|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President portrays Romney's policies as haphazard but candidates' performances are unlikely to influence election result Barack Obama went on the offensive over foreign policy in the third and final presidential debate, repeatedly accusing Mitt Romney of flip-flopping on major international issues but failing to deliver a killer blow to his opponent's resurgent campaign. While the president emerged as the narrow winner on the night, the encounter, which was cordial and largely uneventful compared with the previous two debates, is unlikely to have much impact on the outcome of the election. Going into the debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, Obama had an in-built advantage on foreign policy and security. As president, with access to daily briefings by intelligence analysts, diplomats and generals, he is better briefed and it showed as he dominated Romney in the first half of the debate. The Republican candidate appeared unsure at times and occasionally stumbled over his lines as if struggling to remember his briefing notes. He began sweating as Obama, aggressive from the start, got the better of him during exchanges on Iran, Iraq and Russia as well as on US military spending. Obama described his opponent twice as "wrong and reckless" and accused him of being "all over the map" on his foreign policy positions. The president worked through a list of issues on which he said Romney had been wrong, from support for the 2003 Iraq invasion through to opposing setting a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. "What we need to do with respect to the Middle East is strong, steady leadership, not wrong and reckless leadership that is all over the map," said Obama. "And unfortunately that's the kind of opinions that you've offered throughout this campaign, and it is not a recipe for American strength, or keeping America safe over the long haul." But with a growing sense in the Republican camp that the White House might just be within reach after all, Romney appeared happy to settle for a safe, gaffe-free performance in which his main goal was to reassure the US public that he was not a warmonger. On issue after issue, from Iranian sanctions to withdrawal from Afghanistan, there was little difference between his position and that of the administration, but Romney insisted that he would have projected American strength more effectively. "Nowhere in the world is our influence greater than it was four years ago," said Romney. But while the debate was supposed to be solely about foreign policy, domestic concerns were never far from the surface and the candidates took every opportunity to pivot to their stump speech attacks over the economy and tax. The same was true in the spin room afterwards where both campaign teams dispensed quickly with debate comments and moved instead to analysis of the state of the race in swing states. One of the most telling moments came when Obama, in a flash of normally suppressed arrogance, lectured Romney on military developments as if he was a child. Responding to a pledge by Romney to increase military spending and a complaint that the navy had fewer ships, Obama resorted to heavy sarcasm. "You mentioned the navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1917. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines," Obama said. But Romney did not crumple and recovered in the second half, in particular when he managed to drag the debate on to domestic economic concerns. On the Middle East he said an attack on Iran would be a last resort and that he was against direct US military involvement in Syria. He sought to neutralise the advantage Obama enjoys thanks to the killing of Osama bin Laden by insisting that his own policy was about more than "going after the bad guys". "We can't just kill our way out of this mess," Romney said. Romney managed to get in some hits on Obama too, accusing him of having conducted "an apology tour" of the Middle East at the start of his presidency and this was perceived by America's enemies as a sign of weakness. "Mr President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators," Romney said. The idea that Obama is an apologist for American values resonates strongly among conservatives. Obama responded by describing the "apology tour" as "probably the biggest whopper that's been told during the course of this campaign". "If we're going to talk about trips that we've taken," Obama said, in a reference to Romney's widely criticised summer tour of Britain, Poland and Israel, "when I was a candidate for office, first trip I took was to visit our troops. And when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn't take donors. I didn't attend fundraisers ... I went to ... the Holocaust museum there to remind myself of the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable." The instant polls agreed that Obama carried the night. Public Policy Polling published a poll showing Obama won the debate 53% to 42%. A CNN poll gave it to Obama by 48% to 40%. But few believe that the clash will have done much to affect the course of the race, which enters its final two weeks with Romney still enjoying a surge that began after his triumph over a listless Obama in the first debate in Denver on 3 October. Obama won the second to put himself back in the race. Although he also won the third, foreign policy is not a major concern for voters and it is unlikely to result in any major poll swings. The exchanges revealed there is little major difference between the two in term of their approach to security and foreign affairs. On Iran both vowed it will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Rommey said he would introduce more stringent sanctions; Obama said they were already as stringent as they could possibly be. Suprisingly there