|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | China's president-in-waiting cited in state media as offering his sympathies to the family of Huang Rong who died 6 September China has issued its first public communication from the president-in-waiting Xi Jinping since his unexplained disappearance from the public eye ignited rumours over his health last week. Xi, who has missed meetings with visiting leaders and senior officials over the past week, was cited by state media late on Wednesday night as expressing condolences to the family of a veteran Communist Party official who died last week. But Beijing has still not issued a statement directly responding to rumours about the 59-year-old's health, which have included a bad back and heart trouble. Xi, expected to be named as the new head of the party next month and take up the reins as president in March, was last known to have appeared in public on 1 September, but speculation only took off last week when he missed meetings with the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Singapore's prime minister. This week, a pre-arranged photo opportunity between Xi and the Danish prime minister never happened. Sources close to the Chinese leadership have said that Xi is suffering from a minor ailment, possibly a back injury suffered while swimming. The China News service, in a report posted on its website late on Wednesday, said Xi and other top Chinese leaders had offered their sympathies to the family of Huang Rong, a retired official from southern Guangxi region who died on 6 Septemer – the day after Xi missed his meeting with Clinton. Senior officials including President Hu Jintao and Xi, "expressed their grief and heartfelt sympathies through various means to the relative of Huang Rong", the China News service said. It did not directly quote Xi. China's foreign ministry has declined to comment on the status and whereabouts of Xi.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Impressionist artwork found among box of trinkets bought at a West Virginia flea market A woman who paid $7 (£4) for a box of trinkets at a West Virginia flea market two years ago apparently acquired an original painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir without knowing it. The woman considered discarding the painting to salvage its frame, but instead made an appointment to have it evaluated in July by the Potomack Co. auction house in Alexandria, Virginia, said its fine arts director Anne Norton Craner. When the woman pulled the painting out of a garbage bag she carried it in, Craner was nearly certain the painting was a Renoir with its distinct colours, light and brushwork. A plaque on the front labelled it "Renoir." "My gut said that it was right, but you have to then check," Craner said. French handwriting on the back of the canvass included a label and number. Craner turned to the catalog by French gallery Bernheim-Jeune that's published all of Renoir's work. "Low and behold, it was in volume one," she said. An image of the painting was published in black and white, and the gallery's stock number matched the flea market find. So Craner made a digital image of the flea market painting, converted it to black and white for a closer look, and the brush strokes also matched, she said. "It's not a painting you would fake," Craner said. "If you're going to fake something, you'd fake something easier." Painting No. 24349 turns out to be Renoir's painting "Paysage Bords de Seine," which translates to Banks of the River Seine, Craner determined. It dates to about 1879 and measures 6 inches by 10 inches. The painting is set for auction on 29 September. It could fetch $75,000 or more, Craner said. Elizabeth Wainstein, owner of the Potomack Co., said there's no doubt about the painting's authenticity. The Shenandoah Valley woman found the painting and kept it in storage for nearly two years has declined to publicly disclose her name. After weeks of research, Craner believes Renoir gave the painting to a woman who modelled for him. The painting was then sold to the Bernheim-Jeune art gallery for 5,000 francs in 1925, according to gallery records. The following year, the gallery sold the painting to American lawyer Herbert L. May who kept homes in New York and Geneva and also worked for the government in Washington. As far as Craner can tell, May kept the painting in his personal collection until his death in 1966. It's a mystery, though, as to how the painting ended up in West Virginia. Still, its provenance is fairly short as the painting has not traded hands many times. "It just did what paintings do sometimes they kind of disappear out of circulation," Craner said. "That's what is so fantastic. This painting's been unseen since 1926."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President says bond between US and Libya won't be shaken as officials say embassy attack may have been premeditated Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday to hunt down the killers of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans during an assault on its mission in Benghazi as suspicion grew that the diplomat was the victim of an organised attack by an Islamist group. "Make no mistake: justice will be done," Obama said at the White House. He described the killing, the first of a US ambassador since 1979, as "outrageous and shocking". Crucially, though, the president made it clear that the US would work alongside the Libyan government to track down those responsible and would not be turning its back on the Arab spring in Libya or elsewhere in the Middle East. "This attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya," he said. One witness told the Guardian that a mob fired at least one rocket at the consulate building then stormed it, setting everything ablaze. Stevens is understood to have died from smoke inhalation. Several Libyan security officers were also reported to have been killed in the attack. The Libyan government expressed deep regret over the attack. The country's interim leader, Mohammed Magarief, apologised, calling the killings "cowardly criminal acts" and part of a campaign "to impede our democratic experiment". The FBI is being dispatched to Libya to help with the hunt, as well as 50 marines to reinforce the Tripoli embassy. Two US warships were reportedly heading towards the Libyan coast on Wednesday night. US surveillance drones are being redeployed to search for suspects among alleged jihadist camps in eastern Libya. The state department ordered the evacuation of all non-essential staff from the country. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton blamed the killings on "a small and savage group". CNN reported a senior US official saying the assault was planned to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and that those responsible used the protests as cover. The fact that a rocket-propelled grenade was used is cited as evidence. Congressman Mike Rogers, head of the House intelligence committee, who is usually briefed by the intelligence agencies during a crisis, said details were still fuzzy but it was "a well co-ordinated attack", one in which he said he could see the "signature of al-Qaida" and a link to the 9/11 anniversary. Rogers, a former FBI agent, told CNN: "It has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaida-style event." Jay Carney, Obama's White House spokesman, responding to a question from a journalist whether the consulate attack was planned, said: "It's too early for us to make that judgment." Mohammed el-Kish, a former official with the National Transitional Council, which handed power to an elected parliament last month, blamed the attack on hardline jihadists, as did the Quilliam thinktank in London which tracks jihadist groups. But other officials cautioned against jumping to conclusions, suggesting that the attack was more likely to have been opportunistic than planned many days in advance. The killings led to a political row between Obama and his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney. In what may turn out to be one of the defining moments in the race for the White House, Romney attempted to pin some of the blame on the Obama administration, accusing it of being an apologist for American values. It was a badly-handled, confused intervention that immediately backfired, with former diplomats, foreign policy analysts and even fellow-Republicans accusing Romney of behaving in an unpresidential manner, making political points with the American corpses barely cold. Stevens, 52, a career diplomat since 1991, had been a strong backer of the rebels, going into Benghazi at the height of the revolt aboard a cargo ship. Also killed was another diplomat, Sean Smith, an air force veteran who was based in the Hague but was on temporary transfer to Libya. The other two Americans were security staff. The attack in Benghazi came after a protest at the US embassy in Cairo on Tuesday afternoon over an American-produced amateur film denigrating Muslims. This was ostensibly the motive behind the protests in Benghazi too. It was supposedly made by a Californian real estate developer called Sam Bacile, and both the Associated Press and the Wall St Journal had quoted somebody using that name saying that he was in hiding. But by Wednesday evening, there were signs that Bacile did not exist and it was unclear who was behind the production. Cast members said they had been duped into making it and that anti-Islamic dialogue had been dubbed on later. Obama, in an apparent swipe at the film, said the US was a nation that respected all faiths and "we reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others". In spite of that, he added: "There is no justification for this senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts." The ambassador's killing follows an attack in June on the UK ambassador to Libya, Dominic Asquith. Two British bodyguards were injured after a rocket was fired at Asquith's convoy in Benghazi. There have been similar attacks on the Red Cross and the UN premises. The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, condemned the attack as "brutal and senseless". According to the Libya Herald, which cited local witnesses, the killers included members of the hardline Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia. But a spokesman, Hani al-Mansouri, told the Guardian the allegation was false. Noman Benotman, a former Libyan jihadi who now runs the Quilliam thinktank in London, said he had information it was a terrorist attack that was planned to avenge Abu Yahya al-Libi, al-Qaida's Libyan second-in-command, who was killed in a US drone strike a few months ago. Egypt's president, Mohammed Morsi, who used to lead the country's Muslim Brotherhood, was criticised for not speaking out to condemn the Cairo incident. But he asked the Egyptian embassy in Washington to take legal action in the US against the makers of a film. The Brotherhood called for nationwide protests on Friday outside all main mosques. "The president has to balance between his domestic alliances with ultraconservative Islamists and Egypt's relations with the US on the foreign affairs front," said analyst Khalil a-Anani. As anger over the film spread across the Muslim world, the Afghan government gave orders for YouTube to be closed to the public until the offending film was removed, though the site was still visible to internet users in Kabul. • Additional reporting by Luke Harding, Chris Stephen and Sarah Sirgany.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | French prosecutor says crucial clues could be found in UK as financial dispute, profession, and Iraqi origin become focus Investigators attempting to piece together why a British family was murdered in the French Alps last week say they are now pursuing three main leads, as relatives who said they were heartbroken called for whoever carried out the brutal killings to be brought to justice. A week after the bullet-ridden bodies of Surrey-based engineer Saad al-Hilli, his wife Iqbal and her mother Suhaila al-Allaf were found in a car near Lake Annecy, with a passing cyclist also shot dead nearby, prosecutor Eric Maillaud said the investigation was focusing on three factors: an alleged family dispute, Saad al-Hilli's profession as a contractor for a satellite technology company in Surrey, and his origins in Iraq. Key witness testimony from the couple's seven-year-old daughter, Zainab, who was shot and badly beaten during the attack, has yet to be heard. Investigators waiting to question her have yet to be given the go ahead by doctors, said Maillaud, who said she remained in a "delicate" state of health after being brought out of a medically induced coma at the hospital in Grenoble where she is under armed guard. Her four-year-old sister, Zeena, who survived the attack physically unscathed by hiding under her mother's legs, has returned home to Britain. In their first public statement since the killings last Wednesday, relatives called on investigators to move quickly in their hunt. In a statement issued by the Foreign Office, Ahmed Al-Saffar, brother of the 74-year-old Swedish-Iraqi Suhaila al-Allaf, said: "The victim's family and I are heartbroken by this shocking crime and we have been touched by the expressions of sympathy from people all over the world ... We are very grateful for the support provided by the British, French and Iraqi authorities during this difficult time. We hope that those responsible for the deaths of our loved ones are brought swiftly to justice." Maillaud and one of the two investigating judges responsible for the case are due to visit the UK on Thursday in order, he said, to "further develop and strengthen the quality of co-operation" between the investigators in the two countries. He said that both sides had been trying to work together and understand each other, but the language barrier and legal system differences had presented difficulties. "I think the British police would say the same," he told a press conference in Annecy. "We can say that basically we exist in the same western universe and that we are very close, that we share the same things, but we have different legal systems and there are sometimes difficulties in understanding which slow down and we all regret that." He said a large part of the investigation was taking place in Britain where French authorities believe a "great number of clues" could be found. Much attention has focused on the family and an alleged financial feud between 50-year-old Saad and his brother Zaid, who is also based in the UK. However, Zaid al-Hilli is understood to have approached British police officers to deny the reports, and Maillaud said the "familial lead" was no more deserving of interest than al-Hilli's job or his family roots. "The fact that he was born in Iraq, that he had family in Iraq, of course that's something that is of interest and we are asking ourselves if there is a link between that and his death," Maillaud said. That line of investigation was being pursued by "people who know who to contact in order to be able to work with that country so, for example, we have a security attache we are working with". There was a great difficulty in obtaining reliable information from Iraqi, he said. One of the original theories behind the killings of the three family members in their maroon BMW in a forest clearing near one of the Alps' best-known beauty spots was that it could have been a robbery. However, without saying that any lead had been discarded, Maillaud said numerous identification documents had been left in the car after the attack. He would give no further information concerning the weapon used, believed to be a 7.65 calibre pistol, saying he deplored the leaks that had surfaced in the media surrounding the nature of the weapon and number of perpetrators. He also refused to comment on remarks reportedly made by police that the family did not appear to have the profile of "ordinary tourists". In separate reports, fellow campers have told the media that Saad al-Hilli, from Claygate in Surrey, had behaved "strangely" in the days leading up to the attack.