|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as tensions between Turkey and Syria escalate further after Ankara grounded a Syrian passenger plane which was allowed to leave after an arms inspection
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Liu Futang accused of printing his books on environmental conflicts without proper licences A Chinese former official who won an award for his exposé of illegal forest clearing has gone on trial accused of profiting by printing his books on environmental conflicts without proper licences. Liu Futang won the environmental press award, co-organised by the Guardian, in April. Three months later the 65-year-old was detained while receiving treatment for high blood pressure and diabetes at a hospital in southern Hainan province. His trial opened in Longhua, Haikou city, on Thursday morning. He is accused of "conducting illegal business", and supporters say he could face five years or more in jail. They believe that his last book, The Tears of Hainan II, particularly angered authorities. It highlighted a project to build a coal-fired power plant at Yinggehai, which met fierce opposition from residents. Prosecutors claim Liu ignored the law by illegally publishing, printing and distributing a total of 18,000 copies of his books. They acknowledge that he gave away the books, but argue that the total amount of money involved in the scheme was 464,000 yuan (£46,100), and claim Liu illegally obtained 78,000 yuan. Feng Yongfeng, founder of NGO Green Beagle and one of the judges of this year's award, wrote on his microblog that Hainan prosecutors should withdraw the case, as there was no way it could be considered illegal business since Liu had published the books primarily to give to people. "The purpose was sharing the difficulties of environmental protection. He never wanted to sell it … The circulation could only be useful to spread knowledge of environmental protection, not to have any impact in terms of the market," he said. "Liu Futang has recognised his mistake on illegal publication and will learn from his experience." Xia Jun, a public interest lawyer, wrote on his microblog that the defence might be able to win the activist a two-year term or even a suspended sentence by stressing that he had been seeking to protect the environment. Liu's wife and son and one of his friends were allowed to witness the trial. Relatives had not been able to see him prior to the hearing. His niece, Liu Xiuli, said the activist had appeared in poor health and they were very concerned about his mental and physical wellbeing. She said he had been too emotional to speak at times during the case. Liu won the citizen journalist prize in the China environmental press awards this spring after he revealed that developers of a yacht marina had destroyed one of the world's last groves of water coconut trees. He told the Guardian at the time: "The degradation is terrible … The local media hasn't written a single word, but I've posted 40 articles that have been followed up by newspapers and TV from across the country." The awards are jointly organised by the Guardian, chinadialogue and the Chinese web portal Sina, with funding from the Guardian Foundation and SEE, a Chinese charitable body.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sources say German chancellor was key factor in decision to terminate talks between defence and aerospace giants The €35bn (£28bn) mega-merger between BAE Systems and EADS collapsed as a result of personal opposition from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and despite a series of 11th-hour interventions from Downing Street officials and their counterparts in Paris and Berlin attempting to keep the deal alive. The proposed combination of Britain's largest defence contractor and the Franco-German owner of Airbus would have created a pan-European manufacturing powerhouse with 220,000 employees, making hi-tech products ranging from nuclear submarines and Typhoon fighter jets to the A380 superjumbo. Sources close to the deal said Merkel had become the most significant obstacle to thrashing out an agreement, with No 10 officials participating in frantic high-level discussions on Tuesday night when it became clear that opposition from Germany was in danger of scuppering the deal. "It [Merkel's opposition] was a key factor in the decision to terminate the talks," said the source. Another added that Merkel appeared to be "philosophically opposed" to combining a defence business with a civil aerospace company. "The fundamental problem is that Merkel does not feel comfortable with the deal, full stop." The UK, French and German governments all had the power to veto the deal but Berlin's concern over the potential size of the French shareholding in the combined company, as well as disagreements over the location of the group's headquarters, proved to be the deal breaker that could not be resolved by the last-ditch round of phone diplomacy. BAE's chief executive, Ian King, said failure to agree the size of French and German shareholdings was the key factor behind abandoning the deal , ahead of a 5pm deadline set by the UK Takeover Panel. Declining to comment on Merkel's role, he indicated that Paris and Berlin would have to change their stance if the companies ever wanted to attempt a merger in the future. "Unless European governments completely change their current view, we would not be in a position to resurrect the deal." BAE's chairman, Dick Olver, said the UK government had been "incredibly helpful" and denied that the failure to pull off the deal had now made BAE vulnerable as a takeover target for other overseas buyers – despite speculation that a US defence group such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin could now consider an approach for Britain's largest manufacturing employer. The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, said the deal "had to be done on the basis it was in Britain's national interest" but the two companies had decided it was "too difficult to progress this project further". A source close to EADS said David Cameron had been "really, really interested" in the merger. "There was a view that the British would be the biggest problem but that did not turn out to be the case." In a joint statement, the companies said they could not resolve state concerns about the deal, with the UK, French and German governments unable to reach agreement. "It has become clear that the interests of the parties' government stakeholders cannot be adequately reconciled with each other or with the objectives that BAE Systems and EADS established for the merger," the statement said. A person close to the negotiations added that while Germany had proved to be the biggest obstacle, there were still differences to resolve between France and the UK that had not been cleared by Tuesday night's flurry of calls, even if there had been more substantial progress between London and Paris. It is understood that every solution proposed drew an objection from one of the three governments. France, which controlled 15% of EADS directly, was unhappy with German demands for the business to have its headquarters in Munich, while Germany was concerned that France could end up with a bigger shareholding in the new business than the 9% it was seeking. The UK, in turn, refused to allow German and French political representatives to sit on the BAE board, as would have been likely under the dual-listed structure envisaged by both companies. The UK's largest trade union, Unite, said a merger would have "protected the UK's long-term interests" if it had been accompanied by a jobs guarantee for British employees. BAE employs 37,500 people in the UK and is Britain's largest manufacturing employer. Ian Waddell, a Unite official, said the UK government could secure such a guarantee in future mergers or takeovers by taking an equity stake in BAE. Although the British government has a "golden share" in the business, which can block a foreign takeover, it does not control a significant block of shares similar to France's stake in EADS. When their indirect and direct shareholdings are taken together, France and Germany each control 22.35% of EADS. "It was an unequal negotiation with France and Germany," he said. Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP for Wyre and Preston, who organised a petition against the deal signed by 45 MPs, said the deal should never have been promoted due to the threat of French and German political interference. Wallace said the collapse of the merger put the future of BAE boss King, and his board colleagues, at risk. "The BAE board should now reflect long and hard at what their strategic error could mean for the company's future. If they have put at risk my constituents' jobs and fatally wounded the UK's jewel in the manufacturing crown, then they should consider their position."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nicolás Maduro has been foreign minister since 2006 and has long been seen as a possible successor to Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez has named his foreign minister, Nicols Maduro, as vice-president in a cabinet shake-up. Maduro, 49, a former bus driver, replaces Elías Jaua, who will run for the governorship of Miranda state against the defeated presidential candidate Henrique Capriles in December. Maduro has been foreign minister since 2006 and has long been seen as a possible successor to Chávez. He has been frequently at his side at critical moments since Chávez began cancer treatment last year. Should Chávez's cancer reappear and force him out of office within the first four years of his six-year term, the vice-president would serve temporarily as president before a new election. If Chávez left office in the final two years, the vice-president would serve out the rest of the term. Chávez, 58, has led Venezuela since 1999 and won re-election by an 11-point margin on Sunday. "I don't recommend anyone for the vice-president's job," Chávez joked, naming Maduro during the formal proclamation of his presidential win by Venezuela's election board. "Putting up with me is not easy!" Maduro's working-class background gives him more appeal than other officials among Chávez's supporters. He was elected to parliament in 2000, and his combative defence of Chávez's socialism made him a favoured protege. "He was a bus driver. How they mock him, the bourgeoisie," said Chávez, who depicts his socialist government as a protector of the masses against an evil capitalist elite. In other changes, the interior minister, Tarek el Aissami; the presidential office minister, Erika Farías; and the indigenous peoples minister, Nicia Maldonado, all left the cabinet to fight for state governorships. Capriles, the Miranda state governor, said he had put Sunday's loss behind him and urged opposition supporters to rally once more for December's election of state governors as a way of putting a brake on Chávez's power across Venezuela. "I'm back on my feet … The tears have dried up," Capriles said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • 1,000-page Usada dossier lays out case against Armstrong
• Depicted as bully who coerced team-mates into using drugs A devastating report into years of drug taking at Lance Armstrong's United States Postal Service team described the squad as running "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen". The 1,000-page report from the US Anti-Doping Agency sets out its case against Armstrong with damning clarity, depicting the former cycling hero, US national icon and cancer-campaigning champion as a bully who coerced his team-mates into using drugs and a cheat who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for doping programmes. "His goal [of winning the Tour de France] led him to depend on EPO, testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his team-mates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own," concluded the report. "It was not enough that his team-mates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping programme outlined for them or be replaced." Armstrong fought back, as he always does, with his lawyers attacking the report as "a one-sided hatchet job, a taxpayer-funded tabloid piece rehashing old, disproved, unreliable allegations based largely on axe-grinders, serial perjurers, coerced testimony, sweetheart deals and threat-induced stories". A five-page letter from his lawyers, Timothy J Herman of Austin, Texas, also described Usada's case as "a taxpayer-funded witchhunt". The most damaging testimony came from Armstrong's close friend and long-time team-mate George Hincapie, who is widely viewed as having no axe to grind. Hincapie states: "At a race in Spain in 2000 Lance indicated to me he had taken testosterone. Lance told me that he was feeling good and recovered, that he had just taken some 'oil'. When I heard that drug testing officials were at the hotel, I texted Lance to warn him to avoid the place ..." He adds that in 2003 Armstrong used his apartment to have a blood transfusion. "In 2003 Lance Armstrong contacted me about needing to do something private at my apartment in Girona because he had guests at his apartment. I agreed and Lance came to my apartment with Dr Del Moral. Lance and Dr Del Moral went into my bedroom and Dr Del Moral was carrying what I thought was a blood bag. He asked to borrow a coat hanger and Lance and Dr Del Moral closed the door behind them. They were in the room about 45 minutes to an hour which is about the time it generally takes to re-infuse a bag of blood." As well as the testimony of Tyler Hamilton – whose revelatory book has just been named on the shortlist for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year – and Floyd Landis, both of whom testified after their personal fights against doping positives proved fruitless, the report lists nine witnesses who have no blot on their escutcheons: Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie. Of these, only Vande Velde, Danielson, Zabriskie and Leipheimer are still racing – Hincapie and Barry retired a few weeks ago – and they will face nominal six-month bans which will enable them to race again next season. The Canadian Barry and Vaughters have both been proponents of anti-doping since leaving Armstrong's service; Vaughters was the founder of the Garmin-Slipstream squad which has been at the forefront of anti-doping since its inception in 2007, while Barry, who has combined cycling and writing up to his retirement a few weeks ago, has spoken out against the practice in his published work. Vande Velde and Barry describe being put in a position where they were left with no option but to dope. "I was in the doghouse and ... the only way forward with Armstrong's team was to get fully on Dr Ferrari's doping program," said Vande Velde, referring to Armstrong's trainer Michele Ferrari. Barry said: "After being encouraged by the team, pressured to perform and pushed to my physical limits, I crossed a line I promised myself and others I would not: I doped." Zabriskie's evidence is similar, and is the more harrowing because he had come to cycling to avoid drugs, after his father's life had been shortened by addiction. "He had embraced cycling to escape a life seared by drugs and now he felt that he could not say no and stay in his mentor's good graces," states the report. "When he went back to his room that night he cried." The report also claims to have evidence that Armstrong paid over a million dollars to Ferrari – whom he apparently nicknamed "Schumi" after the German Formula One driver: "The evidence in this case also includes banking and accounting records from a Swiss company controlled by Dr Ferrari reflecting more than one million dollars in payments by Mr Armstrong, extensive email communications between Dr Ferrari and his son and Mr Armstrong during a time period in which Mr Armstrong claimed to not have a professional relationship with Dr Ferrari and a vast amount of additional data, including laboratory test results and expert analysis of Mr Armstrong's blood test results." The report quotes email correspondence from Stefano Ferrari to Armstrong in which Ferrari junior appears to be passing on training advice from "Schumi," in 2009, after Armstrong had returned to cycling and when he had stated publicly that they were no longer working together. The initial paragraphs of the report's "Reasoned decision" include an utterly damning passage about Armstrong's era: "Twenty of the twenty-one podium finishers in the Tour de France from 1999 through 2005 have been directly tied to likely doping through admissions, sanctions, public investigations or exceeding the UCI hematocrit threshold. Of the forty-five (45) podium finishes during the time period between 1996 and 2010, thirty-six (36) were by riders similarly tainted by doping." Usada's chief executive, Travis Tygart, described what went on at US Postal as a "systemic, sustained and highly professionalised team-run doping conspiracy," adding: "The USPS Team doping conspiracy was professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Remarks made by candidate that appear to soften stance on abortion highlight discrepancy with running mate's position Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan were scrambling on Wednesday to present a coherent position on abortion amid accusations from Democrats that the Republican presidential candidate had hidden his true beliefs in an attempt to appeal to moderate voters. In the wake of a Romney interview with the Des Moines Register newspaper in which he said his agenda included no legislation to restrict abortion, his campaign team launched a damage limitation exercise to assure conservative voters that he remained staunchly pro-life. Within hours of the comments being published on Tuesday, Romney's campaign insisted that he was against abortion, telling the conservative National Review Online that Romney "would, of course, support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life. "Mitt Romney is proudly pro-life, and he will be a pro-life president," said his spokeswoman Andrea Saul in a statement. But on Wednesday, an intervention by Ryan during a campaign stop deepened the confusion. Asked by reporters about the differences between him and Romney on the issue, Ryan, who is against abortion in all cases, including rape, incest and where the mother's life is in danger, said: "Our position is unified. Our position is consistent and hasn't changed." As the controversy escalated, Romney himself sought to draw a line under it. He told reporters in Ohio: "I think I've said time and again that I'm a pro-life candidate and I'll be a pro-life president. The actions I'll take immediately is to remove funding for Planned Parenthood. It will not be part of my budget. And also I've indicated that I will reverse the Mexico City position of the president. I will reinstate the Mexico City policy which keeps us from using foreign aid for abortions overseas." Romney's anti-abortion views are less extreme than Ryan's. While he has stated that he supports the overturning of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision, he believes there should be exceptions to a ban on abortion. Ryan, by contrast, has sponsored a series of bills that would either restrict abortion or access to contraception, or both. The differing views of the two men over the issue was highlighted most recently in August when Ryan's views were tied to those of Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri who was abandoned by the party after comments on "legitimate rape". Two months ago, when asked a similar question about the difference on abortion between him and Romney, Ryan acknowledged the difference between them when he told reporters he was "proud of my pro-life record" but said that Romney set the policy. A call to the Romney campaign from the Guardian to clarify the position – and what Ryan's "unified" comment meant – was not immediately returned. Romney's initial remarks to the Des Moines Register were pounced on by Barack Obama campaign officials, who accused him of "cynically and dishonestly" hiding his true anti-abortion position. Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign press secretary, told reporters: "We're not saying that he's changed his mind on these issues. We're saying that he is trying to cover up his beliefs." She added: "Every step of the way he has been anti-choice, against Roe v Wade." Reaction among conservatives to Romney's remarks was also critical. A comment piece in the conservative newspaper The Weekly Standard on Wednesday titled "Did Mitt Romney forget?" suggested that he was "mistaken" and had simply not realised how many issues related to abortion funding he could influence. "The issue here does not appear to be that Romney is backing off his stance on abortion – indeed, he says he will use an executive order to cut off funding to groups that perform abortion overseas," it read. "But he is mistaken in thinking that there aren't issues related to abortion funding are handled through the legislative process at the federal level." Romney's past commitments have included ensuring US laws reflect "values of preserving life". He has previously promised to: support foetal pain legislation, which bans abortion after 20 weeks, on the much-debated basis that foetuses can feel pain at that stage; end public health funds for Planned Parenthood because the group provides abortions; and support a decades-old ban on federal funds for abortions. He supports the reversal of Roe v Wade, but believes in exceptions for victims of rape and incest, or when the mother's life is in danger. Romney, who had been pro-choice as governor of Massachusetts, repeatedly asserted his anti-abortion credentials as he battled to win the Republican nomination. During a televised debate in Charleston on 19 January before the South Carolina primary, for example, he said: "You can count on me as president of the United States to pursue a policy that protects the life of the unborn, whether here in this country or overseas. And I'll reverse the policies of this president." In his acceptance speech to the Republican convention in Tampa in August, he promised that as president he would "protect the sanctity of life". Anti-abortion groups said on Wednesday they didn't see Romney's comments as evidence of a change of heart. Tony Perkins, president of the anti-abortion Family Research Council, told Talking Points Memo the Romney campaign called him soon after the remarks were published by the Iowa newspaper and assured him it didn't represent a shift from his support for pro-life issues. Romney's comments came as he sought to maintain his recent appeal to female voters in the closing stages of the presidential race. A poll by Pew this week found Romney neck-and-neck among women with Barack Obama, who has held an enormous advantage with this demographic.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Usada publishing dossier after showing it to other agencies
