|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Closer magazine says it has pictures of Kate topless taken during a brief holiday with William in Provence last week The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are said to be "saddened" by claims made by a French magazine that it will publish topless photographs of Kate on Friday. The royal couple broke new ground by touring a mosque for the first time during their tour of Malaysia, but all media attention was on speculation that another member of the Royal Family will be at the centre of embarrassing images. Closer magazine has said it has exclusive pictures of Kate topless on the terrace of a guest house, taken during a brief holiday she enjoyed with William in France last week. The couple were staying in Provence at a chateau owned by Lord Linley, the Queen's nephew, ahead of their Diamond Jubilee tour of south-east Asia and the South Pacific on behalf of the Queen. St James's Palace declined to comment on the claims made by the publication, but royal officials said that if the photos are genuine and are published, it would be like "turning the clock back 15 years", according to reports. The magazine's French website showed an image of its new front cover with a heavily pixellated image of a woman with dark hair, it claims is the Duchess, in a bikini apparently about to remove her top. William and Kate were told about the allegations this morning before they visited they Assyakirin Mosque and had also looked at the images on the website. Speaking about the royal couple a source said: "They're saddened their privacy has been breached - if it has been breached." The source stressed it could not confirm if the pictures were of Kate as they appeared to have been taken with a long lens and were pixellated. The source added: "We will talk to our lawyers in London and counterparts in Paris to see what options are available." He went on to say: "We're not aware of anyone (in the UK) seeking to publish so the Press Complaints Commission is not coming into it." If the topless pictures are genuine, it would reignite the row over privacy which raged around Prince Harry last month, when embarrassing images emerged of him frolicking naked in a Las Vegas hotel. Staying in a reported £5,000-a-night hotel suite, Harry was filmed wearing a hat, sunglasses and colourful swimming shorts, and socialising with bikini-clad women at a pool party. The Sun was the only British newspaper to defy a Press Complaints Commission advisory note not to publish photos of Harry in the nude with an unnamed woman. The Duke and Duchess arrived in Singapore on Tuesday and are currently in Malaysia before travelling on to Borneo then the South Pacific. Malaysia is a largely Muslim country with laws on public decency which makes the timing even more difficult. The royal couple will experience the full diversity of Malaysian life on Friday when an outdoor extravaganza is staged in their honour. They will enjoy a cultural fair of music and dance, in the capital Kuala Lumpur, reflecting all aspects of the Commonwealth country's heritage. Later, at a lunch given by the British Malaysian Chamber of Commerce, trade links between the two nations will be highlighted by the Duke when he gives a speech to the assembled businessmen and women. He is expected to underline the importance of the relationship both for British and Malaysian prosperity and for cultural ties between the two nations. During the day, William and Kate will also enjoy a Diamond Jubilee tea party hosted by Simon Featherstone, the British High Commissioner to Malaysia, and his wife Gail at their residence. At the end of the day, the royal couple will leave mainland Malaysia and fly to Kota Kinabalu, capital of the state of Sabah on Borneo, from which they will travel into the rainforest jungle tomorrow to explore the habitat.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Commission led by Kofi Annan says the rise of Super Pacs and voter ID laws has 'shaken citizen confidence' in elections US campaign finance rules, which have allowed wealthy individuals to pour millions of dollars into the 2012 presidential election, have shaken public confidence in the political process, according to a report by the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security. The commission, which is headed by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, and comprises former world leaders and Nobel prize winners, has identified a rise in "uncontrolled, undisclosed, illegal and opaque" political finance across the world as a key threat to electoral integrity, in a new report due to be launched in the UK on Friday. The report singles out the US as an example of a country where lack of transparency and controls in political finance have left it struggling to restore the public's confidence in its elected officials to act in their interest. The commission blamed a series of court decisions – in particular the controversial Citizens United ruling, which turned campaign finance reform on its head and spawned Super Pacs, effectively removing barriers to corporate and union spending to influence elections Citizens United has "undermined political equality, weakened transparency of the electoral process and shaken citizen confidence in America's political institutions and elections", the report said. It also criticises US states which have sought to introduce voter identification laws and other measures that have the effect of suppressing African American participation in the political process. Vidar Helgessen, secretary general of International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, said that US system was cited as just one example of flaws in democracies worldwide. But, he said the US, as the most powerful nation in the world, had a responsibility to set an example. "If a vast majority of citizens say the systems is undermining political equality and weakening transparency of the electoral process, then there is an issue of trust in the government," he said. Political finance was an important issue which had not received the attention and reform it deserved, he said. "We are seeing increasing inequality and we are in a global economic recession and it is an issue that will only grow. It is not only in new and emerging democracies that provide challenges and have elections that lack integrity" The report cited a national survey this year by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school, which found a majority of people believe nominally independent Super Pacs to be a danger to democracy. "Nearly two-thirds of Americans said that they trust government less because big donors have more influence over election officials than average Americans," the report said. It concluded that, although Super Pacs must disclose their contributors and may not coordinate directly with candidates by law, in practice, "both constraints have been flouted". It compared the US unfavourably to Canada, which has faced many of the same campaign finance struggles and concludes: "In contrast to the USA, Canada has managed to strike a balance between safeguarding individuals speech and protecting the overall integrity of the electoral process." It argued that the rise of "uncontrolled political finance" was one of five major threats to democracy, which could rob it of its unique strengths to promote political equality, the empowerment of the disenfranchised and the ability to manage societal conflicts peacefully. The report looked at a host of problems, including post-election violence in places such as Kenya and Nigeria, illicit finance in Costa Rica, and disenfranchised populations in Europe.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Volcano near Antigua spews ash, smoke and lava as over 33,000 people struggle to leave their homes A long-simmering volcano exploded into a series of powerful eruptions outside one of Guatemala's most famous tourist attractions on Thursday, hurling thick clouds of ash nearly two miles (three kilometers) high, spewing rivers of lava down its flanks and prompting evacuation orders for more than 33,000 people from surrounding communities. Guatemala's head of emergency evacuations, Sergio Cabanas, said the evacuees were ordered to leave some 17 villages around the Volcan del Fuego, which sits about six miles southwest (16 kilometers) from the colonial city of Antigua, home to 45,000 people. The ash was blowing south-southeast and authorities said the tourist center of the country was not currently in danger, although they expected the eruption to last for at least 12 more hours. The agency said the volcano spewed lava nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) down slopes billowing with ash around Acatenango, a 12,346-foot-high (3,763-meter-high) volcano whose name translates as "Volcano of Fire." "A paroxysm of an eruption is taking place, a great volcanic eruption, with strong explosions and columns of ash," said Gustavo Chicna, a volcanologist with the National Institute of Seismology, Vulcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology. He said cinders spewing from the volcano were settling a half-inch thick in some places. He said extremely hot gases were also rolling down the sides of the volcano, which was almost entirely wreathed in ash and smoke. The emergency agency warned that flights through the area could be affected. There was a red alert, the highest level, south and southeast of the mountain, where, Chicna said, "it's almost in total darkness." He said ash was landing as far as 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of the volcano. Teresa Marroquin, disaster coordinator for the Guatemalan Red Cross, said the organization had set up 10 emergency shelters and was sending hygiene kits and water. "There are lots of respiratory problems and eye problems," she said.