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President says bond between US and Libya won't be shaken as claims emerge that embassy attack was premeditated Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday to hunt down the killers of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans during an assault on its mission in Benghazi as suspicion grew that the diplomat was the victim of an organised attack by an Islamist group. "Make no mistake: justice will be done," Obama said at the White House. He described the killing, the first of a US ambassador since 1979, as "outrageous and shocking". Crucially, though, the president made it clear that the US would work alongside the Libyan government to track down those responsible and would not be turning its back on the Arab spring in Libya or elsewhere in the Middle East. "This attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya," he said. One witness told the Guardian that a mob fired at least one rocket at the consulate building then stormed it, setting everything ablaze. Stevens died from smoke inhalation. Several Libyan security officers were also reported to have been killed in the attack. The Libyan government expressed deep regret over the attack. The country's interim leader, Mohammed Magarief, apologised, calling the killings "cowardly criminal acts" and part of a campaign "to impede our democratic experiment". The FBI is being dispatched to Libya to help with the hunt and 50 marines were sent to reinforce the embassy in the capital Tripoli. US surveillance drones are being redeployed to search for suspects among alleged jihadist camps in eastern Libya. The state department ordered the evacuation of all non-essential staff from the country. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton blamed the killings on "a small and savage group". CNN reported a senior US official saying the assault was planned to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and that those responsible used the protests as cover. The fact that a rocket-propelled grenade was used is cited as evidence, but it was unclear whether the US had any other information to support this theory. Mohammed el-Kish, a former official with the National Transitional Council, which handed power to an elected parliament last month, blamed the attack on hardline jihadists, as did the Quilliam thinktank in London which tracks jihadist groups. The killings led to a political row between Obama and his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney. In what may turn out to be one of the defining moments in the race for the White House, Romney attempted to pin some of the blame on the Obama administration, accusing it of being an apologist for American values. It was a badly-handled, confused intervention that immediately backfired, with former diplomats, foreign policy analysts and even fellow-Republicans accusing Romney of behaving in an unpresidential manner, making political points with the American corpses barely cold. Stevens, 52, a career diplomat since 1991, had been a strong backer of the rebels, going into Benghazi at the height of the revolt aboard a cargo ship. Also killed was another diplomat, Sean Smith, an air force veteran who was based in the Hague but was on temporary transfer to Libya. The other two Americans were security staff. The attack in Benghazi came after a protest Cairo over an American-produced amateur film denigrating Muslims. This was ostensibly the motive behind the protests in Benghazi too. Obama, in an apparent swipe at the film, said that the US is a nation that respects all faiths and "we reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others". In spite of that, he added: "There is no justification for this senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts." The US ambassador's killing follows an attack in June on the UK ambassador to Libya, Dominic Asquith. Two British bodyguards were injured after a rocket was fired at Asquith's convoy in Benghazi. There have been similar attacks on the Red Cross and the UN premises. The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, condemned the attack as "brutal and senseless". According to the Libya Herald, citing local witnesses, the killers included members of the hardline Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia. But a spokesman, Hani al-Mansouri, told the Guardian the allegation was false. Noman Benotman, a former Libyan jihadi who now runs the Quilliam thinktank in London, said he had information it was a terrorist attack that was planned to avenge Abu Yahya al-Libi, al-Qaida's Libyan second-in-command, who was killed in a US drone strike a few months ago. The apparent maker of the film, called Innocence of Muslims, was in hiding on Wednesday. But the Associated Press reported that the director, who called himself Sam Bacile and described himself as Israeli-American, remained defiant. "Islam is a cancer, period," the agency quoted him as saying. Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said Bacile was unknown in Israel and called him "a complete loose cannon and an unspeakable idiot". Egypt's president, Mohammed Morsi, who used to lead the country's Muslim Brotherhood, was criticised for not speaking out to condemn the Cairo incident. But he asked the Egyptian embassy in Washington to take legal action in the US against the makers of a film. The Brotherhood called for nationwide protests on Friday outside all main mosques. "The president has to balance between his domestic alliances with ultraconservative Islamists and Egypt's relations with the US on the foreign affairs front," said analyst Khalil a-Anani. As anger over the film spread across the Muslim world, the Afghan government gave orders for YouTube to be closed to the public until the offending film was removed, though the site was still visible to internet users in Kabul. • Additional reporting by Luke Harding, Chris Stephen and Sarah Sirgany.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Previously obscure film made last year provided pretext for violence that left US ambassador and three others dead The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi came after midnight in a blaze of gunfire and grenade explosions, taking the diplomats inside by surprise. The consulate IT expert, Sean Smith, was chatting online to fellow internet gamers when it happened. According to another player, who goes by the online handle of The_Mittani, Smith "said 'FUCK' and 'GUNFIRE' and then disconnected and never returned". Smith was one of four Americans killed in the Benghazi attack along with the ambassador, Chris Stevens, and two bodyguards who have not yet been named, presumably because they were members of US special forces. CNN quoted a senior US official as saying the four became separated from their colleagues trying to escape to the roof, where they succumbed to smoke inhalation. A photograph taken in the chaos outside showed Stevens being carried, apparently unconscious, by a crowd of Libyans. He was taken to a Benghazi hospital where a doctor, Ziad Abu Zeid, initially had no idea who the emergency patient was. The doctor told the Associated Press that Stevens had "severe asphyxia", apparently from smoke inhalation, causing stomach bleeding, but had no other injuries. The doctor tried for 90 minutes to revive him but to no avail. Stevens was only the sixth American ambassador to be killed in the line of duty in the country's history. His killing is likely to have far-reaching consequences in American attitudes towards the Arab spring, and could become a factor in the US presidential elections. It was the culmination of a day of rage in north Africa ostensibly triggered by a previously obscure rabidly anti-Islamic film made a year earlier in the US. Demonstrators stormed the US embassy compound in Cairo, climbing over the outer wall, taking down the flag and daubing the buildings with Islamic slogans. There were suggestions by unnamed senior US officials that the attack in Benghazi had been planned by an extremist group using outrage at the film as a diversion. But it seems likely the anger generated by the movie provided both the occasion and pretext for the lethal assault. According to al-Jazeera's correspondent in Benghazi, Suleiman Idrissi, "at about 11.30pm a group of people calling themselves Islamic law [Sharia] supporters heard there would be an American movie insulting the prophet Muhammad. Once they heard this news they came out of their military garrison, and went into the streets calling on people to go ahead and attack the American consulate in Benghazi." The long fuse that led to the explosion of violence that ultimately killed Stevens was lit last summer in California, where someone calling himself Sam Bacile set about making what is likely to be remembered as one of the most notorious films in recent history. It is far from clear who Bacile is. He described himself in telephone interviews this week with the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press as an Israeli-American property developer, but neither the Israeli authorities nor the California realtors association had heard his name. He gave different ages, 52 and 56, to different interviewers. In July of a clip from Bacile's film, called Innocence of Muslims, a bizarre and amateurish hatchet job on the prophet Muhammad, appeared on the internet. The subject is religion but the style, production values and acting are reminiscent of gonzo, low-budget porn, a vast industry in southern California, where this movie appears to have been made. Rarely has the porn industry produced anything as intentionally offensive as the Bacile film. Muhammad is portraying as callow, bloodthirsty and lecherous, allowing his thuggish followers to molest the children of their victims. Steve Klein, a militant Christian activist credited as a consultant on the film told the Atlantic online: "His [Bacile's] name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he's Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign." The man calling himself Bacile said he had raised a budget of $5m from 100 "Jewish donors" whom he declined to name, to make the film, which he wrote and directed himself with the aim of demonstrating his belief, as he described it to the Wall Street Journal, that "Islam is a cancer". To that end, Bacile got his amateur cast to depict the prophet Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child abuse. It took three months, 59 actors and about 45 crew. The result was two hours of stumbling dialogue and wooden acting among flimsy sets, and a stream of gratuitous insults aimed at Muslims. It was screened in an almost empty cinema in Hollywood earlier this year. In another age, that would probably have been the end of the story. In the YouTube era, however, it was a bomb primed for detonation. Bacile posted a 13-minute English-language trailer on YouTube in early July but it was only in the past week that it appears to have caught the attention of all sides of the online sectarian culture wars. A Florida pastor, Terry Jones, who had triggered protests in the Islamic world for burning the Qur'an and his campaign to stop the construction of a mosque at the site of the 9/11 attacks, promoted the film on his website and announced his intention to broadcast the trailer at his Gainesville church this week. "It is an American production, not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam," he said in a statement. "The movie further reveals in a satirical fashion the life of Muhammad." The film clip was also spotted and promoted last week by Morris Sadik, the Egyptian Coptic Christian also based in California who runs a small virulently Islamophobic group called the National American Coptic Assembly. It was later denounced by mainstream Copts in Egypt, but it was too late to stop it going viral. At some point over the summer a version of the YouTube trailer surfaced with the dialogue dubbed in Egyptian Arabic – Bacile says he has no idea who did the translation but has claimed it is accurate – and the translated clip was picked up by a firebrand Cairo television host, Sheikh Khaled Abdallah, with a record of focusing on perceived threats to Islam. He aired clips from the video on his television show on Saturday, and the same video clips were posted to YouTube on Monday. As the audience for Innocence of Muslims grew exponentially, militant Islamists called for a mass protest at the US embassy in Cairo. The organisers told the Associated Press they began planning it last week when Sadik began promoting the trailers, but support for the demonstration snowballed after the Sheikh Abdallah programme. A crowd of some 2,000 is reported to have gathered outside the embassy walls in Cairo on Tuesday. The security services appear to have been caught flat-footed even though the protest had been announced. Most of the diplomats and local staff had left early and a few dozen of the demonstrators were able to scale a wall, take down the stars and stripes and replace it with a black flag. The Egyptian police only managed to evict them from the compound by late evening. By that time, however, the spark had jumped westwards to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. According to al-Jazeera, an extremist militia called Ansar al-Sharia, one of many such armed groups staking out fiefdoms in Libya in the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi's fall, heard about the storming of the Cairo embassy and the American film. Stevens had the misfortune to be making a short visit to Benghazi, and according to US officials quoted on Wednesday, was probably not the intended target. Bacile, whoever he is, was reported to have gone into hiding on Wednesday night. He spoke to the Associated Press from an undisclosed location, said he had not expected such a furious reaction and criticised security at US diplomatic outposts. "I feel sorry for the embassy. I am mad," he said. But Bacile insisted that the movie would help Israel by exposing what he described as Islam's flaws to the world. "My plan is to make a series of 200 hours," he claimed.