• Eleven former team-mates have testified against Armstrong
• Follow our live coverage of the release of Usada's report Lance Armstrong's faltering reputation as an international sporting hero was shredded on Wednesday by a devastating report from the United States anti-doping agency that alleged that he was a the heart of the most sophisticated doping programme in the history of sport. The agency said that its exhaustive inquiry proved that not only was Armstrong a serial doper – an accusation that has been made before – but he bullied other team-mates into taking performance-enhancing drugs, shunned those who refused, and engaged an entourage of doctors and supporters in a long-running cover-up. In a report that runs to more than 1,000 pages and contains the testimony of 11 former team-mates, the agency sets out in meticulous detail how Armstrong doped his way through seven years when he dominated the Tour de France. "The evidence shows beyond any doubt that the US Postal Service Pro Cycling Team ran the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen," Usada said. The agency presented as matter-of-fact reality that winning and doping went hand in hand in cycling and that Armstrong's teams were the best at getting it done without getting caught. Armstrong won the Tour as leader of the US Postal Service team from 1999-2004 and again in 2005 with the Discovery Channel as the primary sponsor. Armstrong has denied cheating and never failed a doping test but was banned for life by Usada in August after announcing he would not fight the doping charges. His attorney, Tim Herman, called the report "a one-sided hatchet job a taxpayer funded tabloid piece rehashing old, disproved, unreliable allegations based largely on axe-grinders, serial perjurers, coerced testimony, sweetheart deals and threat-induced stories." Aware of the criticism his agency has faced from Armstrong and his legion of followers, Usada chief executive Travis Tygart insisted his group handled this case under the same rules as any other. He pointed out that Armstrong was given the chance to take his case to arbitration and he declined, choosing in August to accept the sanctions instead. The agency's full report was sent to the International Cycling Union, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the World Triathlon Corporation – Armstrong now competes as a triathlete. Usada said that Armstrong not only used doping for his own ends, but encouraged others to do the same, in pursuit of his tean's dominance of the Tour de France. "His goal led him to depend on EPO, testosterone and blood transfusions but also, more ruthlessly, to expect and to require that his team-mates would likewise use drugs to support his goals if not their own. "It was not enough that his team-mates give maximum effort on the bike, he also required that they adhere to the doping programme outlined for them or be replaced." In particularly damning testimony, George Hincapie, who rode alongside Armstrong when he won each of his seven Tour de France titles and was his unofficial lieutenant, admitted cheating and told Usada he was not alone. "I would have been much more comfortable talking only about myself, but understood that I was obligated to tell the truth about everything I knew. So that is what I did," he said in a statement. Another former Armstrong teammate, Michael Barry of Canada, said he was pressured to dope by the team. "After being encouraged by the team, pressured to perform and pushed to my physical limits, I crossed a line I promised myself and others I would not: I doped," he said. The Usada statement named 11 former team-mates of Armstrong who have testified against him to the agency. Those it named were, in alphabetical order: Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters and David Zabriskie. "Usada has found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Lance Armstrong engaged in serial cheating through the use, administration and trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs and methods that Armstrong participated in running in the US Postal Service Team as a doping conspiracy," the agency said in its "reasoned decision", issued on Wednesday. "Armstrong and his co-conspirators sought to achieve their ambitions through a massive fraud now more fully exposed. So ends one of the most sordid chapters in sports history." Armstrong, through his spokesman, said earlier on Wednesday that he had no comment on the Usada report. But his legal representative sent a five-page letter to Usada attacking the motives and methods of what he called a "taxpayer-funded witch hunt" against his client. The letter, written by Timothy J Herman of Austin, Texas, accused Usada of waging a vendetta against Armstrong and basing its case on testimony that he said had been pressured and coerced from witnesses, including two former Armstrong team-mates, Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton. The release of Usada's "reasoned decision" on Armstrong's use of drugs and organised doping by the US Postal Service and Discovery teams places in the public domain evidence that Armstrong had aimed to avoid being aired by declining to contest his case in the court of arbitration for sport. Usada noted that Armstrong had "strategically avoided" the hearing, but said that it was publishing the report in any case, first for the sake of transparency, but also specifically to counter the efforts of Armstrong's spokespersons to denigrate Usada witnesses. Earlier in the day, Armstrong's lawyer had dismissed Usada's evidence as the testimony of "serial perjurers". Until now, Armstrong's key accusers have been Landis and Hamilton, both of whom had fought losing battles against their own doping charges, and could thus be called non-credible by Armstrong. However, what is immediately clear from Usada's report is the sheer weight of evidence, backed up by sworn affidavits from former team-mates with no such stain on their integrity: Jonathan Vaughters (now Garmin team director), Christian Vande Velde, Hincapie, Barry, Levi Leipheimer and others. Six of these riders now receive a six-month ban for their admissions of participating in the systematic doping programme run by Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel and their helpers in the US Postal and Discovery teams during the period of Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories, which have now been stripped by Usada. "The evidence demonstrates that the 'code of silence' of performance enhancing drug use in the sport of cycling has been shattered," Usda said in a statement accompanying its report. "It took tremendous courage for the riders on the USPS Team and others to come forward and speak truthfully. It is not easy to admit your mistakes and accept your punishment. But that is what these riders have done for the good of the sport, and for the young riders who hope to one day reach their dreams without using dangerous drugs or methods."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former security chiefs testify at heated House committee hearing that safeguarding US embassy in Libya was a 'struggle' Two former heads of US diplomatic security in Libya have told a congressional hearing that requests for additional agents to protect American officials and premises in the face of a growing threat from armed militias were rejected by the state department ahead of the attack on the Benghazi consulate that killed the US ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other officials. At a heated hearing before the House of representatives oversight committee, Republicans painted a picture of an incompetent state department failing to heed warnings of a growing terrorist threat or to prepare for a possible attack on the anniversary of 9/11, and then covering up the circumstances of the full scale militia assault that killed Stevens. They also accused Obama administration officials of attempting to suppress unclassified documents because they were politically embarrassing. Democrats described the investigation as a partisan political move intended to embarrass the White House in the run up to the presidential election. Hours before the hearing, the state department was forced into an embarrassing retreat on its claim that the attackers used the cover of a popular protest outside the consulate as cover for the assault. Officials acknowledged on Tuesday that there was no protest and that as it occurred on September 11 it was likely timed to mark the anniversary of al-Qaida's assault on the US 11 years ago. The former head of embassy security in Libya, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, said that he recognised the situation in Libya was volatile and that he and other officials pressed for additional agents to protect the consulate in Benghazi. "The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there … Diplomatic security remained weak,'' he said. "The RSO (regional security officer) struggled to obtain additional personnel there, but was never able to attain the numbers he felt comfortable with." The committee chairman, Darrel Issa, then released state department cables not previously made public containing the requests for more security including one from the then ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz. Another official, Eric Nordstrom, who was responsible for protecting US diplomats in Libya, said that he too sought additional resources. But he said he was told over the phone by a senior state department official responsible for handling the request, Charlene Lamb, not to make any more because "there would be too much political cost". After that Republican members of Congress honed in on Lamb, who was also a witness, accusing her of failing to recognise the seriousness of the threat.
Lamb responded that the requests were for more personnel in Tripoli and it would have made no difference to how many security men would have been protecting the Benghazi consulate where protection was in any case mostly in the hands of a pro-government militia. "We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi on the night of 9/11," Lamb testified. However, Republican attempts to accuse the state department of leaving the consulate vulnerable by refusing requests for more security were delivered a blow when Nordstrom was asked how many agents he wanted to protect the Benghazi site. He said he asked for three. The hearing then heard that there were five at the time of the attack. Congressman Jason Chaffetz noted that after the state department declined to increase the number of security personnel it did raise the danger pay of Wood and his colleagues. Nordstrom suggested that it might have been difficult to protect the consulate in any circumstance. "I had not seen an attack of such ferocity and intensity previously in Libya nor in my time with the diplomatic security service," he said. "I'm concerned that this attack signals a new security reality, just as the 1983 Beirut marine barracks bombings did for the marines, the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings did for the state department and 9/11 did for our entire country." But Nordstrom warned that it would be wrong to react to the attack and the continuing threat by retreating to a bunker. Republican congressmen hammered away at the accusation that the state department had failed to heed warnings of an escalating threat and that officials gave "demonstrably false statements" about the circumstances of the attack. The committee released a memo from Stevens sent on the day he was killed in which he described an array of armed militias competing for control and some of their leaders as criticising the US for taking political sides by backing the government in Tripoli. He also described growing Islamist influence in the town of Derna, to the east of Benghazi. However the memo also reported that Benghazi council said the security situation was improving and appealed for American investment. Nordstrom described a chaotic situation in Libya shortly after the revolution, saying that the new government had so little control that it could not provide security for diplomats and embassies. "We could not rely on the Libyan government for security, intelligence and law enforcement help to identify emerging threats or to ask them for assistance in mitigating those threats. In Benghazi however, the government of Libya through the 17 February Martyrs Brigade was able to provide us consistent armed security since the very earliest days of the revolution," he said. Nordstrom said that the long-term plan was to create a local force to protect the consulate. Issa accused the administration of a cover-up of the circumstances of the attack because for days the administration stuck with the claim that the attack was made under the cover of a popular protest against an anti-Islam film. One witness, assistant secretary of state Patrick Kennedy, defended the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, who has faced calls to resign for her statements in the days after the attack saying it was a response to an anti-Muslim video that prompted demonstrations across the Middle East. Kennedy said Rice based her assertion on the best information she had at the time and hinted that it came from the intelligence services but said he could not discuss it in public. The hearing at times degenerated into a spat over what is classified information after Chaffetz attempted to prevent Kennedy speaking about exactly who was protecting US officials and premises in Libya on the grounds he was revealing classified information. He also objected to a satellite image readily available on Google. A Democratic member of the committee, Stephen Lynch, expressed astonishment, saying that Chaffetz had pressed for the hearing specifically to air accusations that the state department had not provided sufficient security. The mother of one of the Americans killed in the Benghazi attack, Glenn Doherty, has accused Mitt Romney of using her son's death for political ends. "I don't trust Romney," Barbara Doherty told a Boston television station, WHDH. "He shouldn't make my son's death part of his political agenda. It's wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former Tour de France champion headed up 'most successful doping program that sport has ever seen,' US anti-doping agency says. Follow live coverage here
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Walmart dismiss as 'publicity stunt' campaign group's attempt on busiest shopping day to push for improved conditions Workers' rights groups behind a series of strikes at Walmart stores across the US are now targeting Black Friday for the next stage of a campaign they say is aimed at improving labour conditions and stopping alleged retaliation against their members. In recent weeks, a wave of small walkouts have hit Walmart stores in at least 28 locations in 12 different states, as a union-supported campaign group, Making Change at Walmart, and other organisations agitate for improved wages, more flexible hours and an end to what they say are punishments – such as reduced shifts – handed out to workers seeking to organise themselves. On a conference call with journalists hosted by MCW's director, Dan Schlademan, numerous Walmart workers who have taken part in strike actions outlined plans to try and disrupt Walmart's operations on November 23, the day after Thanksgiving and traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year in the US. Colby Harris, a full-time Walmart worker in Dallas, said that the action would involve demonstrations, strikes, leafleting and flashmob protests at stores all over the US. "We are going to do everything it takes to make sure change is made," Harris said. Fellow Walmart worker Evelin Cruz, who works at a store in California, said that workers would see to educate the millions of shoppers who flock to stores to snap up bargain goods as part of the holiday celebrations. "We are in this process because Walmart does not want to come to terms with what is going on in their stores," she said. Union groups and other labour-sympathetic organisations have long seen Walmart – the biggest private employer in the world – as a major target. They say the firm pays low wages, does not offer enough benefits and is an implacable opponent of organised labour. Walmart insists that the protesters are a tiny minority of its 1.4 million workers in America, and that it pays solid wages at a time of economic hardship. Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman said that operations across the country had not been affected by the strike. "All of our stores are open. They are completely staffed up, and they are taking care of our customers," he said. Fogleman added that the protests appeared to be a platform for labour unions to try to enter Walmart's workforce. "The unions have wanted to organise Walmart for years. This is just a publicity stunt," Fogleman said. The recent strikes have been organised by a group called Our Walmart, which is closely linked to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Our Walmart, which has not sought union recognition from Walmart, is trying to organise thousands of employees to lobby and protest for higher wages and improved benefits. The Black Friday action was decided upon by leaders of OUR Walmart on Tuesday night at a gathering in Walmart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, where the group is protesting senior Walmart executives. At the same time, pro-labour groups have taken out adverts in five local Arkansas newspapers featuring portraits of senior company figures and calling for them to improve labour conditions. On Black Friday, Our Walmart is set to get support from various national bodies, including the National Consumers League, the National Organisation of Women (NOW) and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. "We are standing in solidarity with with the workers who walking off the job," said Terry O'Neill, the president of NOW, who promised her organisation's members would take action on the day, too.