Many of those living around the volcano are indigenous Kakchikeles people who live in relatively poor and isolated communities, and authorities said they expected to encounter difficulties in evacuating all the affected people from the area. Officials in the Mexican state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, said they were monitoring the situation in case winds drove ash toward Mexico.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Defence secretary said commanders have changed their views about how many troops need to remain in Afghanistan The pace of the British withdrawal from Afghanistan could quicken next year because military commanders have changed their views about how many troops need to remain to help local security forces fight the Taliban, the defence secretary has said. In an interview with the Guardian, Philip Hammond admitted that six months ago the military was privately pushing "for keeping force levels as high as possible for as long as possible". But he said British military thinking was evolving because commanders had been "surprised by the extent to which they have been able to draw back and leave the Afghans to take the lion's share of the combat role". The UK has closed 52 of its military bases and checkpoints in Helmand province over the last six months, leaving 34 still operating, he revealed. "I think there is a bit of a rethinking going on about how many troops we do actually need … there may be some scope for a little bit more flexibility on the way we draw down, and that is something commanders on the ground are looking at very actively." Though Hammond refused to go into details and said no decisions had been taken, this is the first acknowledgment from the government that the UK's long march out of Afghanistan could accelerate markedly next year, rather than waiting until 2014 – the end date for the British military effort in Helmand, which began in 2006. In the interview Hammond also said: • He was concerned that the rioting which led to the murder of the US ambassador in Libya could spread to Afghanistan, and measures had been taken to beef up security around British bases, and prevent the "unnecessary exposure of personnel" to potential trouble, especially on Friday after prayers. • Britain would not be "spooked" by the spate of "green on blue" attacks this year – where Afghan troops killed their British colleagues. He revealed that 60 soldiers had been sacked from the Afghan army in recent weeks, and 600 others were being scrutinised by a joint UK/Afghan inquiry into the killings. He said the UK had found serious weaknesses in the way Afghan soldiers were being managed. • Britons would have to "get used to the idea" that any peace in Afghanistan will need to involve "reaching out Northern Ireland-style to at least the moderate part of the insurgency, to try to bring it inside through reconciliation and integration". • The Afghan government needed to do much more to bring about a political settlement with the insurgents because the diplomatic effort was lagging behind the military campaign. During a trip to Afghanistan in which he met President Hamid Karzai in Kabul and mingled with troops at the British base in Camp Bastion, Hammond was frank about the situation in Afghanistan and what he regarded as the UK's principle objectives. However, it is his remarks on the "draw down" that will provoke interest among all Britain's partners in Nato's International Security and Assistance Force. Britain is withdrawing 500 troops by the end of this year, leaving 9,000. But though the extent and timing of next year's withdrawal will depend on US plans, this is Hammond's first admission that British commanders are now reassessing how many troops they need – because, he said, they have been encouraged at the way Afghan National Security Forces have taken to the battle. This could lead to thousands more troops coming home next year than might have been expected, a withdrawal that would probably start in September. "I think that the message I am getting clearly from the military is that it might be possible to draw down further troops in 2013," Hammond said. "Whereas six months ago the message coming from them was that we really need to hold on to everything we have got for as long as we possibly can. I think they are seeing potentially more flexibility in the situation. "Talking to senior commanders you get a clear sense that their view of force levels is evolving in light of their experiences." He was also unusually blunt about Britain's role in Afghanistan. Now that al-Qaida had been "eliminated" from the country, it was not right to ask troops to put their lives at risk for nation-building, he said. "We have to be clear why we came here in the first place. I believe very clearly that if we are going to ask British troops to put themselves in the firing line, we can only do that to protect UK vital national security interests. "We can ask troops who are here to help build a better Afghanistan, but we cannot ask them to expose themselves to risk for those tasks. We can only ask them to expose themselves to risk for Britain's national security, which is what they signed up to do." Hammond said the UK had "not come here to defeat the insurgency". Britain just needed to help contain the insurgency to stop terrorists getting a foothold again. He said Britain, in an ideal world, would like to see Afghanistan become more democratic, with a society that respected human rights and improved education. But he insisted that was not the ultimate measure of success. "The ultimate measure of success must be the extent to which we can leave Afghanistan in a state that will continue to deny its territory to international terrorists," he said. Despite ongoing fighting in Helmand that has led to more than 20 British troops being killed in recent months, including five in "green on blue" attacks, Hammond said the security situation was improving, and that Afghan forces were now able to protect the main towns, pushing the insurgents into the desert areas. But in a swipe at the diplomatic efforts to secure peace, Hammond said "tracking people down and removing them from the battlefield" was not the best way of finding a settlement. "There needs to be, in my judgment, greater weight given to the high level political initiative for reconciliation. We recognise that Afghan society is such that it is pretty difficult to imagine a situation where there won't be any level of insurgency … but it is also difficult to imagine in the long run a stable prosperous and sustainable Afghanistan that has not managed to reintegrate and reconcile at least a significant part of the insurgency." He added: "The Afghan government needs to do more and the neighbours who have influence [Pakistan] also need to maintain pressure on those parties … to come to the table. We have to provide them with expert support. They want to do it, but turning a wish into reality is a complex process. "I think most of us feel that the political process is not moving as fast as the military process and we would like to see political progress keeping pace with military progress." Accommodating the Taliban in the peace and reconciliation process was vital, he said. "Look at our own history. Every counter-insurgency war we have fought in post-colonial history has ended up with an accommodation with at least part of the insurgency movement. "That is the reality. You cannot create a lasting settlement with … a significant part of the population locked out. You have to bring moderates into the process to lock out the extremists as we have done in Northern Ireland." In July three British troops were killed by an Afghan colleague in one of a series of "green on blue" attacks against Isaf forces this year. More than 40 Nato troops have died since January by these insider attacks, which is having a debilitating affect on morale – and has prompted France to declare it is withdrawing troops early. Hammond said he had spoken to Karzai and told him that "while we [the British government] might not be spooked by this, public opinion feels very strongly about these green on blue incidents and it is absolutely essential that this problem is put back in its box". The defence secretary said he had been "talking to one of the senior officers about one of the green on blue incidents, and the investigation has thrown up serious weaknesses in the way that some elements of Afghan troops have been managed in the past". He added: "The Afghans are moving to address those problems and we are all over it. Where we have pointed the finger at people, the Afghans haven't hesitated to arrest them and check them out." He said it might not be possible to eliminate the green on blue threat completely, but he believed the measures that had been taken would have an effect. The conflict in Afghanistan has led to the deaths of 427 British soldiers, and more than 2,000 American troops. The United Nations said that 3,099 Afghan civilians were killed in the first six months of this year alone. Hammond insisted that it had been right to set an end-date to the military campaign because if "you don't set a deadline you'll never get the job done". While critics of the Afghan conflict have focused on the never-ending fighting with an insurgency that is weakened, but by no means defeated, and the corruption scandals that have plagued President Karzai's government, Hammond said the UK's involvement in Helmand would be regarded as a success story. "The message for people back home is that over the years we have contained the threat to UK security, we have built the Afghan security forces to the point that they can take over that burden. "We are confident we will leave in place a solution that will not look perfect … but if it maintains the integrity of Afghanistan and stops the use of it for international terrorists, we have achieved our primary purpose." He added: "Even if we had achieved nothing lasting, every year that goes by keeping the bombers at bay, keeping them off our streets, is a significant achievement in itself. But we have clearly built the basics of a future that will deny the space of Afghanistan to those who would seek to harm us."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | After four days of strike action, union and CPS appear close to having children back at school next week After months of deadlock and four days of strike action, Chicago teachers appeared on Thursday to be close to a deal with City Hall which would have children back to school by the beginning of next week. Tuesday's deadlock appears to have been broken after Chicago Public Schools officials offered a revised contract, conceding several key points regarding teacher evaluations. Union negotiators who claimed on Tuesday that CPS claims of being close to a deal were "lunacy" left talks on Wednesday night very upbeat. Asked to use a scale of one to 10 regarding the chances of a deal being reached on Thursday, Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said: "I'm a nine." The offer came on the day a poll revealed that 47% of Chicagoans backed the teachers against 39% who backed mayor Rahm Emanuel, whom three quarters of the city believed was doing an average, below average or poor job of handling the dispute. "We're hoping we can tighten up some of the things we talked about yesterday... and get this thing done," Lewis told reporters. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, chief education officer with CPS, was also confident, claiming children could be in school as early as Friday. "I can really, really say to you, if we stick to the issues, unless something really nutsy happens, kids can be back in school [tomorrow]." The union, though, was keen to damp down expectations of a return at the end of the week since any deal would have to be overseen by lawyers and then ratified by the union's house of delegates, which is scheduled to meet on Friday. The new proposals soften the CPS push for evaluations based on testing, offers the opportunity for appeals and prevents the CPS from reneging on previous salary agreements in times of economic crisis, as it did last year. Quite what has been settled on the thorny issue of rehiring is not yet known. The CPS has just finished a round of school closures – concentrated in black and Latino areas – and is about to embark on another. The CTU demands that any new hiring comes from the pool of teachers who have been laid off. The CPS has insisted that principals must have the right to hire who they want and as of Tuesday morning had assured only that laid-off teachers be guaranteed an interview. It is difficult to know what prompted the CPS to shift its position. It is possible that, as school board representatives stated at the beginning of the week, the two sides were very close, even if the union did not know it. It is also possible that local political considerations kicked in once it was clear that most Chicagoans blamed the mayor for the situation and that the teachers showed little sign of backing down. Insiders say the atmosphere in the negotiations on Monday and Tuesday was becoming toxic and the makeshift arrangements cobbled together for and by parents were showing some strain. National political considerations may also have been a factor, with Democratic officials anxious to thwart a conflict between unions and the party in the president's home town a couple of months before the presidential election. But something changed. After all, on Wednesday night CPS supporters were still screening anti-strike ads on local television, even as a deal was being hammered out, and Thursday morning's headlines quoted Lewis saying the two sides were "not inches but kilometres apart". On Thursday, when asked about the prospect of students going back on Monday, Lewis said: "I'm praying, praying, praying. I'm on my knees for that."