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Russian prime minister condemns anti-Putin stunt by feminist punk group but says prolonging imprisonment is 'unproductive' Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, has called for the three jailed members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot to be freed. But Pussy Riot's supporters quickly dismissed the prime minister's statements, noting his long history of appealing to Russia's more liberal demographic while failing to follow through on delivering results. In televised remarks about the band on Wednesday, Medvedev said he was "sickened by what they did, by their looks, by the hysteria that followed what had happened". Three members of the radical anti-Kremlin punk collective were sentenced to two years in prison last month on charges of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after performing a song criticising Vladimir Putin in Russia's official cathedral. The case sparked a global outcry and highlighted the crackdown on the opposition inside Russia. But Medvedev said he believed the women should be freed early. "The prolongation of their incarceration in the conditions of jail seems to me to be unproductive," he said. "A suspended sentence, taking into account time they have already spent [in jail], would be entirely sufficient." The three women – Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova – have been jailed since their arrest in early March. They remain in a pre-trial detention centre in Moscow as they wait for their appeal to be heard. The appeal is due to start on 1 October. "This well-known group of girls has been in jail long enough," Medvedev said, calling the time they had already spent in detention a "very serious punishment regardless of the sentence". Medvedev – who forwent seeking a second term as president to allow his mentor, Putin, a free run – has long sought to portray himself as a liberal reformer. As president, he had vowed to reform Russia's culture of "legal nihilism", building on his career as a lawyer. Yet critics of the government note that his numerous statements on various legal cases – including the need to fully investigate the death in custody of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky – have yielded no results. He ceded the presidency in May to Putin amid unprecedented anti-government protests. "Medvedev has already spoken about several criminal cases and we know what the results have been," said Nikolai Polozov, a lawyer for Pussy Riot. "I agree with what he said – that they should be let out. But considering all the other awful propaganda against our clients, it seems his voice will not be heard. This is an attempt to save face." A popular programme on state-run television said in a broadcast late on Tuesday that the Pussy Riot women were doing the devil's work, and were the brainchild of the London-based oligarch and Kremlin foe Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky denied the accusation. Pussy Riot's supporters accuse Putin of personally orchestrating the campaign against the band. The women sang a song that begged the Virgin Mary to rid the country of the powerful leader. During the trial, Putin called for the women not to be judged "too harshly". The court handed them a two-year sentence instead of the maximum seven years or the three years requested by the prosecution. Both Putin and Medvedev said they had no intention of interfering in Russia's notoriously politicised court system.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Markets rally and chancellor says decision on €500bn ESM sends strong signal of Germany's commitment to Europe Angela Merkel said Germany's highest court had sent a powerful message to the rest of Europe and beyond, after it paved the way for the creation of a €500bn rescue fund to tackle the eurozone's debt crisis. Markets rallied following the decision by the eight justices of the constitutional court in Karlsruhe to let Germany ratify a treaty to establish the European stability mechanism (ESM). The euro reached a four-month high and European stock markets rose after the court imposed conditions that were less burdensome than German parliamentarians and other ESM supporters had feared. The ESM can now start up next month and become fully operational by the new year, despite the warnings of analysts who say it will not work. The ruling was considered one of the most important in the court's 61-year history. A key condition attached to the ruling means that Germany's liabilities will be capped at €190bn. But the fact that the Bundestag and Germany's ESM representative can override the limitation led some observers to say it was a bluff, introduced to assuage the concerns of German taxpayers whose frustration at the prospect of having to bail out indebted southern European countries indefinitely has been on the rise. A poll before the ruling showed that 54% of Germans wanted the court to block the ESM, amid growing fears that Germany is ceding too many powers to European institutions. The court was petitioned by 37,000 Germans arguing that the ESM was anti-constitutional. The ruling is a breakthrough for Merkel and allows the go-ahead of the two-pronged approach she favours of both bailouts and budgetary discipline in the form of the ESM and the fiscal pact. She said the decision sent a strong signal of Germany's commitment to Europe, and was positive news for German taxpayers, who she said had been provided with certainty. "This is a good day for Germany, a good day for Europe," she told the Bundestag. "We haven't yet overcome the crisis, but we have achieved our first steps." Frank-Walter Steinmeier, leader of the opposition Social Democrats, expressed his relief that the ESM – whose creation had been substantially delayed by the constitutional court's deliberations – could now start to work. "The significance of this decision for the future of Europe cannot be underestimated," he told the Bundestag. Neil Prothero, of the Economist Intelligence Unit, said the decision would come as a relief to policymakers across the eurozone. "A decision against the ESM would have thrown the region's crisis response strategy into disarray," he said. But Gunnar Beck, an EU analyst at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, called the decision "a completely absurd judgment from a legal point of view", because it meant Germany's liability was fixed "unless it is decided otherwise, which means there's no limit to it". He was gloomy about the long-term effects of the decision, predicting that the markets' enthusiasm would not last. "In the short term the market will be booming, but in the long term this means unending horror. Germany is locked in now and it means that if the ECB buys unlimited bonds, Germany's liability is unlimited as well," he said. "Germany is like a bank that has lent too much to its biggest client so that it has to continue lending until the client goes bust". The court had been under huge pressure not to torpedo the ESM, amid fears that it would cause the destruction of the euro and have a chaotic effect on the global economy. Andreas Vosskuhle, the court's president, said the economic and political consequences of delaying the law's introduction were "almost impossible to calculate reliably". Despite repeated claims of the court's independence, there have been strong suggestions of at least one high-level meeting between the government and the court, reports about which led to speculation that the two bodies might have worked closely on a face-saving solution. A little light relief amid the gravitas was offered by a slip of the tongue by Vosskuhle, who called the petitions to block the ESM "justified" before changing it to "unjustified" after being corrected by a colleague, as peals of laughter filled the courtroom.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tributes pour in for US ambassador whose humility, warmth and integrity won him friends across the Middle East Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya killed in the Benghazi embassy attack, sent an email to friends a couple of months ago commenting on how very different life in Tripoli was than his time there as a more junior diplomat in the Gaddafi years. "The whole atmosphere has changed for the better," he wrote. "People smile more and are much more open with foreigners. Americans, French and British are enjoying unusual popularity. Let's hope it lasts!" After two decades serving as a US diplomat in the Arab world and North Africa, Stevens was in the unusual position of a posting where Americans were feted by many ordinary people as being on the right side even if, as the email suggested, he remained firmly realistic about the difficulties of building a new Libya. Yet it is a reflection of what friends and colleagues describe as Stevens' personal integrity as well as his diplomatic skills that after a history of postings where US policy has fallen short of proclaimed American values – from Jerusalem and Cairo to Damascus and Riyadh – he won friends in those places who came to trust him even if they didn't trust his government. "I heard about his death when I was on the road and I just pulled over and cried," said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer who has long battled the iniquities of the occupation. "We called him the senator. He was capable of expressing empathy with Israelis and Palestinians simultaneously in the same room without being one bit maudlin or romantic about it. This was real nobility. There was something of a clarity of vision. He was a humble person without being servile." Stevens, 52 – a Californian, a graduate of Berkeley and briefly a trade lawyer – was set on his life's path as a diplomat in the Arab-speaking world after teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in Morocco's Atlas mountains. Former colleagues who stayed lifelong friends describe him as unusually at ease with almost everyone and able to express genuine understanding for passionately held views on opposite sides of divides while remaining a firm realist. They said he was often sceptical about policies of the government he served yet firmly regarded the US as a force for good while attempting to nudge policy back in Washington. "He believed that the US, and he had a role in this, can have a role in the world and can do good in the world," said Lara Friedman, a close friend of Stevens and former state department colleague who served in Jerusalem, Beirut and Tunis. "He believed very much in what he was doing as a foreign service officer. He served in difficult places. He didn't shy away from complicated issues. He made friends wherever he went on all sides of every issue. He was actually interested in the people he was talking to. He met everybody at eye level." Stevens did not shy away from droll and sometimes devastating observations about the Middle East but he was widely regarded as making them from a sympathetic understanding. Among the Facebook messages posted was one from Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, an Egyptian novelist who knew Stevens while serving as a diplomat in Jerusalem: "One of the best people I met, an American who understood and empathized with the Arab predicament." Stevens also had his doubts about those he served at times. A decade ago he headed the political section of the US consulate in East Jerusalem – not an easy task. American diplomats – and British ones for that matter – who see the Israeli-Palestinian situation up close from Jerusalem, often find themselves privately at odds with the strongly pro-Israel positions of their governments. Seidemann, who counted Stevens as a close friend, described him as having an "ironic" take on the situation. "He had great familiarity with the details but never missing the big picture. Knowing that he was representing his government, even though he wasn't always entirely comfortable with its policies, and doing it splendidly," he said. "He knew that Israelis and Palestinians were not blessed with Scandinavian temperaments and didn't let that affect his ability to engage them and engage empathetically. But he was not in any way operating