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ameridose, run by same executives who operate company linked to fatal outbreak, agrees to close for federal investigation Ameridose LLC, a private company that mixes drugs for hospitals nationwide, sought on Wednesday to distance itself from the firm at the center of a deadly US outbreak of fungal meningitis, even though the two pharmacies have common owners. Both companies are owned by Gregory Conigliaro, an engineer who invented a way to turn plastic into pot-hole filler, and his brother-in-law, Barry Cadden, a pharmacist in charge of pharmacy operations at the New England Compounding Center, which distributed thousands of vials of a contaminated steroid that has been implicated in 12 deaths. Both firms mix, dilute and prepare drugs into formulations not typically available through pharmaceutical manufacturers. O'Neill and Associates, a public relations firm hired by Ameridose, confirmed the shared ownership in an emailed statement. The statement said Cadden is president and pharmacist in charge at NECC and Conigliaro is an officer and minority shareholder who is not involved in its pharmacy operations. Conigliaro is executive vice president of Ameridose, while Cadden is a minority shareholder who is not involved in any of its operations the firm said. "Ameridose is a separate entity from New England Compounding Center, with distinct operational management," said O'Neill in its statement. "We have separate production facilities, separate processes and operate at separate locations in different cities." Conigliaro's sister Lisa is married to Cadden. In early 2011, Ameridose moved out of its Framingham, Massachusetts, facility – which was near NECC's operations – and into a new, 70,000-square-foot building in nearby Westborough to accommodate its growing operations. Sophia Pasedis, head of regulatory affairs at Ameridose, said Cadden had nothing to do with operations at Ameridose. "He never came to any functions at Ameridose, he never made any decisions, and was not involved in any discussions," she said. Conigliaro, on the other hand, is at Ameridose on a regular basis, she said, mainly overseeing the facilities. "Greg is a wonderful man and a good human being," she said. "He would never hurt a soul." Pasedis sits on the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, which is responsible for the licensing and monitoring of pharmacists in the state. She said she recuses herself from any discussions involving Ameridose or NECC. Officials at NECC did not respond to multiple calls seeking comment. Medical Sales Management, a company whose board includes Cadden and Conigliaro, provides human resources, accounting and information technology services. It has provided services to both NECC and Ameridose, according to federal court filings.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sources say German chancellor was key factor in decision to terminate talks The €35bn (£28bn) mega-merger between BAE Systems and EADS collapsed as a result of personal opposition from the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and despite a series of 11th-hour interventions from Downing Street officials and their counterparts in Paris and Berlin attempting to keep the deal alive. The proposed combination of Britain's largest defence contractor and the Franco-German owner of Airbus would have created a pan-European manufacturing powerhouse with 220,000 employees, making hi-tech products ranging from nuclear submarines and Typhoon fighter jets to the A380 superjumbo. Sources close to the deal said Merkel had become the most significant obstacle to thrashing out an agreement, with No 10 officials participating in frantic high-level discussions on Tuesday night when it became clear that opposition from Germany was in danger of scuppering the deal. "It [Merkel's opposition] was a key factor in the decision to terminate the talks," said the source. Another added that Merkel appeared to be "philosophically opposed" to combining a defence business with a civil aerospace company. "The fundamental problem is that Merkel does not feel comfortable with the deal, full stop." The UK, French and German governments all had the power to veto the deal but Berlin's concern over the potential size of the French shareholding in the combined company, as well as disagreements over the location of the group's headquarters, proved to be the deal breaker that could not be resolved by the last-ditch round of phone diplomacy. BAE's chief executive, Ian King, said failure to agree the size of French and German shareholdings was the key factor behind abandoning the deal , ahead of a 5pm deadline set by the UK Takeover Panel. Declining to comment on Merkel's role, he indicated that Paris and Berlin would have to change their stance if the companies ever wanted to attempt a merger in the future. "Unless European governments completely change their current view, we would not be in a position to resurrect the deal." BAE's chairman, Dick Olver, said the UK government had been "incredibly helpful" and denied that the failure to pull off the deal had now made BAE vulnerable as a takeover target for other overseas buyers – despite speculation that a US defence group such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin could now consider an approach for Britain's largest manufacturing employer. The defence secretary, Philip Hammond, said the deal "had to be done on the basis it was in Britain's national interest" but the two companies had decided it was "too difficult to progress this project further". A source close to EADS said David Cameron had been "really, really interested" in the merger. "There was a view that the British would be the biggest problem but that did not turn out to be the case." In a joint statement, the companies said they could not resolve state concerns about the deal, with the UK, French and German governments unable to reach agreement. "It has become clear that the interests of the parties' government stakeholders cannot be adequately reconciled with each other or with the objectives that BAE Systems and EADS established for the merger," the statement said. A person close to the negotiations added that while Germany had proved to be the biggest obstacle, there were still differences to resolve between France and the UK that had not been cleared by Tuesday night's flurry of calls, even if there had been more substantial progress between London and Paris. It is understood that every solution proposed drew an objection from one of the three governments. France, which controlled 15% of EADS directly, was unhappy with German demands for the business to have its headquarters in Munich, while Germany was concerned that France could end up with a bigger shareholding in the new business than the 9% it was seeking. The UK, in turn, refused to allow German and French political representatives to sit on the BAE board, as would have been likely under the dual-listed structure envisaged by both companies. The UK's largest trade union, Unite, said a merger would have "protected the UK's long-term interests" if it had been accompanied by a jobs guarantee for British employees. BAE employs 37,500 people in the UK and is Britain's largest manufacturing employer. Ian Waddell, a Unite official, said the UK government could secure such a guarantee in future mergers or takeovers by taking an equity stake in BAE. Although the British government has a "golden share" in the business, which can block a foreign takeover, it does not control a significant block of shares similar to France's stake in EADS. When their indirect and direct shareholdings are taken together, France and Germany each control 22.35% of EADS. "It was an unequal negotiation with France and Germany," he said. Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP for Wyre and Preston, who organised a petition against the deal signed by 45 MPs, said the deal should never have been promoted due to the threat of French and German political interference. Wallace said the collapse of the merger put the future of BAE boss King, and his board colleagues, at risk. "The BAE board should now reflect long and hard at what their strategic error could mean for the company's future. If they have put at risk my constituents' jobs and fatally wounded the UK's jewel in the manufacturing crown, then they should consider their position."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Release of Yekaterina Samutsevich prompts conspiracy theories as colleagues led away to complete two-year sentences For seven months, the world got to know Pussy Riot as three women defiantly smirking inside a glass cage as they issued a rare challenge to Vladimir Putin and the justice system that serves him. On Wednesday, the trio was separated when a Moscow court set free Yekaterina Samutsevich, the oldest and quietest of the Pussy Riot three, while ordering her two bandmates to serve the rest of their two-year sentences in a Russian prison colony. The two women who remain in jail, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, smiled through light tears after hugging Samutsevich goodbye. They then placed their hands through an opening in the court's glass cage, waiting for guards to cuff their wrists and lead them away. The release of Samutsevich prompted much speculation in a country enamoured of conspiracy theories. Her fate overshadowed the fact that two women, both mothers to young children, will not be free until March 2014. A smiling Samutsevich was swarmed by reporters and supporters as she walked out of the court into an autumnal Moscow drizzle. They applauded and shouted "congratulations". One man chanted "glory to Pussy Riot" like a mantra. It was a bittersweet release. "I am happy, of course, but I am upset about the girls," Samutsevich said, before being whisked away from the media frenzy. The case against Pussy Riot, a feminist punk collective formed to challenge the government of Vladimir Putin, has laid bare the crackdown under way as Russia's powerful leader seeks to overcome growing opposition to his rule. Arrested for singing an anti-Putin "punk prayer" inside a Moscow cathedral that caters to the governing elite, the three members of Pussy Riot maintain they were carrying out a political protest. The prosecution argued that the goal of their February performance was to offend Russian Orthodox believers. As with statements made during their trial in mid-August, the women used their appearance in court as a political platform. Posted on blogs and circulated via opposition online media, their words have been keenly read by Putin's opponents. Tolokonnikova, over loud objections from the judge, warned that Putin was leading the country to civil war. "I want to warn that everything that is happening in Putin's third term is leading to the end of stability," she said. "In two years there will be civil war, because Putin is doing everything to ensure that." The judge did not let her finish. "We are sitting in jail for our political beliefs," Alyokhina told the court. "And these beliefs won't let me be quiet: if this verdict remains and we go to a prison colony for two years, we still won't be quiet. If we are in Mordovia or Siberia, we still won't be quiet, no matter how uncomfortable that is for you." "I have lost all hope in the court," Alyokhina added. "I want again, and probably for the last time as I won't have any more chances, to talk about our motives." "I call on all believers to listen to us, because, dear believers, we didn't want to offend you," she said, staring down a video camera placed in the jury box recording the proceedings. "We went into the cathedral to issue a protest against the fusion of the spiritual and political elite of our country." In an interview aired last weekend, Putin came out in support of the women's arrest and sentencing, and showed disgust at what he called their "indecent" name. Alyokhina responded by quoting the president and his spokesman: "That is no more indecent than your Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]'s statements about 'wasting our enemies in the shithouse' or 'smearing the livers of protesters on the pavement'." Supporters outside the courtroom cheered at her statement. Pussy Riot's supporters had long speculated that the Moscow city court would find a way to soften the verdict to dampen the outcry over the case. Although supported by most Russians, who embraced the Orthodox faith in the wake of the Soviet collapse and are served mainly by state-run media, the verdict and sentencing has led to an international outcry with which Putin had rarely before been targeted. Samutsevich fired her lawyers earlier this month and hired a new attorney to represent her at the appeal hearing. Until then, the women had been represented by the same legal team – Mark Feygin, Nikolai Polozov and Violetta Volkova. Samutsevich's new lawyer, Irina Khrunova, argued that her client should be treated differently to her two cohorts, since she was ejected from the cathedral shortly after entering and so didn't take part in the "offensive" performance. The court agreed. "There is no split inside the group Pussy Riot," Samutsevich told the court. "Of course we are happy Yekaterina Samutsevich has been freed," Polozov said. "It's great that one girl won freedom. We will continue to fight for Nadya and Masha," he said, using the diminutive forms of their names. At 30, Samutsevich is the oldest of the three women. Alyokhina, 24, and Tolokonnikova, 22, both have young children. The two women are expected to be sent to separate prison colonies within 10 days of their receipt of the judge's written decision. Polozov said he expected the women would appeal to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg. In a country that thrives on conspiracy theories, speculation abounded. Some said Samutsevich had made a deal with the authorities, others that she had broken under prison pressure. The trial was marked by procedural violations and absurdities – the judge, Marina Syrova, allowed no defence witnesses to be called, while the prosecution declined to question the three women on trial. Pussy Riot's lawyers likened the case to a Stalin-era show trial. Despite the theories, one view remained: that the trial had not suddenly gone straight. "The Pussy Riot case is political," wrote Tikhon Dzyadko, a prominent journalist. "There is no independent court system in Russia, especially in such cases. It doesn't matter which lawyer the defendants had." Pussy Riot's supporters have accused Putin of curating the case against the trio. As Feygin, Polozov and Volkova left court, Samutsevich's father, Stanislav, pushed through the throng to say he hoped they understood her decision to push for her own freedom. He was apologetic. Volkova took him by the arm and said: "Stop it. Congratulations." He said he felt "huge happiness" upon his daughter's release. "I want her to rest now, normally, at home with her family," said the 73-year-old, who attended every court session. He said his daughter would continue to fight for her friends' release. The women have been portrayed has heretics on state-run television. A recent poll by the Levada Centre found that 43 per cent of Russians thought their sentencing was too lenient. Several Orthodox activists gathered near the court on Wednesday to express their displeasure with the band. They were vastly outnumbered by supporters, who wore pins portraying Pussy Riot's trademark balaclava and white ribbons that represent the protest movement against Putin. Outside the courtroom, supporters watching the proceedings on a television screen erupted into applause as the judge announced her decision regarding Samutsevich.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Justices suggest University of Texas is arguing race counts 'above all' in case that could reshape law on college admissions Conservatives on the US supreme court expressed strong doubts about affirmative action at the University of Texas on Wednesday in a case that could reshape 35 years of legal rulings on the use of racial preferences in education. A white woman, Abigail Fisher, is suing the university for discrimination after she said she was denied a college place because African American and Hispanic students were favoured in order to ensure diversity. Fisher's lawyers accused the University of Texas of "blatant racial balancing". The university said that Fisher is "asking this court to move the goal posts on higher education in America – and overrule its precedent going back 35 years". Texas law allocates 75% of places at the university to the best performing students in each state-run school. The remaining places are assigned by competition, in which race plays a part alongside other factors such as school grades, economic background and geography as the university says it attempts to create a diverse student body. Much of the questioning centred on how the University of Texas policy fits with a 2003 ruling in another case that has set the standard on the role race plays in admissions policy for the past decade. That ruling upheld the use of race as a factor in admissions policy to ensure a diverse student body, but said it cannot be the decisive component, and said quotas or a points system involving ethnicity are barred. Conservative justices pressed the university's lawyer, Greg Garre, to say at what point the university would reach a "critical mass" of minority students and no longer need racial preferencing. Garre said the university had no figure in mind. Some of the justices balked at that. Justice Anthony Kennedy said that Texas was arguing that race counts "above all." Two of the more liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, suggested that Fisher did not have a case because she would have failed to gain a place at the University of Texas even if race had not been a factor, and that she has since graduated from another college. Fisher's lawyers said that she had suffered damage nonetheless. The university has strongly defended the benefits of diversity in the classroom. It is backed by other colleges that have filed briefs with the court, including Harvard and Yale, as well as big business interests, such as Microsoft and Walmart. The Obama administration also supports the University of Texas, saying there is a compelling national security interest in ensuring a wide variety of students graduate from university in part to meet the recruiting needs of the military, CIA and FBI. The US solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, backed the university's argument that race is only a contributory, not a deciding factor, in admissions. "Race is not considered on its own, and it is never determinative of an applicant's admission by itself," Verrilli said. "Rather, race is one of a number of contextual factors that provide a more complete understanding of the applicant's record and experiences. That is a far cry from impermissible racial balancing." The centre of gravity of the court has shifted further to the right since the 2003 ruling. Five years ago, four of the judges – John Roberts, the chief justice, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – put their names to an opinion that said: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." The issue will be decided by eight justices after the ninth, Elena Kagan, recused herself because she had a hand in the case in her previous role as solicitor general. If Kennedy sides with the conservative view, that could lead to a radical change to the legal status of affirmative action. If the court divides evenly on the issue then the lower court ruling, which upheld the university's admissions policy, will stand. Scalia pushed back against the idea that a university's ethnic make-up should reflect the demographics of the state it is in. Statistics show Latinos are significantly under-represented at the University of Texas, while the proportion of white and African Americans students is broadly in line with the demographics of the state. The latest intake of students was 18.4% Hispanic, 49.8% white, 4.5% African American and 15.2% Asian American. According to the 2010 census, Hispanics make up 37.6% of Texas's 25 million residents. Whites account for 45.3% and African Americans 3.8%. Less than 1% are of Asian descent. One of the arguments advanced by Fisher's lawyers is that the university's admissions policy is a breach of the equal protection clause of the US constitution's 14th amendment, written after the civil war to overrule an 1857 supreme court decision that deprived black people of American citizenship. The equal protection clause was the basis for the supreme court's 1954 ruling, Brown v Board of Education, which initiated the desegregation of education. Now, Fisher's lawyers say, it is white people who are subject to racial discrimination. "If any state action should respect racial equality, it is university admission," they said in a submission to the supreme court. "Selecting those who will benefit from the limited places available at universities has enormous consequences for the future of American students and the perceived fairness of government action." But the Constitutional Accountability Centre, in its brief to the court, argues that the 14th amendment permits "race-conscious measures to foster equality". "The text permits the government to use race to help realise equal protection under the law, and at the very same time, the framers of the 14th amendment enacted numerous race-conscious measures to help ensure equality," said the centre's civil rights director, David Gans. "The 14th amendment came right after the civil war. Slavery was dismantled. There were efforts to integrate African Americans and to do so on the basis of equality, and the framers recognised you need to use race to help foster equality. The signature and most successful of those early race conscious measures were trying to ensure equality of education for African Americans."