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Deputy interior minister gave no further details on investigation into US consulate attack as violence continues to spread Libyan authorities say they have made arrests in the investigation into the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that left US ambassador Chris Stevens and three state department staff dead. The news followed a call by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, for political and religious leaders to stand up against violence over what she called a "disgusting, reprehensible and cynical" anti-Muslim film as protests spread across the Middle East and beyond. "Some people have been arrested and are under investigation," deputy interior minister Wanis Sharif told Reuters on Thursday. "We are gathering evidence." He did not give further details Demonstrators stormed the US embassy compound in Yemen on Thursday but were unable to break into the main building as police used tear gas and rubber bullets. Fresh demonstrations took place at the American mission in Cairo, where the wave of protests first erupted on Tuesday, as Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood called for a million people to turn out after prayers on Friday. More than 200 people were injured in clashes between the protesters and police in Tahrir square, according to the health ministry, and police vehicles were burned. Smaller demonstrations were staged in Iraq, Iran, Bangladesh, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia. The protests came as Reuters reported that Libya's interior ministry was saying arrests had been made as part of the investigation into the Benghazi attack. But there were also signs that Arab leaders were seeking to placate Washington while publicly condemning the film – called Innocence of Muslims – which is widely considered crudely Islamophobic and blasphemous to believers. Clinton said that although she believed the film, apparently made by a Coptic Christian living in California, was intended to "provoke rage", it was no justification for the assaults on US missions there to promote international understanding. "To us, to me, personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage," she said. "Let me state very clearly – and I hope it is obvious – that the United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video." But Clinton said it was a mistake for protesters to express their anger with violence and against US diplomatic missions. "Violence, we believe, has no place in religion and is no way to honour religion. Islam, like other religions, respects the fundamental dignity of human beings, and it is a violation of that fundamental dignity to wage attacks on innocents," she said. "It is especially wrong for violence to be directed against diplomatic missions. These are places whose very purpose is peaceful to promote better understanding across countries and cultures." She added: "Any responsible leader should be standing up now and drawing that line." Clinton spoke following a conversation between Barack Obama and the Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi. Morsi, who was slow to speak out after the attack on the US embassy in Cairo on Tuesday, pledged that Egypt will "honour its obligation to ensure the safety of American personnel", according to the White House. But he also demanded the US act against the makers of the controversial film. "We condemn strongly ... all those who launch such provocations and who stand behind that hatred," Morsi said. But growing US concern about the relationship was reflected in Obama's comments to the Spanish-language network Telemundo in which he declined to describe the Egyptian government as an ally. "I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy. They're a new government that is trying to find its way. They were democratically elected. I think that we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident," he said. On Thursday, the White House moved to clarify the remarks. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor told Foreign Policy magazine's The Cable blog: "I think folks are reading way too much into this. 'Ally' is a legal term of art. We don't have a mutual defence treaty with Egypt like we do with our Nato allies. But as the president has said, Egypt is longstanding and close partner of the United States, and we have built on that foundation by supporting Egypt's transition to democracy and working with the new government." Obama also called the Libyan president, Mohamed Magariaf, who promised to hunt down the culprits for the Benghazi attack and killing of Stevens and three other US officials. Yemen's president, Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, apologised to the US for the embassy attack and vowed to track down the culprits, just as Libya's president did. Saudi Arabia condemned the film as "irresponsible", but it denounced violent anti-American protests and expressed condolences to the US over the killings in Benghazi. In Iraq, several hundred Shia Muslims protested in Baghdad's Sadr City, where the leader of an Iranian-backed militia threatened attacks on US interests. In Tehran, an estimated 500 people chanted "Death to America!" and death to the film's director. As US officials attempted to establish whether the assault on the Benghazi consulate was a well planned and premeditated attack, the Pentagon deployed two destroyers to the Libyan coast in what was described as a move to give the Obama administration flexibility for any future action against Islamic extremists in Libya. A Marine Corps anti-terrorist team has also been deployed to the country to boost security. State department officials were still trying to piece together precisely what happened in Benghazi when Stevens disappeared for several hours. American officials only discovered he was dead when his body was delivered to Benghazi airport. Shocked residents of Benghazi turned out to protest against the attack that killed Stevens, who was regarded by many in the city as a friend of Libya. Some Libyans are anxious that the US and west will back away from support for the country, and concerned that Libya will be thought of as a hotbed of Islamic extremism.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Visit to burned-out consular building reveals extent of attack and gives Libyans a chance to disown mob and offer condolences The bullet holes, smashed masonry and blood on the walls of the burned-out consulate on the southern outskirts of Benghazi are testament to the gun battle that raged through the building, claiming four lives including that of the US ambassador, Chris Stevens. As the owners of the damaged building and the accommodation block a mile down the road took the Guardian on a tour of the sites on Thursday, reports that the attack was the work of an isolated group seemed to be at odds with the physical evidence and what their staff had told them. "Better security would not have stopped this," said Adel Ibrahim, the owner of the accommodation building where blood is now spattered beneath a hole smashed in a wall by a heavy projectile. "A security unit is fine if you are facing 10 persons, but there were 400 attackers. [The Americans] would have needed an army to stop them." It is clear the US staff and their Libyan guards were subjected to a terrifying, night-long ordeal, which began with protests outside the consulate in the al-Fawahat residential district. Demonstrators gathered in the narrow Venice Street outside the main gated entrance, voicing protests against the reported release in the US of a film that ridiculed Islam. The protest quickly turned violent, the landlords said. Who fired first is a matter of dispute, with some claiming the Libyan security guards hired by the Americans shot in the air, panicking the crowd. There is no doubt about what happened next. The compound is bound by a breeze-block wall topped by barbed wire, but it was not enough to stop the attackers. "They jumped in from everywhere," said Ahmed Busheri, owner of the consulate. In the melee, a single rocket-propelled grenade appears to have been fired from within the compound, detonating on one of the heavy concrete barriers set up outside to deter car bombs. Several of the consulate's Libyan guards were injured during the fighting and others melted away, the landlords said, leaving the diplomats to fend for themselves. Embassy staff had prepared for such an eventuality, having built themselves two positions with sandbags on either side of a villa to the left of the main gate. Three of the Americans – including Stevens – were forced to retreat from these positions towards the small terrace in the centre of the villa. This, according to Busheri, is where two of Stevens' security guards died. Stevens himself ran inside the villa, the landlords said, where he suffocated in the smoke from the blaze that has left the interior of guest rooms and a kitchen charred, blackened and heavy with the stench of putrefying food. Once the mob had seized the compound they looted it. The surrounding lawns are covered in stray US army ready meals, broken furniture and, incongruously, the dustjacket of Simon Sebag Montefiore's book on the history of Jerusalem. There is evidence that at least some of the demonstrators were horrified by what they saw: a group of civilians found the ambassador, smoke-blackened and bleeding from a cut in his head, and rushed him to the city's main hospital, Benghazi Medical Centre. Staff there had been expecting the ambassador at 11am on Wednesday as he had come to Benghazi to inaugurate a landmark medical exchange project between the centre and Harvard Medical School, the centre's director, Dr Fathi al-Jehani, said. Instead, Stevens' body arrived at the emergency ramp at 2am, together with a Libyan embassy translator who had been shot in the leg. There was confusion as the civilians unloaded them from two private cars which had come tearing into the hospital grounds. "He had no form of identification on him," Jehani said. "One of the people with him said: 'This is the ambassador. The ambassador is suffocating from the smoke.'" Emergency staff had heard the sound of fighting hours before and sent an ambulance, but it became lost in the confusion. "We tried to revive him," Jehani said. He did not finish the sentence. The night's fighting had not finished. A mile south of the consulate is a smaller walled compound used as accommodation for most of the dozen US staff posted to Benghazi. As the crowd surged into the consulate, one group of diplomats managed to bundle themselves into a white armoured jeep, forcing it out through the main gates, the landlords said. It tore down the highway towards the accommodation block, surviving an attack as it drove through the armed mob. Busheri said the jeep arrived at the accommodation compound gates at 4am and, an hour later, the protesters that had torched the consulate arrived outside. They "came here to try and ambush, there was an exchange of fire," Busheri said. Inside, he showed the result of the fighting. A projectile, possibly a rocket-propelled grenade, had clipped the outside wall and smashed into the main building, blowing out a chunk of masonry. Below it, flecks of brownish blood were spattered on the garden wall, where the fourth American was killed. Staff held off the mob for an hour until government security forces arrived on the scene as dawn broke. Both compounds now lie empty. The consulate's buildings have been torched and three embassy cars are blackened wrecks. US officials arrived at the accommodation block on Wednesday to remove the belongings of the staff living there. Signs of the diplomats remain. The grey dumb-bells of a makeshift gym remain outside the main gate. Nearby, a whiteboard pinned to the wall has the instruction: "pick up your trash before leaving". "If I could talk to the families of those who died I would say we are sad because, you know, the ambassador has been good for all Libyans," said Kolan Garmud, who co-owns the accommodation building with Ibrahim. "We will not forget how he helped us in the revolution." It is a refrain heard across this shocked city. Stevens was one of the first US diplomats to arrive in Benghazi at the beginning of last year's revolution. He had a reputation here and in the capital, Tripoli, for his enthusiastic backing of medical and social initiatives, and for his informal style. "He had good relations with my colleagues," said Jehani. "So he was loved?" a journalist asked. "He is loved," said Jehani, emphasising the word "is". Almost overcome with emotion, he said two Boston doctors who had arrived for the inauguration this week had flown home. "The people who did this, they are a very small minority," Jehani said. "We did not get out of the [Muammar Gaddafi] dictatorship to be under somebody who is driven by hate." Benghazi has suffered from activities blamed on jihadists for several months, and anger is directed equally at the protagonists and at a government seen as unwilling to stand up to them. Last April, a UN convoy carrying the envoy Ian Martin was bombed in the city, followed by attacks on the Tunisian consulate and the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Jihadists also wrecked a Commonwealth war graves cemetery in the city, and, though it has been repaired, the vandalised stone cross that formed the cenotaph has not been replaced. In June, the British ambassador, Dominic Asquith, narrowly survived when a rocket missed him and hit the armoured car carrying his security detail, two of whom were wounded. The Islamist Ansar al-Sharia brigade is blamed by many here for the violence, particularly with the appearance of a video that appears to show two US embassy vehicles plundered from the burning compound being driven into the brigade's Benghazi barracks. Brigade leaders have issued a denial of responsibility but were unwilling to talk to journalists on Thursday. "They [Sharia] have pros and cons," said Saleh el-Fellah, who works in Benghazi's Friendship Cafe. "They were the ones who provided security [in the revolution]. The cons are all the bad things they have been doing. They take everything to extremes, they are ruining the reputation of Islam." Sadness is everywhere in the city whose proud boast is that it was the cradle of last year's revolution. A Libyan photographer inside the ruined compound came over to offer an unsolicited apology. "We are not all like this," he insisted. "Libyans do not approve of this." There is also unease about how America will react. It has not had an ambassador killed since 1979, and President Barack Obama's vow that "justice will be served" has fuelled rumours that US marines now deployed in Tripoli will head to Benghazi and take action. But many also hope the government will move against the protagonists. "They have to show a fist of steel," said Mohammed el-Kish, a former press officer with the National Transitional Council which handed over power last month to Libya's newly elected congress. "They have got to rid us of these people."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Fed to spend $40bn a month on bond purchases to spur growth and plans to keep interest rates 'exceptionally low'