in the world of delusion. He knew exactly what he was dealing with." Stevens' doubts extended to the war in Iraq. He turned down a posting there because of his disagreement with what he regarded as the neoconservative-driven conflict. In Jerusalem, Stevens was also known as a generous host who, unusually for a diplomat, had a wide circle of friends beyond the rarefied confines of the embassy world. Yet for all his openness, he was discreet about his private life. He was the natural choice as the American liaison with the Libyan rebels once Washington made the decision to embrace the uprising last year having served in Tripoli in the Gaddafi years. Stevens arrived in the de facto rebel capital, Benghazi, in the midst of the uprising and made his way to a hotel where the leaders of the uprising were meeting a delegation of African peacemakers who were trying to press a ceasefire. A large, well-armed crowd had gathered outside to make it known to the Africans that there would be no deal that kept Gadaffi in power and that they were not welcome. Stevens stood at a window looking out on the scene and said that in his days serving in Tripoli he had never imagined such a thing could happen. He appeared to be genuinely excited and moved at the Libyan people's struggle to liberate themselves from a dictatorship that for the few years previously had been supported by the US and Britain. With the revolution over, Stevens was named as ambassador to Libya in May. Friedman said he was excited at the prospect. "He'd been through the whole war. He knew how complicated the politics were and how complicated the future was going to be and he was excited to be going out there," she said. "I attended his confirmation hearing and he believed his service there could make a difference for the people and for America's role there. I don't think I would ever use the word cynical to describe Chris." Stevens recorded a video in Washington introducing himself to the Libyan people. "I had the honour to serve as the US envoy to the Libyan opposition during the revolution, and I was thrilled to watch the Libyan people stand up and demand their rights. Now I am excited to return to Libya to continue the great work we started," he said in the video. Seidemann said that for all Stevens' expression of hope, he did not lose sight of the challenges or dangers. "He knew exactly where he was going when he took on this posting in Libya," said Seidemann. "He had no illusions. He knew he would be in harm's way and he didn't think twice about it."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Comments could signal the early release of the band members, whose case comes up for appeal on 1 October Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, has called for three members of the punk band Pussy Riot to be freed, saying further time in prison would be "unproductive." Medvedev's comments could signal the imminent release of the band members, whose case comes up for appeal on 1 October. The women had already spent more than five months in jail when they were convicted in last month of "hooliganism driven by religious hatred" and sentenced to two years in prison. They were arrested after performing a raucous prayer inside Moscow's main cathedral asking the Virgin Mary to save Russia from its president, Vladimir Putin. The imprisonment of the women has led to protests around the world and highlighted concerns about Putin's crackdown on dissent.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 2011 data also show decline in household income for second year as presidential candidates debate economic recovery New figures have been released by the US census bureau revealing a yearly decline in median household income for Americans, growing inequality and more than one in five children under 18 years old living in poverty. In a survey of data for 2011, the census discovered that real median household income in the US had dipped by 1.5% from its level in 2010 to sit at $50,054 a year. The fall is the second consecutive annual drop and comes in the middle of a bitterly contested election in which America's tepid economic performance has been a central theme. While President Barack Obama has based his campaign on a claim to have saved America from the brink of financial disaster, Republican challenger Mitt Romney has lambasted the country's lacklustre economic performance, especially continuing high levels of joblessness. The figures released by the census also show that little dent has been made on America's high levels of poverty, with some 15% of the nation – representing around 46.2 million people – living in poverty in 2011. The figures are worse for the very young, where the poverty rate for those under the age of 18 is 21.9% – or some 16.1 million children. These latter figures are roughly unchanged in 2011 from 2010. However, income inequality in the US has grown. The Gini Index, which measures income inequality, increased by 1.6% to a score of 0.477 in 2011. Though few other countries have yet produced figures for 2011, that number for the US shows a more unequal economy for America than the 2010 figures for countries like Uruguay, Argentina and Bangladesh. Within the figures there was also an increase in the share of aggregate income for the top 20% of Americans of 1.6% and – within that group – the top 5% saw a jump of 4.9%.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Comments follow report from Moody's threatening to lower US's AAA rating if Congress does not act to avert 'fiscal cliff' Republican House speaker John Boehner has said he's "not confident at all" that the US can reach a budget deal to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff" economists have warned could plunge the US back into recession. Boehner's comments follow a report from credit rating agency Moody's threatening to lower the US government's AAA credit rating if Congress does not reach a compromise before the year end deadline. The fiscal cliff is a combination of tax increases and draconian spending set to go into effect by January unless compromise is reached. It could cut 3.9% of US growth next year – enough to make the year's total growth rate negative – according to the congressional budget office. The ratings agency said Tuesday that budget negotiations "will likely determine the direction of the US government's AAA rating and negative outlook". "If those negotiations lead to specific policies that produce a stabilization and then downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to GDP over the medium term, the rating will likely be affirmed and the outlook returned to stable, says Moody's. If those negotiations fail to produce such policies, however, Moody's would expect to lower the rating, probably to AA1." If Moody's cuts the US's government's rating, it would be following in the footsteps of Standard & Poor's which cut its rating last August amid howls of protest from Washington. Such a move is likely to increase the US's cost of borrowing but would pale in impact compared to a failure to resolve the fiscal cliff. Asked by reporters in Washington how confident he was that congressional negotiators could avoid the fiscal cliff Boehner said: "I'm not confident at all." Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid said he was "disappointed" with Boehner's comments. "We have to look at the glass being half full, not half empty all the time," Reid said. "I'm confident that we will reach some kind of an arrangement. It's much, much too early to give up." Congress appears to be closing in on a short-term solution to the crisis which would delay the fiscal cliff for six months and allow politicians to concentrate on the election. Moody's warned it was "unlikely" to maintain its current US rating unless a solution is found to both the fiscal cliff and the US's mounting debts.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Innocence of Muslims drew almost no one to the cinema in California. In Benghazi it provoked deadly fury The long fuse that led to the explosion of violence that killed the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was lit last summer in the pleasant hills of southern California, where a man who claims to be an Israeli-American real estate developer, Sam Bacile, set about making a film. The citrus groves and villas around Los Angeles are home not just to Hollywood but to a lucrative underside, a vast industry pumping out huge numbers of amateur, gonzo productions for internet distribution, most of them pornographic. But few have been intended to be as grotesquely offensive as Bacile's production, and none have had such explosive consequences. By his own account, Bacile raised a budget of $5m (£3m) from 100 unnamed Jewish donors for The Innocence of Muslims, which he wrote and directed himself, with the aim of demonstrating his belief, as he described it to the Wall Street Journal, that "Islam is a cancer". To that end, Bacile got his amateur cast to depict the prophet Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child abuse. It took three months, 59 actors and about 45 crew. The result was two hours of stumbling dialogue and wooden acting among flimsy sets, and a stream of gratuitous insults aimed at Muslims. It was screened in an almost empty cinema in Hollywood earlier this year. In another age, that would probably have been the end of the story. But in the YouTube era, in which the voices of fanatics are amplified, it was a bomb primed for detonation, months later and thousands of miles away. Bacile posted a 13-minute English-language trailer on YouTube in early July but it was only in the past week that it appears to have caught the attention of combatants in the online culture wars. A Florida pastor, Terry Jones, who had triggered protests in the Islamic world by burning the Qur'an and with his campaign to stop the construction of a mosque at the site of the 9/11 attacks, promoted the film on his website and announced his intention to broadcast the trailer at his Gainesville church this week. "It is an American production, not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam," he said in a statement. "The movie further reveals in a satirical fashion the life of Muhammad." The film clip was also spotted and promoted last week by Morris Sadik, an Egyptian Coptic Christian based in California who runs a small virulently Islamophobic group called the National American Coptic Assembly. It was later denounced by mainstream Copts in Egypt, but it was too late to stop it going viral. At some point over the summer a version of the YouTube trailer surfaced with the dialogue dubbed in Egyptian Arabic – Bacile says he has no idea who did the translation but has claimed it sounded accurate – and the translated clip was picked up by a firebrand Cairo television host, Sheikh Khaled Abdallah, who has a record of focusing on perceived threats to Islam and amplifying them. He aired clips from the video on his television show on Saturday, and the same video clips were posted to YouTube on Monday. As the Arab audience for the film grew exponentially, militant Islamists called for a mass protest at the US embassy in Cairo. The organisers told Associated Press that planning began last week when Sadik began promoting the trailers but the support for the demonstration snowballed after the Sheikh Abdallah programme on Saturday. A crowd of some 2,000 is reported to have gathered outside the embassy walls in Cairo on Tuesday night, catching the local security services flat-flooted. Most of the diplomats and local staff had left early and a few dozen of the demonstrators were able to scale the wall, take down the stars and stripes and replace it with a black flag. The Egyptian police only managed to evict them from the compound by late evening. By that time, however, the spark had jumped westwards to the Libyan city of Benghazi. According to al-Jazeera, an extremist militia called Ansar al-Sharia, one of many such armed groups staking out little fiefdoms in the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi's fall, heard about the storming of the Cairo embassy and the American film. According to al-Jazeera's correspondent in Benghazi, Suleiman Idrissi, "At about 11.30 pm a group of people calling themselves Islamic law [Sharia] supporters heard there would be an American movie insulting the prophet Muhammad. Once they heard this news they came out out of their military garrison, and went into the streets calling on people to go ahead and attack the American consulate in Benghazi." Rocket-propelled grenades were reported to have been fired from a farm next door to the consulate, and film clips on al-Jazeera show men roaming through the ornate gardens amid vehicles, vegetation and buildings in flames. Ambassador Stevens, who was on a short visit to Benghazi, is reported to have died from smoke inhalation, along with an American computer expert at the consulate, Sean Smith, and two security guards. Smith was an internet gaming enthusiast and was chatting online to another player at the time of the attack. According to the other player, who goes by the online handle of The_Mittani, Smith "said 'FUCK' and 'GUNFIRE' and then disconnected and never returned". By Wednesday, Sam Bacile was in hiding. He spoke to Associated Press from an undisclosed location, saying he had not expected such a furious reaction. He said: "I feel sorry for the embassy. I am mad." But Bacile still insisted that the movie would help Israel by exposing what he described as Islam's flaws to the world. "My plan is to make a series of 200 hours," he said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Civil right leader Jesse Jackson has met with both sides and says 'they can't hear each other' as union walkout continues Chicago teachers stayed away from public schools for a third day on Wednesday as both sides "dug in" in a dispute that looks no closer to being resolved. With more than 350,000 children from kindergarten to high school out of school, the patience of parents and labor negotiators began to fray as hopes of a quick resolution to the biggest YS labor strike in a year were dashed.