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Remarks that appear to soften the candidate's position on the issue have drawn attention to differences between the two Mitt Romney's latest comments on abortion, which appeared to soften his pro-life stance, have reignited debate not just on his own apparently evolving beliefs on the issue, but also on the hardline anti-abortion views of his running mate, Paul Ryan. The Romney campaign has said it would not oppose abortion in cases of rape, a clear departure from contradicts Ryan who believes there should be no exceptions to a ban on abortion. Ryan was a co-sponsor of a controversial House bill last year defining life as the moment of fertilisation and granting "personhood" rights to embryos. Abortion rights activists say the Sanctity of Human Life Act would have outlawed all abortions without exceptions, restricted some forms of contraception, in-vitro fertilisation and stem-cell research. The bill never made it onto the floor of the House. All state attempts to introduce so-called "personhood" amendments into law have failed, even in conservative states. Ryan also voted for and co-sponsored a bill dubbed the "let women die" bill by pro-choice campaigners. It would allow hospitals to deny emergency abortions, even when it is necessary to save a woman's life. The Republican representative for Wisconsin has been one of the most active anti-abortion members of Congress, co-sponsoring 38 anti-abortion bills, including some that do not make exceptions for victims of rape. Since first elected to the house in 1998, Ryan has not voted against any bills backed by the National Right to Life Committee. The group gives him a lifetime voting score of 100%. The tally by the abortion rights group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, on the other hand, have recorded Ryan as having voted on 59 occasions against abortion and other reproductive rights issues. He co-sponsored a measure that would require a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound first. He also co-sponsored legislation that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks gestation in the District of Columbia, with no exceptions for rape or incest. A further two bills that he co-sponsored last year would have restricted the definition of rape. The bills sought to ban federal funds from being used for abortion, except in the case of "forcible rape". Use of the term "forcible" was criticised by Democrats and it was subsequently removed in an amendment. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, he drafted a budget blueprint that sought to end federal dollars for Title X, the national family-planning program. The difficulties for a Romney-Ryan ticket among women was highlighted in August when Ryan's extreme pro-life views were tied to those of Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri who was abandoned by the party after comments on "legitimate rape". Ryan told reporters at the time he was "proud of my pro-life record" but said that Romney set the policy.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Vice-president hopes intensive prep pays off as he looks to floor Romney's running mate and hand advantage back to Obama When Joe Biden was last seen on a national debate stage four years ago, it was put to him by the moderator Gwen Ifill that his perceived weakness was lack of discipline. "You're very kind suggesting my only achilles heel is my lack of discipline," the then-senator replied. "Others talk about my excessive passion." On Thursday night, as he steps in front of the TV cameras in Danville, Kentucky, to face his vice-presidential rival Paul Ryan, he will need to overcome both impediments and display discipline combined with great, though not excessive, passion. The stakes are high: in the wake of Barack Obama's own debate appearance last week the president's poll ratings have taken a nose-dive and the Romney-Ryan ticket has been reinvigorated. It falls now to Biden, a politician who, as vice-president, has spent much of the past four years out of the limelight, to deliver the performance of his political career. "He has to reframe the debate," said Darrell West, a specialist in government and media at the Brookings Institution. "Obama's poor showing allowed Mitt Romney to completely recast his record, and the Democrats can't afford that to happen again. I expect Biden to be aggressive in pointing out the differences between the two campaigns over the major issues." For the past three days, Biden, 69, has been sequestered at home in Wilmington, Delaware, in intensive debate prep with a team of advisers led by David Axelrod, Obama's chief re-election strategist. Biden has been rehearsing alongside Maryland congressman Chris Van Hollen, who has been role-playing Ryan, and has been thoroughly mugging up on his opponent's policy positions including a close textual analysis of the book co-written by Ryan: Young Guns. The implication is clear: Biden will move heaven and earth not to repeat Obama's mistakes of last week in which the president was deemed to have been too passive in his encounter with Romney. "He's going to be very attuned to any attempt by Ryan to present himself as more moderate than he is," West said. The need for Biden to exploit the contradictions in his opponent's positions – in a way that Obama failed to do with Romney – is clearly on the minds of top aides. Jennifer Psaki, press secretary of the Obama re-election campaign, told a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One this week that "the question here is: which Paul Ryan is going to come to the debate later this week? Is it going to be the Paul Ryan who has been misleading about everything from his marathon time to details and specifics he included in his convention speech? "Or is it going to be the Paul Ryan who has eagerly embraced voucherizing Medicare and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires? We'll all be watching." Robert Barnett, the doyen of debate prep coaches, who has held the hands of Democratic candidates in no fewer than eight presidential races since 1976 and is part of the Obama-Biden prep team this year, said the focus on substantial policy differences is always ultimately more important than the one-line zinger or the gaffe. Barnett points out that the most famous soundbite of any VP debate – "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" – was delivered against Dan Quayle by Lloyd Bentsen who, despite that exocet remark, went on to lose with Michael Dukakis the 1988 election. Barnett also points out that in last week's debate between Romney and Obama "there was a clear contrast in major issues and not a lot of focus on one-liners. I think that makes for a better debate, when the discussion is substantive." With that in mind, Biden is unlikely to repeat Obama's inexplicable failure to raise the Romney's record at Bain Capital, the asset management firm he set up, and the Republican nominee's notorious comments about the dependent 47% of Americans. And there will be plenty to go at in terms of the record of his immediate opponent. As an avowed policy wonk who refers to himself as a "PowerPoint guy", Ryan, 42, brings to the debate a wealth of policy formulations that give him impressive Beltway credentials but leave him exposed to Democratic attack. Top of the pile is the Paul Ryan budget, which runs counter to Romney's claim last week that he intends to leave unchanged taxes for the most wealthy Americans. Ryan's budget, by contrast, calls for a tax cut for the super rich to 25% and an effective increase in taxes for the most poor by removing tax breaks for low-income earners. Then there's Medicare, the national healthcare insurance scheme for over-65s, which Ryan has proposed essentially to privatise for anyone under 55. He's been similarly bold in his thinking about Medicaid, the national health insurance scheme for poor families, drawing up plans that independent analysts have suggested would lead to the slashing of the Medicaid budget by a third over the next decade. West expects Biden, in addition, to raise Ryan's controversial views on abortion – another area in which the running mate sits uneasily with the new, moderate Romney that was unveiled in Denver last week. All Biden has to do is point out that Ryan backed legislation that would grant a fertilised egg the full legal rights of a person, and that his co-sponsor of the bill was none other than Todd Akin, the Missouri Republican who in August astonished the world with his statement that women who had been "legitimately" raped rarely got pregnant. "The abortion issue is a good way for Biden to reach out to women voters who are wavering in their support for Obama," West said. One thing that Biden cannot assume, however, is that Ryan will be taken off guard by questions surrounding his positions. Though inexperienced in national debating, the Wisconsin congressman has been engaged for days in his own deep debate prep and has said he is braced for Biden going on the offensive. "I expect the vice-president to come at me like a cannonball," he told the conservative Weekly Standard. It all makes for a potentially barnstorming debate after the rather drab presidential affair last week. Joe Biden has achilles heels aplenty, but being dull is not one of them.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Candidate blasted by Democrats and Republicans over remarks that he would not seek to change current abortion legislation Mitt Romney's campaign was in difficulty again on Wednesday over their candidate's position on abortion after a newspaper interview in which Romney said that legislation to restrict abortion was "not part of my agenda". After spending months reassuring conservative voters that he was staunchly against abortion, Romney appeared to soften that stance in an interview with the Des Moines Register on Tuesday. "There is no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda," he said. Within hours of the comments being published, Romney's campaign insisted that he was against abortion, telling the conservative National Review Online that Romney "would, of course, support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life. "Mitt Romney is proudly pro-life, and he will be a pro-life president," said his spokeswoman Andrea Saul in a statement. Romney's comments drew fire from both sides on Wednesday, with Democrats accusing him of playing politics and hiding his real beliefs to attract female voters, and conservatives reminding him of his federal responsibilities over what remains a controversial issue. His remarks to the Iowa newspaper were initially seized on by Democrats as evidence of a change of heart. On hearing them, Bill Clinton told a campaign rally of 2,000 supporters: "I thought, 'Wow, here's old moderate Mitt. Where ya been, boy?'" But by Wednesday, Obama's campaign team was trying to portray Romney not as a flip-flopper, but as someone who cannot be trusted to voice his true beliefs. Democrats said his statement contradicted his pledge to appoints supreme court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1972 decision which confirmed a woman's federal right to abortion. Stephanie Cutter, the Obama campaign's deputy press secretary, told reporters: "We're not saying that he's changed his mind on these issues. We're saying that he is trying to cover up his beliefs." She added: "Every step of the way he has been anti-choice, against Roe v Wade." Reaction among conservatives to Romney's remarks was also critical. A comment piece in the conservative newspaper The Weekly Standard on Wednesday titled "Did Mitt Romney forget?" suggested that he was "mistaken" and had simply not realised how many issues related to abortion funding he could influence. "The issue here does not appear to be that Romney is backing off his stance on abortion – indeed, he says he will use an executive order to cut off funding to groups that perform abortion overseas," it read. "But he is mistaken in thinking that there aren't issues related to abortion-funding are handled through the legislative process at the federal level." Romney's past commitments have included ensuring US laws reflect "values of preserving life. He has previously promised to: support foetal pain legislation, which bans abortion after 20 weeks, on the much-debated basis that foetuses can feel pain at that stage; end public health funds for Planned Parenthood because the group provides abortions; and support a decades-old ban on federal funds for abortions. He supports the reversal of Roe v Wade, but believes in exceptions for victims of rape and incest, or when the mother's life is in danger. Romney, who had been pro-choice as governor of Massachusetts, repeatedly asserted his anti-abortion credentials as he battled to win the Republican nomination. During a televised debate in Charleston on 19 January before the South Carolina primary, for example, he said: "You can count on me as president of the United States to pursue a policy that protects the life of the unborn, whether here in this country or overseas. And I'll reverse the policies of this president." In his acceptance speech to the Republican convention in Tampa in August, he promised that as president he would "protect the sanctity of life". His position on abortion also came under the spotlight when he selected Paul Ryan as his running mate. The Wisconsin congressman is against abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, or when the mother's life is in danger. He has sponsored a series of bills that would either restrict abortion or access to contraception, or both. Rick Perry, the Texas governor and a staunch pro-life advocate, said he was untroubled by Romney's initial remarks. He said on Wednesday that he was confident Romney will appoint "constitutionalists" to the supreme court. "I think the supreme court is where that issue will be decided, from the standpoint of how America's going – we'll have a supreme court decision, and that's where the focus will be," Perry said on CBS This Morning. "He's said very clearly that he's going to put people who are constitutionalists on the supreme court." Romney's comments came as he sought to maintain his recent appeal to female voters in the closing stages of the presidential race. A poll by Pew this week found Romney neck-and-neck among women with Barack Obama, who has held an enormous advantage with this demographic.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former Tour de France champion headed up 'most successful doping program that sport has ever seen,' US anti-doping agency says. Follow live coverage here
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Anti-corruption group says French former president sounded out country on issues such as his relationship with Carla Bruni Nicolas Sarkozy could face yet another legal headache after an anti-corruption group filed a complaint for alleged misuse of public funds to pay for private opinion polls in which he regularly sounded out the nation on issues such as his relationship with Carla Bruni. The anti-graft group Anticor argued that polls ordered by the Elysée under Sarkozy's rightwing presidency were of a "private interest" to him and therefore constituted embezzlement of state funds. A report in Le Monde suggested that topics covered in Sarkozy's personal polls to gauge the mood of the nation included the pregnancy of the justice minister Rachida Dati and his probable opponents in the election race of 2012. The French public was also sounded out over Sarkozy's courtship with the ex-supermodel turned folk-singer Carla Bruni, then their marriage and her capacity to represent France. Other polls were allegedly carried out into voting intentions in various local elections and the public's view of a TV show performance by the then Socialist presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Anticor's lawyer, Jerome Karsenti, told Le Monde the French taxpayer had no place funding partisan polls at the Elysée. The group estimates at €9.4m Sarkozy's total expenditure on hundreds of polls ordered during his presidency – spending which had already met disapproval from the state auditor. It is not the first time Sarkozy has been targeted in a legal complaint over his fondness for ordering opinion polls to find out what France was thinking. Anticor previously lodged a complaint about the Elysée's costly polling habits under Sarkozy in 2010 but he then enjoyed protection under presidential immunity. The latest legal complaint also makes another allegation: favouritism. One contract for polling and advice worth more than €3m over five years was given to a firm owned by one of Sarkozy's key advisers, with other advisers allegedly benefiting from polling contracts not put out to tender. The latest complaint draws on new documents obtained by the ecologist Raymond Avrillier who went through the courts to obtain Elysée records that showed polls were carried out about the president's private life, as well as issues such as the controversial Tunisian holiday taken by Sarkozy's foreign minister while the revolution was under way. The Elysée had also taken the national temperature on the Bettencourt affair – a saga that began as a family feud in one of the richest dynasties in France but sparked major legal inquiries including into illegal party funding and tax evasion. Sarkozy lost his legal immunity this summer after leaving office. French police have since searched his home and offices as part of the high-profile investigation into illegal campaign funding in 2007 and alleged brown envelopes of cash to politicians from France's wealthiest woman, the L'Oreal hairspray heiress Liliane Bettencourt. He denies any wrongdoing. All Sarkozy's actions as part of his presidential role are still covered by immunity so a complaint about opinion polling would have to prove the polls were of a private nature. France's highest court has yet to rule whether complaints over the polling can be pursued.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Event in Ohio attracts one of the largest crowds of campaign so far as Romney resurgence injects new life into GOP hopes Newly energised Republicans are turning out in droves for Mitt Romney in the state that could decide the election, Ohio, as previously confident Democratic activists have begun to display signs of nervousness. At a rally at Cuyahoga Falls on Tuesday night, Romney attracted one of the biggest turnouts of his campaign so far, an estimated 12,000, with thousands more stuck outside, unable to get through security in time. The response of the crowds so far is a long way from 'Romneymania' but there are strong signs of growing Republican confidence as a result of last week's debate and the narrowing of the polls. The crowd, responding to Obama supporters' chants at rallies of "four more years", shouted: "four more weeks". Republicans in the crowd attributed the rejuvenation of his campaign to Obama's poor debate performance and his subsequent polling slide.