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ben Bernanke calls move 'a Main Street policy' as Wall Street reacts by sending Dow Jones average soaring by 200 points Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke pledged to keep injecting money into the US economy until it recovers Thursday as it announced a rolling program to buy $40bn a month in mortgage-backed securities. The widely anticipated third round of quantitative easing – dubbed QE3 – comes after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke had said he was increasingly concerned about the recovery. Bernanke said the plan was aimed at reviving the jobs market by stimulating the still troubled housing market. "This is a Main Street policy because what we're about here are jobs," he said at a press conference. He said the Fed stood ready to take more action if the situation deteriorated further and that the he would not "rush to tighten policy" even when signs of a stronger recovery emerge. Wall Street cheered the move, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring over 200 points. Gus Faucher, senior economist with PNC Bank, said the open-ended nature of the mortgage bond buying scheme – a marked break from previous QE efforts – sent a clear signal that the Fed was committed to propping up the US recovery. "It was much more aggressive than we were expecting," he said. "Bernanke clearly feels that the recovery in the jobs market just isn't there." On top of the new scheme, the Fed said it would continue its action to bring down long-term interest rates, dubbed "Operation Twist", through the end of this year. Together the schemes will pump $85bn a month into the US economy. Bernanke said there were signs of recovery in the housing market and in the wider economy, but the Fed feels the economy is not yet strong enough to go it alone. His move so close to the election is likely to draw fire from Republican critics, though a response to the announcement from presidential candidate Mitt Romney was notable by its absence. The open-ended nature of QE3 will infuriate those who already argue Bernanke is too interventionist. But Faucher said that if the latest stimulus program had been given an expiration date, investors would once again have been asking what comes next. "He's done this twice already. This is a way of saying we are sticking with it," he said. The Fed chairman refused to be drawn on precisely what signs would have to emerge before he turns off the spigot. "We are looking for ongoing, sustained improvement in the labor market. There isn't a specific number in mind but what we've seen in the last six months isn't it," he said. The statement came after clear signals from Bernanke that he was preparing to act. The economy was "far from satisfactory" and the continuing high rate of unemployment threatened to "wreak structural damage," Bernanke said in a speech at the high-powered annual economic summit of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City last month. Since that speech, the economic situation appears to have deteriorated. In August, the US added just 61,000 new jobs, half what many economists had been expecting. The unemployment rate ticked down from 8.3% to 8.1% but was driven down not by hiring but by 368,000 Americans leaving the labor force. Worrying economic news has continued to emerge since the job's report. On Thursday more evidence of a weakening global economy emerged as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development issued its latest report. The OECD found indications of slower growth in the US, Japan, China, India and Russia among others. The Fed chairman warned that the US still faced "headwinds" most notably the so-called fiscal cliff, a year end deadline for the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and the imposition of massive spending cuts. Unless a political solution is found to the fiscal cliff, the US could be plunged back into recession, according to the Congressional Budget Office. He said the uncertainty over the fiscal cliff had been a major topic of conversation among the Fed's committee members and that uncertainty was a drag on the economy. "A lot of businesses are waiting to see whether that problem will be resolved and if so how," he said. Bernanke's actions are likely to spark a furious backlash from some members of the Republican party, who have criticised his past interventions. The Fed chairman has become a whipping boy for the right, and Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick, has clearly stated he is against more stimulus. "I'm not a fan of more stimulus or more easing," Ryan said last month in a CNBC interview. "The benefits are clearly outweighed by the long-term costs of this. Iit's not working, and all this loose money from the Fed is basically bailing out the fact that President Obama has failed on fiscal policy." All but one of the Fed's committee, Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, voted for the new stimulus package.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Federal Reserve to buy $40bn of mortgage-backed securities per month, and announces plans to bring down interest rates The Federal Reserve stepped in Thursday to prop up the fragile US economic recovery by announcing a rolling program to buy $40bn a month in mortgage-backed securities. The widely anticipated move – dubbed QE3, for quantitative easing – comes after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke had said he was increasingly concerned about the US recovery. The aim is to stimulate the housing market, which has long been a drag on jobs growth and the wider economy. In a statement, the Fed said it stood ready to take further action if the situation deteriorated further. On top of the new scheme, the Fed said it would continue it action to bring down long-term interest rates, dubbed 'Operation Twist', through the end of this year. Together the schemes will pump $85bn a month into the US economy. "If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability," said the Fed. Bernanke said there were signs of recovery in the housing market and in the wider economy, but the Fed clearly feels the economy is not yet strong enough to go it alone. His move is likely to draw fire from Republican critics so close to the election. The open-ended nature of the mortgage bond buying scheme – a marked break from other QE programmes – is likely to infuriate critics who already argue Bernanke is too interventionist. The statement came after clear signals from Bernanke that he was preparing to act. The economy was "far from satisfactory" and the continuing high rate of unemployment threatened to "wreak structural damage," Bernanke said in a speech at the high-powered annual economic summit of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City last month. Since that speech, the economic situation appears to have deteriorated. In August, the US added just 61,000 new jobs, half what many economists had been expecting. The unemployment rate ticked down from 8.3% to 8.1% but was driven down not by hiring but by 368,000 Americans leaving the labor force. Worrying economic news has continued to emerge since the job's report. On Thursday more evidence of a weakening global economy emerged as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development issued its latest report. The OECD found indications of slower growth in the US, Japan, China, India and Russia among others. Bernanke's actions are likely to spark a furious backlash from some members of the Republican party, who have criticised his past interventions. The Fed chairman has become a whipping boy for the right and Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick, has clearly stated he is against more stimulus. "I'm not a fan of more stimulus or more easing," Ryan said last month in a CNBC interview. "The benefits are clearly outweighed by the long-term costs of this. Iit's not working, and all this loose money from the Fed is basically bailing out the fact that President Obama has failed on fiscal policy." All but one of the Fed's committee, Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, voted for the new stimulus package.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ben Bernanke holds a press conference to discuss the Federal Reserve's decision and the state of the US economy
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | California workers say they've filed labour complaints over lack of access to drinking water and alleged bullying by managers A group of workers at a warehouse that supplies Walmart stores have gone on strike to protest what they say are dangerous labour conditions and retaliation by management against employees who complain about them. Organisers for the activist group Warehouse Workers United, which is working in the booming warehouse industry that has grown up in the Inland Empire region of southern California, say at least 20 workers had walked off the job and were protesting outside the gates of a warehouse run by transport firm NFI. Labour abuses in the Inland Empire's warehouse industry have recently been highlighted in various media and academic reports. Experts say the industry, which is thought to employ some 110,000 people, is often staffed by poor, immigrant workers who toil for long hours with little pay and in unsafe conditions. One recent survey by the WWU and the University of California interviewed 101 workers and found that 83 of them said they had suffered a job-related illness. The striking workers at the NFI facility have filed an official complaint with California labour authorities on conditions that they say show inadequate safety protection, not enough access to drinking water in warehouses that can reach 125 degrees on a hot day, and a management culture that bullies them. They also say that workers listed in their legal complaint have since been retaliated against by things such as demotions or reduced hours, and the threat of losing their job. One of the strikers, David Garcia, 29, said he had walked out of work in order to fight for better conditions. "We were told we would lose our jobs if we did not shut up," he said. The workers are not members of a union and risk dismissal by refusing to work. "I am willing to risk it for the rights of myself and my co-workers," said Garcia. The strike comes as WWU begins a six-day "pilgrimage" of warehouse workers who will walk 50 miles from the high desert of the Inland Empire to downtown Los Angeles. The march is aimed at following the route taken by the shipping containers that arrive by boat in LA and are then driven to the vast warehouse hub of the Inland Empire where they are unpacked and then reloaded for entry into the distribution networks of major retailers. In its actions the WWU has specifically targeted Walmart warehouses due to the firm's scale, which many experts say dictates the practises of the rest of the entire industry. "We are hoping Walmart will intervene. They must be aware of these problems," said Guadalupe Palma, a WWU director. Neither NFI or Walmart responded to requests by the Guardian for comment. Previously, NFI has disputed the specific claims of workers and is contesting the official complaint. It says it does not retaliate against workers and adheres to safety standards. Walmart, meanwhile, has said that it expects all its the companies in its supply chain to conform to "the highest standards" and take corrective action if abuses occur.