was almost nothing on the Benghazi consulate attack. Having twice botched the issue Romney opted against returning to it in depth. Obama teased Romney over his claim that Russia rather than al-Qaida was America's number one foe. Romney said he had meant Russia was America's biggest geopolitical foe and al-Qaida its biggest security problem. Both agreed that in Syria President Bashar Assad will not survive. Obama said there was no difference between the two on policy towards Syria except that Romney wanted to send heavy weapons to the rebels. Romney said America should be arming the "responsible" rebels. "Syria is an opportunity for us," Romney said. "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world ... so seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for us ... We should have taken a leading role." The two jostled over who was the closest to Israel, with Romney berating Obama for failing to visit Israel during a Middle East tour. Stuart Stevens, one of Romney's chief advisers, said: "The more people see Governor Romney the more comfortable they are with him." He criticised Obama for the sarcasm he displayed over the smaller navy. "I do not think his tone and demeanour is something that people would find attractive," Stevens said. David Plouffe, one of Obama's chief advisers, said: "The president was strong. Romney was unsteady."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The president did better than an unconvincing Romney – but it's difficult to imagine this debate changed minds or won hearts If the world could vote on 6 November, Barack Obama would win by a landslide. A global poll for the BBC World Service revealed that 20 out of 21 countries preferred the president to his challenger. But when you watched the presidential debate on foreign policy on Monday night you had to wonder why. Not because Mitt Romney was better, but because on matters of policy, Obama was almost as bad. It takes a friend to reveal the harsh truth to the global community, so here it is: "Obama's just not that into you." No one could love Israel more, care less about the Palestinians, put more pressure on Iran or be a greater fan of drone attacks or invading Libya. Both candidates agreed that America's task was to spread freedom around the world: nobody mentioned Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib or rendition. "Governor, you're saying the same things as us, but you'd say them louder," said Obama. It was a good line. The trouble was it condemned them both. It was one of many lines Obama delivered that sought not just to correct Romney but belittle him. "When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s." When Romney complained that America had fewer ships in the US navy than in 1916, Obama answered: "We also have fewer horses and bayonets." Obama's task was to cast his opponent as an opportunist out of his depth, not waving at the electorate but drowning before them. Promising to be "strong and steady not wrong and reckless," he painted Romney at every opportunity as a flip-flopper. Romney had a tougher task. With the race tightening and just two weeks to go until polling day, he had to focus the national imagination on the prospect of a President Romney. His problem was that Obama had left no room to the right on foreign policy that would not have left Romney sounding like Herman Cain (who would probably bomb Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan if only he had known where it was). So after a month of shape-shifting, fact-mangling and question-dodging Romney finally morphed into a peacenik. "But we can't kill our way out of this mess," he said, with a plausibility that would have had him booed off stage in a Republican primary. He spoke of promoting peace and democracy as though that had been the idea all along, and America's benevolent instincts had been blown off course by some freak wind. He parried Obama's slights as though they were beneath him. "Attacking me is not an agenda," was one retort. "I've got a policy for the future," was another. But there are only so many times you can shake an Etch A Sketch before its capacity to form an image starts to falter. Romney was less than convincing. And while Obama's put-downs were well-rehearsed, they also worked. He came out on top although it's difficult to imagine he changed any minds or converted any waverers. Both men, when given half a chance, tried to steer the debate back to the central issue in the election – the economy. Viewers could be forgiven for thinking the answers to issues relating to Iran, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Iraq or China were Obamacare, educational reform, tax rates and loopholes. This was the last set-piece of the campaign. After the primaries, conventions and two previous debates, all that's left now are doors to knock, phones to ring and rallies to attend. On the ground and in the heartland there is still everything to play for. But from the podiums and the spin rooms the campaign has played itself out.