantico, he started to be creative about finding a way around the prohibition. "I would practise various dance moves. Dancing wasn't unauthorised as exercise." He would also practise what he called resistance training – pretending to be lifting weights in his cell when he had no weights. "I would pace around, walk around, shuffling, any type of movement. I was trying to move around as much as I could." As a man who from a young age has been noted for his bright intelligence, and who until his arrest was passionate about interactive computer technology and computer games, Manning also found an unconventional way to keep his mind sharp in the cell. He would make faces at himself in the mirror, the one bit of furniture in the cell other than his bed, sink and toilet. "The most entertaining thing in there was the mirror. You can interact with yourself. I spent a lot of time with that mirror," he told the court, provoking laughter. Why did he do all those things, Coombs asked him. "Boredom. Just sheer out-of-my-mind boredom." But that is where the problems for Manning started. He was trying to keep himself sane in unthinkably isolated and segregated conditions. But his military captors chose to interpret such behaviour as quite the opposite – a sign that he was still suicidal. The truth was very much otherwise. Three Quantico forensic psychiatrists gave evidence to the court earlier this week and they agreed that within days of arriving at the marine base Manning had recovered his mental health and was no longer a risk to himself. They consistently recommended that the soldier be put on a much looser regime. But the authorities would not listen. All they would do was to lower his status from "suicide risk" to "prevention of injury order" or PoI – a theoretically more relaxed set of rules that in practice was in almost all regards just as restrictive as its predecessor. Other military expert witnesses this week compared the PoI regime Manning was held under unfavourably to Guantánamo and death row, saying that it was more stressful on the inmate than either. Yet the Quantico authorities cited precisely those activities that Manning had used to keep his hopes alive to argue for him remaining on the PoI order. They referred to the fact that he danced in his cell, did fantasy weightlifting and made strange faces in the mirror. They even referred to the fact that he played peek-a-boo with the guards as a sign that he was at serious risk of suicide. They also continuously referred back to that comment he'd made in Kuwait – "Always planning, never acting" – even though that had been almost a year earlier. Before he left Quantico Manning made one final attempt to persuade the brig commander, Chief Warrant Officer Barnes, that he was perfectly well and was no danger to himself. "I told her that the conditions I was under struck me as absurd. I tried to tell her that's how I saw it – the absurdity of it." Once more his attempt to act reasonably and rationally was interpreted as the opposite. Barnes grew angry, Manning testified, and said he was being disrespectful of a superior rank. She warned Manning to be careful in future about what he said, as it might hurt him. "I took that as a threat," he told the court. "I realised at that point that to say any more would be a dangerous mistake."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Overwhelming majority votes to recognise Palestine as non-member state as US and Israel are left to condemn decision The United Nations general assembly voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to recognise Palestine as a state, in the face of opposition from Israel and the US. The 193-member assembly voted 138 in favour of the plan, with only nine against and 41 abstentions. The scale of the defeat represented a strong and public repudiation for Israel and the US, who find themselves out of step with the rest of the world. Thursday's vote marked a diplomatic breakthrough for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and could help his standing after weeks in which he has been sidelined by Palestinian rivals Hamas in the Gaza conflict. Abbas, who flew from Ramallah, on the West Bank, to New York to address the general assembly, said: "The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: enough of aggression, settlements and occupation." A Palestinian flag was unfurled on the floor of the general assembly after the vote. Several hundred people turned out in Yasser Arafat square in Ramallah on the West Bank, waving flags and singing along to nationalist music to mark the occasion. In his address, Abbas noted the symbolism of the date, the 65th anniversary of the UN partitioning what had been British-ruled Palestine into Jewish and Arab countries. In the decades that followed, the idea of an independent Palestine had often been in danger of disappearing but had been "miraculously" kept alive, he said. The general assembly resolution had finally given legitimacy to Palestine, he said. "The general assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the state of Palestine." Israel and the US immediately condemned the resolution. The office of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, described Abbas's speech as incitement and full of lies about Israel. Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, said: "Because this resolution is so one-sided, it doesn't advance peace, it pushes it backwards." The only way to a Palestinian state was through direct negotiations, he said. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, described the vote as "unfortunate and counterproductive". She said: "Only through direct negotiations between the parties can the Palestinians and Israelis achieve the peace that both deserve: two states for two people, with a sovereign, viable and independent Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security with a Jewish and democratic Israel." Thursday's resolution raises Palestine from being a "non-member observer entity" to a "non-member observer state". The key is the final word, which confers UN legitimacy on Palestinian statehood and, while it cannot vote at the general assembly, it will enjoy other benefits, such as the chance to join international bodies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). While important, the resolution is limited, elevating Palestine only to the status of the Vatican, which until Thursday had been the only other non-member observer state. For Palestinians, the idea of an independent state bears little reality on the ground, given the degree of Israeli involvement in the West Bank and Gaza. The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, speaking after the vote, disputed that the resolution conferred statehood on Palestine. "Today's grand announcements will soon fade and the Palestinians will wake up to realise that little in their lives has changed," Rice said. "This resolution does not establish Palestine as a state." But the coalition against the vote was thin. Apart from Israel and the US, those voting against were Canada, the Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama. European countries such as France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland all voted yes. Britain and Germany both abstained, with Britain saying Abbas had failed to promise he would resume peace negotiations with Israel. Some countries, especially in Europe, switched from abstention to support out of a feeling that Abbas needed to be bolstered after eight days of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians earlier this month. An estimated 158 Palestinians died in Gaza, and six Israelis were killed. The Israeli and US governments had put pressure on the Palestinians not to press the issue to a vote and threatened significant retaliation – mainly in the form of punitive financial measures. They have since largely backtracked over the threats, concerned that withdrawal of major funding might undermine Abbas at a time when he is particularly vulnerable. The prospect of the Palestinians applying to bodies such as the ICC is one of the main reasons for Israeli opposition, fearful that the Palestinians might try to launch a case over Jewish settlements on the West Bank or over military attacks on the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian officials say they have no immediate plans to do so but it remains a new and useful lever for the future. The Obama administration, in an effort to try to persuade the Palestinians to drop the vote, sent deputy secretary of state Bill Burns to see Abbas on Wednesday. But Abbas turned down his pleas. The US, Israel and Britain wanted the Palestinians to give explicit pledges they would not seek to join the ICC any time soon and also to resume peace negotiations with the Israelis that were abandoned in 2010 over a settlement expansion. In Ramallah, hundreds watching on a television in the square cheered enthusiastically for Abbas as he denounced Israel's most recent assault on Gaza. When the Israeli ambassador began addressing the UN, the crowd in the square watching on a giant television screen began booing. Prosor's speech was suddenly cut, and nationalist music fired up. But the mood of the crowd did not appear to be that of people who thought they were marking a great national moment, or who had hope that the general assembly's recognition of Palestinian statehood amounted to anything like the birth of a real country.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Negotiations hit a snag after Republican aides characterise proposals made by Treasury secretary as 'outrageous' The first serious proposals from the White House to solve the looming "fiscal cliff" of tax rises and budget cuts appear to have been rejected out of hand by Republican leaders in Congress. Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner is reported to have offered a set of proposals that include increasing tax rates on the wealthy, a one-year postponement of scheduled cuts in defence and domestic spending, and $400bn in savings from Medicare and other entitlement programmes. The proposals from the White House – the first to use hard numbers – include a $1.6tn tax increase, a $50bn stimulus package and new presidential powers to raise the federal debt limit without congressional approval. But based on public and private comments after their meetings, both House speaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell – the two most senior Republicans in Congress – brushed aside the proposals as incomplete. Boehner said later: "No substantive progress has been made in the talks between the White House and the House over the last two weeks." Boehner is said to have demanded matching spending cuts in return for raising the federal debt ceiling, which limits the total amount the US government can borrow. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will be breached in February or March next year. USA Today reports that three Republican congressional aides familiar with the president's offer cast it as an "outrageous" proposal that surprised the speaker and has set back negotiations on how to avoid the fiscal cliff coming at the end of the year, when all of the Bush-era tax rates expire and the first of $1.2tn in spending cuts over 10 years are triggered. The automatic budget cuts that are at the heart of the fiscal cliff stem from the difficult negotiations over the debt ceiling in 2011. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, was dismissive of Boehner's remarks. "I don't understand his brain," he said after his own meeting with Geithner. Reid added: "Democrats are all of the same page. For two weeks we have been waiting for a serious offer from Republicans." Obama and Boehner spoke for 15 minutes on Wednesday night. Obama had spent part of the day discussing the crisis with business leaders. On Thursday, Obama had lunch with his former presidential rival Mitt Romney, amid rumours that he was considering Romney's proposal to cap tax breaks for the rich. The White House said the lunch was private. Boehner's suggestion that a compromise was far from certain were echoed by other Republicans. "It is not going to happen soon," senator John Barrasso told Fox Business News. Stock markets largely shrugged off the latest posturing from Washington, remaining broadly flat at lunchtime. Despite the public comments from Boehner, a mall but growing number of Republicans in the House of Representatives believe tax hikes on the rich will be part of a final deal to resolve the so-called fiscal cliff. "I wouldn't have a problem with letting those tax rates [for the rich] go up," provided they are coupled with spending cuts, Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho told Reuters on Thursday. A similar sentiment expressed by about a half a dozen House Republicans in recent days will likely increase pressure on their party's congressional leadership to reach a bipartisan agreement with Obama and his fellow Democrats. Simpson, a seven-term veteran, said that raising taxes on the rich "wouldn't be my preferred way to do it. But elections have consequences," referring to Obama's re-election earlier this month. Another senior Republican lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that a Democratic bill, which passed the Senate in July and would raise income taxes on families with net incomes above $250,000, could pass his chamber if it got to the floor. The lawmaker said he was confident, however, that Boehner would not allow this bill to be brought to the House floor for a vote, explaining: "It may be popular" but "it's class warfare." Republican Representative Steve King said he and fellow conservatives could live with raising taxes. "Conservatives might be able to figure how they can go home and rationalise a vote that included a revenue increase and or a tax rate increase," King said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The United Nations general assembly has voted to grant nonmember observer status to the state of Palestine