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Violence in volatile coastal region gives rise to suspicions of political motives and Somali involvement as elections approach Deadly clashes in a volatile district on Kenya's coast have raised fears that politicians may be exploiting tribal rivalries before elections in March next year, with some observers also suggesting that weapons and militants from neighbouring Somalia may be involved. At least 116 people have been killed in the Tana river delta since late August as hundreds of fighters from the Pokomo and Orma tribes, armed with guns, spears and bows and arrows, attacked each other's villages, burning homes and killing people. The violence has exposed a potent cocktail of tensions before the first election since more than 1,200 people were killed after a disputed 2007 vote in east Africa's largest economy. Thirty-eight people, including five children and nine police officers, were killed in Kilelengwani village on Monday. A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed but the next day, a group of around 300 attacked several villages, killing at least four people. More than 12,000 people have been displaced in the region of forests and mangrove swamps about 150 miles north of Mombasa, according to the Kenya Red Cross Society. An assistant minister, Dhadho Godhana, was arrested on Wednesday over an allegation that he played a role in fuelling the violence, which started in August when more than 50 Orma were killed by Pokomo raiders. Godhana, whose constituency is in Tana, has pleaded not guilty to charges of inciting violence. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said its research in the area showed that at least three other politicians might have been involved. It also found that police and local authorities failed to respond to reports from residents over the past six months that violence could be imminent. "Members of both communities, including victims of the attacks, told Human Rights Watch that area politicians who hoped to win seats in next year's elections were involved in the violence on both sides and that the villagers had informed the police about their suspicions," HRW said in a statement on Thursday. The US state department warned that the attacks threatened to destabilise the surrounding region and urged the government to bring those responsible to trial and unite opposing factions. Pokomo farmers and the semi-nomadic Orma have clashed before over water, land and grazing but Phyllis Muema, executive director of the Kenya Community Support Centre, said this time was different. "This is actually a massacre. The level of killing shows very clearly that this is not just a resource-based conflict … The sophistication of the arms they are using indicates that they have acquired them, we suspect, from neighbouring Somalia," Muema said. Kenya has thousands of troops in Somalia as part of an African Union peacekeeping force fighting the Islamist militants of al-Shabaab. The Kenyans are moving towards al-Shabaab's stronghold at Kismayo, raising concerns that some militants might flee across the border into Kenya's tinderbox coastal region. This region, where five-star luxury co-exists with extreme poverty and where indigenous tribes have long felt neglected by authorities, is seen as a potential flashpoint before the March vote. Some Kenyan commentators have linked the once-banned Mombasa Republican Council, which wants the coast to secede, to the Tana river clashes, but the secretary general, Randu Nzai Ruwa, denied the charges. "The MRC is not involved in this … We are fighting for the coastal people," he said, adding that he believed the clashes had been orchestrated to drive people off lucrative sugar cane farms. Kenyan elections have often triggered violence between tribes, as political parties tend to draw support from a particular ethnic group. Three senior politicians and a radio presenter will stand trial at the international criminal court in April next year over their alleged roles in fuelling the 2007/08 violence, and many Kenyans had hoped this would act as a deterrent in future elections. However, two of those facing trial are still running for president, and analysts say violence is a real possibility again. The stakes are even higher this time. In March, Kenyans will, for the first time, vote for county governors and senators, meaning there is more power to be won at the local level. The police service has been criticised for failing to stop the bloodshed. "The response has been pathetic," Robert Ndege, a political risk consultant at Africapractice, said. "If [the security forces] can't contain one flashpoint, what happens if this is repeated across the country?" Ndung'u Wainaina, of the International Centre for Policy and Conflict, said security forces must have known attacks were being planned. "There is no way a group of about 300 militia can … make a brazen attack without some very strong powerful support," he said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | City's teachers and mayor make a final push to negotiate as nation's biggest labor strike of 2012 grinds on The union for Chicago teachers and the third largest US school district said they will try on Thursday to make a final push to settle a strike that has drawn national attention to the sweeping education reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. As the strike of 29,000 public school teachers and support staff prepared to enter a fourth day, negotiators for the first time expressed optimism that the nasty fight could end soon. "We would like to get this done. I think everybody would like to get this done," a smiling Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said late on Wednesday. She and Chicago School Board President David Vitale said they had made considerable progress toward a compromise. Chicago has become the focal point of a debate over how to reform troubled urban schools and the outcome could have a ripple effect in cities across the country. Lewis, a former high school chemistry teacher, led the teachers on strike Sunday saying the union could not accept what it considered misguided reforms that were hurting poor neighborhoods. She has rallied teachers to her cause with enthusiastic marches and pickets throughout the city at a time when a weakened US labor movement has lost several fights over collective bargaining and benefits such as pensions. While the teachers' loud protests have received more attention, Emanuel has powerful backers in the fight over education reform as well. National reform groups who support the tougher performance evaluations for teachers sought by Emanuel began running broadcast ads in Chicago media this week. One radio ad paid for by a group called Democrats for Education Reform, a coalition of wealthy financiers and entrepreneurs, asked listeners to sign an online petition calling on the union to go back to work. The new optimism in the negotiations followed days of acrimony and deadlock over two key issues – how to evaluate teachers and whether principals should have more authority to hire the teachers in their schools. Neither Lewis nor Vitale, who is Emanuel's chief negotiator, would give details of compromises on those issues. But teacher evaluations have been at the heart of the national school reform drive. Emanuel was proposing that Chicago teachers be evaluated based on a system that would rate teachers in several categories. Administrators would observe them in the classroom. Students would be asked about teacher strengths and weaknesses. And, most controversially, many teachers would be assessed based on their students' performance on standardized tests. The union fiercely opposes using standardized test results, arguing that many Chicago students perform poorly on the tests because they come to school hungry and live in poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods. They also say that class sizes are too large to teach children effectively. Wages do not appear to be a sticking point in the talks, with the district offering a 16% rise over four years and some improved benefits. President Barack Obama has stayed out of the dispute between his former top White House aide Emanuel, and organized labor, which he needs to help get out the vote in the presidential election on 6 November. The White House has urged the two sides to settle it quickly. Parents have struggled to balance child care and work during the strike. The city set up nearly 150 centers to house children for most of the day and feed them breakfast and lunch. But only a fraction of the 350,000 students out of school came to the centers. Some parents said they did not want to cross picket lines set up by the union outside the centers and others said they felt children were safer at home. Both sides in the dispute agree Chicago schools need to be improved. Students perform poorly on standardized tests and only around 60% of high school students graduate, well below the national average. "Teachers feel beaten down throughout the country," said Randi Weingarten, national president of the union including the Chicago teachers. "They feel beaten down because of austerity, because of test- rather than teacher-driven policies, because of a spike in poverty, because of the demand on them to do more with less – and then blame them when that doesn't work out." "That's what's created all the frustration that you hear on the picket line," she said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | City's teachers and mayor make a final push to negotiate as union president hopeful students could return to class on Friday Negotiators trying to bring an end to the Chicago teachers' strike say the most recent talks made substantial progress and suggested that classes could resume Friday. The bargaining ended shortly before midnight Wednesday. Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis said the sides had definitely come closer together. She said the strike would continue Thursday but added: "Let's hope for Friday." School board president David Vitale was also more positive. He agreed that negotiators had made progress, and he was hopeful they could come to a deal in time for students to return to class on Friday. Chicago's teachers went on strike Monday for the first time in 25 years. Chicago has become the focal point of a debate over how to reform troubled urban schools and the outcome could have a ripple effect in cities across the country. Lewis, a former high school chemistry teacher, led the teachers on strike Sunday saying the union could not accept what it considered misguided reforms that were hurting poor neighborhoods. She has rallied teachers to her cause with enthusiastic marches and pickets throughout the city at a time when a weakened US labor movement has lost several fights over collective bargaining and benefits such as pensions. While the teachers' loud protests have received more attention, Emanuel has powerful backers in the fight over education reform as well. National reform groups who support the tougher performance evaluations for teachers sought by Emanuel began running broadcast ads in Chicago media this week. One radio ad paid for by a group called Democrats for Education Reform, a coalition of wealthy financiers and entrepreneurs, asked listeners to sign an online petition calling on the union to go back to work. The new optimism in the negotiations followed days of acrimony and deadlock over two key issues – how to evaluate teachers and whether principals should have more authority to hire the teachers in their schools. Neither Lewis nor Vitale, who is Emanuel's chief negotiator, would give details of compromises on those issues. But teacher evaluations have been at the heart of the national school reform drive. Emanuel was proposing that Chicago teachers be evaluated based on a system that would rate teachers in several categories. Administrators would observe them in the classroom. Students would be asked about teacher strengths and weaknesses. And, most controversially, many teachers would be assessed based on their students' performance on standardized tests. The union fiercely opposes using standardized test results, arguing that many Chicago students perform poorly on the tests because they come to school hungry and live in poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods. They also say that class sizes are too large to teach children effectively. Wages do not appear to be a sticking point in the talks, with the district offering a 16% rise over four years and some improved benefits. President Barack Obama has stayed out of the dispute between his former top White House aide Emanuel, and organized labor, which he needs to help get out the vote in the presidential election on 6 November. The White House has urged the two sides to settle it quickly. Parents have struggled to balance child care and work during the strike. The city set up nearly 150 centers to house children for most of the day and feed them breakfast and lunch. But only a fraction of the 350,000 students out of school came to the centers. Some parents said they did not want to cross picket lines set up by the union outside the centers and others said they felt children were safer at home. Both sides in the dispute agree Chicago schools need to be improved. Students perform poorly on standardized tests and only around 60% of high school students graduate, well below the national average. "Teachers feel beaten down throughout the country," said Randi Weingarten, national president of the union including the Chicago teachers. "They feel beaten down because of austerity, because of test- rather than teacher-driven policies, because of a spike in poverty, because of the demand on them to do more with less – and then blame them when that doesn't work out." "That's what's created all the frustration that you hear on the picket line," she said.