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Four civil claims filed at the high court in the first formal move for damages from any company outside News International The publisher of the Daily Mirror faces being sued over alleged phone hacking by four public figures, including ex-England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson. Four civil claims were filed against Mirror Group Newspapers at the high court on Monday in the first formal move for damages from any company outside Rupert Murdoch's News International. The allegation by Eriksson relates to the Daily Mirror when Piers Morgan was editor. Morgan, now a primetime TV host on CNN in the US, has repeatedly denied knowledge of phone hacking at the title. A spokesman for Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) said: "We have no comment; we are unaware action has been taken at the high court." The claims were filed by the solicitor Mark Lewis on behalf of Eriksson, former footballer Garry Flitcroft, actor Shobna Gulati, who played Sunita Alahan in Coronation Street and Anita in Dinnerladies, and Abbie Gibson, the former nanny to David and Victoria Beckham's children. The claims lodged on behalf of Gulati, Gibson and Flitcroft, allege phone hacking at either the Sunday Mirror or the People. MGN faced accusations of hacking during evidence to Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into press standards, but has always said: "All our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] code of conduct and we have seen no evidence to suggest otherwise." Lewis confirmed to the Guardian that the civil claims had been lodged, but said they had not yet been served on MGN. He added that he did not expect to file any further claims against the Daily Mirror's publisher this week. Morgan edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004. He gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry in December when he repeatedly denied any knowledge of illegal newsgathering techniques at the tabloid. But in May, BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman claimed to the inquiry that Morgan had personally shown him how to illicitly intercept voicemail messages at a lunch in September 2002. Paxman claimed that at the same lunch Morgan had teased Ulrika Jonsson about the details of a private conversation she had had with Erikson, who was England manager at the time. In one testy exchange with Robert Jay, the senior counsel to the Leveson inquiry, in December 2011, Morgan said: "Not a single person has made any formal or legal complaint against the Daily Mirror for phone hacking." The four claims accuse the newspapers of a "breach of confidence and misuse of private information" relating to the "interception and/or misuse of mobile phone voicemail messages and/or the interception of telephone accounts". Former Blackburn Rovers footballer Flitcroft told the Leveson inquiry in November that he had been hounded by tabloid newspapers over an extra-marital affair in 2001. Golati is the actor best known for playing Sunita Alahan in Coronation Street and, previously, Anita in Dinnerladies. Lewis said no particulars of claim had been filed, but that relevant dates relating to the alleged activity were submitted to the high court. The individuals now have four months to serve particulars of claims on MGN. The merits of the claim remain to be tested. The formal hacking allegations come weeks before Leveson is expected to outline a critical assessment of the ethics of the press in his report to prime minister David Cameron. Trinity Mirror has robustly defended its decision not to launch an internal investigation into phone hacking at its titles. Sly Bailey, the former chief executive, told the Leveson inquiry in January that it was unhealthy for a company to investigate unsubstantiated allegations about itself. Bailey said: "I don't think it's a way to conduct a healthy organisation to go around conducting investigations when there's no evidence that our journalists have been involved in phone hacking. "There was no evidence and we saw no reason to investigate. We have only seen unsubstantiated allegations and I have seen no evidence that phone hacking has ever taken place at Trinity Mirror." Trinity Mirror opened a review of its editorial "controls and procedures" following the hacking scandal in July 2011.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Armstrong to be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles
• Whistleblowers Landis and Hamilton savagely criticised Although Lance Armstrong was finally and definitively cast out of his sport and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles on Monday, the cycling world will have to wait a while longer to discover whether or not new winners will be declared for the races held between 1999 and 2005. Pat McQuaid, the president of the UCI, the international cycling union, announced at a press conference in Geneva on Monday that the governing body has accepted the verdict of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), which concluded that Armstrong and his US Postal and Discovery Channel teams colluded in what it called "the biggest doping conspiracy in the history of sport" and handed the Texan a lifetime ban. The UCI will not be appealing against Usada's 1,000-page "reasoned decision", with McQuaid making it clear that he would now like to erase the former seven-times champion from cycling's history. "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling," McQuaid declared. "He deserves to be forgotten." McQuaid was equally severe in his condemnation of Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton, two former Armstrong team-mates who tested positive, vehemently denied the charges, served suspensions and then wrote books in which they admitted guilt and turned whistleblowers. "Landis and Hamilton are being made out to be heroes," he said. "They are as far from heroes as night from day. They are not heroes. They are scumbags. All they have done is damage to the sport." On Friday his management committee will meet to decide whether the runners-up to Armstrong in those seven Tours will be retrospectively handed a winner's yellow jersey or whether those races will be deemed to have had no winner. The complication of elevating riders from second and third places is that so many of them have subsequently been implicated in doping scandals. The committee will also discuss whether or not Armstrong will be made to refund his $3m of Tour prize money, as was requested on Monday by ASO, the race's owners. Traditionally the winner's cheque is divided between all the riders of his team, many of whom testified against