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Daily deal website has seen its share price tumble since its IPO as directors may still want to replace chief executive Groupon boss Andrew Mason appears to have survived a fractious board meeting at the troubled daily deal website. But insiders said unhappy board members are still keen to oust the company's once feted founder. Directors at the online discounter met to discuss Mason's future at a board meeting in Chicago on Thursday. Mason, chief executive of the online daily deal firm once billed as the fastest growing company ever, said ahead of the meeting that it would be "weird" for the company not to question his leadership after the collapse in Groupon's share price. The discussion at Groupon's regularly scheduled meeting comes amid reports of discontent between Mason and co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. According to venture capital sources Lefkofsky backed Mason at the meeting. All three founders have "super-voting" shares that carry 10 times the votes of ordinary shares making it all but impossible to dismiss Mason as long as he has the support of his fellow founders. "We hear the meeting was very contentious. The independent directors want him out. He's in over his head. But basically you can't fire this guy without his own permission," said Sam Hamadeh, chief executive of the analyst PrivCo. Paul Taaffe, company spokesman, said in a statement: "The board and the management team are focused on the performance of the company and they are all working together with heads down to achieve Groupon's objectives." Mason, 32, founded Groupon in his twenties and built it into a web phenomenon that, according to Forbes magazine, was the fastest ever to record $1bn in sales. Google offered $6bn for Groupon in 2010 but that was rejected in favour of an initial public offering (IPO). The share sale, in November 2011, was the largest tech IPO since Google and valued the the company at $13bn. Since then, Groupon's decline has been dramatic, and it is now valued at less than $3bn. Shares that sold at $20 at the IPO have sunk as low as $2.60, although the share price rallied to over $4.40 on reports that Mason's days are numbered. The reports about Mason's future first surfaced on the tech blog All Things D. Speaking about the reports at a conference held by the business news website Business Insider on Wednesday, Mason said: "Here's a news flash: our stock is down about 80%, it would be weird if the board wasn't discussing whether I'm the right guy to do the job. It's their chief responsibility to ask that question. "If I ever thought I wasn't the right guy for the job, I'd be the first person to fire myself." The company has been hit by accounting irregularities, departures of senior staff and slowing sales, especially overseas. Recently the firm has diversified into new areas like Groupon Goods, which sells discounted items like heart rate monitors and yoghurt makers. Growth in that business has been good and Mason said this week was making $500m in revenues one year after its launch. But analysts point out that Groupon Goods has very small margins. Groupon posted a loss of $2.98m in the third quarter and its shares hit new lows as it announced slowing revenue growth amid weakness in its European business. "We have a North American business that's growing … that's really the model for what Groupon can be," Mason said Wednesday. "Because of our strategy to grow quickly [in Europe] and capture market share, we didn't invest in technology like we did in North America. We're paying for that now. We now have the playbook, it's the playbook for North America." Mason's woes come amid signs of a major slump in the daily deal business model. LivingSocial, Groupon's chief rival, is reportedly preparing to lay off 9% of its staff. The firm is part-owned by Amazon, which invested $175m in the company in 2010. That investment was virtually wiped out last month when Amazon reported a third-quarter net loss of $274m; $169m of those losses were driven by an impairment charge from its stake in LivingSocial.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The United Nations general assembly has voted to grant nonmember observer status to the state of Palestine
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Lawyer for Milly Dowler's parents says prime minister has 'failed the Dowler test' after rejecting Lord Justice Leveson's recommendation for law-backed regulator David Cameron found himself accused of betrayal by the victims of phone hacking and isolated from his coalition partners when he took the gamble of opposing Lord Justice Leveson's proposal to underpin a new independent press regulator with legislation. Unveiling his 2,000-page report, the judge insisted the move was an essential to end "a culture of reckless and outrageous journalism". But after agonising for 24 hours since he received the report of the inquiry set up by him 16 months ago, Cameron said he had "serious concerns and misgivings" in principle to any statutory interference in the media. He warned: "It would mean for the first time we have crossed the Rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into law of the land." Cameron argued: "We should think very very carefully before crossing this line," warning that parliament for centuries had seen its role as a bulwark of democracy. "We should be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and the free press." But the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, took the opposite view, siding with Leveson in saying that a state-backed body was needed to have oversight of self-regulation by the press. Leveson said that proposals from the Press Complaints Commission for a revamped regulator, backed by some but by no means all newspapers, would still amount to the "industry marking its own homework". Mark Lewis, the lawyer for the parents of Milly Dowler, accused Cameron of betrayal, reminding him he had promised his response would satisfy the victims of phone hacking and intrusion. Lewis said: "He called it the victim test; he called it the Dowler test. It looks like he failed his own test." The culture secretary, Maria Miller, will meet with victims on Friday, and on Tuesday she will hold a round table with editors of national newspapers and some proprietors to press them to draw up a timetable for a tougher self-regulatory model than the one they had proposed to Leveson. In a subtle proposal designed to win over those fearful of direct state interference in a free press, Leveson proposed that the broadcasting regulator Ofcom should take responsibility for monitoring a new independent voluntary press regulator, organised by the media and capable of imposing fines of up to £1m as well as demanding up-front apologies. Leveson said it was necessary for a body like Ofcom to monitor a revamped PCC to "reassure the public of its independence". The purpose of legislation is "not to establish a body to regulate the press", he insisted. But he warned that if newspapers were not prepared to join a revamped regulator, despite financial incentives to do so, it would be necessary to force Ofcom to act as a "backstop regulator". In an unflinching catalogue of both general and specific acts of press intrusion, Leveson said: "There have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist. "This has caused real hardship and, on occasion, wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people whose rights and liberties have been disdained." In the run-up to publication, Cameron had repeatedly promised not to let down the victims of hacking and to implement Leveson so long as it did not propose "anything that is bonkers". But since then Cameron has been under sustained pressure from the newspaper industry, and from cabinet colleagues, to oppose any state involvement in media regulation, unless the industry patently failed to embrace Leveson's call for robust, swift and effective self-regulation. The film-maker Ed Blum, himself a victim of hacking, accused Cameron of abandoning those he had pledged to help. "He's ripped out the heart and soul of the Leveson report and at the same time, some papers tomorrow will call him courageous." But Cameron is in danger of finding himself in a minority in the Commons as Clegg took the extraordinary step of making his own statement to MPs, contradicting the prime minister's central judgment, and broadly siding with the Labour leader, Ed Miliband. To the fury of some Conservative MPs, Clegg said: "Changing the law is the only way to give us all the assurance that the new regulator isn't just independent for a few months or years, but is independent for good." Clegg said he had heard nothing to suggest that a better solution can be found than the one proposed by Leveson, adding: "We need to get on with this without delay." He was supported by the Liberal Democrat president, Tim Farron, who said the law, far from representing a Rubicon was little more than a brook. Privately Clegg believes Cameron can yet be persuaded of the need for state oversight of the regulatory power, but needs time to persuade his own backbenchers. Cameron, Clegg and Miliband met to discuss a joint response to the report and, according to Labour, under pressure from Miliband Cameron had said he would allow the culture department to prepare a draft bill on state underpinning of a new regulatory body. But Cameron's spokesman said "drawing up a bill will only serve to demonstrate how complicated it would be to introduce press laws". The spokesman added that preliminary work had already been undertaken showing this to be the case. Miliband said he would be calling a vote in the Commons on implementing Leveson by the end of January at the latest, and with Cameron allowing MPs a free vote, the prime minister is currently at risk of losing. Government sources claim that even if they lose a vote, they would need to bring forward a bill, a point contested by Labour and the Lib Dems. The report appears to find unnamed executives of News International guilty of trying to hide the extent of phone hacking at the company. It finds: "Questions were there to be asked and simple denials should not have been considered sufficient. This suggests a cover-up by somebody and at more than one level." Cameron took relief that Leveson issued little criticism of the relations between Cameron and News International, apart from to say that all politicians over the past 30 years had been close to newspaper magnates. Criticism is expressed of the way in which the then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt had allowed perceptions to arise that he was too close to News International during its bid for BSkyB, but the report said he had not behaved improperly. Cameron said Hunt had "endured a stream of allegations with great dignity. This report confirms something what we on this side of the house knew all along: we were right to stand by him".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Florida man accused of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin moves to raise money on his personal website ahead of trial George Zimmerman, the former neighbourhood watch captain accused of murdering unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin during a confrontation at a Florida housing estate nine months ago, is to begin selling autographs to bolster his depleted defense fund. Zimmerman, 29, has burned through almost all of the $340,000 he is thought to have raised since his arrest in April, his website says, leading to an appeal for more donations from the public in exchange for a personally signed thank-you card. "The balance of the George Zimmerman Defense Fund is at its lowest, and new funds must be raised to support George's living expenses and legal costs through the end of the Self Defense Immunity Hearing and/or trial," a statement on the site says. "Priority for the funds will be as it has always been, to pay for George's living expenses, to pay for costs associated with the defense, and then, only if funds remain, to pay appropriate legal fees." Zimmerman's lawyer Mark O'Mara, who recently said he would consider having his client declared indigent if more money was not forthcoming, has so far received no payment for his services, the website states. Donations that were once running at $1,000 a day have dried up, O'Mara has said. The move to begin selling signatures marks a new strategy for Zimmerman, who has been in hiding since he was freed on bail in July. Next month he will take back control of his defence fund, which has been independently managed since O'Mara assumed responsibility for it April. A photograph on his website shows a printed card with a black front featuring Zimmerman's name, and below a printed "Thank you for your support" message inside is a handwritten signature, "Your friend, George Zimmerman." The site states the identity of all donors will remain confidential. "Once the fund is under new management, there will be more affirmative fundraising efforts," it says. "These efforts will include an updated gzdefensefund.com website, a disclosure of how funds have been spent, and regular updates regarding how future funds will be allocated." Zimmerman has always insisted he acted in self-defence when he shot and killed Martin, 17, during their encounter at the Retreat at Twin Lakes community in Sanford on 26 February. Martin, a black teenager who was visiting from Miami, was walking home to the house of his father's friend with a soft drink and sweets he bought at a local shop when the fatal confrontation occurred. Zimmerman has claimed Martin attacked him first and broke his nose, although prosecutors say the defendant pursued the boy after being told by a police dispatcher to desist. A decision by the Sanford police department to release Zimmerman without charge on the night of the shooting caused outrage and prompted numerous rallies and marches until a special prosecutor appointed by Florida governor Rick Scott announced the murder charge in April. A trial is scheduled to take place next June unless O'Mara can get the charge dismissed at a hearing under Florida's controversial stand-your-ground law, by which a judge can determine the use of deadly force is justified if the defendant acted in fear of his life or serious injury. The judge in the case, Kenneth Lester, was removed in August after making what O'Mara said were "disparaging and gratuitous" comments about his client. Lester had earlier revoked Zimmerman's original bail after ruling that the defendant and his wife Shellie, who herself faces a perjury charge, had lied about their personal finances. Circuit judge Debra Nelson, Lester's replacement, denied a motion from prosecutors last month to issue a gagging order against the defence, stating it was not necessary to ensure a fair trial.