One of mayor Rahm Emanuel's negotiators, Barbara Byrd Bennett, said the two sides had not even met by early afternoon on Wednesday. The school district said it gave the union a comprehensive proposal on Tuesday night.
"We have not formally met with them. We have not received a response to our proposal," Byrd Bennett said. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who is based in Chicago, appeared at the site where negotiations were supposed to take place on Wednesday and said that he had met with both sides separately to urge them to settle. "Both sides are dug in. They can't hear each other," Jackson said. Emanuel attended a routine meeting of the city council on Wednesday where the strike was not discussed. After the meeting, he held a press conference and repeated his contention that the union chose to strike and should go back to work. "There's nothing that can't be worked through while our kids stay in the classroom. … Those issues can be negotiated simultaneously while our kids are in the classroom learning." But Karen Lewis, the union leader who has galvanized the union, said there were fundamental issues of closing schools in poor neighborhoods and evaluating teachers without giving due weight to the conditions children live in.
"If you are going to make decisions, instead of sitting in an air conditioned office with a spreadsheet, come talk to us and see what's really going on," she said on Wednesday. Lewis led the walkout on Monday of more than 29,000 teachers and support staff in the nation's third-largest school district, saying the union would not agree to school reforms it considers misguided and disrespectful. The dispute jolted the United States, where a weakened labor movement seldom stages strikes and even less frequently wins them. Organized labor has lost several fights in the last year including Wisconsin stripping public sector unions of most of their bargaining power, Indiana making union dues voluntary and two California cities voting to pare pensions for union workers. The strike in Barack Obama's home city has also put the US president in a tough spot between his ally and former top White House aide Emanuel and labor unions Obama is counting on to win re-election on November 6. Obama has said nothing in public about the dispute, allowing administration surrogates to urge the two sides to settle. Obama's own education department has championed some of the reforms Emanuel is seeking, and a win for the ambitious Chicago mayor would add momentum to the national school reform movement. "Being on the sidelines at the moment is fine. As long as it gets settled in a reasonable time period, no one's going to blame the president," Dick Simpson, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said of Obama. Emanuel canceled a trip to New York on Friday to speak to a group of bankers, his office said on Wednesday. The first poll of Chicago voters since the strike showed 47% supporting the teachers union, 39% against the strike and the rest uncommitted, according to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. The city is operating 147 schools with non-union staff to offer meals and "keep children safe and engaged", but only a fraction of parents have been using that option, officials said. At Disney elementary school, several dozen strikers with homemade signs targeting Emanuel and school policies picketed in cool, sunny weather on Wednesday. Kent Barnhart, a music teacher for the past 25 years, said neighborhood parents had been supportive, offering water and opening their homes and even joining picket lines to march. But he said teachers were frustrated with the slow talks. "It's difficult for us to understand why they have not truly discussed over the last 11 months things that have been very important," he said of school officials. "It didn't seem like they took it seriously – really important things like evaluations, health benefits and pay." Both sides agree Chicago schools need fixing. Chicago students consistently perform poorly on standardized math and reading tests. About 60% of high school students graduate, compared with 75% nationwide and more than 90% in some affluent Chicago suburban schools. The fight does not appear to center on wages, with the school district offering an average% rise over four years and some benefit improvements.
The union is fiercely opposed to Emanuel's demand that teacher performance be evaluated in part on the results of their students on standardized tests because it says teachers have no control over the conditions students face such as crime-ridden neighborhoods, poverty and disengaged parents. More than 80% of Chicago public school students qualify for free lunches at school because they come from low-income households.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Union president Karen Lewis says only six of nearly 50 provisions have been resolved with mayor Rahm Emanuel Chicago teachers stayed away from public schools for a third day on Wednesday in a strike over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's demand for tough teacher evaluations that US education reform advocates see as crucial to fixing urban schools. With some 350,000 children from kindergarten to high school age out of school, the patience of their parents began to fray as hopes were dashed for a quick resolution to the biggest US labor strike in a year. Fiery union president Karen Lewis, who has called Emanuel a "liar and a bully", said the two sides had agreed on only six of nearly 50 provisions of a new teacher contract. An exasperated Chicago school board president David Vitale said that he would not be back to the negotiating table on Wednesday until the union made a comprehensive proposal to resolve the strike. Lewis led the walkout on Monday of more than 29,000 teachers and support staff in the nation's third-largest school district, saying that the union would not agree to school reforms it considers misguided. The dispute jolted the United States, where a weakened labor movement seldom stages strikes and even less frequently wins them. Organized labor has lost several fights in the last year including Wisconsin stripping public sector unions of most of their bargaining power, Indiana making union dues voluntary and two California cities voting to pare pensions for unionized workers. The strike in Barack Obama's home city has put the US president in a tough spot between his ally and former top White House aide Emanuel, and labor unions he needs to win the presidential election on 6 November. Obama has said nothing in public about the dispute, allowing administration surrogates to urge the two sides to settle. "The president has said what is appropriate to be said, which is that it is a local issue," said Randi Weingarten, national president of the union that represents Chicago teachers. "It has national implication, but it has to be settled at the bargaining table." Obama's own education department has championed some of the reforms Emanuel is seeking, and a win for the ambitious Chicago mayor would add momentum to the national school reform movement. The first poll of Chicago voters since the strike showed 47% supporting the teachers union, 39% against the strike and the rest uncommitted, according to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. But that could change as the strike drags on and parents are forced to find childcare or stay away from work for days. Both sides agree Chicago schools need fixing. Chicago students consistently perform poorly on standardized math and reading tests. About 60% of high school students graduate compared with 75% nationwide and more than 90% in some affluent Chicago suburban schools. The fight does not appear to be over wages, with the school district offering an average 16% rise over four years and some benefit improvements. They are at loggerheads over Emanuel's demand that teacher performance be evaluated in part on the results of their students on standardized tests. He also wants school principals to have more autonomy in hiring teachers. The union is fiercely opposed to evaluations based on standardized tests because it says teachers have no control over the conditions in which students live such as crime-ridden neighborhoods, poverty and disengaged parents. More than 80% of Chicago public school students qualify for free lunches at school because they come from low-income households. "We are miles apart because this is a very serious ideological difference here," Lewis said of the dispute over evaluations. John Kugler, a union activist representing school staff such as nurses and social workers, demonstrated outside the Chicago Public Schools headquarters on Tuesday in support of the strike because he said schools in poor areas need more resources. "We're talking about some of the poorest communities, some of the most at-risk communities. That's what we're fighting for," he said.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Judges at constitutional court reject popular petition, allowing Germany to ratify treaty to establish €500bn fund Germany's highest court has paved the way for the creation of a €500bn rescue fund to tackle the eurozone's debt crisis after a huge popular petition to block it was rejected. The decision by the eight justices of the constitutional court in the south-western city of Karlsruhe now allows Germany to ratify the treaty to establish the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and will enable it to become effective next month. But a key condition attached to the ruling means that Germany's liabilities will be capped at €190bn, unless parliament rules otherwise. The limitation will go some way to assuage the concerns of German taxpayers whose frustration at the prospect of having to bail out indebted southern European countries indefinitely has been on the rise. A poll before the ruling showed that 54% of Germans wanted the court to block the ESM. Markets reacted positively to the decision with the euro reaching a four-month high, after the conditions imposed by the court, which had been widely expected to reject calls to block the fund, were less burdensome than German parliamentarians and other ESM supporters had feared. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, for whom the ruling is a personal breakthrough, allowing the go-ahead of the two-pronged approach of both bailouts and budgetary discipline in the form of the fiscal pact that she has consistently advocated, said the decision sent a strong signal of Germany's commitment to Europe, and was positive news for the German taxpayer. Addressing the Bundestag she said: "This is a good day for Germany and a good day for Europe." Frank-Walter Steinmeier, leader of the opposition Social Democrats, expressed his relief that the ESM, whose creation had been substantially delayed by the constitutional court's deliberations, could now start to work. "The significance of this decision for the future of Europe cannot be overestimated," he told the Bundestag. The court had been under huge pressure not to torpedo the ESM, amid fears that it would cause the destruction of the euro and have a chaotic effect on the global economy. Andreas Vosskuhle, the court's president, said "the economic and political consequences" of delaying the law's introduction were "almost impossible to calculate reliably". A little light relief amid the gravitas of an occasion which amounted to the most important ruling in the court's 61-year history was offered by a slip of the tongue by Vosskuhle who called the petitions to block the ESM "justified" before changing it to "unjustified" after being corrected by a colleague, as peals of laughter filled the courtroom.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ambassador and three other American embassy staff killed after Islamist militants fired rockets at their car, say Libyan officials The US ambassador in Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack after the diplomat's car was targeted in the eastern city of Benghazi, it was confirmed on Wednesday. A statement from President Obama "condemned the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens". The president added: "Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States." Earlier, Libya's interior ministry confirmed that Stevens died in the attack. "The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them," a Libyan official told Reuters. An unconfirmed photograph posted on Facebook appears to show a mob dragging a lifeless Stevens along the ground, his shirt off. Some reports say he suffocated to death. Libya's deputy prime minister, Mustafa Abushagur, said security forces have launched a manhunt to find the killers. "I condemn the cowardly act of attacking the US consulate and the killing of Mr Stevens," he said. The exact circumstances of the ambassador's death remain unclear. On Tuesday night a group of extremists attacked the US consulate building in Benghazi, setting it on fire, and killing one US diplomatic officer. There are reports in Tripoli that Stevens was not killed in the Tuesday night assault, but was attacked by a second mob when he arrived close to the scene early on Wednesday morning. On Tuesday the US state department confirmed that one of its employees had been killed by the mob that stormed the US mission in Benghazi, incensed by a US film that they deemed blasphemous to the prophet Muhammad. Libyan officials said Stevens and two security staff were in their car when gunmen fired rockets at it, Reuters reported. The official said the US military had sent a military plane to transport the bodies to Tripoli and to fly them back to the US. One witness told the Guardian on Wednesday that a mob fired at least one rocket at the US consulate building in Benghazi and then stormed it, setting everything ablaze. "I was there about an hour ago. The place (US consulate) is totally destroyed, the whole building is on fire," said Mohammed El Kish, a former press officer with the National Transitional Council, which handed power to an elected parliament last month. He added: "They stole a lot of things." Kish, who is from Benghazi, blamed the attack on hardline jihadists. He said locals in Benghazi were upset by the activities of Islamist groups and would revolt against them. He also said the US consulate was not well protected, unlike the fortified US embassy in the capital, Tripoli. "It wasn't