Such is the importance of Ohio that Romney is spending four out of the next five days campaigning in the crucial state. With fewer than four weeks left until election day, Obama has recognised the urgency of the situation, curtailing fundraising events and concentrating on debate preparation and rallies in swing states such as Ohio. Polls have shown Obama's previous leads have evaporated and he and Romney are now tied nationally at 47%. Obama's lead in Ohio, where he had been enjoying leads of up to eight points, has been cut to about four points, according to the latest CNN/Orc poll. Democratic activists on the ground in Ohio say the state will be decided by who gets the vote out on the day, anticipating that Republican turnout will be high, as it is traditionally. One organiser, preparing for a big door-to-door campaign effort this weekend, admitted that the numbers of volunteers for Obama is down this year on 2008. "I think the elections are riding on these debates. If Obama does well, we will bring it home," he said. He was not sure why the number of volunteers is down, whether there was just not the same sense of excitement as in 2008 or if it was the result of disillusionment. He is hoping it is because Democrats thought the election was already won in Ohio, and that the tightening of the polls will see a big volunteer turnout this weekend. Ohio is one of the eight swing states but no Republican has won the White House without taking it. Without winning the state, it will be difficult for Romney to accumulate the number of votes he needs. A large turn-out of Democratic supporters is needed in working-class cities in the north of Ohio to counterbalance Republican support in the largely rural areas to the south. Democrats, as well as being worried about Obama, are also concerned about the fate of Democratic senator Sherrod Brown, who is up for re-election. Although he is the favourite to win, it is proving to be a closer race than Democrats expected and Republicans have spent $20m to oust him, more than any other Senate race. The Ohio govenor, John Kasich, in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, attributed the Republican resurgence to Romney's debate performance. "There isn't any question that he has breathed new life and new energy into the Republican party," Kasich said. "We're seeing that there is greater intensity among Republicans and a great willingness to get out and vote and participate than we're seeing with Democrats." Romney, campaigning in Ohio with New Jersey governor Chris Christie and senator Rob Portman – who plays the part of Obama during debate preparation – appears more confident at the podium after months in which he often attracted meagre crowds of a few hundred. At the Cuyahoga Falls rally, Kate Paul, 25, a teacher from Canton, said: "I think a lot of people are still curious about the candidate. Some people are still curious about the candidates. Some people are still figuring it out. The majority are not. "I was not sure about Romney at first but the debate sealed the deal." Some of the crowd expressed confidence that the tightening of the polls would turn out to be more than a short-lived bounce. Karla Shott, 61, from Akron, said: "I think the polls are more than a bounce. A lot of people's eyes were opened during the debate." Asked about Romney's chances in Ohio, Shott said: "I feel better than I did before last Wednesday." The impact of the debate was evident when Romney referred to it in his speech, securing the biggest cheer of the evening. Another Romney supporter, Michael Battaglia, 71, from Cuyahoga Falls, said the election could turn into a landslide. Battaglia, who converts retro cars from petrol so they can run on both petrol and natural gas, said: "Supposedly the [Romney] campaign had scratched Ohio but they have seen a grassroots resurgence. The polls in Michigan are tightening too." He added: "A lot of people are scared of being called racist. I think Obama is a poor leader and I think there are a lot of African Americans who could run the country better." Cara Moorhead, 26, a paralegal from Cuyahoga Falls, who supported Romney in 2008, said she had come to the rally "to witness history, to see the next US president".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In Aleppo there is still no sign of the heavy weapons for which the rebels have pleaded and ammunition is running low In the battle for northern Syria the most important front is far from Aleppo. It is across the border in the southern Turkish town of Antakya. Here rebels, who now move around with increasing ease, are engaged in daily bids for patronage with those who keep the insurgency running. Over the past year, and especially since May, when weapons started to arrive, Bashar al-Assad's enemies have met their benefactors in Antakya's backstreets, coffee shops and hotel lobbies and made a case as to why they should receive help. The rivalries of Arab and Gulf politics, divisions between the west and Russia, fear of Syria's bloody crisis spreading beyond the country's borders to drag in Iran or Lebanon all make supplying arms to the rebels a sensitive and murky issue. Now, it seems, the supply is drying up. On Aleppo's frontlines, there is still no sign of the heavy weapons for which the rebels have pleaded. Ammunition is running low. "They are giving us enough to keep this fight going, but not enough to win it," complained Abu Furat, a commander. "I'm sure that's not going to change until after the American elections. I'm not sure everyone can survive until then." The men with the money and influence in Antakya are envoys sent by the Sunni world's political elite or business leaders. One name comes up more than any other – a Lebanese MP named Okab Sakr. "Every time Okab is in town the weapons start to move across the border," said a rebel colonel from the Jebel al-Zawiya region, who calls himself Abu Wael. "The problem is he is very particular about where those weapons go." Sakr is a member of the Future movement of the Lebanese opposition leader, Saad Hariri. According to colleagues in Beirut he has been given the role of gun runner-in-chief. Sakr has become a polarising figure among Syria's fragmented opposition; those he supplies see him as a saviour; those who miss out hold him responsible for the faltering rebel cause. Dissatisfaction with Sakr's role goes further. The US, always jittery about backing the uprising, is opposed to calls by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply rebel groups with equipment needed to combat aircraft and tanks – an issue raised by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday. Jordan and Turkey appear to share Washington's concerns. Confirmation on Wednesday that the US had sent a military mission to Jordan to help build a headquarters on the border with Syria and to improve Jordan's military capabilities underlines worries about possible spillover. "It's about indirect intervention," said Mustafa Alani of the Saudi-financed Gulf Research Centre in Abu Dhabi. "The money is there, arms can be supplied. But the Jordanians and the Turks are hesitant. Turkey is allowing some weapons in but there are a lot of restrictions. People are waiting for a shift after the US election." Another growing problem is a lack of co-ordination between Qatar and the Saudis – the likely subject of Wednesday's talks in Doha between the Emir and the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar. King Abdullah is said to be growing impatient with the difficulties of the Syrian crisis. According to Syrian opposition activists, the Saudis now sponsor only rebel groups which are at odds with those backed by Qatar and Turkey, which are often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. "The Qataris are much more proactive than the Saudis," said one well-placed Arab source. "The Saudis are not interested in democracy, they just want to be rid of Bashar. They would be happy with a Yemeni solution that gets rid of the president and leaves the regime intact." Intelligence chiefs from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and France reportedly met in Turkey in early September along with the CIA director general, David Petraeus. But they apparently failed to reach agreement on a co-ordinated strategy. US officials say the opaque nature of the opposition and the creeping presence of foreign jihadis are behind their pressure on Riyadh and Doha. "They have both been given a yellow light by the Americans," said a Lebanese minister aligned to the Future movement. "The Saudis see yellow as yellow, but the Qataris have seen it as green. Their connections with and supply to the opposition have continued, perhaps escalated. The Americans are especially against handing out anti-aircraft missiles. They will not accept these things falling into the hands of jihadis. Imagine having to do a Stinger buy-back programme like Afghanistan all over again." Now the Saudis are signalling that they are reaching the limits of what they will do in the face of US objections, concern about the resilience of the Assad regime, fears that extremists will dominate the opposition – as well as the risks of "blowback" from jihadis returning home. The initial armed support for the rebels resulted in two substantial shipments of automatic weapons, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades, delivered in May and June from Turkey. Since then, large-scale gun-running has dried up. "The Saudis were the most enthusiastic by far about getting weapons to the rebels," said a former Lebanese MP. "They were public about it and committed. That was until July." By the middle of that month, foreign jihadis started trickling into Syria looking to join the fray. The rebel military council, a group of defected senior officers, is opposed to the foreigners and wary of Syria's own Islamist groups, who have been organising and arming in the rural areas between Aleppo and Idlib. Riyadh worries too about its home front, where the Syrian issue is kept alive by the likes of Sheikh Adnan Arour, a rabidly sectarian Salafi televangelist. Official media continue to bombard the public with images of atrocities carried out by Alawites – Assad's ruling sect. But non-establishment clerics who wanted to launch a fundraising drive to aid Syria were ordered to hold off. An official campaign raised more than $100m in a few days. "The Saudis fear that there will be blowback from Syria like there was from Iraq and Afghanistan," said Alani. "They don't want chaos. They want the Syrian military to take over. The whole region wants that, including the Israelis. Everyone wants an organised structure of army officers who will keep weapons under control and make sure that they are handed in." Now the Saudis are pushing the armed Syrian opposition to form a "salvation front" with unified command and control on the ground and, crucially, an ability to collect weapons once fighting has ended – a lesson learned the hard way from Libya. The Saudis are backing brigadier-general Manaf Tlass, the most senior defector yet from the military – from a key Sunni family – as part of a drive to win over other figures from the Syrian army and security establishment. "It's no good calling for them to be held accountable for crimes," warned Alani. "They need to be told they will get support." Next week the Qataris are hosting a conference to try to unite a host of squabbling opposition groups. But there is little optimism about prospects for any immediate improvement. "It's all a bit of a mess," said analyst Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution in Doha. "Everyone is waiting for someone else to do a better job. It can't be the Saudis or the Qataris or the Turks. It's got to be the Americans. If we are looking at Gulf support it's certainly been a big story, but that's not the reality. There's a big gap between what people think the Gulf countries have been doing and what they are actually doing. Not that many weapons have been delivered."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka share Nobel for discovering molecular switches that underpin cells' response to environment Two American doctors whose work over four decades has revealed how the body responds to the smells, sights, flavours and threats of the outside world have won this year's Nobel prize in chemistry. Robert Lefkowitz at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Brian Kobilka at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, share science's most prestigious award – and 8m Swedish kronor (£744,000) – for their discovery of molecular sensors called G-protein-coupled receptors or GPCRs. The sensors take the form of proteins that act as gatekeepers between cells and the environment they live in. When a substance latches on to the outer part of a sensor protein, it causes it to change shape, triggering a response inside the cell. Scientists now know of a whole family of GPCRs that detect hundreds of different substances in and around the body. Work on the receptors has underpinned decades of progress in medicine, with half of all pharmaceuticals acting on the proteins. The huge variety of GPCRs allows individual organs in the body to react in different ways to the same stimulant. A surge of adrenaline through the body, for example, acts through GPCRs to make the heart race, the lungs heave, muscles contract and pupils widen. Without GPCRs, humans would not have the famous "fight-or-flight" response that is crucial for survival. Speaking by phone to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences soon after the announcement, Lefkowitz recalled the moment he heard of the award. "I was fast asleep and the phone rang but I didn't hear it," he said. "I wear ear plugs and my wife gave me an elbow and said there's a call for you. And there it was, a total shock and surprise, as many before me have experienced." Asked about his plans for the day, he said: "I was going to get a haircut, which if you could see me you would see it is quite a necessity, but I'm afraid that will probably have to be postponed." In a statement from Stanford University, Kobilka said: "I didn't believe it at first, but after I spoke with about five people – they handed the phone around – with really convincing Swedish accents, I started to think it was for real." For many years, researchers knew that adrenaline and other substances produced their effects without entering cells, suggesting they must instead act through surface sensors on the outsides of cells. Lefkowitz and Kobilka confirmed those suspicions and showed how the sensors worked. In the first step forward, in 1968, Lefkowitz used radioactive iodine to tag various hormones and track them in the body. Through these studies, he identified several GPCRs, including the one that responds specifically to adrenaline. His lab went on to isolate the receptor and unravel how it worked. The next major advance came in the 1980s when, working in Lefkowitz's lab, Kobilka discovered the gene that makes the adrenaline receptor. On inspecting the DNA sequence, the scientists noticed its similarities to another gene responsible for a light-sensitive receptor in the eye. It dawned on them that there is a family GPCRs, all closely related and working in a similar way. "Their real triumph very early on was to show that you could isolate these sensors and what they sensed. And what they sense is actually quite staggering," said David Phillips, former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry. "These are important in everyday life. They are important for our continued existence. Certainly in primitive mankind if you didn't have this fight-or-flight response we would not have survived danger," Phillips added. There are nearly a thousand known GPCRs in the human body, but scientists do not understand what substances or stimuli trigger all of them. Some of those that are understood respond to light, flavour, smell, adrenaline and histamine, which is important in allergic reactions, and dopamine, which is used in treating Parkinson's disease. This year, in line with other recent years, the Nobel prize honoured research that is more in the biological sciences than in the realm of classical chemistry. But the apparent shift away from more traditional chemistry was not a cause for concern, Phillips said. "The field of chemical biology is burgeoning because at its heart, at the heart of certainly cell biology, is an understanding at the molecular level of what's going on and that's chemistry essentially. So other sorts of chemistry are still going on and still very important, but this level of understanding, which has been made possible by advances in techniques over the last 20 years or so, is crucial to mankind."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Gary Younge reports from Ohio on the peculiar qualities of Democratic deflation as Obama's supporters struggle with internal conflict even as they plan to vote for his re-election
• Then v Now: readers talk about what's changed The first time I met Susan Aylward, in 2004, she had just emerged from the opening night of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in Akron, Ohio, and was shooing away John Kerry supporters who wanted to give her a sticker. She intended to vote for him and she even campaigned for him, but she had no intention of bragging about it. "People don't love Kerry because they're not sure what he stands for," she said. "But I'm going to vote for him because he's not Bush." Four years later she was positively excited at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "I had high hopes," she says. "After having to live for 8 years through Iraq and all of that stuff I really wanted Obama to be the counterpoint to that. He was a brilliant speaker. Pretty much everything about him made you hopeful. He reminded me of JFK." When we met at her house for breakfast just a week before the 2008 election she was eager to contain her excitement. "After the last two times I just don't want to jinx it," she said. "Everything looks good. But I won't believe it until it actually happens." When he won she made her two-year-old granddaughter, who's mixed race, sit with her and watch the festivities. "We kept saying: 'It's history, Sasha'. We wanted her to be able to say she saw it that day, even if she didn't really know what she was seeing." This time around she feels deflated. You can hear it in her voice as she works through her mixed emotions. It's almost as though she cast a vote for Barack Obama and got Kerry instead. "It's not going to change my vote," she says. "But I just wish he could have been better. I don't even know how exactly. If you're going to be president then I guess you obviously want to be in the history books. So what does he want to be in the history books for? I don't quite know the answer to that yet." There is a peculiar quality to the disappointment among Democrats when it comes to talk of Obama's first term. Most feel it but few will own it. Some project it, others deflect it. Many are in denial, some are in mourning. They struggle with it, qualify it, rationalise it, calibrate it and question it. Did he raise expectations too high or were unreasonable expectations imposed upon him? Was he too compliant with the Republican Congress or was he trying to fulfill his promise to be more consensual? They wanted more and they're not sure whether their aspirations were reasonable, feasible, justified or deluded. They wish the disappointment wasn't there. And they can't avoid it. For this is one emotional toll that could have electoral consequences. In a tight race in which there are few undecideds both sides have to galvanise their bases. The Obama campaign has tried trying to manage it, lest the disappointment depress enthusiasm and harm. In Charlotte Obama told the convention: "While I'm proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said: "I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go." Republicans are keen to leverage it, in the hope that with a show of empathy they can win over some precious waverers. Mitt Romney spoke over the heads of his convention-goers to disaffected Obama supporters: "You know there's something wrong with the kind of job he's done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him." Now they are running ads, mostly featuring women, to appeal to swing voters. "I'm disappointed in Barack Obama as my president," says Melanie McNamara, who voted for him in 2008. "He promised to bring us all together so we could prosper, and I don't see the prospering." Given the excitement at Obama's election some measure of disappointment was inevitable. The combination of both the historic nature of both his candidacy and the economic crisis during which it emerged virtually ensured it. The first black president elected during the steepest downturn since the Great Depression set the nation on contradictory paths. In Harlem people were dancing in the street even as, at the other end of Manhattan, Wall Street was sending the economy into free fall. The month he was elected – two months before he took office – he had a 61% approval rating while only one in six believed the country was heading in the right direction, and it was unlikely one person could correct the course of a tanker the size of the US economy. 'I never thought things could become more divided'After rereading The God That Failed, in which six ex-Marxists voice their disaffection with communism, the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said questioned the very premise in the title. "Why as an intellectual did you believe in a god anyway? And besides, who gave you the right to imagine that your early belief and later disenchantment were so important?" One might say the same of some Obama supporters whose investment in him was rooted in an unreasonable belief that the presidency endowed Obama with superhuman powers. "This is not some academic exercise," Obama told supporters in Philadelphia in 2010. "Don't compare us to the Almighty; compare us to the alternative." That's why Susan believes people must, to some extent, take responsibility for their disappointment. "That's what we're taught to believe from an early age," she says. "That one man should be able to fix everything. Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Ronald Reagan – history's told as though it were all down to them. The world is way too complex for that, and we know that but we still have those expectations that we were raised with." And while some of the expectations may have been unreasonable some were just plain unfounded. On election night in 2008 I watched the result come in the President's Lounge on the South Side of Chicago. As Obama was announced the winner a woman at the bar started cheering. "My man's in Afghanistan. He's coming home." Quite why she thought that wasn't clear. But it wasn't true. Afghanistan was the one war Obama had pledged to continue and which he would eventually escalate. Where she'd got the impression otherwise is not clear. But her disappointment was guaranteed and had little to do with him. Indeed one of the sources of disappointment, particularly from abroad, is that people mistook the fact that his election marked a radical departure from the previous eight years as an indication that he was a radical. He wasn't. His record both as a state senator and on the national level, where he voted with Hilary Clinton 90% of the time, was of a centrist Democrat. Unlike black presidential candidates of the past, who were unlikely to get white support, he was not standing to advance a broader cause but to get elected. "The civil rights generation saw politics as the next step in the struggle for civil rights," said Salim Muwakkil, a Chicago-based journalist who has known Obama for many years. "Their aim was to get their agenda taken up by whoever won. But this new generation do not conceive politics as the next step, but just as what it is – politics. Their aim is to win." But the fact that he didn't stand on a radical platform doesn't mean people were deluded to imagine that he would govern as a radical. In January 2007 I saw him speak at George Mason University to a 1,000-plus crowd where he quoted Martin Luther King: "The arc of justice is long but bends towards justice." He promised his presidency would be transformative and in campaign speeches he invoked abolitionists, suffragettes and labour activists and then Will.I.Am set it to song. "Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change," he said. "We have been asked to pause for a reality check. We have been warned against offering people of this nation false hope." One could be forgiven for thinking he wasn't just talking about marginal tax rates and cap and trade. Such were the nature of the aspirations and potential disappointments, both projected onto him and which he projected himself, before he even took office. Then there is his record. Pretty much everybody has their pet disappointment here: a specific thing they'd wanted to see but haven't or, conversely, wished he hadn't done. Most frequently mentioned are failing to close Guantanamo Bay, political polarisation, drone attacks, comprehensive immigration reform, kill lists and failing to oversee stronger regulation of the financial sector. It is intriguing how many Obama loyalists explain these problems away with a mixture of psychoanalysis and Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns". "I know he's smart. I know he's caring," says Bobbi Watson, who was with Susan the night I met her outside the cinema eight years ago. "But when I think about the drone attacks, which trouble me, I think he's making decisions on the basis of information that I couldn't possibly know." Many redirect their disappointment in politics in general, pointing to the Republican stonewalling in Congress. "I never thought things could become more divided, and there be more fighting," said Ann Trinkel, who I met in Roanoke recently. "But oh my gosh it's just … gridlock. And I guess that's what sort of lessened the hopefulness for me, and made me a bit more cynical, is all the money." It is certainly true that in a system where seats are openly gerrymandered, 40% in the upper house can block almost anything, lobbyists are everywhere and you need vast sums of money to get elected there is a limit to how much progressive change one can really expect. Susan's husband, Michael who backed Obama last time, isn't voting. He's had enough of all of them. Some are just in denial. One person said to me when I raised the escalation in Afghanistan: "You don't know what's in his heart." "True," I replied. "Only his cardiologist can know that. But that knowledge would make little difference to the people of Afghanistan." Each disappointment can be argued out or argued away, dismissed by loyalists, insisted upon by the disaffected, explained by circumstance or excused at will. In any case, every president has these. So long as they are not full on reversals – as when George Bush senior said: "Read my lips: no new taxes" and then put up taxes – then they are rarely fatal. Obama hasn't opened another Guantanamo Bay facility, and it is understood that presidents don't get everything done that they promise to do. But that does not mean they are not grounds for disappointment. Obama ran claiming he was going to change the way Washington operated, and there was much he could not control. But it was his choice to leave in place George W Bush's secretary of defence and to draft of Bill Clinton's former treasury secretary, Larry Summers, to guide his economic policy. With those appointments there's only so much 'change' one can reasonably expect. Moreover, if someone who says: "I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that," and promises it'll be closed within a year and it's still open, then by any measure people are entitled to feel let down. But left there all of these particular disappointments would have remained just that – particular letdowns that disillusioned discrete groups of people. What morphed them into a broader narrative of disappointment was the one thing over was the key issue of the economy over which he had limited power – and gridlock in Congress. In September 2010 he was challenged at a town hall meeting by a black woman, Velma Hart, who said: "I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now." With poverty rising, unemployment stubbornly high and wages still stagnant the economy was both a material problem in itself – people have been struggling to make ends meet – and became an emblem for a broader disaffection. The country was stalled. And whatever it was they were expecting from his presidency it wasn't this. They wanted more and, many believe, he promised more. 'It seems like there's no good way out'Jodie Delamatre has no time for this. She is no stranger to disappointment. I followed Jodie around on election day in 2004 as she knocked on doors to get out the vote. I saw her in the polling booth press her pin down hard to avoid through the punch card for Kerry to avoid any Florida-like shenanigans. "I've got to make sure it counts," she said. "I don't want to leave anything to chance." That night when the polls closed they thought they'd squeaked a victory in Ohio and therefore the nation. When I called her the next morning she was devastated. This time around she wished Obama had done more about the banks. But she thinks those who dwell on their disappointments are self-indulgent. "People ask what has he done and I think well what did you do? You can't just have things given to you all the time. You have to go out and get them. And look at the things he has done. In four years he's introduced healthcare reform, stabilised the economy, stopped a war, killed Bin Laden, saved the auto industry – give me a break." When Obama was inaugurated unemployment in Summit County, where Akron sits, was 8.8%; today it is 6.5%. In 2009 the poverty rate is 14.9; today it is 13.8%. It is true that if you ask most people what they thought would happen their hopes are as heartfelt as they are vague. "I definitely think it's about me," says Susan. "I hoped he would give us a vision of where we were going. Just one big idea. But it doesn't seem as though he has one. I did hope that he would be that person who would pull it off. Because otherwise it seems like there's no good way out." Obama's election forced a reckoning between what a large number of Americans wanted to happen and what was possible to achieve through the American polity as it stands. The hard truth is that with few exceptions the most transformational advances in US political history have their origins either in the streets or the courts – not the ballot box.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As co-host of Good Morning America, Mitt's good lady talked horses, shared recipes – and made a mess of the Welsh cakes Wednesday morning in New York: outside it is drab and drizzly. Inside the Good Morning America studios at ABC it is brighter than ever – Ann Romney is here! And not just for a quick interview, but to host the show! Well not the whole show, we are told at 7am – but she would be "coming in in our second hour!" GMA is on a roll at the moment, beating NBC's the Today Show on a regular ratings basis. Ann Romney is on a roll, too, as one of the more popular faces of her husband's campaign. Her poll numbers currently outdo her husband's by nine points. Like all political spouses on the campaign trail, her duties fall into the intellectually light, but warm and fuzzy category. This means that GMA and Ann Romney are a perfect match. At 7.30am, we were told that among other things Romney would be doing was "sharing a family recipe." The Romney family is particularly partial to Welsh cakes – or "a kind of English scone". There's something of the Martha Stewart about Ann Romney's tall, strong, slightly intimidating presence. Both seem to stride through the oversized, well-equipped kitchens of life taking their blows firmly on their unflinching, upraised chins. "Tough" is a word you could use to describe them both. Also, "middle-class" and "white". So baking seemed a reasonable morning gig for Ann Romney to undertake on national television. "After raising five boys, I'm ready for anything!" cried an enthusiastic Romney, catching a football and wearing a hot pink jacket as the camera announced her presence at 8am. But the best thing about live television is you can't always follow a script. "They're burning," she muttered through clenched teeth to an unseen minion, seconds later, not realizing she was on camera. "You can turn the griddle down." That was the first and last we saw of the Welsh cakes.
Instead her first segment is a forgettable interview with the losers of last night's Dancing With the Stars. DWTS is not having a good season on ABC, so if the wife of a residential candidate can help get the show some viewers – great. I'm not sure Romney sitting formally in her signature red shirt-dress asking singer Drew Lachey: "How did you like your scoring on the cha-cha?" will really bring it home. But she tried.
Romney might be very wealthy, but she's also a wife and a mother with health issues. Which means she falls nicely into the GMA demographic. The show tailored itself around those similarities creating a segment where she petted the horse Lord Ludger while its rider, Becca Hart, who had competed in the London Paralympics, was briefly interviewed. "It's so extraordinary what horses do for us. For me, it's balance, it's love, it's joy," said Romney, who has famously used equine therapy to help deal with multiple sclerosis. "Horses are a gift from God and they are a partner in our life's journey and they can bring such joy." (Brief pause while I pictured Jason Sudeikis playing Mitt Romney as a horse on this week's Saturday Night Live.)
Finally, with only 10 minutes of the show left, she began cooking. Well, actually, she watched as Stanley Tucci, who is promoting a new cookbook, began cooking. "I think our butter is burning, sorry," said Tucci in a relaxed manner, taking a saucepan off the heat. "They burnt my Welsh cakes, too," said Romney, throwing up her hands. "This show's a disaster," said Tucci. "Yeah," said Romney. "This is really burning!" said Tucci as sparks started flying off the butter. "Every time I don't know," said Romney, laughing. "My plane almost goes down – now I'm going to catch on fire." But she never did – in any sense of the word.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Objections from Berlin helped to sink the €35bn proposed combination of BAE Systems and EADS
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Leon Panetta confirms Pentagon has sent team to bolster Jordan's military capabilities and help deal with refugees The United States has sent military troops to the Jordan-Syria border to help bolster Jordan's military capabilities in the event that the violence in Syria spreads, according to defence secretary Leon Panetta. Speaking at a Nato conference of defense ministers in Brussels, Panetta said the US has been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and also to help Jordan deal with refugees moving across the border. However, the revelation of US military personnel being deployed so close to the Syrian conflict suggests an escalation in the US military involvement, even as Washington pushes back on any suggestion of a direct intervention in Syria. It also follows several days of shelling between Turkey and Syria, an indication that the civil war could spill across Syria's borders and become a regional conflict. "We have a group of our forces there working to help build a headquarters there, and to ensure that we make the relationship between the United States and Jordan a strong one so we can deal with all the possible consequences of what's happening in Syria," Panetta said. The development comes with the US presidential election less than a month away, and at a time when Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has been criticizing Barack Obama's foreign policy, accusing the administration of embracing too passive a stance in the Middle East. The defense secretary and other White House officials have expressed concern about Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's arsenal of chemical weapons. Panetta said last week that the United States believes that while the weapons are still secure, intelligence suggests the regime might have moved the weapons to protect them. The Obama administration has said that Assad's use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would change the US policy of providing only non-lethal aid to the rebels seeking to topple him. Pentagon press secretary George Little, traveling with Panetta, said the US and Jordan agreed that "increased cooperation and more detailed planning are necessary in order to respond to the severe consequences of the Assad regime's brutality." He said the US has provided medical kits, water tanks, and other forms of humanitarian aid to help Jordanians assist Syrian refugees fleeing into their country. Little said the military personnel were there to help Jordan with the flood of Syrian refugees over its borders and the security of Syria's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. "As we've said before, we have been planning for various contingencies, both unilaterally and with our regional partners," Little said in a written statement. "There are various scenarios in which the Assad regime's reprehensible actions could affect our partners in the region. For this reason and many others, we are always working on our contingency planning, for which we consult with our friends." A US defense official in Washington said the forces are made up of 100 military planners and other personnel who stayed on in Jordan after attending an annual exercise in May, and several dozen more have flown in since, operating from a joint US-Jordanian military center north of Amman that Americans have used for years. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the mission on the record. In Jordan, the biggest problem for now seems to be the strain put on the country's meager resources by the estimated 200,000 Syrian refugees who have flooded across the border – the largest fleeing to any country. Several dozen refugees in Jordan rioted in their desert border camp of Zaatari early this month, destroying tents and medicine and leaving scores of refugee families out in the night cold. Jordanian men also are moving the other way across the border – joining what intelligence officials have estimated to be around 2,000 foreigners fighting alongside Syrian rebels trying to topple Assad. A Jordanian border guard was wounded after armed men – believed trying to go fight – exchanged gunfire at the northern frontier. Turkey has reinforced its border with artillery guns and deployed more fighter jets to an air base close to the border region after an errant Syrian mortar shell killed five people in a Turkish border town last week and Turkey retaliated with artillery strikes. Turkey's military chief Necdet Ozel vowed Wednesday to respond with more force to any further shelling from Syria, keeping up the pressure on its southern neighbor a day after Nato said it stood ready to defend Turkey.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | BAE Systems and EADS abandon proposed €35bn merger after UK, French and German administrations are unable to agree BAE Systems and EADS have abandoned their proposed €35bn (£25bn) merger after failing to overcome political obstacles to the combination of Britain's largest defence contractor and the owner of Airbus. In a joint statement the companies said they could not resolve government concerns about the deal, with the UK, French and German administrations unable to come to an agreed position. "It has become clear that the interests of the parties' government stakeholders cannot be adequately reconciled with each other or with the objectives that BAE Systems and EADS established for the merger," the statement said. "BAE Systems and EADS have therefore decided it is in the best interests of their companies and shareholders to terminate the discussions and to continue to focus on delivering their respective strategies." The announcement raises question marks over the long-term future of BAE now that it has signalled it needs a merger or acquisition and poses questions over its management, after the company's largest shareholder took the unusual step of criticising the deal publicly. Sources close to the deal said that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had emerged as the most significant obstacle to an ambitious transaction that would have created an industrial behemoth with 220,000 employees worldwide, making products from nuclear submarines and Typhoon fighter jets to the A380 superjumbo. Speaking before the deal was officially terminated, the source said: "The fundamental problem is that Merkel does not feel comfortable with the deal, full stop." The source added that the German leader appeared to have deep concerns over the notion of merging a civil aerospace manufacturer with a defence group. Speaking after the announcement, another sources said that Merkel was "a key factor in the decision to terminate the talks", with her objections becoming clear only over the last 24 hours. Prior to that, both companies were expecting to seek an extension to a UK Takeover Panel deadline that expired at 5pm. However, as alluded to by the joint statement on Wednesday afternoon, the UK and French governments also harboured concerns about the transaction to the extent that every workable solution drew an objection from one of the three governments. France, which controlled 15% of EADS, was unhappy with German demands for the business to have its headquarters in Munich, while Germany was concerned that France would have a bigger shareholding in the new business than the 9% stake that it was seeking. The UK, in turn, refused to allow German and French political representatives to sit on the BAE board, as would have been likely under the dual-listed structure envisaged by both companies. BAE and EADS said they had made significant progress in thrashing out the shape of their merged business, including the management structure, the dividend policy and cost savings. "BAE Systems and EADS believe that the merger was based on sound industrial logic," the companies said, having argued over the last month that the deal would protect BAE from the troubled UK defence market while giving EADS access to the US military sector. "It represented a unique opportunity to create a combination from two strong and successful companies greater than the sum of the parts. The merger would have produced a combined business that would have been a technology leader and a greater force for competition and growth across both the commercial aerospace and defence sectors and which would have delivered tangible benefits to all stakeholders." Ian King, the BAE chief executive, said he was "obviously disappointed" that an agreement could not be reached but defended BAE's prospects, which will now be the subject of intense political and City debate. "We believe the merger presented a unique opportunity for BAE Systems and EADS to combine two world class and complementary businesses to create a world leading aerospace, defence and security group," he said. "However, our business remains strong and financially robust. We continue to see opportunities across our platforms and services offerings and in the various international markets in which we operate. We remain committed to delivering total shareholder value and look to the future with confidence." The chief executive designate of the merged company, EADS boss Tom Enders, said: "It is, of course, a pity we didn't succeed but I'm glad we tried. I'm sure there will be other challenges we'll tackle together in the future." Analysts said the smaller of the two businesses, BAE, now faced serious questions over its future. "We think the pressure will be on BAE more than EADS to come up with a plan B," said Guy Anderson, senior principal analyst at IHS Jane's. "I am not convinced that investors will put up with business as usual. BAE is not in a bad position, it is profitable with 8% profit margins, but the fact that they leapt into this merger has opened Pandora's box. It shows that they feel they are stronger with another company than not." The UK's largest trade union, Unite, said a merger would have "protected the UK's long-term interests" if it had been accompanied by a jobs guarantee for British employees. Ian Waddell, a Unite official, said the UK government could secure such a guarantee in future mergers or takeovers by taking an equity stake in the company. Although the British government has a "golden share" in the business, which can block a foreign takeover, it does not control a significant block of shares similar to France's stake in EADS. Ben Wallace, the Conservative MP for Wyre and Preston, who organised a petition against the deal signed by 45 MPs, said the deal should never have been promoted due to the threat of French and German political interference. Wallace said Wednesday's developments put the future of King and his board colleagues at risk. "The BAE board should now reflect long and hard at what their strategic error could mean for the company's future. If they have put at risk my constituents' jobs and fatally wounded the UK's jewel in the manufacturing crown, then they should consider their position. "BAE and its workers is a world leader in aerospace it has a great future it does not deserve, through inconsistent and unrealistic strategy to be put at risk by such leadership."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates after the New York Times reported that the US has sent a military task force to Jordan to insulate its ally from the turmoil in Syria