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Advocates urge Canadian government not to go further down the route of privatising immigration detention Dramatic changes to Canada's immigration laws expected to come into effect in December will mean that asylum seekers face more restrictions and have less time to make a claim. Advocates fear this will lead to more detentions and further opportunities for private prison operators to cash in. Immigration detention is a growth industry around the world, and some of the biggest private security and prison firms are the beneficiaries. In Canada, increased government use of by immigration detention has refugee lawyers and advocates worried, particularly after the passage of the tough new immigration laws in June. Serco is one of the biggest players in the immigration detention business worldwide. The company, which provides public services to governments around the world, including Canada – where it runs everything from the Ontario driver's education and licencing program to military bases in Newfoundland and Labrador – has been lobbying Ottawa on the subject of immigration service delivery. "The government has indicated that they expect to make increased use of detention for refugee claimants," said Janet Cleveland, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal who studies the effects of detention on asylum seekers. "We have a very strong position saying people should not be incarcerated when they're not criminals," said Cleveland, adding that this approach should be extended to asylum seekers entering the country. "Incarceration is absolutely unjustified because there's essentially no flight risk." Asylum seekers hope to be accepted as refugees, added Cleveland. The changes to Canadian law come after nearly two years of Stephen Harper's Conservative government signalling its intention to crack down on human smuggling and after months of the immigration minister, Jason Kenney, warning of "bogus refugees" taking advantage of Canadian generosity. Detention is mandatory in cases in which the identity of the claimant cannot be established, human smuggling is suspected or if the claimant arrived in the country by "irregular arrival". According to some critics, these criteria could include all asylum seekers coming to Canada. Canadian border officials can order asylum seekers held for an initial two-week period, then for as much as six months before review. The Harper government's original plan called for one year's detention, before it pulled back in the face of a chorus of opposition from civil groups. "Is that coming out of the need to detain people who are seeking refuge in Canada, or is that being driven by companies... who stand to profit tremendously [from] incarcerating people?" said Justin Piché, an assistant professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa who is also a prison-policy blogger. In June, during a parliamentary debate on the new legislation, Kenney insisted that "no immigrant is imprisoned in immigration detention centres. All immigrants are free to leave Canada at any time. It is not imprisonment." But a 2012 Global Detention Project report on Canada lists it as one of the only western countries that actively and increasingly detains asylum seekers in correctional facilities, including maximum-security prisons, in apparent contravention of international human rights norms. The ability to claim asylum is not a criminal offence. As an immigration lawyer, Douglas Cannon, put it when speaking to the Times Colonist newspaper: "It's a right." Repeated requests by the Guardian to interview Kenney went unanswered. 'The Heritage Inn'Officially, Canada has four immigration holding centres (IHCs): one in Laval, near Montreal; one at Vancouver International Airport; a high-security IHC for security certificate detainees in Kingston, Ontario; and the Toronto Immigration Holding Centre. The last-named used to be an airport motel, and it is sometimes referred to by its past name, "the Heritage Inn". The multinational security firm G4S, which was recently in the spotlight for understaffing security at the London Olympic Games, has the contract to provide security at the IHCs in Toronto and Laval, while the Corbel Management Corporation has had the contract to manage the Toronto facility since 2003. Government records show that contract to have been worth more than $19m between 2004 and 2008. The Toronto IHC recently underwent an expansion, to increase its capacity from 120 to 195 beds. The renovations were completed in September, according to a spokesperson for the CBSA. Perhaps the most curious lobbying effort around immigration detention comes from BD Hamilton and Associates, a boutique real-estate firm that shares its address with a private surgical clinic in Toronto. According to its registration, the company was seeking to "work with the Government of Canada to build a refugee detention centre in Toronto". Bridget Hamilton, who is listed as the principal of the company, was a director of the Corbel Management Corporation until 2009. Her husband, Dr James Hamilton, is president and medical director of the clinic. "The proposal called for a P3 [public-private partnership] arrangement that was to be financed by Hamilton and Associates and potentially other Canadian registered/incorporated investors," said Emily Wehbi, of the prominent lobbying firm National Public Relations, the registered lobbyist for BD Hamilton. The government rejected Hamilton's proposal in June, according to Wehbi, but records show the company is now seeking to "work with the Government of Canada on the escorted removals process" of deportees. In March, Rick Dykstra, parliamentary secretary to the immigration minister, met Serco executives who flew in from the UK. Kerry-Lynne Findlay, the parliamentary secretary to the justice minister, also attended the meeting. "They've [Serco] never had the opportunity to speak with officials... about services that they deliver from an immigration and citizenship perspective," said Dykstra, who was quick to point out that the meeting wasn't about detention specifically but instead aimed to "broaden our horizons about the services they [Serco] have to offer, to see if there's a way in which somewhere down-the-line they could assist the Canadian government." In September 2010, Kenney toured two Serco-run detention centres in Australia, as part of a fact-finding tour into Australia's anti-human smuggling initiatives. He tweeted that he had "learned a lot". In April 2011, detainees at the Serco-run Villawood facility in Australia rioted in protest at the length of their detention. A month before, a protest that authorities labelled an attempted breakout by asylum seekers detained at Serco's offshore Christmas Island facility had resulted in a number of buildings being burned to the ground and detainees being injured after police used bean-bag rounds and tear gas. Serco declined requests to comment on this story. Janet Cleveland believes it would be a mistake for Canada to go further in the direction of privatising immigration detention, by following the lead of Australia and the US. "My presumption is that the conditions would be far worse." she said. "There would be less control, less oversight and so on." Justin Piché said: "By planning, by touring these different facilities, by having meetings with these different companies, it suggests that perhaps they [the Harper government] don't expect this bill to deter anything, and what they're in fact doing is creating a useful crisis in the form of mandatory detention that will be resolved by privatized detention facilities."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The United Nations general assembly is voting on a proposal to be recognise Palestine as an observer state
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Five Dreamers say governor Jan Brewer is trying to override Obama's order allowing them to work in US for two years Alejandra Lopez, 19, is one of thousands of young Hispanic "Dreamers" who grew up in the US and have been authorised to live and work here under Barack Obama's deportation reprieve. But Lopez, the main carer for three US citizens – her child and two younger brothers – has been forced to turn down job interviews because she has been denied a driving licence by her home state of Arizona. She is one of five young undocumented immigrants from the state who filed a class action lawsuit on Wednesday challenging what they say is its unconstitutional and discriminatory policy of depriving them of a driving licence or other state identification. Jan Brewer, the governor of Arizona, issued an order in August this year to deny recipients of Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program any state identification of any kind, including licences. The DACA order, which was announced in June this year, allows undocumented young immigrants who came to the US as children to live and work here for a renewable period of two years. The lawsuit was filed in the US district court for the state of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, an immigrant youth-led organization, Lopez and four other individuals. (The Dream Act is the name given to legislation, delayed in Congress for years, that would grant citizenship to certain undocumented migrants. Aspirant migrants living in the US are known as Dreamers.) Jennifer Chang Newell, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's immigrants' rights project, said: "Jan Brewer is thumbing her nose at the federal government. Federal immigration authorities have lifted the shadow of deportation from these bright and hardworking Dreamers, but Arizona insists on pursuing its own immigration policy aimed at keeping them in the dark." She said that 87% of workers in Arizona, a state which has a poor public transportation network, drive to work. "Rather than deny these young people the ability to drive – an everyday necessity for most people – our leaders should come together to enact long-term solutions that would allow our talented immigrant youth to achieve the American dream." Brewer issued her order on 15 August, the day that the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) began accepting DACA applications. Brewer instructed agencies to "prevent DACA recipients from obtaining eligibility" for any "state identification including a driver's license" the lawsuit says. Arizona's motor vehicle division implemented Brewer's order on September 18. Previous to the order, according to the lawsuit, DACA recipients would have been able to meet the requirements for a driving licence by submitting their employment authorisation documents. The legal challenge names Brewer as well as officials in the state's department for transportation. Lopez, who has lived in the United States since she was four and is married to a US citizen, said: "It's hard to take my child to the doctor or help my two little brothers get to school and after school activities without being able to drive." The high school graduate, who was granted federally deferred action status, including a work permit, in October, said: "Somebody offered me a job interview in Tempe (Arizona), which is about 25 miles away from where I live, but I had to turn it down because I'm not allowed to drive a car." The lawsuit claims that Arizona's policy violates the supremacy clause of the US constitution by interfering with federal immigration law, and that it also violates the 14th amendment's equal protection clause by discriminating against certain non-citizens. Linton Joaquin, general counsel of the National Immigration Law Center, said: "Young people like Alejandra have so much to contribute to Arizona. Unfortunately, her effort to fully participate in his community is stymied by governor Brewer's unlawful and wrong-headed executive order, which specifically targets immigrant youth who often know no other home." An estimated 1.76 million young people in the United States are eligible for the DACA programme, including 80,000 in Arizona, according to the Migration Policy Institute, an independent, non-profit think tank in Washington DC. The USCS has deferred action to at least 53,275 individuals nationwide under the DACA programme, the lawsuit says. Alessandra Soler, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona, said: "This is a shameless attack on our youth. When our youngest and brightest residents are prevented from getting licenses, going to school or work and pursuing their dreams, entire communities suffer." The ACLU also said it is continuing to challenge Arizona's notorious SB 1070 immigration law. The US supreme court struck down many of the provisions of the state's SB 1070 law in June this year, but the most controversial part of the law – the clause known as the "show me your papers" provision – that instructs police to investigate the immigration status of those they suspect of being undocumented who they come across in the course of other policing matters – was upheld.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Manning takes stand at pre-trial hearing and speaks at length about his treatment by the military following his arrest in 2010 After 917 days in military captivity, the world finally heard on Thursday from Bradley Manning, the army soldier accused of being the source of the largest leak of government secrets in US history. In a dramatic first half hour of testimony on the third day of the pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade military base in Maryland, Manning spoke at length for the first time about the days and months after he was arrested in May 2010. He detailed the trauma he went through at the hands of the US military while he incarcerated for having allegedly handed hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. In the courtroom his defence lawyer, David Coombs, had drawn out a life-sized square on the floor exactly the dimensions of the 6x8 feet cell in which he was held in Quantico in Virginia once he was brought to the US. Manning seemed initially nervous but relaxed into his subject. He described a breakdown he had in Kuwait in the days after his arrest. "I was in a pretty stressed situation," Manning said. "I had no idea what was going on with anything. I was getting very little information. "I began to really deteriorate. I was anxious all the time about not knowing anything, days blend into night, night into days. Everything became more insular." Manning's guards, he said, stopped taking him out of his cell, preventing any interaction with other detainees. "I didn't have a good understanding of the reasons. Someone tried to explain to me but I was a mess. I was starting to fall apart." He claimed that two or three times a day his guards would give him a "shakedown". This involved taking him out the cell, then tearing apart everything he had in the cell. Coombs asked Manning whether he had any recollection of an incident on 30 June 2010, when he had lost control of himself to the extent that doctors had to intervene. "He was screaming, babbling, banging his head against the cell," said Coombs. Manning replied: "I knew I had just fallen apart, everything is foggy and hazy at that point." A few weeks later, on 29 July, he was transferred from Kuwait to Quantico marine base in Virginia. "I had no idea where I was going," said Manning, who thought he might be taken to Germany. "I was very scared, I had no idea." On board the plane, he was in full restraint. "The captain went over the intercom, 'We'll be arriving in Germany,'" he said. After an hour and a half on the ground there he was put back on the plane and that is only when the crew announced they were going to Baltimore that Manning discovered he was being returned to the US. That made him feel better, he said. "I didn't think I would set foot on American soil for a long time." Earlier, before Manning took the stand, the military judge accepted the terms under which he would enter a guilty plea to seven charges for disseminating classified documents. Colonel Denise Lind approved the language of the offences to which Manning would admit. She said those carry a total maximum prison term of 16 years. The Associated Press reported that the judge's ruling on his plea language does not mean that pleas have been