that much heavily guarded. In Tripoli the embassy is heavily guarded." The ambassador's killing follows an attack in June on the UK ambassador to Libya, Dominic Asquith. Two British bodyguards were injured after a rocket was fired at Asquith's convoy in Benghazi, hitting his security escort. There have been similar attacks in Benghazi on the Red Cross and the UN. It is not clear why the US ambassador had returned to Benghazi at a time of security concerns. On Wednesday the British embassy in Tripoli said that after the attack in June UK diplomats were pulled out of Benghazi. "Nobody is based there permanently. We have a villa there and an office, with staff travelling there from time to time," it said. No British staff were injured during Tuesday's attack on the US mission, it added. Benghazi was the cradle of Libya's revolution last year against Muammar Gaddafi. The rebels' military victory was made possible by a Nato air campaign against regime targets, supported by the US. But in recent months radical Islamist groups have become increasingly active in much of the east of the country, threatening the country's weak civilian government in Tripoli. According to the Libya Herald, citing local witnesses, those who attacked the US mission included members of the hardline Islamist group Ansar Al-Sharia. It reported that Libya security forces tried to defend the embassy building but withdrew under heavy fire. The attackers opened fire on the buildings and threw homemade bombs into the compound, setting off small explosions. Fires burned around the compound. The assault followed a protest in neighbouring Egypt where demonstrates scaled the walls of the US embassy, tore down the US flag, and burned it during a protest over the same film which they said insulted the prophet Muhammad. Speaking on Tuesday – before the death of the US ambassador was reported – the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said she was heartbroken at the death of a US officer in Benghazi. "I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today," Clinton said in a statement. "We have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack." She said she had been in contact with Mohamed Magarief, the new president of Libya's General National Congress, which was formed following post-Gaddafi elections in June. Clinton asked him "to co-ordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya. President Magarief expressed his condemnation and condolences and pledged his government's full cooperation". She said that "some have sought to justify this vicious behaviour as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind". The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, condemned the attack on Wednesday. "There is no justification for such an attack and the appalling death of an US official. My thoughts and condolences are with his family and all his colleagues at the State Department," he said. "It is essential that the Libyan authorities take urgent action to improve security, particularly in Benghazi, and identify those responsible for such attacks." The attack on the consulate comes two weeks after Salafists used a bulldozer to destroy a key Sufi Islamic shrine in central Tripoli, watched by security forces who did not intervene. It is likely to be the first challenge for Libya's new prime minister, due to be elected on Wednesday by the 200-member national parliament.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | PM says he is 'profoundly sorry' for failures that caused disaster and for attempts to shift blame on to football fans David Cameron said he was "profoundly sorry" for the failures that caused the Hillsborough disaster and the subsequent attempts to shift blame for the tragedy on to supporters after the publication of a damning report on the events 23 years ago that left 96 dead. Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, the prime minister said the findings in the report were "deeply distressing". He said: "With the weight of the new evidence in the report it's right for me today as prime minister to make a proper apology to the families of the 96 … On behalf of the government, and indeed of our country, I am profoundly sorry that this double injustice has been left uncorrected for so long." The report by the Hillsborough independent panel, established three years ago and chaired by the bishop of Liverpool, James Jones, found that there was a failure of authorities to protect people and an attempt to blame fans. The panel concluded that the main cause of the Hillsborough disaster was a "failure in police control" but also revealed "multiple failures" within other organisations that compromised crowd safety. It underlined the "clear operational failure" that led to the disaster and the attempts by South Yorkshire police (SYP) and the ambulance service to cover up their shortcomings. The fact that the ambulance service also altered statements from staff is revealed for the first time. The evidence shows "conclusively" that Liverpool fans "neither caused nor contributed to the deaths" and shows the extent to which attempts, endorsed by the South Yorkshire chief constable Peter Wright, were made to smear them. Documents released to the panel show how high-ranking police sources, the South Yorkshire Police Federation and the Tory MP Irvine Patnick were responsible for feeding the stories to Whites News Agency in Yorkshire. They led to the infamous Sun headline "The Truth" that led to a longstanding boycott of the paper in Liverpool. "The Police Federation, supported informally by the SYP chief constable, sought to develop and publicise a version of events derived in police officers' allegations of drunkenness, ticketless fans and violence. This extended beyond the media to parliament," said the panel."From the mass of documents, television and CCTV coverage disclosed to the panel there is no evidence to support these allegations other than a few isolated examples of aggressive or verbally abusive behaviour clearly reflecting frustration and desperation. The vast majority of fans on the pitch assisted in rescuing and evacuating the dead and injured." The panel found that 164 police statements were significantly amended and 116 explicitly removed negative comments about the policing operation, including its lack of leadership, a revelation that drew gasps when relayed by Cameron in parliament. Officers carried out police national computer checks on those who had died in an attempt "to impugn the reputations of the deceased" and the coroner took blood alcohol levels from all of the deceased, including children. The panel found that close analysis of the documents demonstrated that the weight placed on blood alcohol levels was inappropriate, fuelling "persistent and unsustainable assertions about drunken fan behaviour not supported by evidence of moderate patterns of drinking unremarkable for a leisure event." Documents disclosed to the panel also reveal that the original pathologists' evidence of a single unvarying pattern of death is unsustainable. The assumption was the basis of a coroner's imposition of a 3.15pm cut-off on evidence to the inquests. It led to the mistaken belief that an effective emergency service intervention could not have saved lives. The panel's disclosure confirms that in some cases death was not immediate and the outcome depended on events after 3.15pm. Dr Bill Kirkup, from the panel, said at a press conference at the Anglican cathedral in Liverpool that 41 of the victims had "potential to survive", although he could not say for sure how many could have been saved. Cameron said it would be for the attorney general to decide whether to apply to the high court to quash the original inquest and seek a new one, as the families are demanding. But he added that it was clear "today's report raises vital questions which must be examined". The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, made his own apology for his party not doing more to uncover the truth during its 13 years in office from 1997 to 2010. "We on this side also apologise to the families that we didn't do enough to help," he said. A succession of MPs called for legal action against those responsible for the failures that led to the tragedy or who were involved in the subsequent cover-up, variously suggesting that proceedings should be brought for defamation, misconduct in public office and perverting the course of justice. More than 23 years after 96 men, women and children died in the Leppings Lane end of the ground on 15 April 1989, the families of those who died gave the panel a standing ovation in Liverpool Cathedral as it delivered its findings. "For nearly a quarter of a century the families of the 96 and the survivors of Hillsborough have nursed an open wound waiting for answers to unresolved questions. It has been a frustrating and painful experience adding to their grief. In spite of all the investigations they have sensed that their search for truth and justice has been thwarted and that no one has been held accountable," said Jones. "The documents disclosed to and analysed by the panel show that the tragedy should never have happened. There were clear operational failures in response to the disaster and in its aftermath there were strenuous attempts to deflect the blame on to the fans. The panel's detailed report shows how vulnerable victims, survivors and their families are when transparency and accountability are compromised." Sheila Coleman of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign welcomed Cameron's apology. She told BBC Radio 4's World at One that the inquest verdicts "have to be quashed" and that criminal charges should be brought "because all the evidence today shows that South Yorkshire police and people in South Yorkshire police lied and operated a cover-up."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Documentary film 2016: Obama's America has wowed at the box office but infuriated campaigners for the president's re-election Barack Obama's campaign team has published an extensive critique of a documentary which accuses the US president of being an anti-colonialist who will work to reduce his country's influence on world affairs if he is re-elected this winter. 2016: Obama's America, directed by Indian-American conservative author and commentator Dinesh D'Souza, has been a surprise box office success in the US this summer. As of last weekend, it had taken $26.2m (£16.3m), behind only Michael Moore's anti-George W Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11 in the pantheon of US political documentaries. D'Souza's film argues the president's political instincts are anti-American – allegedly due to the influence of his supposedly anti-colonialist Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr. It warns that a second term for the Democratic candidate after November's presidential election could change the country for good, and ends with the statement: "The future is in your hands." Obama's re-election team hit back on Wednesday with an online post via the campaign website BarackObama.com. "That his writings and film are based on lies should not come as a surprise to anyone given D'Souza's long history of attempting to add a veneer of intellectual respectability to fringe theories, conspiratorial fear-mongering, and flat-out falsehoods," it reads. "Right-wing author Dinesh D'Souza has recently released 2016: Obama's America, a movie that falsely smears President Obama as having a hidden agenda bent on realising 'anti-colonial' ambitions'," the post begins, before quoting a series of poor verdicts on the film and its director's previous work across a range of media. "A self-proclaimed expert on the president, D'Souza bases the film around his own past works, which were previously described as 'the worst kind of smear journalism,' and riddled with 'lazy' errors," the post continues. "The result is what Variety calls a 'cavalcade of conspiracy theories, psycho-politico conjectures and incendiary labelling' and what the LA Times labels a 'badly disguised and overly long attack ad'. A look at D'Souza's record is a look at a history of demonstrably false and ridiculous claims about the president, and 2016 is no exception. In fact, admitting President Obama was born in the US is what Bloomberg calls 'as close to moderation as this nutty film gets'." It adds: "2016 promises to show viewers what they 'don't know' about President Obama, but instead reveals what Newsday called a 'ranter' peddling conspiracy theories. In place of an actual documentary, D'Souza employs 'pseudo-scholarly leaps of logic' to invent an imaginary character who has inherited 'anti-colonial,' 'Third World' views from his father — whom he last saw when he was 10 years old." Obama's team also suggests that D'Souza once falsely accused the president of backing the release of the Lockerbie bomber, despite his administration having stated its opposition to the move and written to the Scottish government to raise its strong objection. The team alleges that D'Souza once accused Obama of authorising the US bank bailouts when it was George W Bush who signed the troubled asset relief programme into law in October 2008. D'Souza, meanwhile, hit back in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. "Their original strategy was to lie low and hope this goes away, but now they're launching a full-scale attack," he said. "And this is one of the most bizarre, clumsy and ineffective attacks I have seen in politics. Half of the stuff they talk about isn't even in the film – like the Lockerbie bomber. These guys are referencing a Columbia Journalism Review article that's two years old and is about my book, not about the film." D'Souza pointed out that Obama's team made no mention of the interview the commentator conducted with the president's Kenyan half-brother, George Obama, who lives in Huruma Flats near Nairobi, and who the film-maker claims lives in poverty. "If Mitt Romney had a half brother living destitute in a third-world slum, it would be on the front page of the New York Times and a topic on MSNBC, CBS News and the Sunday talk shows," said D'Souza. "But this fact is not even reported by those outlets. They just pretend it doesn't exist. It's immensely interesting that a guy who has more than 50 times quoted the Bible – 'we are our brother's keeper' – has a half-brother he won't help at all. That's not a story?"