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | International Monetary Fund warns that Europe risks a downward spiral of capital flight, breakup fears and economic decline
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Faulty window switches in 12 models prompts biggest global car recall since 1996 In the biggest car recall since 1996, Toyota is calling back 7.4m vehicles worldwide after discovering faulty window switches in 12 models. In the UK, 138,000 cars are affected. The Japanese carmaker stressed that there have not been any accidents or injuries – the problem is the electric window switch which could feel uneven or notchy and could over time stick. There has been one reported case in the UK. Toyota said various simulation tests had shown there was no risk of fire. It is the biggest car recall since Ford was forced to call back 8m vehicles in 1996 to replace defective igntion switches that could cause engine fires. "Recalls in the automotive sector are not rare events, but the size and scale of this particular recall is unusual," said Richard Matthews, head of product liability at international law firm Eversheds. "Toyota faced heavy public scrutiny for the way it handled recalls in 2009-10, culminating in a record fine of $16.4m (£10.2bn) from the US transportation department. Toyota's approach this time around is perhaps indicative of an increasingly 'belt and braces' approach to managing risk." Toyota already recalled more than 10m vehicles between 2009 and 2011 over various problems, and the latest recall will further damage its reputation. It is now calling back 1.39m vehicles in Europe, 2.47m in the US and 1.4m in China, as well as 459,000 in Japan, 650,000 in Australia and Asia and 490,000 vehicles in the Near and Middle East. The range of Toyota cars affected worldwide include some models of the Yaris, Vios, Corolla, Matrix, Auris, Camry, RAV4, Highlander, Tundra, Sequoia, xB and xD made between 2005 and 2010. In Britain, only three models are affected – the RAV4, Yaris and Auris. Toyota said the window switches take about an hour to fix. All affected owners will be contacted by Toyota GB within the next six weeks and asked to bring their car to the nearest Toyota centre. The dealer will check the window switch and will apply a special lubricant if it is operating properly, or replace it if not. The move comes a day after Toyota reported a near-50% slump in sales in China in September, where Japanese car brands have suffered because of anti-Japanese sentiment in the wake of a Sino-Japanese territorial dispute. Despite this, Matthews noted that Toyota's brand had proved remarkably resilient: in August it announced a quarterly profit of ¥290bn (£2.3bn), the highest in four years, and the business still claims the top spot for global sales, with 4.87m units sold in the first half of 2012.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | International Monetary Fund warns that Europe risks a downward spiral of capital flight, breakup fears and economic decline
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | International Monetary Fund warns that Europe risks a downward spiral of capital flight, breakup fears and economic decline
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Prime minister insists country is on right track and denies Conservatives are party of the rich David Cameron has offered himself as the leader of an "aspiration nation", admitting his plans to eradicate the deficit are taking longer than he hoped, but insisting the country is on the right track. In a sometimes defensive speech to his party conference in Birmingham, he sought to fend off the image of his party as a defender of the rich, saying: "We are the party of the want to be better off," and insisting his goal was to spread, not defend, privilege. He said he was not going to allow Britain, like some "sclerotic European countries", to slide in the face of the global challenge posed by countries such as China. He said: "I know you are asking whether the plan is working and here is the truth: the damage was worse than we thought and it's taking longer than we hoped." In a play on Ed Miliband's "one nation" speech, he dismissed Labour as the party of "one notion" – borrowing. He blamed the slowing of the world economy, especially in the EU over the last two years, but told the country: "Here is the crucial thing you need to know. Yes, it's worse than we thought, yes, it's taking longer, but we are making progress. "The country is on the rise and we are selling to the world again," he said, adding it was a time of reckoning, when the country would "either sink or swim, do or decline". As evidence that the economy was on the mend, he cited the creation of 1m new jobs in the private sector, saying this was in net terms more than Labour managed in 10 years. In his only specific growth measure, he said Britain's planning laws would have to be scrapped so more housing could be built, vowing to scrap "the suffocating bureaucracy" that he said was holding economic growth back. He said: "There are too many 'yes but no' people. The ones who say: 'Yes, our business needs to expand, but no, we cannot reform planning'." He said: "If we are going to be a winner in this global race we've got to beat off this suffocating bureaucracy once and for all. He also attacked the so-called "Nimbys", saying it had been "OK for his generation that had got on the housing ladder". But he pointed out that the average age that people buy their first home today without any help from their parents was 33.He insisted: "We are the party of home ownership. We cannot let this carry on. We have to accept we need to build more houses in Britain. "There are people who work hard year after year but are still living at home. They sit in their childhood bedroom looking out of the window dreaming of a place of their own." He also issued a strong defence of his plans to cut welfare, as well as his free school programme. He insisted in British politics it was the Conservative party that was saying no one was a write-off, adding that his goal was not to hoard privilege but to spread it. He defended his work experience scheme, attacking those who compared it to workhouses or said it was state-sponsored slavery. He replied: "What an appalling, snobbish attitude to the idea of work. We're not sending children up chimneys. We're giving them a chance. What's cruel is not asking something of people – it's when we ask nothing of them. Work is not slavery, it's poverty that is slavery, and again it is us, the modern, compassionate Conservative party, who are the real champions of fighting poverty in Britain today." He also set out plans to end automatic access to housing benefit for people under 25, saying for some people there was a soft option of "don't get a job, sign on, don't ever need to produce a CV when you do sign on. Get housing benefit, get a flat and then don't ever get a job, or you will lose a load of housing benefit." He also attacked the "leftwing establishment in education – the leftwing local authorities, the leaders of the teachers' unions, the Labour party theorists that stand in the way of aspirational parents by excusing low expectations and blaming social disadvantage". He said: "It's that toxic culture of low expectations – that lack of ambition for every child – which has held this country back." He said he wanted more free schools, academies, more rigour, and "more expected of every child". Refusing to back away from his schooling at Eton, he added: "To all those people who say he wants children to have the kind of education he had at his posh school, I say: 'Yes, you are absolutely right.'" He launched a number of attacks on Labour, but was silent on his coalition partners. He attacked Miliband by saying: "While the intellectuals of other parties sneer at people who want to get on in life, we here salute you. They call us the party of the better off. No, we are the party of the want to be better off, those who strive to make a better life for themselves and their families – and we should never be ashamed of saying so." He promised that "those with the broadest shoulders would bear the greatest burden. With us the rich will pay a greater share of tax in every year of this parliament than in any one of the 13 years under Labour." Previewing the attack he will mount at the next election, he said he did not think Labour had learned a single thing. "When they were in office, their answer was always borrow more money. Now they are out of office, it's borrow more money whatever the day, whatever the question, whatever the weather it is, borrow more money."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Americans Robert J Lefkowitz and Brian K Kobilka have won this year's chemistry Nobel for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former prime minister may return to challenge Binyamin Netanyahu, despite recent conviction and forthcoming trial The Israeli former prime minister Ehud Olmert is considering a political comeback, despite his recent conviction for breach of trust and his forthcoming trial on bribery charges, to challenge Binyamin Netanyahu in a general election next year. Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 until 2009, is expected to decide on the move within days, according to media reports. His allies claim there is no legal bar to such a move. Netanyahu announced on Tuesday evening that he would go to the polls early next year rather than face the defeat of his austerity budget. The date is to be set in the coming days, with most commentators predicting late January or early February. Olmert could return to lead the centre-right Kadima party, ousting its present head, Shaul Mofaz. Other possibilities are that Olmert leads a new centre party or heads up a bloc of centre parties, which may be able to muster enough seats to dislodge Netanyahu. Olmert is considered to be the only figure capable of mounting a credible challenge to the incumbent PM. "What is driving Netanyahu to the polling stations at almost hysterical speed is Ehud Olmert. Bibi also reads the polls … and he knows that the only one who can give him a real fight, as an equal, with an actual chance, is Olmert," wrote the columnist Ben Caspit in the Ma'ariv newspaper. Netanyahu's move was intended "to pre-empt Olmert's comeback, catch his opponents off guard and steal a new term before it's too late", he said. The former Kadima minister Haim Ramon confirmed that he had approached Olmert about joining a new centre party. "I am talking to Ehud Olmert, he has obviously not made his decisions and we need to wait patiently and if you want to find out from him you need to talk to him, but in principle we are talking," Ramon told Army Radio. Kadima, which emerged from the last election as the biggest party but was unable to form a government, is projected to win only eight seats in the 120-place parliament, down from 28 in 2009. Amit Segal, chief political correspondent for Israel's Channel 2, said: "Kadima is in such a desperate position that Mofaz would be happy to give up his place to Olmert." However, he added, Olmert's public appeal was tempered by his criminal cases and the fact that he took Israel into two wars, in 2006 and 2008. Last month Olmert was fined and given a suspended prison sentence after being convicted of breach of trust when a minister. He was cleared of corruption charges. He still faces another trial on bribery charges over a residential development called Holyland. He has denied the accusations and his lawyers say the case against him is weak. As prime minister, Olmert was responsible for the second Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, and the three-week conflict in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008. He entered into secret and detailed negotiations with the Palestinians on a settlement to end the conflict, which reached an advanced stage before he was forced to resign as party leader over corruption charges.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sentence for Russian punk band member Yekaterina Samutsevich suspended but two others stay in jail A Moscow appeals court has released one of the jailed members of anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot, but ordered two others to serve the remainder of their two-year jail term in a Russian prison colony. Yekaterina Samutsevich, the oldest of the three women at 30, walked free into the arms of her father, after serving six months in a pre-trial detention centre after being found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred in August. A panel of three judges accepted the argument of Samutsevich's new lawyer that she had not participated fully in the group's February performance of an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in a Moscow cathedral. Samutsevich had been kicked out of the cathedral shortly after entering, meaning she did not engage in the "aggressive movements" that had offended Russia's Orthodox believers, she argued. The other two women, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, hugged Samutsevich goodbye. They will now be sent to prison colonies to serve the remainder of their two-year terms. The women issued final statements in the court, acknowledging that their public roles as harsh anti-Putin critics would be reduced once in jail. "I have lost all hope in the court," Alyokhina said from inside a glass cage. "But I want again and for the last time, because we probably won't get another chance, to talk about our motives. Dear believers, we did not want to offend you." "We don't have and have never had any religious hate," Tolokonnikova said. The band's performance was political and not religious, she argued. The case against Pussy Riot has highlighted the crackdown on freedoms inside Russia since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in May amid a wave of discontent. They have been held in a Moscow detention centre since their arrest in March. In a documentary aired on Sunday, Putin said the three jailed members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot "got what they asked for". He claimed on NTV that he had played no role in the case. "I have nothing to do with it," he said. "They got what they asked for."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sentence for one of Russian punk band Yekaterina Samutsevich suspended but two others remain in prison A Moscow appeals court has released one of the jailed members of anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot, but ordered two others to serve the remainder of their two-year jail term in a Russian prison colony. Yekaterina Samutsevich, the oldest of the three women at 30, walked free into the arms of her father, after serving six months in a pre-trial detention centre after being found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred in August. A panel of three judges accepted the argument of Samutsevich's new lawyer that she had not participated fully in the group's February performance of an anti-Putin "punk prayer" in a Moscow cathedral. Samutsevich had been kicked out of the cathedral shortly after entering, meaning she did not engage in the "aggressive movements" that had offended Russia's Orthodox believers, she argued. The other two women, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, hugged Samutsevich goodbye. They will now be sent to prison colonies to serve the remainder of their two-year terms. The women issued final statements in the court, acknowledging that their public roles as harsh anti-Putin critics would be reduced once in jail. "I have lost all hope in the court," Alyokhina said from inside a glass cage. "But I want again and for the last time, because we probably won't get another chance, to talk about our motives. Dear believers, we did not want to offend you." "We don't have and have never had any religious hate," Tolokonnikova said. The band's performance was political and not religious, she argued. The case against Pussy Riot has highlighted the crackdown on freedoms inside Russia since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in May amid a wave of discontent. They have been held in a Moscow detention centre since their arrest in March. In a documentary aired on Sunday, Putin said the three jailed members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot "got what they asked for". He claimed on NTV that he had played no role in the case. "I have nothing to do with it," he said. "They got what they asked for."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jason Chaffetz says White House and state department took part in co-ordinated effort to scale down security at US consulate – but admits he has no evidence for claim A Republican congressman at the forefront of hearings into the killing of the US ambassador to Libya has attempted to directly tie the White House to security decisions that may have contributed to the disaster. Jason Chaffetz has alleged that there was a "co-ordinated effort" between the White House and the state department to scale down security at US diplomatic missions in Libya in the months before a militia attacked the American consulate in Benghazi on September 11, killing the ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other officials. Chaffetz's allegation comes ahead of a hearing by the House of Representatives oversight committee on Wednesday into whether the state department contributed to the disaster by failing to heed warnings from Stevens and its own security personnel of the scale of the threat. US state department officials on Tuesday gave their most detailed description yet of the events in Benghazi, and backed away from earlier assertions that the incident was triggered by protests against an anti-Islam video. They described frantic and prolonged efforts to rescue the ambassador, Chris Stevens, from a smoke-filled "safe haven" inside the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi where he apparently died of asphyxiation. The officials said there was nothing unusual happening near the Benghazi mission before the assault. Earlier accounts by White House and state department officials, including Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the attacks were triggered by protests over a video made in California that insulted the prophet Muhammad. Last week, Chaffetz, chairman of a subcommittee on national security, and congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the oversight committee, wrote to Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, accusing the administration of incompetence and covering up the true nature of what they say was a well-planned terrorist assault with links to al-Qaida. Now, in an attempt to pin ultimate responsibility on Barack Obama, Chaffetz says those cuts were at the behest of the White House. "It seems to be a coordinated effort between the White House and the state department, from Secretary Clinton to President Obama's White House," Chaffetz told Fox News. "There was a very conscious decision made. My personal opinion is that they wanted the appearance of normalisation there in Libya, and [that] putting up barbed wire on our facility would lead to the wrong impression. Something that this administration didn't want to have moving forward." However, Chaffetz admitted he had no evidence for his assertion. Chaffetz and Issa are also vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy after it was revealed that both congressmen voted to cut the state department's diplomatic security budget after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010. Republicans have shaved nearly $800m off state department spending on worldwide security over the past two years including $376m cut from embassy protection this year alone. Among those called to testify before the oversight committee is the former head of US security in Libya, lieutenant colonel Andy Wood. He told CBS news that American officials, including himself and Stevens, made repeated calls for more security personnel in the months prior to the attack but the state department cut back instead. "We tried to illustrate … to show them how dangerous and how volatile and just unpredictable that whole environment was over there. So to decrease security in the face of that really is … it's just unbelievable," Wood said. He told CBS that when he was told that his 16-member team and a separate state department elite force of six were being withdrawn from Libya in August he felt "like we were being asked to play the piano with two fingers. There was concern amongst the entire embassy staff". "They asked if we were safe," he said. "They asked … what was going to happen, and I could only answer that what we were being told is that they're working on it – they'll get us more (security personnel), but I never saw that." The state department denies Wood's claim, saying there was no reduction in security personnel in the weeks before the attack in Benghazi. It said that when Wood's unit was withdrawn it was replaced bother others and that the number of security personnel in Libya remained constant. The state department also said Wood was based in Tripoli and had no knowledge of the situation in Benghazi, 400 miles away. The US under-secretary of state for management, Patrick Kennedy, will be the highest state department official to testify.