formally accepted. That could happen in December. In the proposal, Manning admits to leaking a battlefield video file, some classified memos, more than 20 Iraq war logs, more than 20 Afghanistan war logs and other classified materials. He would also plead guilty to wrongfully storing classified information. Manning had made the offer as a way of accepting responsibility for the biggest leak in US military history. Government officials have not said whether they would continue prosecuting him for the other 15 counts he faces, including aiding the enemy, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | UN general assembly expected to elevate Palestinian territories to statehood despite US, Israeli opposition The UN general assembly was set to vote overwhelmingly to recognise Palestine as a state, a diplomatic breakthrough for its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in the face of vigorous Israeli and US opposition. The move required only a simple majority of the 193-member general assembly. Even before voting began, at least 130 countries had publicly pledged to line up behind Palestinian statehood. Among European countries, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland all said they would vote yes, while Germany planned to abstain. A small number of countries planned to join Israel and the US in voting no. The vote was held on a symbolic date, the 65th anniversary of the UN partitioning what had been British-ruled Palestine into Jewish and Arab countries. In the decades that followed, the idea of an independent Palestine was often in danger of disappearing. The Palestinian president, speaking at the start of the general assembly, said: "We are humbled by this historic support and to say on this day: your support is more vital than ever at this critical, decisive moment in time." Abbas added: "We have faith that every person with conscience in the world, and every state respecting the UN charter, will support and contribute to enabling our people to exercise their right to self-determination and to achieve independence in their state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital." The vote came after eight days of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians earlier this month that left an estimated 158 Palestinians dead in Gaza, and six Israelis killed. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking from Jerusalem, downplayed the vote. In spite of a huge diplomatic operation by Israel to block the vote, Netanyahu insisted it had no significance. "The decision at the United Nations will change nothing on the ground. It will not advance the establishment of a Palestinian state. It will delay it further." He added: "No matter how many hands are raised against us there is no power on earth that will cause me to compromise on Israel's security." The diplomatic victory for Abbas, who heads the Fatah group that controls the West Bank and is widely regarded as a moderate, helps offset a little the prominence achieved by the rival Palestinian faction Hamas during the Gaza conflict. Some countries, especially in Europe, switched from abstention to support out of a feeling that Abbas needed to be bolstered. The Israeli and US governments had piled pressure on the Palestinians not to press the issue to a vote and threatened major retaliation, mainly punitive financial measures. They have since largely backtracked, concerned this might undermine Abbas at a time when he is particularly vulnerable. At the General Assembly, the Israeli ambassador said it would not bring achievement of an independent Palestinian state any closer. The vote raises Palestine from "a non-member observer entity" at the UN to "a non-member observer state". There are only two with this status, the Vatican and now Palestine, both classified as sovereign states but are not allowed to vote at the general assembly with the other 193 countries. The vote leaves Palestine far short of full UN membership. The reality of Israeli control on the ground also ensures Palestine is far from being an independent state. But the vote is important, andnot just symbolical. It allows Palestine for the first time to join international bodies such as the international criminal court. This is one of the main reasons for Israeli opposition, fearful that the Palestinians might try to launch a case over Jewish settlements on the West Bank or over military attacks on the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian officials say they have no immediate plans to do so but it remains a new and useful lever for the future. The Obama administration, in an effort to try to persuade the Palestinians to drop the vote, sent deputy secretary of state Bill Burns to see Abbas on Wednesday. But Abbas turned down his pleas. The US, Israel and Britain wanted the Palestinians to give explicit pledges they would not seek to join the ICC in the near future and also to resume peace negotiations with the Israelis that were abandoned in 2010 over an settlement expansion. Britain delayed a decision on whether to abstain or vote to see whether Abbas might make the necessary concessions in his general assembly speech. The vote came more than a year after Abbas was rebuffed by the UN security council when he sought full membership. Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who flew to New York to meet UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon before the vote, threatened two weeks ago that a vote for non-member status would trigger "an extreme response from us". But the Obama administration, Britain and other countries have pressed Israel to show restraint. The Obama administration is also pushing Congress, which is strongly pro-Israel, not to penalise the Palestinians. US senators have warned that if the Palestinians try to take Israel to court, they will risk losing aid. Admission of the Palestinians to any UN agency automatically triggers the withdrawal of US funding to that agency. Admission of the Palestinians to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation last year saw the US withdraw its funding, about 20% of its revenue.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Messenger spacecraft finds substances similar to tar or coal in craters on planet nearest sun Despite searing daytime temperatures, Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, has ice and frozen organic materials inside permanently shadowed craters in its north pole, Nasa scientists say. Earth-based telescopes have been compiling evidence of ice on Mercury for 20 years, but the finding of organics was a surprise, say researchers with Nasa's Messenger spacecraft, the first probe to orbit Mercury. Both ice and organic materials, which are similar to tar or coal, were believed to have been delivered millions of years ago by comets and asteroids crashing into the planet. "It's not something we expected to see, but then of course you realise it kind of makes sense because we see this in other places", such as icy bodies in the outer solar system and in the nuclei of comets, the planetary scientist David Paige of the University of California, Los Angeles, told Reuters. Unlike Nasa's Mars rover Curiosity, which will be sampling rocks and soils to look for organic materials directly, the Messenger probe bounces laser beams, counts particles, measures gamma rays and collects other data remotely from orbit. The discoveries of ice and organics, painstakingly pieced together for more than a year, are based on computer models, laboratory experiments and deduction, not direct analysis. "The explanation that seems to fit all the data is that it's organic material," said the lead Messenger scientist Sean Solomon, of Columbia University in New York. Paige added: "It's not just a crazy hypothesis. No one has got anything else that seems to fit all the observations better." Scientists believe the organic material, which is about twice as dark as most of Mercury's surface, was mixed in with comet- or asteroid-delivered ice aeons ago. The ice vaporised, then re-solidified where it was colder, leaving dark deposits on the surface. Radar imagery shows the dark patches subside at the coldest parts of the crater, where ice can exist on the surface. The areas where the dark patches are seen are not cold enough for surface ice without the overlying layer of what is believed to be organics. So remote was the idea of organics on Mercury that Messenger got a relatively easy pass by Nasa's planetary protection protocols that were established to minimise the chance of contaminating any indigenous life-potential material with hitchhiking microbes from Earth. Scientists do not believe Mercury is or was suitable for ancient life, but the discovery of organics on an inner planet of the solar system may shed light on how life got started on Earth and how life may evolve on planets beyond the solar system. "Finding a place in the inner solar system where some of these same ingredients that may have led to life on Earth are preserved for us is really exciting," Paige said. Messenger, which stands for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging, is due to complete its two-year mission at Mercury in March. Scientists are seeking Nasa funding to continue operations for at least part of a third year. The probe will remain in Mercury's orbit until the planet's gravity eventually causes it to crash on to the surface. Whether the discovery of organics now prompts Nasa to select a crash zone rather than leave it up to chance remains to be seen. Microbes that may have hitched a ride on Messenger are likely to have been killed off by the harsh radiation environment on Mercury. The research is published in this week's edition of the journal Science.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Republican leader dashes hopes of progress on a deal and says 'American economy is on the line' as both sides dig in The Republican leader John Boehner has shot down reports that Washington is nearing a solution to the year-end fiscal cliff budget crisis, saying there has been "no substantive progress" over the last two weeks. "Jobs are on the line, the American economy is on the line, and this is a moment for adult leadership. The White House has to get serious," Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said after meeting treasury secretary Tim Geithner on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Boehner's comments came amid reports of a breakthrough in negotiations to avert the year-end imposition of tax hikes and massive spending cuts. In a nationally televised statement on Wednesday night, president Barack Obama said: "Our ultimate goal is to get an agreement that is fair and balanced." The president also said that he hoped to "get this done before Christmas". Boehner, who has spoken to Obama twice in recent days, met Geithner on Thursday in the hope of averting a crisis that economists have warned could push the US back into recession. The two parties are at loggerheads – with the Democrats pushing for tax hikes for the rich and Republicans calling for deep government spending cuts – as they attempt to tackle the US's $16tn debt. At a press conference in Washington, Boehner said: "I'm disappointed about where we are and I'm disappointed about where we've been over the last couple of weeks. "Based on where we stand today – first, despite the claims that the president supports a balanced approach, the Democrats have yet to get serious about real spending cuts. And secondly, no substantive progress have been made in the talks between the White House and the House over the last two weeks." His statement came after Geithner met Republican leaders including Boehner, House majority leader Eric Cantor and the former vice-presidential pick and House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan, in his latest attempt to forge a budget consensus. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, was dismissive of Boehner's remarks. "I don't understand his brain," he said after his own meeting with Geithner. Reid added: "Democrats are all of the same page. For two weeks we have been waiting for a serious offer from Republicans." Obama and Boehner spoke for 15 minutes on Wednesday night. Obama had spent part of the day discussing the crisis with business leaders. On Thursday, Obama had lunch with his former presidential rival Mitt Romney, amid rumors that he was considering Romney's proposal to cap tax breaks for the rich. The White House said the lunch was private. Boehner's suggestion that a compromise was far from certain were echoed by other Republicans. "It is not going to happen soon," Senator John Barrasso told Fox Business News. Stock markets largely shrugged off the latest posturing from Washington, remaining broadly flat at lunchtime.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | General assembly to vote on making Palestine a non-member state as Israel threatens retaliation with financial penalties The United Nations general assembly is set to deliver a momentous vote on Thursday that potentially moves the Palestinians along the road to statehood, a step that will be hailed by their leader Mahmoud Abbas as a diplomatic breakthrough in the face of Israeli and US opposition. An overwhelming majority of the 193-member world organisation were lining up to back upgrading Palestine from UN observer status to that of a non-member state. Israel and the US faced being left largely isolated on the issue. The vote was held on the 65th anniversary of the UN voting to partition what had been British-ruled Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The president of the general assembly, Vuk Jeremic, of Serbia, opening a day devoted almost entirely to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, said the vote "would achieve what was envisaged in 1947, a two-state solution". He hoped too that it would see a return by Israel and the Palestinians, in the aftermath of the conflict in Gaza earlier this month, to negotiations. The Palestinian foreign minister, Riyad al-Malki, told the general assembly: "We are humbled by this historic support." The Israeli government had threatened to retaliate by imposing punitive financial penalties against the Palestinian authority but has since softened its line. Having failed to block the vote, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu instead downplayed its significance, saying it would not bring Palestinian independence any closer. Netanyahu, speaking from Jerusalem, said: "The decision at the United Nations will change nothing on the ground. It will not advance the establishment of a Palestinian state. It will delay it further." He added: "No matter how many hands are raised against us there is no power on earth that will cause me to compromise on Israel's security." But Netanyahu's dismissal was undermined by the vigour with which, backed by the US, it worked to try to stop it. The US State Department even sent the deputy secretary of state Bill Burns to see Abbas on Wednesday in late, futile attempt to stop the vote. A diplomatic triumph for Abbas helps offset a little the prominence achieved by the rival Palestinian faction Hamas during the Gaza conflict. Some countries, especially in Europe, switched from abstention to support out of a feeling that Abbas needed to be bolstered. The vote comes a year after a failed attempt by Abbas to secure recognition by the UN security council of full UN membership for Palestine. The general assembly vote falls well short of that, giving Palestine only non-member status, the same as the Vatican. But it is a step up from its present observer status. Malki said the Palestinian preference was for full membership and he hoped that the security council would one day soon agree to this. But in the interim he welcomed the vote Thursday as an "investment in peace" and support for a two-state solution. The elevation to non-member status is more than just symbolic. The Palestinians could potentially use it to apply for membership of bodies such as the International Criminal Court, which would then allow it to try to launch a case against Jewish settlements in the West Bank or any further Israeli military action in Gaza or the West Bank. The Israelis and the US, along with Britain, pressed the Palestinians to give assurances that they would not press immediately for ICC membership. Although the Palestinians said they do not plan to do this, they refused to give that pledge. The British government said it would wait until the last minute to hear from the Palestinians before deciding whether to abstain or vote for non-member status. It wanted a clear assurance that the Palestinians would not seek ICC membership and that it would also promise to return to the negotiating table with Israel. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman had threatened two weeks ago that a vote for non-member status would trigger "an extreme response from us". But the Obama administration, Britain and other countries have pressed Israel to show restraint. They are motivated in part by a need to bolster Abbas, who is regarded as a moderate and who was sidelined during the Gaza conflict. The Israeli government is now threatening to show its displeasure by withholding about $200m from the monthly transfers of duties that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | US secretary of state launches five-point 'Blueprint' to eradicate Aids pandemic A five-point plan for ending the Aids pandemic has been unveiled by the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who said the Obama administration would focus efforts on women and girls but also the stigmatised communities most affected by HIV – drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men. "Make no mistake about it – HIV may well be with us into the future, but the disease that it causes need not be," said Clinton at the launch of the so-called Blueprint at the state department in Washington before World Aids Day on Saturday. Advances in science and technology have now made it possible for the next generation to be Aids free, said Clinton. Babies need not be born with HIV infection as drug regimes can prevent transmission of the virus from the mother at birth, and adults with HIV can receive treatment which keeps them well and stops them infecting their partners. Progress is also being made on developing microbicides and vaccines which will protect healthy people from infection. A report from UNAids last week showed that over the past decade, the rate of new infections had dropped by more than half in 25 low and middle-income countries, including Zimbabwe with a drop of 50% and Malawi with a drop of 73%. "As we continue to drive down the number of new infections and drive up the number of people on treatment, eventually we will be able to treat more people than become infected every year. That will be the tipping point. We will then get ahead of the pandemic and an Aids-free generation will be in our sight," said Clinton. The Blueprint will: • Rapidly scale up the most effective treatment and prevention interventions. That will include getting more people on antiretroviral drugs which keep them not only healthy but less infectious. The US president's emergency plan for Aids relief (Pepfar) has already funded drugs for 5.1 million people out of the total of more than 8 million on treatment worldwide – a 200% increase since 2008. • Focus efforts where the virus is, targeting populations at greatest risk and who suffer most from stigma: those who inject drugs, sex workers as well as those trafficked into prostitution and men who have sex with men. It will also focus more intently on women and girls who are put at risk through gender discrimination and violence, integrating HIV programmes with family planning and reproductive health. • Promote sustainability and effectiveness – for example, Pepfar has saved billions of dollars by buying generic instead of brand-name HIV drugs, said Clinton. • Encourage affected countries to step up efforts to protect and help their own communities and urge donors to meet their funding commitments. • Support research into new scientific advances and innovative approaches. "It is science that has brought us to this point. It is science that will allow us to finish the job," said Clinton. The secretary of state called on Eric Goosby, the US global Aids co-ordinator, to produce the Blueprint at the International Aids Conference in Washington DC in July, when she pledged that the Obama administration would do whatever it took to end the HIV epidemic. She told the 25,000-strong conference: "I'm here to make it absolutely clear that the US is committed and will remain committed to achieving an Aids-free generation. We will not back off and we will not back down. We will fight for the resources necessary to achieve this historic milestone."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow how the day unfolded as the crisis over President Mohamed Morsi's new powers deepened
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former US president in 'stable condition' while treated at a Houston hospital for complications related to bronchitis The former US president George Bush Sr is being treated at a Houston hospital for complications related to bronchitis. He is in stable condition, the hospital said on Thursday. "President Bush has been in and out of The Methodist Hospital in the Texas Medical Center being treated for complications related to his bronchitis," Bush's office said, in a statement released by the hospital. "He is in stable condition, and is expected to be released within the next 72 hours." The Houston Chronicle reported on Thursday that Bush, who is 88, has been in the hospital for a week. Bush, a Republican and the 41st president, took office in 1989 and served one term in the White House. The father of former President George W Bush, he also served as a congressman, UN ambassador, envoy to China and CIA director; he was vice-president for two terms under Ronald Reagan. As president, Bush routed Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and his approval ratings soared into the 90% range. But just 20 months later he was defeated in his re-election bid, by the Democrat Bill Clinton.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Academy Awards have not been keen on rewarding commercial hits – especially Spielberg's. Lincoln should break that streak An interesting thing happened at the box office this Thanksgiving. The top two spots were taken, predictably enough, by the new Bond movie, Skyfall, and the final part of the Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn Part 2. But right behind Bond and Bella at number 3 was Abe Lincoln, as given flesh by Daniel Day-Lewis in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. To date it has taken $62m, almost its entire production budget, in just two weeks. It may be the year's most unlikely blockbuster. Of the three passes Spielberg has made at the subject of slavery – The Color Purple in 1982 and Amistad in 1997 – Lincoln is by far the least Spielbergian. There is no action to speak of, only the skimpiest of battles scenes, little grand oratory, a bare minimum of John Williams music and no glimpse of the assassination. The film instead gives its audience 149 minutes of dense political maneuvering in dark smoke-filled rooms, as Lincoln hunts down the votes necessary to pass the 13th amendment. It's a film about process, a political procedural. What's particularly impressive is that Lincoln is playing as well in red states as well as blue, as if buoyed by the small swell of bipartisanship in Washington in the wake of Obama's re-election. "This is more a film for Robert Caro than for the masters of combat video games," wrote David Thomson, a decided Spielberg agnostic, in the pages of The New Republic: To see it in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's second election is the way to go. You can tell yourself that the resulting surge of emotion is a matter of chance, or God-given, but then you realize that Steven must have organized it this way. He foresaw our moment, he designed his opening, and Lincoln is especially momentous as the second Obama administration realizes there is no peace for the elected. It would have had a different resonance if the November 6 result had gone the other way. But Steven – not for the first time – planned an opening that would work either way.
In other words, Spielberg's knack for national pulse-taking – which turned Jaws and ET into national events, and Saving Private Ryan into a generational salute – hasn't deserted him. Might Spielberg be on the verge of joining Frank Capra and William Wyler in the paddock of three-time best director Oscar winners (he won in 1993 for Schindler's List and 1998 for Saving Private Ryan)? The academy has been remarkably slow to honor Spielberg, and certainly not for that early quartet of his – Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark and ET – which rank among the greater glories of American popular cinema. The academy were then in their Knights In White Flannel phase, when they turned to the British period dramas like Chariots of Fire and Ghandi to reassure themselves that the rivers of cash they were busy making from big summer hits like Spielberg's didn't suggest anything too unseemly about the business. As Spielberg noted, painfully, on the day of the nominations in 1976, when Jaws received only four nominations and Fellini nabbed his spot for Best Director. "This is called commercial backlash. When a film makes a lot of money people resent it. Everybody loves a winner but nobody loves a winner." Not until Forrest Gump in 1993 could the academy bring themselves to reward a film that made over $100m, thus opening up the way for Titanic and Lord of the Rings. The academy's attitude to the big money-makers is still ambivalent; witness the annual game everyone goes through trying to predict a nomination for something like Harry Potter – or is it the new Christopher Nolan? Or maybe the new Bond? – in order to fill out the new expanded nomination berth, only to see it filled instead with something small, worthy and unwinning from the indie sphere. "The voters often like low budget/high return best and they hate high budget/low return most" writes Sasha Stone at Awards Daily, which is why Life of Pi, which cost $120m, and was released last weekend to take in a respectable $30m, will have to keep that up to become the Avatar-like must-see phenomenon it needs to be to win best picture in February. It's still the best-looking dark horse out there. What the academy really likes to see, above all else, is this: That's the box office takings of Slumdog Millionaire, the 2009 winner, from Box Office Mojo. See that first big spike at around 80 days? That's the film getting nominated. And the second big spike at about 110 days? That's it's win on 22 February – the so-called Oscar bounce, a much under-appreciated factor in the Oscar race, not for the money, but for what that money means: the world is listening. The academy, like all of us, likes to be listened to. It wants its recommendation to carry weight. Which isn't to say that it can boss people around. They certainly don't want a repeat of this: That's the box office graph for Crash, that most wretched of winners from 2006, which tanked at the box office despite being pumped full of Oscar steroids. The academy want to play king-maker, not Svengali. The film must be already on its way up before they give it a lift. It's box office doesn't even have to be all that big. As I said, this is not about the money. Here, for instance, is the graph for The Hurt Locker, the lowest-grossing film ever to win the Academy Award for best picture: It's exactly the same as the Slumdog Millionaire curve, except in miniature. So what is this about, if it's not about the money? There's one other thing the two graphs have in common. They bear a startling resemblance to the kind of box-office takings films used to make, in the land time forgot, before $100m marketing campaigns and day-and-date saturation releases in 3,000 cinemas all but guaranteed a first-weekend audience of semi-satiated teenagers for your 13-writer franchise hopeful, KerPlunk: The Movie, thus allowing it to join Battleship and Total Recall and all those Not Quite Hits and Unexploded Bombs, neither wildly popular nor devastatingly unpopular, just there, circling the earth like blimps, slowly raking in DVD rentals from Abu Dhabi and pay-per-view from Peking. The obsession with box office numbers is a modern phenomenon, dating to the mid-80, but so too is cynicism about the numbers. The academy are not just nostalgics in their taste in films: they're nostalgic about the numbers too. Those Oscar winning bellwethers recall an older, simpler time when word-of-mouth still existed, when films built their audience, and a purchased ticket didn't just meant money for the film's producer. It also meant, as likely as not – certainly if it occurred two or three weeks into a film's run – that the person who purchased it had enjoyed themselves. Or if they didn't enjoy themselves at least been directed there by someone who had. It meant a hit. If such talk is too populist for you, then think of it this way: that purchased ticket was the equivalent of one good review, and a million of those tickets meant a million good reviews. The public voted and the way they voted produced a remarkable accurate relief map of their affections. The more curvaceous the curve, the deeper the love. You want to know what audience love for a movie looks like? It looks like this. That's the curve for Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of The Southern Wild. It doesn't stand a chance of winning the best picture Oscar, but if it gets a nomination – and it should – it will have something to do with the shape of that graph. Which is why Spielberg's team at Dreamworks can afford to be a little excited by this early flutter in the public breast: Wouldn't it be interesting if the people who put Lincoln over the finishing line were – well, the people?