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow the latest developments as anti-Islam film stirs violence in Libya and Egypt
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | US ambassador and three other American embassy staff killed after Islamist militants fire rockets at their car. Follow the latest here
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Building standards criticised after deadly blazes at underwear factory in Karachi and illegal shoemaking operation in Lahore Factory fires in Pakistan's two biggest cities have killed more than 300 people – and been blamed on barred windows, shoddy building standards and the flouting of basic safety regulations. At least 289 died after becoming trapped in a blazing underwear factory in the coastal megalopolis of Karachi on Tuesday evening. More were injured after trying to escape by jumping out of high windows of the five-floor building, including a pregnant woman. That fire came just hours after a similar blaze in an illegally built shoe factory in Lahore, which killed at least 25. Pakistani TV broadcast harrowing footage of the Karachi fire, the worst industrial disaster to hit the city in decades. Rescue workers said the factory was a death trap, with many of those inside having no chance to escape the flames and toxic fumes. Muhammad Ilyas, one of the injured workers, said he had been with about 50 other men and women on one of the floors when a fireball suddenly erupted from the staircase. "I jumped from my seat as did others and rushed toward the windows, but iron bars on the windows barred us from escaping. Some of us quickly took tools and machines to break the iron bars." The twin tragedies will focus attention on the weak workplace safety regime in a country that relies heavily on its low-cost garment and textile industries for vital export earnings. "There were no safety measures … there was no emergency exit. All the people got trapped," said Amjad Farooqi, a senior Karachi police official. Faulty wiring, unsafe chemicals and a lack of emergency exits were blamed for the deaths in the factory in a residential area of Lahore . The efforts of firefighters and ambulances were hindered by huge crowds of onlookers. One rescue officer, Ahmad Raza, told the Dawn newspaper that the fire had been triggered by faulty wiring in one part of the building, which he said ignited nearby chemicals that had not been properly stored.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Building safety standards criticised after dual disaster strikes underwear and shoe factories in Karachi and Lahore Factory fires in Pakistan's two biggest cities have killed 261 people in a disaster blamed on barred windows, shoddy building standards and the flouting of basic safety regulations. In the coastal megalopolis of Karachi 191 people were killed after becoming trapped in an underwear factory that caught fire on Tuesday evening. Many others were injured after trying to escape by jumping out of high windows of the five-floor building, including a pregnant woman. That fire came just hours after a similar tragedy in an illegally built shoe factory in Pakistan's second largest city, Lahore, which killed 25. Pakistani television broadcast harrowing footage of the worst industrial disaster to hit Karachi in decades. Rescue workers said the factory was a death-trap, with many of the 200 overtime workers thought to be inside at the time having no chance to escape the flames and toxic fumes. Mohammad Ilyas, one of the injured workers, said he had been with about 50 other men and women on one of the floors when a fireball suddenly erupted from the staircase. "I jumped from my seat as did others and rushed toward the windows, but iron bars on the windows barred us from escaping. Some of us quickly took tools and machines to break the iron bars," he said. The tragedy will focus attention on the weak workplace safety regime in a country that relies heavily on its low-cost garment and textile industries for vital export earnings. "There were no safety measures taken in the building design. There was no emergency exit. All the people got trapped," said a senior police official, Amjad Farooqi. The lack of emergency exits was also blamed for the death toll in Lahore in a shoe factory illegally built in a residential area of the city. The efforts of firefighters and ambulances were hindered by huge crowds of onlookers. One rescue officer, Ahmad Raza, told the Dawn newspaper that the fire had been triggered by faulty wiring in one part of the building, which he said ignited nearby chemicals that had not been properly stored.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Germany's highest court has ruled that the European Stability Mechanism does not violate German law. The new permanent rescue fund can now come into effect soon
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Germany's highest court has ruled that the European Stability Mechanism does not violate German law
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A raft of literary adaptations are getting their first screenings at the Toronto film festival, says Catherine Shoard
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow the latest developments as anti-Islam film stirs protests
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow the latest developments as anti-Islam film stirs violence
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Officials confirm source of stench in southern California is gas produced by decaying fish wafting from inland lake It smelled like rotten eggs, but the source of what California officials called a "very large and unusual odour event" has been traced to rotten fish. The stench, which began on Sunday and spread throughout southern California, prompting hundreds of complaints and thousands of jokes, came from the inland lake known as the Salton Sea, air quality officials said on Tuesday. The smell reached Los Angeles, 150 miles to the north, astounding experts who at first doubted it was scientifically possible for a smell to travel so far. "I just thought San Diego farted," said one wag. Official inspectors confirmed the culprit was in fact concentrations of gas produced by decaying fish. "We now have solid evidence that clearly points to the Salton Sea as the source," Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, said in a statement. Massive fish die-offs are common in the 376-sq mile lake, which is itself slowly dying from excessive salinity, but nobody remembered such a powerful stench. Experts collected air samples, modelled weather patterns and ran computer simulations as part of "odour surveillance" before concluding a huge thunderstorm churned up fetid waters with bacteria and made the stench airborne where it became trapped by low-hanging clouds and then gusted north on 60mph winds. "No one using the freeways could possibly have travelled so far so fast in southern California," noted the Mercury News. The noxious smell, however, zipped through Mecca, Indio and other towns on its way through the Coachella Valley and Los Angeles. "I think we've shown it was theoretically possible," Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the AQMD, told reporters. "But this is just something we did not expect." Other suspects, besides San Diego, included oil refineries, landfills and natural springs, though from the outset a combination of weather and fish was considered likeliest. ''The problem I'm having is the magnitude of the area that was covered by the odour itself,'' Andrew Schlange, general manager at the Salton Sea Authority, told reporters before inspectors confirmed their findings. ''But I guess it can happen under the right conditions, and we had those conditions, apparently, the other night." Salton Sea, formed in 1905 when floodwaters breached a Colorado river irrigation canal, sits 235 feet below sea level and is 50% saltier than the ocean. It was a popular resort destination in the 1950s but increasing salinity, receding shorelines and periodic mass fish deaths turned it into a symbol of decay and desolation in documentaries such as Bombay Beach. "What happened gives us an opportunity to let people know that the Salton Sea is dying and that we need to fix it," said Schlange.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Social networking site's co-founder has given his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering Mark Zuckerberg has called Facebook's stock market debut disappointing but said the company was set to bounce back. "Some days are hard, some days kick ass," the firm's billionaire co-founder told an audience at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in San Francisco in his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering in May. Zuckerberg has come under intense criticism since the IPO. The company's share price is close to half the $38 (£23.5) price it reached at the launch and the company and its advisers are being sued by angry investors. The price collapsed due to fears that the company was not prepared for the dramatic shift to mobile devices, an area in which the company has struggled to make money. But after Zuckerberg offered a robust defence of Facebook's mobile strategy, shares rose 4% in after hours trading. "The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing," said Zuckerberg. He said the big question in people's minds was how well the social networking company would do in mobile. Zuckerberg said that IPO rules had prevented the company from updating people on Facebook's mobile developments and that "a lot of things have changed". "I think it's easy for a lot of folks without us being out there talking about what we are doing to fundamentally underestimate how good mobile is for us," he said. Zuckerberg said mobile had more users and those people were spending more time on Facebook. He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run. Questioned about the atmosphere inside the company, Zuckerberg said the collapsing share price had brought pressures. He has faced criticism about claiming he was more interested in Facebook's "mission" than in making money. "It is definitely true that the primary thing that makes me excited about what we are doing is the mission, but I also think that from the beginning we have had a healthy understanding that we need to do both," said Zuckerberg. He said "it doesn't help" motivate staff that the share price had fallen so hard but said the future looked brighter. Zuckerberg ruled out the prospect of Facebook launching its own mobile device. Arch-rival Google has increasingly moved into the hardware business with phones and tablet devices. He said such a move would make no sense for Facebook. But he said he was interested in Google's core product - internet search. He said that the "legacy" in search was about keywords triggering responses from search engines like Google or Bing. Social search would give people more specific answers to questions like "what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked". Zuckerberg also defended his $1bn purchase of Instagram, a loss making photo-sharing site that now has over 100m users. "They are this super-talented group of engineers that are building this amazing product," he said. He said Instagram would remain a standalone company. "There's no doubt we are a mission driven company," said Zuckerberg. "The thing that gets us excited is making the world more open and connected. But you can't just focus on that."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Social networking site's co-founder has given his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering Mark Zuckerberg has called Facebook's stock market debut disappointing but said the company was set to bounce back. "Some days are hard, some days kick ass," the firm's billionaire co-founder told an audience at TechCrunch's Disrupt conference in San Francisco in his first interview since the company's disastrous initial public offering in May. Zuckerberg has come under intense criticism since the IPO. The company's share price is close to half the $38 (£23.5) price it reached at the launch and the company and its advisers are being sued by angry investors. The price collapsed due to fears that the company was not prepared for the dramatic shift to mobile devices, an area in which the company has struggled to make money. But after Zuckerberg offered a robust defence of Facebook's mobile strategy, shares rose 4% in after hours trading. "The performance of the stock has obviously been disappointing," said Zuckerberg. He said the big question in people's minds was how well the social networking company would do in mobile. Zuckerberg said that IPO rules had prevented the company from updating people on Facebook's mobile developments and that "a lot of things have changed". "I think it's easy for a lot of folks without us being out there talking about what we are doing to fundamentally underestimate how good mobile is for us," he said. Zuckerberg said mobile had more users and those people were spending more time on Facebook. He said the firm expected to make a lot more money off those users in the long run. Questioned about the atmosphere inside the company, Zuckerberg said the collapsing share price had brought pressures. He has faced criticism about claiming he was more interested in Facebook's "mission" than in making money. "It is definitely true that the primary thing that makes me excited about what we are doing is the mission, but I also think that from the beginning we have had a healthy understanding that we need to do both," said Zuckerberg. He said "it doesn't help" motivate staff that the share price had fallen so hard but said the future looked brighter. Zuckerberg ruled out the prospect of Facebook launching its own mobile device. Arch-rival Google has increasingly moved into the hardware business with phones and tablet devices. He said such a move would make no sense for Facebook. But he said he was interested in Google's core product - internet search. He said that the "legacy" in search was about keywords triggering responses from search engines like Google or Bing. Social search would give people more specific answers to questions like "what sushi restaurants have my friends been to in New York and liked". Zuckerberg also defended his $1bn purchase of Instagram, a loss making photo-sharing site that now has over 100m users. "They are this super-talented group of engineers that are building this amazing product," he said. He said Instagram would remain a standalone company. "There's no doubt we are a mission driven company," said Zuckerberg. "The thing that gets us excited is making the world more open and connected. But you can't just focus on that."