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The New York director is unfazed by Italian criticisms of To Rome With Love, nor references to the scandal surrounding his marriage. But he is still, at nearly 77, fretting about mortality – and won't be retiring just yet "You equate retirement with death," Woody Allen's character is informed, by his psychiatrist wife, in the opening minutes of his new comedy To Rome With Love. The line is blatant self-diagnosis on Allen's part. In December, the director will turn 77 – well past the point at which "death enters your basic timeframe", as he puts it – and this morning finds him in his editing suite on Park Lane, Manhattan, dressed in khaki slacks and khaki shirt, toiling hard to keep the reaper at bay. In a week or two, he'll finish shooting his 2013 movie, which doesn't yet have a title; then, while he edits that, he'll start mulling ideas for 2014's, poring over the scraps of paper on which he scribbles stray thoughts and keeps in a drawer. Outside, New York is oppressively humid, but thanks to air-conditioning and a total lack of windows, Allen's workspace is a chilly cavern. ("I have an intense desire to return to the womb – anybody's," he once told Time.) Against the dark carpet, dark walls and dark furniture, Allen stands out: a small, beige presence, labouring. A surprisingly persistent misconception, to this day, is that the real Woody Allen must be broadly the same as his movie persona: the fretful nebbish, plagued by hypochondria, beset by existential terrors, anxious to the point of paralysis. But that Woody Allen, of course, could never have written and directed at least one feature film a year, as he has done, with only two exceptions, since 1966. The offscreen Allen exudes single-mindedness of purpose; he's guardedly friendly, and these days a little deaf. The hypochondria part is real enough, though – as is the fretting. The movie he's wrapping up now – a "serious drama" set in San Francisco, starring Cate Blanchett – is proving a disappointment, he says. But that's always the way. "I have an idea for a story, and I think to myself, my God, this is a combination of Eugene O'Neill, and Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller … but that's because [when you're writing] you don't have to face the test of reality. You're at home, in your house, it's all in your mind. Now, when it's almost over, and I see what I've got, I start to think: what have I done? This is going to be such an embarrassment! Can I salvage it? All your grandiose ideas go out the window. You realise you made a catastrophe, and you think: what if I put the last scene first, drop this character, put in narration? What if I shoot one more scene, to make him not leave his wife, but kill his wife?" These fusillades of self-criticism, you sense, aren't false modesty, nor real terror, but something else: the musings of a veteran who has long since come to terms with the fact that his creative process will always be a long slide into disillusionment. Nine times out of ten, he says, when he leaves the screening of the first rough cut: "The feeling is: OK, now don't panic." The other 10% of the time, it's: "OK. That's not as bad as I thought." You needn't undergo 37 years of psychoanalysis, as Allen has, to see that all this activity fulfils a therapeutic function. Every few movies, it throws up a gem, too. Last year's Midnight In Paris was Allen's best in years: a purely entertaining fantasy in which Owen Wilson, playing a Hollywood screenwriter on holiday in France, is transported, via a time-travelling Peugeot, to the Paris of the 1920s, where he receives relationship advice from Ernest Hemingway and editorial tips from Gertrude Stein. (For Wilson's character, who romanticises that era, it's a dream come true – but the Parisians of the 20s are themselves nostalgic for the 1890s. That's the problem with longing for the past, Allen is saying: we long for it because it's the past.) The film became Allen's highest-grossing in North America ever, outstripping Hannah and Her Sisters. Even the French loved it, which isn't how things usually go with Allen's late-period Euro movies: British reviewers gave the otherwise acclaimed Match Point a chilly reception, while the Spanish hated Vicky Cristina Barcelona. But then Allen has always been loved by the French, who, he once said, make two mistakes about him: "They think I'm an intellectual because I wear these glasses, and they think I'm an artist because my films lose money." To Rome With Love, unfortunately, embodies the other result of Allen's shoot-it-and-move-on approach. Trundling on a cheesy tourist trail around the Italian capital (the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Steps), it tells four whimsical stories that never intersect, meaning that its most watchable stars – Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz, Roberto Benigni and Allen, appearing in one of his movies for the first time since Scoop, in 2006 – never interact. Benigni, for example, plays a Roman office worker who leaves home one morning to find himself inexplicably hounded by paparazzi; the funniest scenes involve Allen, as a retired opera director, discovering that his daughter's Italian fiance's father has the ability to sing like a world-class tenor, but only in the shower. A tour of opera houses follows, featuring a shower cubicle on stage. But none of it really goes anywhere. The film, as Christopher Orr wrote in the Atlantic, has "a tossed-off, rough-draft quality … it's as if Allen had a handful of early ideas kicking around, couldn't settle on any one of them, saw his psychological nuclear-countdown clock ticking toward the one-year mark, and threw together what he had." The film-a-year schedule, Orr wrote, "increasingly seems less a choice than a compulsion" – a reading with which, meeting Allen, it's hard to disagree. Given the picture's claim to be a love-letter to Rome, did it bother Allen that Italian critics argued that it showed Rome through the eyes of an outsider – and a pampered celebrity outsider, familiar only with its five-star hotels, at that? "My experience has been, with one exception [Midnight In Paris], that when I do a film in a foreign country, the toughest audience for me is that country," he says. "In Italy, they said: 'This guy doesn't understand Italy.' And I can't argue with those criticisms. I'm an American, and that's how I see Barcelona or Rome or England … If the situation was reversed, and somebody from a foreign country made a film here, I might very well be saying: 'Yeah, it's OK, but this guy really doesn't get New York.' And I'd be right. And I'm sure they're right." It's a curious truth, though, as Allen points out, that his movies – even the New York classics, pre-eminently Manhattan, in which he starred alongside Diane Keaton in 1977 – have always been outsider's views to some degree. Born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn in 1935, the son of a jewellery engraver and a deli worker, "my view of Manhattan was largely gleaned from Hollywood movies," he says. "Where I grew up, we didn't have sophisticated penthouses. Nobody mixed martinis or popped champagne corks or had white telephones. These things were only in Hollywood movies." Perhaps it's because Allen is, these days, a pampered celebrity – "everything is done for you by minions," he says of the film-making process – that celebrity is the one subject on which To Rome With Love feels authentic and personal. He has been here before, most obviously in 1998's Celebrity, but in the new film he seems far more reconciled to life in the public eye. When Benigni's character's fame evaporates as suddenly as it arrived, he misses it badly. Allen's message, such as it is – and to non-fans, it will doubtless seem a little smug – is that wealth and fame are pretty fun. "There are lots of nice advantages that you get, being a celebrity," he says. "The tabloid things, the bumps in the road, they come and they go. Most people don't have as big a bump as I had, but even the big bump – it's not life-threatening. It's not like the doctor's saying: 'I looked at these x-rays of your brain, and there's this little thing growing there.' Tabloid things can be handled. I just don't want a shadow on my lung on the x-ray." The bump to which he is referring, of course, is the scandal that for some people overshadows all his achievements before or since: his split in 1992 from Mia Farrow, after she discovered naked photos he had taken of Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, then aged 20, whom Allen subsequently married. There followed a long and acrimonious battle for custody of Farrow and Allen's three children, which Allen lost. (Allen was never Previn's legal father.) Two decades later, there's little more to be said about it. Either you side with the still-seething Farrow camp – "happy father's day, or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law's day," Allen's estranged son Ronan Farrow tweeted earlier this year – or you buy Previn's argument that Allen was "never any kind of father figure to me", in which case it's just another May-to-December movie-world marriage. By all accounts, the Allen/Previn union is a tranquil one; the couple have two adopted children, reportedly aged 12 and 14. (Soon-Yi, Allen maintains, still hasn't seen most of his earlier movies, though it's unclear if this is through lack of interest or an aversion to exploring her husband's earlier romances.) Does it bother him, I ask, that for a sizeable minority of his audience, the scandal still defines him? "I think that's true," he says, thoughtfully. "To have been the lead character in a juicy scandal – a really juicy scandal – that will always be a part of what people think of when they think of me. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't please me. It's a non-factor. But it's a true factor." What preys on his mind infinitely more – this won't come as a surprise – is ageing. In one sense, this is nothing new: Allen has been confronting the horror of mortality, he says, since he was five, which means that by the time he wrote the part of the death-obsessed Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, back in 1977, he had already been worrying for 37 years. Now actually getting older, though, he finds grim satisfaction in being proved right: "It's a bad business. It's a confirmation that the anxieties and terrors I've had all my life were accurate. There's no advantage to ageing. You don't get wiser, you don't get more mellow, you don't see life in a more glowing way. You have to fight your body decaying, and you have less options." In 46 years as a director, he hasn't budged on his position that there's only one response: watch a basketball game, play the clarinet. "The only thing you can do is what you did when you were 20 – because you're always walking with an abyss right under your feet; they can be hoisting a piano on Park Avenue and drop it on your head when you're 20 – which is to distract yourself. Getting involved in a movie [occupies] all my anxiety: did I write a good scene for Cate Blanchett? If I wasn't concentrated on that, I'd be thinking of larger issues. And those are unresolvable, and you're checkmated whichever way you go." Plus, he adds, leaning forward: "If you're a celebrity, you can get good medical treatment. I can get a doctor on the weekends. I can get the results of my biopsy quickly." He doesn't envisage ever stopping making films. "But this can be taken out of my hands in a number of sinister ways." These relate to health, but also to money: the real explanation for Allen's recent filmic tour of European capitals has been the willingness of British, Spanish and Italian funders to step in where US studios won't. "You'd think that after a hit like Midnight in Paris – made a lot of money, not by Dark Knight standards, but by my standards – there would be some companies that would want to do a film with you. But I didn't get a single offer. Not one … and then an Italian company I'd been talking to for years was willing to put up money." Soon-Yi, he says, has been "bothering me relentlessly" to travel to south-east Asia; he'd make a film anywhere, he says, providing he could find the right idea. Allen still holds, as he's often done, that he's never made a "great" film, though it no longer seems to trouble him. "I'm just trying to be objective and honest," he says. "If you were having a 10-film festival and showing Citizen Kane on Monday, Rashomon on Tuesday, The Bicycle Thief, The Seventh Seal … I don't think anything I've ever made could be placed in a festival with those films and hold its own." If he's exercising on the treadmill and Annie Hall or Take the Money and Run comes on the TV, he says, he switches channel instantly; the same even applies to his personal favourites, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Husbands and Wives. "More than likely, if I stopped to watch it, I'd think: 'Oh, God, can I buy that back?'" Now and then, an exasperated critic will demand Allen's retirement, as if it's somehow an offence against cinema to keep making films that don't, on the whole, measure up to his earlier triumphs. But they misunderstand his motivation. "Making films is a very nice way to make a living," he says. "You work with beautiful women, and charming men, who are amusing and gifted; you work with art directors and costume people … you travel places, and the money's good. It's a nice living." And the perfect distraction from the abyss. As long as you have the means to keep going, why would you stop?