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Shutting down of communications seen as bid to stymie rebel moves as militias attempt assault on the regime's power base
Middle East live blog: all the latest developments Syrian officials shut down nationwide internet access on Thursday and closed Damascus airport as rebels mounted offensives nearby and tried to advance on the capital from four directions. Phone networks were also crippled in much of the country, causing fear and confusion on both sides and fuelling claims that a new rebel push was gaining momentum. Syria's information minister blamed "terrorists" for the outage, but the communications shutdown was seen as an attempt to stymie rebel moves as militias try to co-ordinate an assault on Damascus. It was also thought to be aimed at thwarting any plans for advances in other towns and cities. Opposition groups have also been advancing in northern Syria, particularly near the second city, Aleppo, where the downing of two regime aircraft with surface to air missiles this week has given impetus to a rebel campaign that had become a series of attritional battles. While officials have frequently shut down internet and mobile phone access to opposition-held areas since the uprising began in March 2011, sometimes for weeks at a time, they have never before cut web and voice communications nationwide. Soon after noon on Thursday, all 84 of Syria's ISP address blocks were unreachable, web specialists Renesys said. Five ISP addresses did continue to function. Renesys analysts said they were used to deliver malware to anti-regime activists earlier this year, a fact that would appear to link the addresses to the government. Landline phones began to slowly come back on line later in the day. Throughout 20 months of insurrection, Damascus has remained a regime stronghold, with loyalist army divisions able to rout a rebel offensive in July and mount large-scale reprisals in rebel areas nearby. Rebels have long regarded the capital as the most difficult cog in the formidable state machine they have been trying to dismantle as the early days of street protests morphed into the uncompromising civil war now ravaging the country. As night fell on Thursday, regime rocket fire reverberated from the city centre and there were sustained heavy clashes near the international airport. Two airlines, Egypt Air and the Dubai-based Emirates, said they had suspended inbound flights. Two more airlines said they were likely to follow suit. The ground radar at the airport had been turned off by early evening. Rebel groups said fighting near the airport was the most intensive since the uprising began. The Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of militias that has mostly led the fight against regime forces, confirmed it had launched a big push in Damascus. Regime forces were also heavily deployed and appeared to be digging in for a fierce defence of the city. While apparently besieged, the city does not appear to be at risk of falling soon – and spelling the end of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and the regime he inherited from his father, Hafez al-Assad, who laid the foundations of the ruthless police state close to 40 years ago. Syrian officials have persistently labelled the opposition as foreign-backed terrorists. Bashar al-Assad has denied the groups now fighting him are Syrian and insists rebel groups want to replace his secular regime with an Islamic state that will widely persecute minority communities. Rebel groups continue to rail against the regime's claims, insisting their campaign is nationalistic and aimed solely at removing a vengeful regime. In Syria's north, the opposition is being led by the rural poor – a group almost exclusively drawn from the country's Sunni majority, which is estimated to account for at least 65% of the population. However, since the summer, the battle in northern and eastern Syria has steadily been joined by jihadist groups, who are now playing prominent roles in most clashes with regime forces, from Aleppo to Idlib and Deir el-Zour near the eastern desert. Chief among the groups is Jabhat al-Nusra, a mainly Syrian network of militants, many of whom have fought in Iraq. Foreign fighters are also joining the fray. While much smaller in number than regular Free Syria Army units, which are comprised of defectors and citizens, the influence of the jihadists is being increasingly felt even in Damascus, where car bombs and suicide attacks have hit many regime targets.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former head of NBC Universal tasked with revamping the news channel as it struggles to compete with MSNBC and Fox CNN on Thursday named former NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker as its new top executive, searching for a way to turn around the original cable news network as it has lagged behind rivals Fox News Channel and MSNBC. Zucker will start in January, based in New York and reporting to Phil Kent, who runs all of the Turner networks for parent company Time Warner. "I spent the most rewarding years of my career as a journalist, and it's where I look forward to spending many more," said Zucker, who shot to fame as the executive producer of NBC's Today show at the start of its morning dynasty in the 1990s. Zucker moved on to Hollywood as NBC's entertainment president, where he was less successful. He became head of NBC Universal, and while he couldn't turn around NBC, achieved great financial success for the company by overseeing its highly profitable cable networks. One of them was MSNBC, which has become more successful by appealing to a partisan audience, following the model of the market leader at Fox News Channel. CNN has steadfastly maintained a non-biased approach and its biggest issue has been the same as it has been for two decades: how to get an audience to stay with the network when there is not a big news story dominating the public's attention. While a great deal of attention has been paid to CNN's problems in primetime for its domestic network, Zucker will command a much larger and more successful portfolio, including HLN, CNN International and CNN.com. A CNN product is in televisions on some 265m homes across the world. Zucker has been seen as the lead candidate for the job since his predecessor, Jim Walton, announced in the summer he was leaving. Zucker has spent the past year helping Katie Couric put her talk show on the air. "Jeff's experience as a news executive is unmatched for its breadth and success," Kent said. "He built and sustained the number-one brand in morning news, and under his watch NBC's signature news programming set a standard for quality and professionalism." Tom Johnson, president of CNN during the 1990s, said it was a "splendid choice". "I would hope it would be a return to CNN where news trumps all programming so CNN gets back to its basics of being a breaking news network," Johnson said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nepalese troops thought to be source of disease that has killed 7,500 – more than violence that brought peacekeepers to Haiti Haiti is to call on the international community for more than $2bn (£1.25bn) to fight cholera amid growing evidence that UN peacekeepers started the world's worst epidemic. The government's 10-year plan to improve sanitation and water provision will be unveiled with the backing of foreign aid groups and the UN, which is accused of one of the greatest failures in the history of international intervention. It follows reports of a recent spike in cholera cases following hurricane Sandy and warnings from non-governmental organisation (NGOs) that the US and other big donors are cutting back on funding for disease control. A growing body of medical research identifies Nepalese peacekeepers as the source of the pathogen, which had been unheard of in Haiti for a century until the death in October 2010 of a villager who lived downstream of the UN camp in Mirebalais. Since then, cholera has spread along the river and into the slums of the capital, Port-au-Prince. About 6% of the population have been infected and more than 7,500 people have died – a higher toll than the political violence that brought the peacekeepers to Haiti. According to the World Health Organisation, the 340,000 cases in Haiti last year were more than the rest of the world put together. This year, the number of cases has declined, but hundreds of infections are still being diagnosed every week, particularly after hurricane Sandy. Last week the International Organisation for Migration said Haitian officials had reported a spike of 3,593 cholera cases since the middle of October. The organisation's spokesman, Jumbe Omari Jumbe, told reporters in Geneva: "The numbers are going up particularly in [refugee] camps around the capital, Port-au-Prince." The government will ask for more than $500m for the next two years in a short-term emergency response to the epidemic. Another $1.5bn will be requested for the following eight years to eliminate the disease. While this plan will call on funds from private donors, companies, NGOs and international bodies, many victims and activists believe the UN must take a greater responsibility because its personnel are likely to have brought the cholera to Haiti. The UN has not accepted culpability. It launched an investigation into its role, but a panel of experts concluded in 2011 that the outbreak was not the fault of "any group or individual". Although it acknowledged inadequate sanitation at the Mirebalais barracks as a possible source of the bacterium, it said this was not completely certain and that other factors – including poor public sewage systems and water treatment – contributed to the outbreak. However, a former panel member – a US cholera specialist, Daniele Lantagne, –recently cited new data that suggests the Nepalese troops were most likely to have been the source. Based on full genome sequencing, she concluded: "We now know that the strain of cholera in Haiti is an exact match for the strain of cholera in Nepal." This backs up long-held suspicions of locals in Mirebalais. Although the Nepalese troops have been replaced by Uruguayans and the sewage canal from the camp has been cleaned up, residents have not forgotten or forgiven what the UN peacekeepers did to their area. "The troops were shitting and pissing in the river. It used to stink. Many people got sick," said Johnson Pierre as his girlfriend washed clothes in the stream. "We don't like the UN. They have given us nothing. They're not clean. And we are still getting cholera." In Meye village, which sits across the road from the barracks, a sign above the first house reads: "Have Mercy Nepalese." Everyone in the community has either had cholera or knows a relative or neighbours who have been infected. "There were people dying in hospital and I thought I was going to join them," says Audeline Louis-Jeune, a 23-year-old villager who was one of the first to suffer in 2010. She is unsure how she was infected, but like all the local residents she has never stopped using the river to wash clothes. At the hospital in Mirebalais, medical staff recall the first cholera patient they saw on 17 October 2010 – a woman from Pageste village. Since then, they have accepted thousands of cases despite educational campaigns to encourage locals to be careful about possible sources of infection. "It's very difficult in Haiti to get treated water. Many people have no choice but to use the river for washing, despite the risk of contamination," said Thelisma Heber, a doctor with the Partners in Health NGO. Asked if the outbreak was linked to the UN base, Heber was cautious. "I don't have the information to prove that the Nepalese troops are the origin. All I know is that before 2010, there was no cholera." Last year, a coalition of lawyers and campaigners lodged a multibillion-dollar claim at the UN headquarters for 5,000 plaintiffs. It demands $100,000 compensation for each of the families of the victims and calls on the UN invest at least $750m in the water infrastructure of Haiti, which ranks last on global water poverty indexes despite its many rivers, lakes and streams. In its 67-year history, the world body has never set up a committee to assess large-scale claims for compensation, although its rules permit it to do so. But momentum is building behind the Haiti case. "There is general agreement that this wall of impunity is going to come down at one time or another," said Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. "If any case should do it, this would be it as the case is so clear. We are on right side of the tide of history." His group plans to expand the lawsuit to include thousands more cases. If the UN fails to respond, he says lawyers are preparing to file the case in a national court in the US, Haiti or Europe. Pressure for action is also coming from grassroots organisation. Haitian senators are also drafting a resolution calling for reparations that will be submitted next month, according to Camille Chalmers, of the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development. "If the UN doesn't take responsibility, there'll be protests," he says. The UN's head of humanitarian affairs in Haiti, Nigel Fisher, said the matter was under consideration by the organisation's lawyers. "Obviously we are aware of the latest reports and analysis. Unfortunately, we have to leave this in the hands of the legal process until they have worked that through," he said. "I hope that is sooner rather than later. We'd all like to put that issue behind us so we can contain the continued epidemic." Though cholera deaths have fallen from 7,000 until the end of 2011 to 600 this year, they continue to tarnish the UN's reputation and add to doubts about whether the $600m of foreign aid being poured into Haiti each year is helping or hurting the country. Cholera is not just a disease of the poor – it is a disease that worsens poverty. Villagers must now buy bottled water to drink and cook. They need chlorine to purify water before they bathe. Poor governance and the dire conditions in much of Port-au-Prince add to the problems. Driving past street vendors selling meat and vegetables off a floor littered with rubbish and puddled with murky water, Mathieu Fortoul of Médecins sans Frontières explained the risks. "You can see why it has spread," he said. "People know the risks, but they lack the means to protect themselves. The problem here is that people don't have access to soap and drinkable water." The death toll would be much higher if it were not for the tented control centres that have sprung up around the country. The facilities are basic, but effective: beds, drips, disinfectant and careful segregation of confirmed and suspected cases. At the Carrefour centre, five-year-old Yvena Marcellus was brought with the typical symptoms of diarrhoea and vomiting. She still has stomach ache but is likely to make a full recovery. "We don't know how she got infected. She was just playing on the ground," said her aunt, Mikerlande Eugene. The Haitian government has practically renounced any responsibility for cholera treatment in the capital. Even before a recent doctors' strike, hospitals were turning away patients or referring them to foreign NGOs. "If we are over -apacity, it is because of the health ministry. They refer all cases to NGOs, but with the fall in international funding, there is a struggle," said Fortoul. "In May we treated 70% of the cholera cases in Port-au-Prince. At