him to Usada. SCA Promotions, an insurance company, has said that it will demand repayment of $7.5m in bonuses and on Monday Armstrong lost the last of his big personal sponsorships when Oakley sunglasses announced that it was following Nike, RadioShack and Anheuser-Busch by terminating its relationship with the cyclist. McQuaid denounced the claims made by Landis and Hamilton that their team leader had given more than $100,000 to the UCI in order to persuade it to cover up an alleged positive test for EPO at the 2001 Tour de Suisse. The money was said to have been used to buy a blood analysis machine to increase the effectiveness of the UCI's dope testing programme. While admitting that Armstrong had indeed made two donations, one of $25,000 in 2002 and another of $100,000 promised in 2005 and paid in 2007, McQuaid said that any suggestion of a cover-up was "absolutely untrue". In similar circumstances, he said, he would accept further donations from riders – "but in a different way". Friday's committee meeting will also consider the possibility of setting up some sort of truth and reconciliation process on the lines of that utilised by the South African government in the wake of apartheid, including the notion of an amnesty. "The trouble is that amnesty means different things in different languages," Philippe Verbiest, the UCI's legal advisor, said on Monday. "It's not something that you can figure out in one day." The idea of an amnesty does not, however, appear to extend to journalists. McQuaid confirmed that he and his predecessor, Hein Verbruggen, will be continuing their legal action for alleged defamation against the Irish journalist and former rider Paul Kimmage, one of a handful of reporters who showed the persistence and courage to pursue the Armstrong story through years of veiled and explicit threats. "It's a straight defamation case," McQuaid said. "He called us corrupt." Supporters of Kimmage, whose book Rough Ride, published in 1990, was the first to expose systematic doping in the modern peloton, have raised a significant sum of money to help with his defence. The World Anti-Doping agency said on Monday night it was "encouraged" that the UCI felt it could use the case as a "catalyst" to thoroughly clean up the sport. But it also warned that the governing body needed to act on evidence of doping, no matter how long ago, and said it would await "with interest" the decisions the UCI planned to take on Friday. "The fact the World Anti-Doping Code only came into force in 2004 is not a valid excuse for an organisation failing to act on evidence of widespread doping, and nor is the Statute of Limitations contained within the Code an excuse not to investigate evidence of doping that dates back longer than eight years," said Wada's president, John Fahey. The organisation will have three weeks from the end of the month to decide whether to appeal against the UCI's verdict. Fahey added: "It will announce that decision in due course, and will continue to examine the evidence encouraged by the fact that the biggest doping scandal in the history of sport is close to reaching a correct conclusion."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tonight's third and final presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama is on foreign policy
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live coverage as Romney and Obama prep for final debate meeting as latest polls put the candidates neck and neck
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Four civil claims filed at the high court in the first formal move for damages from any company outside News International The publisher of the Daily Mirror faces being sued over alleged phone hacking by four public figures, including ex-England manager Sven Goran-Eriksson. Four civil claims were filed against Mirror Group Newspapers at the high court on Monday, in the first formal move for damages from any company outside Rupert Murdoch's News International. A spokesman for Mirror Group Newspapers said: "We have no comment, we are unaware action has been taken at the high court." The claims were filed by the solicitor Mark Lewis on behalf of Eriksson, former footballer Garry Flitcroft, actress Shobna Gulati, and Abbie Gibson, the former nanny to David and Victoria Beckham's children. The company has faced accusations of hacking during evidence to the Leveson inquiry into press standards. but has always said: "All our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC code of conduct and we have seen no evidence to suggest otherwise." Lewis confirmed to the Guardian that the civil claims had been lodged, but said they had not yet been served on Mirror Group Newspapers. He added that he did not expect to file any further claims against the Daily Mirror's publisher this week. Lewis is the solicitor behind several dozen of the settled phone-hacking claims brought against News International, which has paid out several millions of pounds to alleged victims since 2010.