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of the day's political developments, including reaction to the Hillsborough report
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Girl was 'stumbling' around bleeding and BMW's engine was still revving when Brett Martin came across scene of carnage The British cyclist who discovered the victims of the French Alps murders has described how he found a little girl "stumbling" around, bleeding and "moaning". Brett Martin said he initially believed there had been a terrible accident as he surveyed the horrific scene in the secluded car park close to Lake Annecy. The BMW's engine was still revving and its wheels were spinning. Inside were the bodies of engineer Saad al-Hilli, 50, his dentist wife, Iqbal, 47, and her mother. The couple's four-year-old daughter, Zeena, lay undiscovered under her mother's corpse for eight hours afterwards, while her seven-year-old sister, Zainab, was the girl found outside the car. Martin, from West Sussex, a former RAF and British Airways pilot who is now a pilot instructor, was speaking as French investigators said they believed the key to the motive behind the murders lay in the UK "without doubt". Martin, who was visiting his family's rental property in the area and out on his daily cycle ride, described the scene of carnage, in the Combe d'Ire forest, near Chevaline, as though it was from a Hollywood film. "There was a lot of blood and heads with bullet holes in them," he said. "It was the sort of thing you would never in your life expect to come across." "As I approached the scene, the first thing I saw was a bike on its side. I had seen the cyclist ahead of me much earlier so I thought he was just having a rest. "As I got a little bit closer, a very young child stumbled out onto the road and at first I thought she was actually just playing with her sibling because she sort of looked, from a distance, like she was falling over, larking about like a child would. "However, as I approached her it was obvious that she was quite badly injured and there was a lot of blood on her. "As I got even closer, I then saw the car with its engine revving and its wheels spinning. It seemed at that moment in time like there had been a terrible car accident." He went first to the girl, Zainab. "She was prone on the road, moaning, semi-conscious and she was lying in a position that was in front of this car with its wheel spinning. So my immediate thought was she needed to be moved in case the car lurched forward and ran her over. So I gently attended to her and moved her into a position clear of where the vehicle could possibly go, clear of the road, and put her in the recovery position as best I could, and asked her to stay there. And then moved on. "She was very severely injured, she was going in and out of consciousness. After a few minutes, she had become unconscious. She had quite a lot of blood and some very obvious head injuries." At first he believed there had been an accident between a cyclist and the car, because there was a cyclist on the ground more or less in front of the car. "But there were things that didn't quite match, because the cycle wasn't beside him, and he wasn't grazed." "As the minutes went on I started to change my opinion about whether it was a car accident." There was nothing he could do for those in the car, he said: "What struck me was their complete inanimate nature, which is how I assessed, without breaking into the car and physically handling them, that they were dead." He switched off the car engine, then realised he had no mobile signal. He realised he would have to leave Zainab to get help. "It was a dilemma. One choice was to leave her, and another was to take her with me. She was very light, so I could have done a fireman's lift and take her down to my bike. But she had a lot of injuries, and it seemed if there was a risk of internal bleeding, wounds, then dragging her like a rag doll on my shoulder might have perhaps killed her. The prudent decision was to leave her in the recovery position and go for help on my bike as fast as I could." Leaving her "was not a very comfortable decision to have to make," he said. He did not see Zeena and had "no inkling" she was there, and was not surprised police did not find her for some hours. "Unless you were to open that car and look in, the way the bodies in the rear were slumped, it doesn't surprise me in the least. I can see why you wouldn't want to go into the car for forensic reasons and there would be no other reason to go in there other than to move bodies." French prosecutor Eric Maillaud, arrived in Surrey on Thursday with French examining magistrate Michel Mollin and both are expected to visit the Hilli family home in Claygate during their 24-hour visit. Maillaud told reporters of the motive: "Without any doubt the reason and the causes have their origin in this country." His comments would appear to rule out robbery or carjacking. It also dispelled speculation that French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45, apparently shot because he stumbled on the scene, may have been the original target. Forty French police officers are working on the complex case with investigators focusing on three specific areas - Hilli's work, his family and his native Iraq – as they try to find a motive for the murders. Maillaud said a number of witnesses have come forward in Annecy. They include a hiker, named only as Philippe D, 41, who likened the carnage to a horrific film scene. Sources said the victims were likely to have been shot with the same gun, fuelling speculation they were targeted by a contract killer. Each person was shot twice in the head. Detailed ballistic analysis of 25 spent cartridges found at the scene suggests they all came from a 7.65mm automatic pistol. The gun has been described as an old-fashioned weapon but one that is still sometimes used by special forces. The victims' bodies have been returned to their families.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sir Norman Bettison, who was part of South Yorkshire police inquiry, refuses to quit as head of West Yorkshire force
• Read Bettison's Hillsborough statement in full A senior police officer who was involved in the Hillsborough operation has rejected calls from victims' families to resign, saying he has nothing to hide. Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire police, released a detailed statement outlining his belief that he had done nothing wrong. Bettison was a chief inspector and later a superintendent in South Yorkshire police, and a member of the force's internal inquiry team following the disaster. The unit was condemned by the families of Hillsborough victims, and by the Labour MP Maria Eagle in parliament, as a black propaganda unit designed to smear the fans and shift blame from the police on to the victims. Trevor Hicks, whose two daughters died at Hillsborough, said Bettison should "scurry up a drainpipe" and resign in the aftermath of the publication of the Hillsborough report on Wednesday. The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, called for the Home Office to launch an investigation into the cover-up by South Yorkshire police and to examine whether criminal charges should be brought. "The job of the police is to protect the public and to pursue justice," she said. "Instead at Hillsborough, people who should have been protected were betrayed and justice was denied. The report reveals an appalling systemic cover-up, including the alteration of over 100 statements and a campaign of misinformation. "People need to have confidence in the police and need to be certain that they will pursue the truth in all circumstances. Even though these events took place 23 years ago, it is important to public confidence in the integrity of police forces that these issues are taken extremely seriously and investigated. "The chief constable of South Yorkshire police has rightly said that if people have broken the law then they should be prosecuted and his force would co-operate with any new inquiry." The former home secretary Jack Straw indicated on Radio 4's Today programme that Bettison should examine his position, but said any decision to go was down to the chief constable and his police authority. Bettison – one of the UK's most senior officers – said in a statement that he welcomed the 395-page report for endorsing his position. He made no apologies for his role in the aftermath of the Hillsborough tragedy. Bettison said he had always believed what the Taylor report found, that "the disaster was caused, mainly, through a lack of police control". He went on: "Fans' behaviour, to the extent that it was relevant at all, made the job of the police, in the crush outside Leppings Lane turnstiles, harder than it needed to be. But it didn't cause the disaster any more than the sunny day that encouraged people to linger outside the stadium as kick-off approached. "I held those views then, I hold them now. I have never, since hearing the Taylor evidence unfold, offered any other interpretation in public or private. "In the absence of all the facts I was called upon to resign 14 years ago when I became chief constable of Merseyside," he said. "I really welcome disclosure of all the facts that can be known about the Hillsborough tragedy because I have absolutely nothing to hide … Whilst not wishing to become a conducting rod for the genuine and justified hurt and anguish, I would invite anyone to do the same as me and read the document and the papers online." A former chief constable of South Yorkshire, Richard Wells, who took over in the aftermath of the disaster, said prosecutions of police officers were essential after the revelations about the scale of the cover-up in the force, which at the time was "secretive, defensive and authoritarian". Bettison denied that his role in an internal inquiry team from South Yorkshire police was to foment black propaganda and transfer blame for the tragedy on to the fans. Instead, he said, the review team was charged with "piecing together what had taken place". He made clear he had not been part of a unit which was responsible for doctoring police statements. "In 1989, I was a chief inspector in a non-operational role at headquarters. Four days after the disaster (and after all the vile newspaper coverage had been written) I was one of several officers pulled together by the then deputy chief constable, Peter Hays, to support him in piecing together what had taken place at the event. "By that time, the chief constable, Peter Wright, had handed over the formal investigation of the tragedy to an independent police force, West Midlands police. It was West Midlands police that presented evidence before the Taylor inquiry. The South Yorkshire deputy chief constable's team, under the leadership of Chief Superintendent Wain, was a parallel activity to inform chief officers of facts rather than rely on the speculation rampant at that time. "Another team was later created … to work with the solicitors who were representing South Yorkshire police at the Taylor inquiry, to vet statements from South Yorkshire police officers that were intended to be presented to the inquiry … I never altered a statement nor asked for one to be altered. Two South Yorkshire police teams have been conflated in the minds of some commentators." Bettison said he sat through every day of the Taylor inquiry, published in August 1989, and briefed the South Yorkshire chief constable and deputy on the proceedings. "These briefings acknowledged and accepted the responsibility of the force in the disaster. The evidence was overwhelming," he said. "Shortly after the conclusion of the Taylor inquiry, I was posted to other duties. I had nothing further to do with the subsequent coroners' inquests and proceedings, other than occasional advice because of my knowledge of the evidence presented to the Taylor inquiry."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The still-young director's highly praised film represents an effort to hang with cinema's biggest guns. He seems to have done it Last week, the Toronto film festival was treated to a rare sighting of Paul Thomas Anderson, who with his unkempt hair and bushy demeanor resembles a cross between a film director and a marmoset. "I just want to tell you that I don't consider that we're dealing with a cult," he told the assembled journalists about his film, The Master, which is based in part on the founding of Scientology. "Trust me, it's not about Scientology," said its star, Philip Seymour Hoffman, earlier in the year – a mixture of concerted PR voodoo and counter-bluff worthy of Orson Welles, who famously denied that William Randolph Hearst had been any kind of inspiration for Citizen Kane. California is, of course, the home of the cult. Anderson grew up in the San Fernando valley, home of the religious cult portrayed in the recent Brit Marling film Sound of My Voice and also the Spahn Ranch, the final nest of the Manson family. "No other city in the United States possess so large a number of metaphysical charlatans in proportion to its population," wrote local Willard Huntington Smith of Los Angeles in 1913. Partly this is a matter of geography: an oceanfront paradise at the end of the long, dusty trek west that convinced many early settlers they had stumbled across a modern-day Shangri-La, it has drawn more than its share of dreamers, visionaries and scam artists with its promise of protean self-realization. If New York is the place you go to be yourself, Los Angeles is the place you go to be someone else, as did L Ron Hubbard when he left the US Navy to write science fiction from a run-down trailer home in North Hollywood, before founding the Church of Scientology in 1952. The parallels between Hubbard and Anderson's Lancaster Dodd (played by Hoffman) are clear. Both men love boats and motorcycles. Both have a wife named Mary Sue and nurse a paranoia about the American Medical Association. Hubbard's followers hope to become "clear"; the Master's followers cast off their animal selves to become "optimum". And both flourished like toadstools in the shadow of the second world war, hovering up lost souls and walking wounded. "It's a mix of a tremendous amount of optimism," Anderson said of the era, "but