the peak, that was 500 cases in a week. Two years after the start of an epidemic, that's not normal. The ministry of health should take responsibility. We shouldn't be a substitute." NGOs are finding it harder to get donations. Louise Ivers, an adviser at Partners In Health, said the US government's funding for their Haiti cholera programme would run out in February. "But the emergency isn't over. Cholera is still a leading cause of death in Haiti and we continue to see cases spike with rain," she said. While a new drive for funding is prepared and legal wrangles continue, the disease continues to take a toll – and there is little optimism that it will be eradicated in the near future. "Haiti had never seen a case of cholera before October 2010, yet somehow needless cholera deaths are beginning to be accepted as the new norm. That is an outrage we cannot accept," Ivers said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Andrew Mason, who founded the online discounter, has seen his company's stock take a nosedive since its IPO last year Directors at the troubled online discounter Groupon were due to discuss the future of its founder, Andrew Mason, at a board meeting in Chicago on Thursday. Mason, chief executive of the online daily deal firm once billed as the fastest growing company ever, said ahead of the meeting that it would be "weird" for the company not to question his leadership after the collapse in Groupon's share price. The discussion at Groupon's regularly scheduled meeting comes amid reports of discontent between Mason and co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. Mason, 32, founded Groupon in his twenties and built it into a web phenomenon that, according to Forbes magazine, was the fastest ever to record $1bn in sales. Google offered $6bn for Groupon in 2010 but that was rejected in favour of an initial public offering (IPO). The share sale, in November 2011, was the largest tech IPO since Google and valued the the company at $13bn. Since then, Groupon's decline has been dramatic, and it is now valued at less than $3bn. Shares that sold at $20 at the IPO have sunk as low as $2.60, although the share price rallied to over $4.40 on reports that Mason's days are numbered. The reports about Mason's future first surfaced on the tech blog All Things D. Speaking about the reports at a conference held by the business news website Business Insider on Wednesday, Mason said: "Here's a news flash: our stock is down about 80%, it would be weird if the board wasn't discussing whether I'm the right guy to do the job. It's their chief responsibility to ask that question. "If I ever thought I wasn't the right guy for the job, I'd be the first person to fire myself." The company has been hit by accounting irregularities, departures of senior staff and slowing sales, especially overseas. Recently the firm has diversified into new areas like Groupon Goods, which sells discounted items like heart rate monitors and yoghurt makers. Growth in that business has been good and Mason said this week was making $500m in revenues one year after its launch. But analysts point out that Groupon Goods has very small margins. Groupon posted a loss of $2.98m in the third quarter and its shares hit new lows as it announced slowing revenue growth amid weakness in its European business. "We have a North American business that's growing … that's really the model for what Groupon can be," Mason said Wednesday. "Because of our strategy to grow quickly [in Europe] and capture market share, we didn't invest in technology like we did in North America. We're paying for that now. We now have the playbook, it's the playbook for North America." Mason's woes come amid signs of a major slump in the daily deal business model. LivingSocial, Groupon's chief rival, is reportedly preparing to lay off 9% of its staff. The firm is part-owned by Amazon, which invested $175m in the company in 2010. That investment was virtually wiped out last month when Amazon reported a third-quarter net loss of $274m; $169m of those losses were driven by an impairment charge from its stake in LivingSocial.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Unseen McQueen is a brilliant new book celebrating the work of the late designer. Fashion historian Judith Watt examines each collection from a career that shook the British fashion industry and produced some of the most memorable shows of all time
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Alexander McQueen, Fashion Visionary is a brilliant new book celebrating the work of the late designer. Fashion historian Judith Watt examines each collection from a fascinating career
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | US company which tracks internet traffic, said that at 12.26pm, Syria's international internet connectivity shut down completely
Middle East live blog: all the latest developments Two US-based internet-monitoring companies say Syria has shut off the internet nationwide. A blog post on Renesys, a US company which tracks internet traffic worldwide, said that at 12.26pm in Damascus, Syria's international internet connectivity shut down completely. Akamai Technologies also confirmed a complete outage. The Syrian government has previously cut phone lines and internet access in areas where regime forces were conducting major military operations. An activist near Damascus who gave his name as Abu Sham said the government had cut the internet in the southern neighbourhoods of the capital on Thursday. Another activist, Abu Qais al-Shami, who lives outside the country, also said land-lines, mobile phone signals and the internet were cut in several of the capital's southern neighbourhoods, including Yarmouk and Tadamon, around noon. He said he had been able to communicate with contacts in Syria by using satellite telephones. Elsewhere in the capital, warplanes bombed Kafr Souseh and Daraya, two neighbourhoods that fringe the centre of the city where rebels have managed to hide out and ambush army units, opposition activists said. The past two weeks have seen military gains by rebels who have stormed and taken army bases across Syria, exposing Assad's loss of control in northern and eastern regions despite the devastating air power he has used to bombard opposition strongholds.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | UN vote complements Hamas's violence and is needed for world to recognise occupation, say Palestinians in a Ramallah camp The card players of the Al-Amari cafe have been around long enough to take a sceptical view of the United Nations vote on Thursday to recognise Palestinian statehood. The men at the regular morning gathering inside one of Ramallah's dense refugee camps have seen invasion, occupation and peace talks come and go over the years. They've listened to pledges from Arab leaders that Israel would be crushed from existence, and heard promises from American presidents of an independent Palestine living in harmony with a Jewish state. None of that has come to pass. So the card players agree that a vote at the UN only goes so far. But that doesn't mean they think it's not significant. Husni Khalil, 65, said the vote mattered because Israel had never explicitly recognised a Palestinian state, even though it demanded that the Palestinians recognise a Jewish state. That, he reasons, is because Israel wants to seize as much land as it can in the West Bank. But now the UN decision will stand in opposition to Israel's attempts to make historic and religious claims to territory that is supposed to be part of an independent Palestine. "Instead of the land belonging to Israel, as the Israelis claim, the world will see that it belongs to us but is occupied by Israel. Palestinians want to live in peace alongside Israel. That's all we want. But they have to recognise we are a country, a state," he said. Ibrahim Khamis, a 58-year-old driver, breaks from the card game because he wants to be heard. "This is important because we will be recognised as a country, not a disputed land. And if we are a country, then it will be recognised that we are occupied," he said. Many Palestinians are mystified over why Israel would oppose the UN move. It's not violent, it recognises Israel and it's legal, they say. The conclusion some reach is that Israel is only paying lip service to a Palestinian state. Majed Reehan, a 40-year-old accountant, who mentions in an aside that working with numbers gives him an advantage at cards, said Palestinians have followed the path of concessions, negotiations and meeting the requirements for recognition laid down by everybody from Bill Clinton to Tony Blair. So the UN vote is a just step. "We have proved to the world we can build institutions and we can build a proper state. We have proved to the world we deserve a state. We have done what was asked of us," he said. "The UN vote is a step forward but we will still be a state under occupation. Maybe it will not automatically improve things but it is something." Some European countries, such as France and Spain, shifted their support behind the UN request in part because they want to strengthen the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the wake of the fighting in Gaza earlier this month. Hamas emerged from the war considerably more popular among Palestinians for firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, and for the first time striking at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Many Palestinians contrast Abbas's commitment to what is widely regarded as a failed diplomatic strategy, in which he has largely been humiliated by the Israelis as they continue to expand Jewish settlements on illegally occupied land, with what is seen as Hamas's success in forcing concessions through resistance. There was alarm in western capitals at the prospect of ordinary Palestinians giving up on negotiations and Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, by concluding that Israel responds to force, not diplomacy. But the card players do not see the two positions in opposition. Reehan said the violence of recent weeks had strengthened Abbas's hand. "What happened in Gaza was a boost to Abu Mazen at the UN and it'll boost him in negotiations," he said. Khamis noted that Hamas came out strongly in support of the statehood move. "Hamas lifted our heads up high. We didn't benefit from the peace process. Abu Mazen said it clearly, we haven't received anything from the peace process. He said: 'I'm not the ruler of my people, Israel is'," he said. "Now Hamas has made him stronger. People are applauding Hamas; they respect Hamas. But Abu Mazen is our leader. He wasn't wrong to say we must negotiate. But Israel will only bow down before strength. You need negotiation but you also need resistance." As with many Palestinians who have lived through so many twists and turns of conflict and diplomacy, the men are well informed on the detail of what the UN vote will mean. One of the elements Khamis latches on to is also the most contentious for Israel and its closest allies: the prospect of Palestine using recognition as a state to pursue prosecutions at the international criminal court (ICC). "We want the people who attack us held responsible," he said. "At least we can hold the Israeli army responsible for the massacres against us." The Palestinian leadership has resisted intense pressure from the US and Britain to renounce the right of the Palestinian Authority to accede to the ICC. The UK said it would abstain in the vote over the issue, and a demand that Abbas agree to immediate unconditional talks with Israel. Still, Abbas's officials have made it clear that the Palestinian Authority will not be rushing to accede to the ICC. Khamis is not bothered. "It's not a problem because we can keep it in our hands." he said, gesturing as though it were a valuable card in one of the games at the cafe. "We can play it at any time." Reehan thinks the UN vote may actually benefit ordinary Israelis because it will remind them that they are better off negotiating than fighting. "I think the average Israeli wants peace as much as us but they have a radical government. When the [Gaza] war was going on, they were running to their shelters. They don't want to live like this anymore than we do. Israeli people love life," he said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mitt Romney meets Barack Obama for lunch at the White House as talks continue over a deal to fix the fiscal cliff
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mistakes by Continental Airlines mechanics were not enough to make it legally responsible for deaths in 2000, court rules A French appeals court has overturned a manslaughter conviction against Continental Airlines over the July 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde that killed 113 people, ruling that mistakes by the company's mechanics were not enough to make it legally responsible for the deaths. The crash hastened the end for the already faltering supersonic Concorde, which was taken out of service in 2003. A French court initially convicted Continental Airlines and one of its mechanics in 2010 for the crash and imposed about €2m ($2.7m) in damages and fines on the carrier. The lower court ruled that the mechanic fitted a metal strip on a Continental DC-10 that fell on to the runway, puncturing the Concorde's tyre. The burst tyre sent bits of rubber into the fuel tanks, which started the fire that brought down the plane near Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport. "This was a tragic accident and we support the court's decision that Continental did not bear fault. We have long maintained that neither Continental nor its employees were responsible for this tragic event and are satisfied that this verdict was overturned," Megan McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the company, said. Parties including Air France and Continental compensated the families of most victims years ago, so financial claims were not the trial's focus – the main goal was to assign responsibility. In France, unlike in many other countries, plane crashes routinely lead to trials to assign criminal responsibility – cases that often drag on for years.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Live coverage as Lord Justice Leveson publishes his long-awaited report into the culture and ethics of the press