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | First set of results under new chief executive beat analysts' expectations as Mayer says Yahoo's future is 'incredibly bright' Yahoo beat analysts' expectations on Monday as it posted its first set of results under Marissa Mayer, the former Google executive who took over the troubled internet firm in July. Mayer said her first "nearly 100 days have been incredibly energizing" and that the company had achieved three quarters of modest growth. "Yahoo is a truly iconic company, one I've had respect for since I discovered it in 1994 as a Stanford student," she said. "While we have a lot to do, the future for Yahoo is incredibly bright." Mayer, the first female engineer to be hired by Google, is Yahoo's third full-time CEO since the company fired Carol Bartz in September 2011. "Companies are all about people, it's no secret that our team has experienced numerous changes," she said. She said she had assembled a "dream team" to turn the firm around. She said the company had made a "solid foundation" with its last three sets of results. Mayer said the company was positioning itself to compete once more with consumer internet firms like Facebook and Google. "We will become a growth company by inspiring and delighting our users," she said. There was no "giant pivot", said Mayer. Yahoo would not go into new businesses but grow by capitalising on search, news, its homepage and mobile. The company's shares rose in after-hours trading as Yahoo announced a slight increase in net revenue, which excludes fees paid to partner websites, to $1.09bn, compared with $1.07bn in the same period a year ago. A $2.8bn gain from the sale of the company's stake in China's Alibaba drove up revenues, but earnings were still up from a year ago and above estimates. Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners in New York, described the results as "solid". "The stock has been trading like a distressed asset, so the fact that it's not a sharp decline is great," he said. But Gillis said the results suggested Mayer and Yahoo were far from out of the danger zone. He said display advertising, an area where Yahoo is losing ground to Google and Facebook, was down quarter over quarter and flat year on year. "She doesn't have a lot of time to turn that around," Gillis said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nine of the 12 new reported cases are at clinics in Michigan, one of the hardest hit states as CDC tries to track injections The number of patients known to have contracted a deadly form of meningitis linked to contaminated steroid shots prepared by a Massachusetts pharmacy edged closer to the 300 mark Monday. Health officials said some 294 cases had now been recorded across 16 states, up 12 on the previous day's figures. To date some 23 deaths have been attributed to the rare fungal meningitis, thought caused by the contamination of vials at the New England Compounding Center. The firm is believed to have sent out more than 14,000 individual doses of the suspect steroid injection to clinics across the US. All of the recorded cases of fungal meningitis have resulted from patients being administered steroid shots to the spine to help with back pain. A further three peripheral joint infections – relating to injections to areas such as the knee, hip and shoulder – have also been recorded as part of the current outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its daily update Monday. Nine of the new meningitis cases relate to patients at clinics in Michigan, one of the hardest hit states. Michigan has now recorded 62 infections, five of which have resulted in death. Tennessee is still the worst affected, with 69 identified cases and nine fatalities. Health regulators have formally matched the fungal meningitis to a contaminate found at the premises of the NECC in the Boston suburb of Framingham. Last week, federal agents from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raided the pharmacy compounder as part of a widening investigation. One of the areas being probed is whether the company violated regulations by supplying bulk orders to clinics without matching the drugs to specific prescriptions or patients. The pharmacy compounder has a checkered history of violating health and safety standards, having been cited on numerous occasions by the FDA prior to the latest outbreak. As well as the prospect of potential criminal action, the company is already the subject of numerous civil lawsuits by those affected by the meningitis outbreak. After being identified as the likely source of the infection, the NECC recalled all of its products amid fears that other drugs were contaminated. A sister company of the pharmacy, drug manufacturer Ameridose, has likewise suspended operations, and will remain shut until November 5 at the earliest for inspections. The move has led to warnings that hospitals may experience a shortage of some medications. Over the weekend, the FDA posted a statement on its website stating that the "current production shutdown of Americdose may impact supplies of certain drugs for some health care systems".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Economists find popular students tend to have better social skills later on in the workplace, which pays off with higher earnings Bad news, nerds. Those years of high school spent shuttered in a darkened room programming computers or playing Dungeons & Dragons might not pay off with a paycheck. A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research released Monday says there is a positive correlation between a person's popularity in high school and how much money they will make. The researchers estimate that moving from the 20th percentile of high school popularity to the 80th percentile yields a 10% wage premium 40 years after graduation. They determined students' popularity by asking more than 4,300 males from Wisconsin high schools to name their three best friends from their senior class in high school. By the study's criteria, the students who received the most votes are the most popular. Only men were surveyed because the sampling group attended high school in 1957, and women who graduated from high school at that time had fewer job opportunities. Even incremental increases in popularity had monetary benefits for the average high schooler. A unit increase in expected number of friendships translates into 2% higher wages 35 years later. That increase is equivalent to 40% the wage premium that comes from an additional year in education. So, skipping SAT prep for a party might actually be worth it. To determine the labor market returns for popularity, the researchers also investigated what