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Haaretz claims president turned down meeting offer from prime minister as Israel increases rhetoric over Iran nuclear facilities The public feuding between Israel and Washington ratcheted up sharply on Tuesday amid claims that Barack Obama has declined to meet Binyamin Netanyahu during the Israeli prime minister's visit to the US later this month. Haaretz reported an Israeli official as saying that Netanyahu asked for a meeting with the president after attending the opening of the UN general assembly in New York in late September. Netanyahu offered to travel to Washington but the White House allegedly said Obama was too busy. Israeli officials confirmed that version of events to other reporters. But the White House denied any intentional snub of Netanyahu, saying that the president was not able to meet the Israeli leader in New York because the pair would not be in the city on the same day. It also said Netanyahu did not request a meeting in Washington, "nor was a request for a meeting ever denied". However, Israeli officials continued to assert in private that Obama appeared to have snubbed the Israeli leader. It will be the first time Netanyahu travels to the US as prime minister without seeing Obama. The perception of deepening strains was reinforced by an undiplomatic warning to the US from Netanyahu on Tuesday over Iran's nuclear programme which prompted suspicions in the Obama administration that the Israeli leader is dabbling in the American election campaign. It also resulted in an hour long call from the president to Jerusalem although the White House released little information about what was said. Netanyahu said other countries have no moral right to block an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities if they are not prepared to set firm "red lines" for Tehran, including a deadline for it to meet western demands for a halt to uranium enrichment. He did not name the US, but that is where the warning was aimed. "The world tells Israel: Wait. There's still time. And I say: Wait for what? Wait until when?" said the Israeli prime minister. "Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel." He disparaged economic sanctions against Iran as ineffective, saying that Iran is getting closer every day to building a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu's comments came in response to a statement by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, who at the weekend rejected Netanyahu's calls for red lines, and said sanctions and diplomacy need to be given time to shift Iran. "We're not setting deadlines," Clinton told Bloomberg Radio. "We're convinced that we have more time to focus on these sanctions, to do everything we can to bring Iran to a good-faith negotiation." The Israeli leader's public challenge to Obama over Iran was taken badly in Washington. The White House said of the president's call to the Israeli leader only that the two "are united in their determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and agreed to continue their close consultations going forward". But there is a suspicion that Netanyahu is seeking to use the US election to bounce Obama into committing to early military action against Iran or is trying to influence Jewish American votes in favour of the more hawkish Republican candidate, Mitt Romney by suggesting the president is jeopardising Israel's security. Netanyahu only recently pulled back from months of threatening rhetoric over an attack on Iran, under pressure from the US and Europe – including, it emerged on Tuesday, a highly unusual visit two weeks ago of the head of the British intelligence service MI6, Sir John Sawers, as a special envoy from the prime minister, David Cameron. In meetings with Netanyahu and his defence minister, Ehud Barak, Sawers reinforced the message from Washington that an attack on Iran in the near future would only complicate attempts to dissuade the country from developing a nuclear weapon. An Israeli official source told Haaretz that British fear of an imminent Israeli strike was heightened by Netanyahu's failure in a phone call with Cameron "to provide clear and precise answers" to questions about Israeli intentions. As it toned down the rhetoric, the Israeli leadership sought guarantees of US action if Iran failed to meet western demands - the so-called "red lines". But Washington has refused to agree. The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, further angered the Israelis by saying there is still more than a year to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon. He also contradicted Israeli claims that Iran had already decided to build an atomic bomb. Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, sought to cool tensions on Tuesday, at least in public, by saying that differences should be sorted out "behind closed doors". "We must not forget that the US is Israel's most important source of support in terms of security," he said. Last week, the chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, Mike Rogers, described attending a "very tense" and argumentative meeting between Netanyahu and the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, in late August at which the pair had "elevated" exchanges.
Rogers described Netanyahu as at his "wit's end" over Obama's refusal to set red lines for Iran. "It was very, very clear that the Israelis had lost their patience with the administration," Rogers told a Detroit radio station. "We've had sharp exchanges with other heads of state and other things, in intelligence services and other things, but nothing at that level that I've seen in all my time where people were clearly that agitated, clearly that worked up about a particular issue, where there was a very sharp exchange." Rogers said Israel will probably bomb Iran if the White House does not lay down firm limits for Iran. Shapiro rejected the characterisation of the meeting. A former senior Israeli foreign ministry official and diplomat who served in the US, Alon Liel, said Netanyahu engineered the confrontation in front of Rogers. "It appears to be an attempt to help the Republicans in the upcoming election. The entire show, under the patronage of Rogers, is meant to prove to the American public, and in particular to the Jewish community, that the rift between Israel and the United States is more significant and deeper than we thought," he wrote in Haaretz.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Spokesman for Libya's supreme security committee says member of staff at consulate has died following clashes An American member of staff at the US consulate in Benghazi has died following fierce clashes at the compound, two Libyan security sources said on Wednesday. "One American staff member has died and a number have been injured in the clashes," Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya's supreme security committee, said, adding that he did not know the exact number of injured. Gunmen attacked the compound in the eastern city on Tuesday evening, clashing with Libyan security forces before the latter withdrew as they came under heavy fire. Reuters reporters on the scene saw looters raiding the compound, walking off with desks, chairs and washing machines. A security official said a fire was burning inside the consulate and that staff had been evacuated. Three injured members of the Libyan security forces taken away in an ambulance. The gunmen formed part of a group protesting against a US film they say is blasphemous. The incident followed a protest in Egypt where demonstrators scaled the walls of the US embassy, tore down the American flag and burned it during a protest over the same film, which attacks Islam's prophet, Muhammad. The film, clips of which are available on YouTube, depicts Muhammad as a fraud, showing him having sex and calling for massacres. Muslims find it offensive to depict Muhammad in any fashion, much less in an insulting way. Hurr said roads in Benghazi had been closed off and security forces were surrounding the building. He said the clashes were outside the consulate building. "There is a connection between this attack and the protests that have been happening in Cairo," he added. "They are trying to take advantage of the security situation in Libya and cause more instability in the country." The United States condemned the Benghazi attack and said efforts are underway with the help of Libyan authorities to secure the facility. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said: "We can confirm that our office in Benghazi, Libya has been attacked by a group of militants. We are working with the Libyans now to secure the compound. We condemn in strongest terms this attack on our diplomatic mission." Benghazi, the cradle of last year's uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, has been hit by several bombings and attacks on international convoys as well as some western missions. In June, an explosive device was dropped from a passing car outside the offices of the US diplomatic mission. The blast that followed slightly damaged the gate in front of the building. A week later, a British embassy convoy was attacked about 300 metres from the British consulate office in the city.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Projections that Apple will sell 8m of the devices predict growth rate surge of 0.5%. That is if it's releasing an iPhone at all When it was originally unveiled, the iPhone was so universally revered that wags dubbed it the "Jesus Phone". Five years on, its power is so great that its latest iteration could perform the miraculous feat of saving the US economy. Apple's release of the iPhone 5 on Wednesday could materially impact US gross domestic product (GDP) in the fourth quarter of the year, claimed JP Morgan's chief economist Michael Feroli in a note to clients. Boosting the bottom line of the world's most valuable company is one thing, but Feroli contends that iPhone sales could add between 0.25 and 0.5 of a percentage point to the US's sluggish economic growth rate. JP Morgan expects Apple to sell around 8m of the new devices in the fourth quarter and for the iPhone 5 to be priced at about $600. Subtracting about $200 in imported component costs would allow the government to factor in $400 per phone into its GDP calculations for the fourth quarter, according to Feroli's calculations. In his note, Feroli wrote: "Calculated using the so-called 'retail control method', sales of iPhone 5 could boost annualized GDP growth by $3.2bn, or $12.8bn at an annual rate." Sales would help prop up the struggling US economy by limiting "the downside risk to our Q4 GDP growth protection, which remains 2%", he wrote. Feroli said the estimate of between a quarter to a half point of annualized GDP "seems fairly large, and for that reason should be treated skeptically". But, he added, "we think the recent evidence is consistent with this projection". The report met with some scepticism among Feroli's peers. "God help us if we have to rely on the iPhone to underpin the US economy," said one analyst who wished to remain anonymous. Others questioned the math, pointing out that if people buy iPhones with money they had intended to spend elsewhere, there would be no GDP boost. Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG said the larger point was what the story said about the US economy. "There's no doubt that Apple are going to sell millions of these things," he said. "But it underscores how weak the economy is that we even care about the possible impact of a quarter percentage boost to the economy." Of course there is always the tiny possibility that Apple will not be releasing the iPhone 5 at all. The notoriously secretive company has given no details of tomorrow's much anticipated launch. If it isn't a new iPhone, heaven help us all.
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