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tickets sold to unknown buyers in Arizona and Missouri were only two nationwide to match all six numbers for prize Two ticket holders will share the highest Powerball jackpot ever, and the second-largest top prize in US lottery history. The question is: who are the winners waking up to new lives as multi-millionaires? Lottery officials said early Thursday that tickets sold in Arizona and Missouri matched all six numbers to win the record $587.5m jackpot. The numbers drawn Wednesday night are: 5, 16, 22, 23, 29. The Powerball is 6. It was not clear whether the winning tickets belonged to individuals or groups. Arizona lottery officials said early Thursday morning they had no information on that state's winner or winners but would announce where it was sold during a news conference later in the day. Lottery officials in Missouri did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Six-minute video shows inmate begging for mercy as he is kicked, slapped and punched by men in police uniforms The horrid state of Russia's prisons has been thrown into the spotlight following an uprising at a jail and the airing of a video that shows prison guards beating an inmate until he begs for mercy. The six-minute long video, removed from YouTube but later put on a Russian site, shows a group of shaven-headed men in blue police camouflage uniform punching an inmate in the stomach, slapping his face and head, and kicking him repeatedly after he falls to the ground in pain. The inmate, called "Marat" by his torturers, begs for mercy, saying: "Please forgive me. I won't do it any more. Please stop." His hands are bound behind his back with handcuffs. Russia's federal prison service said the video was recorded at a prison colony in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don. It accused the inmate, a 20-year-old man who had been sentenced to three and a half years for assault, of failing to abide by the rules once he arrived at the prison colony by refusing to give up his civilian clothes for a prison uniform. "Having arrived at the establishment, inmate M behaved in an extremely challenging way, expressing his unhappiness with the detention regime and categorically refusing to meet the legitimate demands of the staff – to give up his civilian clothes and change into the required uniform," a statement from the regional prison service branch said. It said that six people had taken part in the beating, two of whom had been fired from serving in Russia's prison system before the incident. Three of the prison employees have been detained, it said. The video went viral days after hundreds of inmates at a prison colony in Kopeysk, near the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk, staged a rare and daring protest against abuse, torture and poor conditions. Video and photographs from the day-long protest showed inmates standing atop the prison's buildings, some with white banners reading: "People, help!" and "People are tortured, humiliated". Around 250 inmates reportedly took part in the protest. Riot police clashed with relatives who had gathered outside the prison's barbed-wired walls as news of the protest broke. Eight were left injured. With around 800,000 Russians in jail, Russia has the third largest prison population in the world, behind the United States and China. It has the second highest incarceration rate in the world, after Rwanda, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies. Human rights activists regularly complain of violence in Russian prisons and argue that conditions are little changed from the Soviet era. A report by the UN Committee Against Torture released last week harshly criticised Russia for failing to investigate widespread claims of torture inside its prisons. It also said that human rights activists and journalists focusing on Russia's prison system were coming under increasing pressure.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The blueprint aims to prevent the spread of the disease and to reach all those who need treatment across the globe The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is launching a blueprint for the eradication of Aids across the globe, which will aim to focus efforts on preventing the spread of the disease and reaching all those who need treatment. Clinton called for the blueprint in her keynote speech at the International Aids Conference in Washington DC in July, when she pledged that the Obama administration would do whatever it took to end the HIV epidemic. "I'm here to make it absolutely clear that the US is committed and will remain committed to achieving an Aids-free generation. We will not back off and we will not back down. We will fight for the resources necessary to achieve this historic milestone," she told the 25,000-strong conference. The blueprint has been masterminded by the US global Aids co-ordinator, ambassador Eric Goosby, who will join her at the launch on Thursday, together with the executive director of UNAids, Michel Sidibé. It is expected to focus on four streams: saving lives, smart investments, shared responsibility, and driving results of science. Aids campaigners say the end is in sight, with new medical tools such as drugs that keep people alive to prevent transmission of the infection. In the summer Clinton announced new funding to identify the most effective interventions, to ensure funds were spent where they would do most good. She also spoke of the need to do more for women, who are the majority of those infected, and for marginalised groups such as drug users and sex workers, who are worst affected by the epidemic. The big question is whether the US administration is prepared to put up a substantial amount more in funding in order to finish the job. "We're expecting the US blueprint for an Aids-free generation to be a top-level strategic document that demonstrates US political commitment to maximising the scientific know-how and tools available in order to lead us to the tipping point that will bring about an end to Aids," said Anton Ofield-Kerr, head of policy at the International HIV/Aids Alliance. "It's essential that barriers currently impeding the HIV response such as criminalisation of vulnerable groups at most risk of the epidemic are also taken into account and we would hope that the US and the UK jointly, as the largest donors to the global HIV response, would lead the way together on this issue and put in place a joined up approach that addresses structural, behavioural and biomedical interventions. "
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Bombs in southern cities of Hilla and Kerbala, which also leave dozens injured, appear to target Shia Muslims Bombs in two majority Shia Muslim cities in southern Iraq have killed at least 30 people, police and hospital sources say. Scores more were wounded in the blasts, which struck during a month that is of special significance to Shia Muslims, who are often targeted by al-Qaida's Iraqi affiliate and other Sunni Muslim insurgents. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Iraq so far this year following last December's withdrawal of US troops. Although violence is considerably reduced compared to the sectarian slaughter of 2006-2007, insurgents have carried out at least one big attack a month this year. Tensions between Shia, Kurdish and Sunni factions in Iraq's power-sharing government have been on the rise since the US withdrawal. Rivals of the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia Muslim, accuse him of trying to monopolise power. Iraqi officials are also now worried that Islamists may be gaining strength from the conflict in neighbouring Syria, where Islamists have joined the ranks of rebels fighting to overthrow the president, Bashar al-Assad. Two explosions near a restaurant in the city of Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad, killed 28 people. "We started to stop civilian cars asking them to take the wounded to hospital since there were not enough ambulances to transfer them," said 39-year-old Ihsan al-Khalidi, a schoolteacher who was near the scene of the explosions. Blood, shoes, body parts and wristwatches were scattered around the site of the blast and grieving women pounded their faces and chests, searching for relatives who might have been hurt. "Shame on the officials who are just sitting in their offices while explosions hit the city every day," Khalidi said. In the predominantly Shia city of Kerbala, a car bomb near a bus terminal where pilgrims gather killed two people, a spokesman for the local health office said. Attacks tend to increase during the period when Shia Muslims commemorate the death of the prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein. On Tuesday, car bombs targeting Shia Muslims in mourning processions killed 14 people in Baghdad. Shias were not the only target on Thursday. In Falluja, a mainly Sunni city 32 miles west of Baghdad, three people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the midst of a group of soldiers who were gathering to get their pay from a state bank, police and health sources said. A roadside bomb also went off near a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, killed one policeman and one civilian, police said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Pakistani doctor who helped CIA hunt down al-Qaida leader is protesting against his living conditions in jail The Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden started a hunger strike in his jail cell this week to protest against his living conditions, prison officials said. Shakil Afridi was sentenced in May to 33 years in jail for his links to a banned militant group. The decision was widely seen as punishment for helping the CIA find the al-Qaida leader, and has led to strained ties between Washington and Islamabad. Prison officials in Peshawar said they were keeping Afridi in solitary confinement and would not allow him to have visitors or speak to anyone by telephone, as punishment for a media interview he gave in September. "After the interview in which Dr Shakil Afridi levelled serious allegations against the country's top spy agency, the prison authorities barred his family members and lawyers from meeting him," said a prison official who asked not to be identified. "In protest, Dr Shakil has begun a hunger strike for an indefinite period." An investigation following the September interview found that Afridi had bribed guards to use their mobile phones to speak to journalists, family and friends, making a total of 58 calls, prison officials said. Six prison guards have been suspended. US officials have hailed Afridi as a hero for helping pinpoint Bin Laden's location before the raid in May 2011 that killed the al-Qaida leader. Afridi's family and lawyers maintain he is innocent of any wrongdoing. "He is not allowed to meet with us, his brother and other family members. He is a human being and would definitely be frustrated enough to begin a hunger strike," said Afridi's lawyer, Samiullah Afridi. Afridi had been working with the CIA for years before the Bin Laden raid, providing intelligence on militant groups in Pakistan's unruly tribal region. The Bin Laden raid was a humiliation for Pakistan's military and raised questions about whether it was harbouring militants. Barack Obama said the al-Qaida leader would have escaped if the US had sought Pakistan's permission before the raid.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | West Bank officials hope for more than 130 yes votes in 193-nation general assembly, despite US and Israeli opposition The UN general assembly is set to implicitly recognise a sovereign state of Palestine on Thursday despite threats by the US and Israel to punish the Palestinian Authority by withholding much-needed funds for the West Bank government. A resolution to change the Palestinian Authority's UN observer status from "entity" to "non-member state," like the Vatican, is expected to pass easily in the 193-nation general assembly. Israel, the US and a handful of other members plan to vote against what they see as a largely symbolic and counterproductive move by the Palestinians. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has led the campaign to win support for the resolution, and more than a dozen European governments have offered him their support. The US state department said on Wednesday that the deputy secretary of state, Bill Burns, made a last-ditch effort to get Abbas to reconsider. The Palestinians gave no sign they were turning back. Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, said on Wednesday that the US believed the Palestinian move was misguided and efforts should focus instead on reviving the stalled Middle East peace process. "The path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York," she said. "The only way to get a lasting solution is to commence direct negotiations." A state department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, reiterated US warnings that the move could lead to a reduction of economic support for the Palestinians. The Israelis have said they might take significant deductions out of monthly transfers of duties that Israel collects on the Palestinians' behalf. Granting Palestinians the title of "non-member observer state" falls short of full UN membership, something the Palestinians failed to achieve last year. But it would allow them access to the international criminal court and some other international bodies, should they choose to join them. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian Liberation Organisation official, told a news conference in Ramallah that "the Palestinians can't be blackmailed all the time with money". "If Israel wants to destabilise the whole region, it can," she said. "We are talking to the Arab world about their support, if Israel responds with financial measures, and the EU has indicated they will not stop their support to us." Peace talks have been stalled for two years, mainly over the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have expanded despite being deemed illegal by most of the world. In their draft resolution, the Palestinians have pledged to relaunch the peace process immediately following the UN vote. As there is little doubt about how the US will vote, the PA has been concentrating its efforts on lobbying wealthy European states, diplomats say. With strong support from the developing world that makes up the majority of UN members, the Palestinian resolution is virtually assured of securing more than the requisite simple majority. Abbas has been trying to amass as many European votes in favour as possible. As of Wednesday afternoon, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland had all pledged to support the resolution. Britain said it was prepared to vote yes, but only if the Palestinians fulfilled certain conditions. Diplomats said the Czech Republic was expected to vote against the move, although other Europeans might join it. Germany said it could not support the Palestinian resolution, but left open the question of whether it would abstain, like Estonia and Lithuania, or vote no with the Czechs. Ashrawi said the positive responses from European states were encouraging and sent a message of hope to all Palestinians. "This constitutes a historical turning point and opportunity for the world to rectify a grave historical injustice that the Palestinians have undergone since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948," she said. A strong backing from European nations could make it awkward for Israel to implement harsh retaliatory measures. Diplomats say Israel wants to avoid antagonising Europe. But Israel's reaction might not be so measured if the Palestinians seek ICC action against Israel on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity or other crimes the court would have jurisdiction over. Israel also seems wary of weakening the western-backed Abbas, especially after the political boost rival Hamas received from recent solidarity visits to Gaza by senior officials from Egypt, Qatar and Tunisia. Hamas militants, who control Gaza and have had icy relations with the PA in the West Bank, unexpectedly offered Abbas their support this week. One western diplomat said the Palestinian move was almost an insult to the US president, Barack Obama. "It's not the best way to convince Mr Obama to have a more positive approach toward the peace process," a western diplomat planning to vote for the Palestinian resolution said. "Three weeks after his election, it's basically a slap in the face."
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