makes people popular in high school. To the chagrin of teens everywhere, the criteria they determined for acquiring popularity are more abstract than wearing the right clothes and being attractive (though those always help). People who come from warm family environments, have similar characteristics to their classmates and whose qualities are relatively better than their classmates' tend to have more friendships. A person with a higher degree of those things and more social skills is more likely to get a friendship nomination. Which, again, correlates to more money. The idea is the more friends one acquires, the more skills for building positive social relationships they must have. People who can build positive social relationships are also better suited to adjust to social situations. Having those skills also makes it easier for people to migrate from the social circles of the high school world to the social circles of the working world. The respondents entered the professional world before the widespread dissemination of the internet, which means the value of Facebook friending or LinkedIn requesting the person someone sat next to in math once are unaccounted for.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Dublin banks rescue a special case, Merkel and Hollande agree, as EU says aggregate deficit falls to 4.1% from 6.2% The eurozone appeared last night to be in a stronger position to survive the debt crisis after EU figures revealed member governments cut their annual budget deficits last year. The EU statistics office, Eurostat, said the aggregate budget deficit in the 17 countries using the currency fell to 4.1% of GDP in 2011 from 6.2% in 2010 – the first year of the sovereign debt crisis. Ireland cut its annual deficit from 31% of GDP to 13.4%, while Germany brought the deficit on its annual budget down to 0.8%, Eurostat said. The figures were published before a flurry of meetings that culminated in the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, gaining a commitment from François Hollande of France and Angela Merkel of Germany that cheaper funds would be made available to prevent Dublin's bank rescue from bankrupting the country. Hollande said after talks with Kenny that he supported calls to treat the Irish banking sector as "a special case" after the Dublin government was almost brought to its knees by the crippling cost of bailing out the Irish Republic's main banks. Merkel previously blocked direct recapitalisation of banks with eurozone rescue funds until a banking supervisor is fully operational late next year but issued a joint statement with Kenny on Sunday affirming that Ireland's bank rescue was a "special case". "I said Ireland was a special case and should be treated as such," Hollande told reporters after his meeting with Kenny. Asked if recapitalisation could be backdated, he said: "Yes, recapitalisation already took place through their own funds so the Eurogroup will take that into account." The Eurogroup represents the 17 nations in the single currency zone and has sought to impose strict austerity measures on members with escalating debt. Eurostat said although annual budget deficits had fallen, eurozone public debt rose to 87.3% of GDP in 2011 from 85.4%. Ireland's public debt jumped to 106.4% from 92.2% in 2010 as the benefits of spending cuts were undermined by a fall in tax receipts and a prolonged recession. Greece, where the crisis started, had the highest debt ratio in Europe last year, reaching 170.6% of GDP, or €355bn (£289bn). It reduced its annual deficit to 9.4% from 10.7% in 2010 and 15.6% in 2009. The Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, said his government would receive €31.5bn in loans next month if the Athens parliament pushed through €13.5bn in spending cuts and tax increases, though it remained unclear that MPs would do so. The finance minister, Yiannis Stournaras, warned MPs that "people would go hungry" should Greece failed to take receipt of its next rescue loans. "The cost for the country will be boundless if we don't get the €31.5bn instalment," he said. Stournaras asked if MPs thought the Europeans were bluffing over their demands for new cuts. "Time is running out," he said. "If we want to get the instalment before state funds at our disposal are exhausted we must move very quickly."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | RAF makes urgent purchase of five more Reaper drones, which will be the first to be controlled from a UK base The UK is to double the number of armed RAF "drone" flying combat and surveillance operations in Afghanistan, and for the first time the aircraft will be controlled from terminals and screens in Britain. In the new squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), five new Reaper drones will be sent to Afghanistan, the Guardian can reveal. It is expected they will begin operations within six weeks. Pilots based at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire will fly the recently bought American-made UAVs at a new hi-tech hub built on the site in the past 18 months. The UK already has five Reaper drones targeting suspected insurgents in Helmand, but they have been operated from Creech Air Force base in the US state of Nevada, because Britain has not had the capability to fly them from here. By "standing up" the new XIII squadron in a ceremony this Friday, the UK will soon have 10 Reapers in Afghanistan. The government has yet to decide whether they will remain there after the end of 2014, when all Nato combat operations are due to end. "The new squadron will have three control terminals at RAF Waddington, and the five aircraft will be based in Afghanistan," a spokesman confirmed. "We will continue to operate the other Reapers from Creech, though in time, we will wind down operations there and bring people back to the UK." The use