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Americans Robert J Lefkowitz and Brian K Kobilka have won this year's chemistry Nobel for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Aubrey Levin, accused of human rights abuses in apartheid-era South Africa, charged with sexually assaulting male patients A Canadian psychiatrist accused of human rights abuses in apartheid South Africa for subjecting gay soldiers and conscientious objectors to electric shock "cures", will stand trial in Calgary on Wednesday for allegedly sexually abusing male patients. Aubrey Levin, known in South Africa as "Dr Shock" for his use of electroshock therapy, is charged with sexual assaults on 10 patients, mostly prisoners assigned by the Canadian justice system for treatment. On Tuesday, a jury ruled he was fit to stand trial after the defence claimed Levin, 72, was suffering from the early stages of dementia. Levin was arrested only after a male patient secretly filmed him making sexual advances. Earlier complaints by others were ignored by the authorities or not believed. His licence to practice has been suspended and the Alberta justice department has reviewed scores of criminal convictions in which the psychiatrist was a prosecution witness. One of Levin's patients told CTV two years ago he endured abuse because he was afraid to protest. "I didn't want him to write anything negative about me. So I pretty much kept quiet through the whole ordeal and the next time I came forward I was going to bring a tape recorder and record everything he was going to say, just to protect myself," the man said. After his arrest, about 30 other patients came forward to accuse Levin of sexual abuse. Levin's arrest raised questions in Canada as to how he was allowed to become a citizen and permitted to practice at the University of Calgary's Medical School even after he was named by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for "gross human rights abuses" during the apartheid era. Levin was a colonel in the South African military and chief psychiatrist at 1 Military hospital in Pretoria in the 1970s and 80s, where he was in charge of a unit where electric shocks were administered to "cure" gay white conscripts. Levin also oversaw the use of electroshocks and powerful drugs against conscientious objectors refusing to fight for the apartheid army in Angola or suppress dissent in the black townships, who were held against their will and classified as "disturbed". Levin, a member of the ruling National party during apartheid, had a long history of claiming to be able to cure gay people. In the 1960s, he wrote to a parliamentary committee considering the abolition of laws criminalising homosexuality saying they should be left in place because he could turn them into heterosexuals with electric shocks, known as aversion therapy. From 1969, he subjected an undetermined number of men to the treatment at the infamous ward 22 of the military hospital near Pretoria that catered for service personnel with psychological problems. Levin encouraged commanding officers and chaplains to refer "deviants" for electroconvulsive aversion therapy, which consisted of homosexual soldiers being shown pictures of naked men and encouraged to fantasise as they were subject to increasingly powerful electric shocks until they begged for the pain to stop. Some of the abuses were documented by the Aversion Project in South Africa (pdf). Its report quotes Trudie Grobler, an intern psychologist in the psychiatric unit at 1 Military hospital, who was forced to give electric shocks under Levin's supervision. "I know that [the psychiatrist] did aversion therapy with the homosexual men. I don't know of a single case where it was successful … You know he would show the boys men, and then shock them, and then show them girls," she said. According to the Aversion Project report, Grobler also saw a lesbian subjected to such severe electric shocks that her shoes flew off. "I can only think that it was the same method and intensity that the woman had been given. And it was terrible. … I couldn't believe that her body could survive it all," she said. According to the Aversion Project, some soldiers were subjected to hundreds of electric shock sessions. It said Levin "coerced conscripts into admitting that they were homosexual to their parents, and further coerced them to undergo aversion therapy". Among them was Michael Smith, then an 18-year-old conscript. Levin forced him to tell his parents he was gay. "It was the first time they realised I was homosexual and they were horrified. Dr Levin told them he had a therapy that would 'reorientate' me, so I agreed to the treatment," he told the Guardian in 2000. Smith was subject to numerous electric shock sessions. "When you kind of reached the maximum point and then you'd say 'No, no, no, I couldn't stand it any more', then he would say: 'Now you must think about your girlfriend', and all that sort of off-the-wall statements." Other conscripts with learning difficulties or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from fighting in Angola were also given powerful drugs and subjected to electric shocks. One of them was a soldier who subsequently wrote a book, a Branch of Wisdom, under the pen name Christopher. "Within 2 days of meeting with Dr Levin, I commenced a series 6 ECTs (Electro Convulsive Therapy) against my will," he wrote. The TRC heard testimony from a gay soldier who was chemically castrated. It was told that at least one patient had been driven to suicide by his treatment at Levin's hands. The psychiatrist refused to testify before the commission. Levin also targeted drug users, principally soldiers who smoked marijuana, and conscientious objectors who would not serve in the apartheid military on moral grounds. Some were subjected to narco-analysis or a "truth drug", involving the slow injection of a barbiturate before the questioning began. Speaking in 2000, Levin said the drug was used to help soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress. He said electric shock therapy was a standard "treatment" for gay people at the time and those subjected to it did so voluntarily. "Nobody was held against his or her will. We did not keep human guinea pigs, like Russian communists; we only had patients who wanted to be cured and were there voluntarily," he said. While the details of Levin's abuses at 1 Military hospital were widely aired in South Africa, he managed to suppress publication of details about his past in Canada by threatening legal action against news organisations. Canada admitted other South African medical practitioners accused of human rights abuses, including two who worked with Wouter Basson, known as "Dr Death" for his oversight of chemical and biological warfare experiments that included the murder of captured Namibian guerrillas.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Relatives say 14-year-old Pakistani peace activist appears to be doing well after three-hour operation Pakistani surgeons have removed a bullet from the head of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old schoolgirl and peace activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman on Tuesday. Relatives of the girl, who rose to fame for her outspoken opposition to Taliban militancy in her home town of Swat, said she appeared to be doing well after a three-hour operation. Her father, Ziaudduin Yousafzai, said doctors were encouraged by a CT scan taken after the operation. She was unconscious but had moved her hand slightly after coming out of surgery. Malala could be moved abroad for further treatment. A plane is on standby in Peshawar and Rehman Malik, the interior minister, has contacted the family to make sure their passports are in order. Three years ago Malala blogged on the BBC website about the terror of living amid a rising Taliban insurgency. Last year she received the country's first peace prize. She was on a Taliban hitlist for publicly advocating what the movement derides as "secular governance". On Tuesday morning as she and her classmates sat on a bus to take them home after a midterm exam, three men reportedly approached in search of Malala. "The man who stopped the vehicle signalled to his other armed accomplices that Yousafzai was inside," the bus driver, Usman Ali, told the Express Tribune newspaper. "Another armed man went to the back of the vehicle and started firing inside." Malala attempted to deny her own identity, but one of the other girls pointed her out. According to the Express Tribune, a total of four girls, including Malala, were injured. On Tuesday the Taliban appeared more than happy to take the credit for the attempted murder. "She was pro-west, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her ideal leader," said a spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan. "She was young but she was promoting western culture in Pashtun areas." The attack has horrified many in Pakistan, especially liberals who have long been aghast at what they see as the feeble response by the state and some religious political parties towards the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Pakistani offshoot of the hardline Islamist movement that closed down girl's schools and ran public executions when it was in power in Afghanistan in the 1990s. On Wednesday, Pakistan's parliament unanimously passed a resolution condemning the attack. Even the head of Pakistan's military, General Ashfaq Kayani, made public his anger during a meeting with Malala's parents at a military hospital in Peshawar. The attack has alarmed residents of Swat, which was infiltrated by Taliban insurgents who burned schools and executed its enemies. An operation by the Pakistani military eventually forced the Taliban out of the valley in 2009, but the attempt to kill Malala indicates their continued ability to mount attacks in an area still living under a heavy army presence. "The suicide bombings and blasts may be over in Swat but this attack has rung alarm bells reminding us that militants are still in Swat," said Iqbal Hussain, one of Malala's teachers. He said the girl's classmates were anxious to return to school despite the attack. "Girls of Swat are courageous and bold and they want to continue their education they cannot be bettered by these tactics of the militants," Hussain said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Moratorium on offshore drilling in the Arctic rejected by European parliament vote amid intense lobbying by oil industry The European parliament's industry committee has rejected attempts to introduce a moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, overruling a contrary vote by its environment committee last month. The key vote in the industry committee yesterday (9 October) instead proposed a new directive to ensure that companies have "adequate financial security" to cover the liabilities that could be incurred by any accidents. Drilling companies would also have to submit to national authorities a safety hazard and emergency response report at least 24 weeks before the planned start of operations. A plenary vote in December will now consider one surviving amendment from the environment committee vote, which would impel member states to refrain from licencing drills unless an effective accident response can be guaranteed. The European Commission had initially proposed a binding EU-wide regulation, but the industry committee's vote instead plumped for a directive, which member states can choose how to enforce according to their regional standards. "Questions have been raised about the significant revocation and amendments of existing equivalent national legislation and guidance [a regulation] might entail," said the parliamentary rapporteur, Ivo Belet (European People's Party). "Such redrafting would divert scarce resources from the safety assessments and inspections on the field," he added. British oil industry representatives used similar arguments, according to minutes of a stakeholder peer review meeting at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. "Implementing the Regulation would tie-up considerable resources in both industry and regulators … taking them away from the 'front line' where the hazards are," representatives of Oil and Gas UK said. After that meeting, the head of the European Commission's coal and oil unit, Jan Panek, invited the Oil and Gas UK representatives to a separate bilateral meeting on the legal instrument and requirements in the regulation, which took place in April 2012. Tip of the iceberg Environmentalists suspect that this was the tip of a lobby iceberg. "This vote had the fingerprints of oil lobby all over it," Greenpeace spokesman Joris den Blanken told EurActiv. Amid intense industry lobbying, EurActiv has learned that the oil giant Chevron offered MEPs on the committee a free trip to its offshore Alba platform on 12-14 July, involving two nights stay in an Aberdeen hotel, helicopter trips to the platform, and several briefings. But a Chevron representative informed EurActiv that the trip had not in fact gone ahead, due to "organisational reasons" on which she declined to elaborate. Ivo Belet's office said that he had "had the intention" of going on the package, but instead visited a platform in the Netherlands on a paid-for trip to GDF Suez's K12B gas-producing platform which utilises carbon capture and storage techniques. In March 2011, another shadow rapporteur on the committee, Vicky Ford (European Conservatives and Reformists), who tabled more than half of the 642 amendments on the report, visited a rig off the coast of Aberdeen paid for by the oil company ConocoPhillips. Such trips are considered necessary and educational for legislators, and may not be luxurious, but environmentalists are wary of undue influence when MEPs adopt positions close to the industry's interests. A spokesperson at Ford's office said that she had registered her trip on her European Parliament online declaration of interests but it was not mentioned there at the time of writing. Camel operations in the Sahara Oil producing countries such as Norway also pushed hard for the proposed regulation to be transmuted into a directive, because of the "massive administrative burden" and "complicated legal questions" it could raise, according to a Norwegian position paper, seen by EurActiv. Norway's deputy oil and energy minister, Per Rune Henriksen, went further, arguing that for the EU to claim jurisdiction over the Arctic by banning drills there "would almost be like us commenting on a camel operations in the Sahara." The EU sees itself as an actor in the Arctic because three EU countries have territory in the Arctic – Denmark, Finland and Sweden – while Iceland is an EU candidate. The EU has in return applied for an enhanced observer seat on the Arctic Council, partly because climate change is a transboundary issue, affecting European weather patterns and fish stocks alike. Gustaf Lind, the Arctic Council's current chair, told EurActiv that "of course, as we have EU members, we can all say that we're positive, very positive [towards the EU's application] but we try to avoid reviewing specific applications in the media." Arctic resource race The EU's application comes as the continent's ice has melted to its lowest level ever, carving the pristine region open for a resource race. The US Geological Survey says that the region could be home to 13% of the world's undiscovered oil reserves and 30% of its undiscovered gases, and gold and diamond mining companies also view its prospects with relish. Arctic nations often bemoan a perceived southern hypocrisy that would prevent them from enjoying the same economic benefits from fossil fuel production that others have done. Oil extracted from the Arctic emits no more greenhouse gas than that produced anywhere else but the region's remote and hostile terrain could make rescue operations treacherous in the event of an accident. Arctic futures Gunnar Wiegand, a director at the EU's External Affairs Action Service, told an Arctic Futures Symposium in Brussels on 4 October that he hoped EU legislation could inspire Arctic nations to firmer environmental legislation. "The acquis [accumulated legislation] in the Arctic Council doesn't go as far as any of the environmental legislation of the EU," he said. Maria Damanaki, the EU's maritime commissioner, told the same conference that as the continent's ice thawed, new opportunities could arise. "Offshore drilling in the Arctic now becomes a viable option for big oil companies," she said. "Arctic reserves could hold enough oil and gas to meet global demand for several years. This is a need the world economy has." "Though we may be greening the world economy, oil and gas remain vital for us and will do for some years," she added. Scientists are more concerned that the Arctic ice melt could raise sea levels, accelerate global warming by reducing the region's ice reflectivity of solar heat, and change Gulf Stream currents. If the Arctic's summer ice melts completely, some scientists fear that methane hydrates currently frozen on the seabed could be released, causing a runaway and unstoppable greenhouse effect.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates after the New York Times reported that the US has sent a military task force to Jordan to insulate its ally from the turmoil in Syria
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | State department officials give detailed description of events in Benghazi, on eve of congressional hearing into incident US state department officials have given their most detailed description yet of the events in Benghazi that led to the death of a US ambassador, and backed away from earlier assertions that the incident was triggered by protests against an anti-Islam video. The officials briefed reporters on the eve of a congressional hearing that is expected to focus on security missteps by the department. They described frantic and prolonged efforts to rescue the ambassador, Chris Stevens, from a smoke-filled "safe haven" inside the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi where he apparently died of asphyxiation. Confusion over the attack last month has become the subject of fierce partisan debate in Washington in the final weeks before the US presidential election. The state department officials said agents crawled on their hands and knees through thick diesel smoke to try to find the missing envoy, who somehow was transported out of the compound to a local hospital. The US government learned where he was after someone called numbers in his mobile phone, the officials said. "We do not know exactly how the ambassador got to the hospital. That is one of the issues that we hope to resolve in the ongoing reviews, and the information we are still seeking," one official said. The officials said there was nothing unusual happening near the Benghazi mission before the assault. Earlier accounts by White House and state department officials, including Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the attacks were triggered by protests over a video made in California that insulted the prophet Muhammad. A key subject of the congressional inquiry will be whether the state department rejected requests from diplomats to increase security at the Libya mission after months of violent incidents. A senior official described the Benghazi attack as unprecedented and said security measures were always being adjusted. "We attempt to mitigate our risks. We cannot eliminate them," the official said. The officials described the rented villa in which Stevens was hiding as a large residence with numerous bedrooms. Half of one floor was a safe haven barricaded with a gate and locks. Stevens, Sean Smith, an information management officer, and five armed American security agents were in the compound on the night of attack, on 11 September. There were also four members of a Libyan militia, assigned as the local government's protection force. Stevens arrived in Benghazi on 10 September and the next day held a series of meetings at the compound. His last visitor was a Turkish diplomat, whom he escorted to the main gate at 8.30pm local time, a state department official said. "There had been nothing unusual during the day at all outside," the official said. The officials played down earlier assertions that the anti-Islam film was a trigger for the violence. "That is the question that you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion, that's not saying we had a conclusion, but we outlined what happened," one official said. At 9.40pm, security agents in Benghazi heard loud noises at the gate, gunfire and an explosion. A large number of armed men entered the compound. One agent went to fetch the ambassador from his bedroom as well as Smith. The three entered the safe haven, which had window grills and a central windowless closet area where people could take refuge. The security agent was armed with a submachine gun and a sidearm. He radioed to other agents that he was with Stevens in the safe haven. Other agents tried to enter the villa, but they encountered a large group of armed men and retreated to another building in the compound where they barricaded themselves in. The attackers swarmed into the darkened villa and walked around in the living area. They looked through the grill into the safe area and tried to enter it but could not. The agent protecting Stevens watched their movements with a gun trained on them, ready to shoot. The attackers carried cans of diesel fuel that they sprinkled on furniture and set on fire. The building filled with smoke and fumes, and the air inside grew black. Stevens, Smith and the security agent moved to a bathroom in the safe area where they opened a window but still could not get enough air. They decided to leave through an adjacent bedroom. Outside, there were shots, tracer bullets, smoke and explosions. The officials said the security agent, whom they did not identify, was suffering "severely" from smoke inhalation and could barely breathe. He left the villa first, following protocol, but when he turned back he did not see the other two. He returned to try to rescue Stevens but he could not find him. He went in and out of the building several times before he was overcome by smoke. The agent went up a ladder to the roof, collapsed and radioed other agents who arrived to continue the hunt for Stevens and Smith. "They take turns going into the building on their hands and knees, feeling their way through the building to try to find their two colleagues. They find Sean. They pull him out of the building. He is deceased. They are unable to find the ambassador," one official said. Six security personnel from a US annex nearby arrived with members of the Libyan militia, known as the February 17 Brigade. They took people from the compound and transported Smith's body to a secure annex. The annex came under fire, killing two security personnel and wounding another. There were no classified materials that had to be secured at the mission site, the official said. Asked whether anyone had counselled Stevens against being in Benghazi on 11 September, the 11th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, the official said: "Ambassadors must travel, ambassadors must get out and meet with a variety of individuals especially in countries that have multiple centres of energy or power. This just must happen."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | International Monetary Fund warns that Europe risks a downward spiral of capital flight, breakup fears and economic decline
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