an incredibly large body count behind you. How can you feel really great about a victory with so much death around you? So it gets you to a spot where… people want to talk about past lives, about where we go after we die, past lives, and those kinds of ideas that The Master is putting forward – time travel is possible – those are great ideas." He may not have been faking the note of sympathy just to screw with the press. Hollywood has its personality cults too. If the cult of the auteur is the high-brow response to the outsized personality cults that attached themselves to the stars of the 1920s and 1930s – an attempt to even up the kilowattage – then it burns brightest around Anderson, the chosen son of Those Who Are Serious About Their Cinema. "In the decade and a half since his dark but rambunctious ensemble dramas Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Anderson has gone from a protégé of Robert Altman and Jonathan Demme to a Kubrickian formalist," wrote David Edelstein in his review of The Master. Abjuring press interviews, Anderson aims for the matte anti-mystique of Kubrick too, though collaborators testify to an antic sense of humor. "I expected him to be so serious," Amy Adams told me when I spoke to her earlier in the year about the shoot of the film – then called simply Untitled Western. The film left few traces, other than a fake shipping schedule, as it moved from location to location: the wing of an old hospital on Mare Island, an empty admiral's mansion, FDR's old boat, the Potomac. "Once you got out on that boat all day long there was no escape," said Adams, who was required to show up even for scenes in which her character – Dodd's Lady Macbeth-like wife – did not appear, just to make her presence felt. Even in the scenes where she did appear – a naked singalong led by Dodd around a piano, for example – she was never entirely sure when the camera was on her. "So you just do your work and exist in space," she said. Another day, she was handed some pages of Victorian pornography by Anderson and told to read it into the camera, staring right into it, for a scene in which she breaks down the reactions of Joaquin Phoenix's character. "That's the first time I've ever looked into the camera that long. I was entranced by the end of that sequence because it went on much longer than [it does in the film]. That takes it to a new level for me as well, because I can't react. And I'm like: 'Wait, is Paul trying to break down my reaction? Is he doing this to me?'" When I suggested that it all sounded a little cult-like, with the secretive Anderson imposing his will upon a cast and crew systematically kept off balance throughout, Adams demurred. "I won't go that far," she said. "But I do kind of worship Paul. He's magnificent." Altman played similar tricks on his actors. Contemporary Pied Pipers seeking to lead the way through a mixture of charisma, wile and manipulation, directors have always shared a gene pool with cult-leaders. They are modern-day Mesmers, seeking to cast their spell over millions. Channelling the ghosts of Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick, The Master represents a muscular will-to-power from a still-young director wanting to hang with cinema's biggest guns – does its title refer to its subject or its director? For the most part, reviewers have been happy to suggest the latter. "I believe in the church of Paul Thomas Anderson," declared Rolling stone's Peter Travers. "The Master is a great movie, the best of the year so far, and a new American classic." Every film contains within it the acorn of the manner in which it will be received. People who have seen The Master have divvied up into Believers and non-Believers, and woe betide the agnostic who wanders into the crossfire. "NO ONE will ever be soothed or placated by it, and NO ONE will ever 'understand' it or parse it or break it down into rhyming prose," tweeted one fan. "The Master rips its shirt open and shouts at the audience, 'I am a bear! We are ALL bears! And you will not tame me! Accept me as I am or go away and hide in your little hole!'" tweeted another. Do not dare to disbelieve.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | No casualties reported in the attack in Sana'a, which happened a day after the US ambassador to Libya was killed in Benghazi Arab outrage triggered by an anti-Islamic film made in California has spread to Yemen, where protesters attacked the US embassy in Sana'a. The Yemeni government said on Thursday that there had been no casualties as a result of the storming of the embassy compound and vowed to protect all foreign embassies in the capital. The protesters succeeded in breaching security at the outer perimeter of the embassy, breaking into the compound and burning the US flag, but they were unable to gain entry to the embassy buildings. The incident came a day after the killing of the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans in an armed assault on the US consulate in Benghazi, and a demonstration at the US embassy in Cairo, where protesters managed to take down the Stars and Stripes before being evicted. In all three countries the ostensible reason for the demonstrations was fury at a virulently Islamaphobic video, which appeared online in July but only drew a mass audience in the past week after Christian and Muslim radicals started to publicise it. The maker of the film, Innocence of Muslims, which crudely denigrates the prophet Muhammad, called himself Sam Bacile and claimed to be Israeli American, but that appears to be an alias. A Coptic Christian living on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, later admitted to the Associated Press that he had managed and provided logistics for the film. Nakoula, who pleaded no contest to bank fraud charges in 2010, denied being Sam Bacile, but a mobile phone used by the elusive director in earlier interviews was registered under Nakoula's address, and he had previously used similar aliases. Mainstream Coptic Christian organisations in Egypt have repudiated the film, but its viral spread on YouTube – deliberately fanned by religious zealots on all sides – was a powerful demonstration of the volatile power of the internet. In the aftermath of Stevens's death, President Barack Obama swore that "justice will be done" and telephoned his Egyptian counterpart, Mohamed Morsi, and Libya's interim leader, Mohammed Magarief, to call for better security for American diplomats. Obama expressed appreciation for the Libyan government's role in ultimately repelling the attackers in Benghazi, an extremist faction calling itself Ansar al-Sharia, and for taking Stevens to hospital. However, the president was cool towards Morsi, who initially only issued a mild rebuke to the rioters on Facebook. Egyptian security forces failed to prevent the storming of the compound and only evicted the demonstrators hours later. Egypt is the biggest recipient of US bilateral aid after Israel, receiving about $2bn (£1.24bn) a year, more than half of it in the form of assistance to the country's armed forces. But Obama was tepid about relations with Cairo in a television interview with Telemundo aired on Wednesday, saying: "I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy". Speaking during a visit to the European Union in Brussels on Thursday morning, Morsi insisted he had condemned Tuesday's attacks "in the clearest terms" when he spoke to Obama. The Egyptian president also harshly criticised the Innocence of Muslims film. "We condemn strongly … all those who launch such provocations and who stand behind that hatred," Morsi said, adding that he had asked Obama "to put an end to such behaviour". Morsi, who is hoping to carry out structural reforms to overhaul Egypt's ailing economy, is seeking a $4.8bn loan from the International Monetary Fund, but more could be required.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates on the aftermath of the killing of the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, in a suspected terrorist attack
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mexican navy says it has detained the head of the Gulf cartel, one of the country's most wanted drug bosses The Mexican navy says it has captured one of Mexico's most wanted drug bosses, the head of the Gulf cartel, in what would mark a major victory in President Felipe Calderón's crackdown on organised crime. The capture of Jorge Costilla, alias El Coss, is a boost for the military battle against drug trafficking, but it could open a power vacuum and intensify a struggle south of the Texas border in north-east Mexico, a region that has seen some of the most horrific violence in the country's six-year war among law-enforcement and rival gangs. Clad in a blue plaid shirt and bulletproof vest, the suspect was presented along with 10 bodyguards. The navy also showed dozens of assault weapons, some pistols that appeared gilded and studded with jewels, and several expensive-looking watches seized in the operation. Navy spokesman Jose Luis Vergara said five guards had been arrested on Wednesday morning. Five fled when marines tried to arrest them and the chase led authorities to Coss's hideout in Tampico in north-eastern Mexico. Costilla shook his head when asked if he had anything to say about the charges against him and if he had a lawyer. The US state department has a reward of up to $5m (£3m) for his capture. The arrest comes barely a week after the Mexican navy captured the senior Gulf cartel member Mario Cárdenas, alias Fatso. The Gulf cartel has been weakened by a violent turf war with the Zetas, a gang formed by army deserters which acted as enforcers for the cartel before 2010. It could also have political implications because top officials in the cartel's stronghold, the state of Tamaulipas, have been accused of taking money from local drug gangs. "All these politicians who were getting money from the Gulf cartel ought to be very worried now because this information is going to come to light," said Alberto Islas, a security expert at the consultancy Risk Evaluation. He said he expected Costilla to be extradited to the US, and that his testimony could prove damaging to officials in Tamaulipas and neighbouring Veracruz state, which has also been dogged by allegations of corruption. Tomás Yarrington, a governor of Tamaulipas between 1999 and 2005 for the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), which will retake the national presidency in December, is wanted in Mexico for aiding drug gangs. The FBI said Costilla was believed to have taken over the daily operations of the cartel after his former boss Osiel Cárdenas was arrested and jailed in Mexico in 2003. He features prominently on a wanted list of 37 kingpins the Mexican government published in 2009. Well over 20 on that list have now been captured or killed. Costilla's capture could, however, lead to more violence with the weakening of the Gulf cartel intensifying turf wars for control of Mexico's north-eastern border with Texas between the Sinaloa cartel and the Zetas.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mexican navy says it has detained the head of the Gulf Cartel, one of the country's most wanted drug bosses The Mexican navy says it has captured one of Mexico's most wanted drug bosses, the head of the Gulf Cartel, in what would mark a major victory in President Felipe Calderón's crackdown on organised crime. The navy said it would give more details about the arrest of the man it believed to be Jorge Costilla, alias El Coss, when it parades him in front of the media early on Thursday. A government security official said the man was detained in Tampico in north-eastern Mexico without resistance. The US state department has a reward of up to $5m (£3m) for his capture. The arrest comes barely a week after the Mexican navy captured the senior Gulf Cartel member Mario Cárdenas, alias Fatso. The Gulf Cartel has been weakened by a violent turf war with the Zetas, a gang formed by army deserters which acted as enforcers for the cartel before 2010. It could also have political implications because top officials in the cartel's stronghold, the state of Tamaulipas, have been accused of taking money from local drug gangs. "All these politicians who were getting money from the Gulf Cartel ought to be very worried now because this information is going to come to light," said Alberto Islas, a security expert at the consultancy Risk Evaluation. He said he expected Costilla to be extradited to the US, and that his testimony could prove damaging to officials in Tamaulipas and neighbouring Veracruz state, which has also been dogged by allegations of corruption. Tomás Yarrington, a governor of Tamaulipas between 1999 and 2005 for the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI), which will retake the national presidency in December, is wanted in Mexico for aiding drug gangs. The FBI said Costilla was believed to have taken over the daily operations of the cartel after his former boss Osiel Cárdenas was arrested and jailed in Mexico in 2003. He features prominently on a wanted list of 37 kingpins the Mexican government published in 2009. Well over 20 on that list have now been captured or killed. Costilla's apparent capture could, however, lead to more violence with the weakening of the Gulf Cartel intensifying turf wars for control of Mexico's north-eastern border with Texas between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates on the aftermath of the killing of the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, in a suspected terrorist attack
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of the day's political developments as they happened, including reaction to the Hillsborough report
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | There are hopes that Ben Bernanke will announce a third bout of quantitative easing in this month's Fed meeting, while Dutch election results overnight showed a victory for pro-Europe parties
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | There are hopes that Ben Bernanke will announce a third bout of quantitative easing in this month's Fed meeting, while Dutch election results overnight showed a victory for pro-Europe parties
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