of drones has become one of the most controversial features of military strategy in Afghanistan, and the UK has been flying them virtually nonstop since 2008. Last month the CIA's programme of "targeted" drone killings in Pakistan's tribal heartlands was condemned by a report by US academics. The attacks are politically counterproductive, kill large numbers of civilians and undermine respect for international law, according to the study by Stanford and New York universities' law schools. The most recent figures from the Ministry of Defence show that by the end of September 2012, the UK's five Reapers in Afghanistan have flown 39,628 hours and fired 334 laser-guided Hellfire missiles and bombs at suspected insurgents. While British troops on the ground have started to take more of a back-seat role, the use of UAVs has increased markedly over the past two years, despite fears from human rights campaigners that civilians might have been killed or injured in some of the attacks. The RAF bought the drones as an Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) specifically for Afghanistan, and the MoD confirmed it was unclear what would happen to them after 2014. Under rules imposed by the EU and the Civil Aviation Authority, UAVs can only be flown in certain places in the UK, including around the Aberporth airfield in mid-Wales. If the air-exclusion zone restrictions are not lifted by the end of 2014, then the UK may have to relocate the aircraft to the US, or perhaps even to Kenya, sources said. "No decisions have been made about the longer-term future of Reaper as a core capability, nor have any decisions been made on the basing of Reaper aircraft once the UOR is complete," said a spokesman. "The UK has a need for a persistent intelligence gathering capability. Our investment and experiences with Reaper will be considered in developing the programme ... at this stage, the MoD is still developing this strategy." The MoD said the relocation of RAF personnel from 39 Squadron at Creech Air Force base would begin in the new year, and that RAF Waddington would eventually become home to two squadrons of drones. "The intention is to phase the relocation of 39 Squadron to ensure there is no disruption to Reaper support to current operations," the spokesman added. In the first three-and-a-half years of using the Reapers in Afghanistan, the aircraft flew 23,400 hours and fired 176 missiles. But those figures have almost doubled in the past 15 months as Nato seeks to weaken the Taliban ahead of withdrawal. The MoD insists only four Afghan civilians have been killed in its drone strikes since 2008 and says it does everything it can to minimise civilian casualties, including aborting missions at the last moment. However, it also says it has no idea how many insurgents have died, because of the "immense difficulty and risks" of verifying who has been hit. The MoD says it relies on Afghans making official complaints at military bases if their friends or relatives have been wrongly killed – a system campaigners say is flawed and unreliable. Heather Barr, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch, has said: "There are many disincentives for people to make reports. "Some of these areas are incredibly isolated, and people may have to walk for days to find someone to report a complaint. For some, there will be a certain sense of futility in doing so anyway. There is no uniform system for making a complaint and no uniform system for giving compensation. This may not encourage them to walk several days to speak to someone who may not do anything about it." In December 2010, David Cameron claimed 124 insurgents had been killed in UK drone strikes. But defence officials said they had no idea where the prime minister had got the figure from, and that it had not been provided by the MoD. On Tuesday there will be a high court hearing which may shed light on any support the UK is giving to the CIA's campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan. The case has been brought by Noor Khan, whose father was killed in an attack on a local council meeting in 2011. He is asking the foreign secretary, William Hague, to clarify the government's position on sharing intelligence for use in CIA strikes, and challenging the lawfulness of such activities. His lawyer, Rosa Curling, said: "This case is about the legality of the UK government providing 'locational intelligence' to the US for use in drone strikes in Pakistan. An off-the-record GCHQ source stated to a number of media outlets that GCHQ assistance was being provided to the US for use in drone attacks and this assistance was 'in accordance with the law.' "We have advised our client that this is incorrect. The secretary of state has misunderstood the law on this extremely important issue and a declaration from the court confirming the correct legal position is required as a matter of priority."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Dozens more have been wounded in accidents since September, raising pressure to reform hunting laws Italian hunters have killed 13 people and wounded 33 in shooting accidents since the season began in September, raising pressure to reform antiquated hunting laws. The death toll rose at the weekend when a 16-year-old was killed by a friend while hunting, a pensioner was shot and wounded in his garden and a cyclist was taken to hospital after being shot. Hunting groups and environmentalists agree that the law – which allows hunters to roam on private land and fire guns just 150 metres from a house – should be changed, but not how. Hunters claim they help control species such as wild boar that can damage crops. However, Animalisti Italiani Onlus, an animal rights group, said the accidents proved that laws to protect rare wildlife were ineffective: "Wolves, bears, hawks and other protected species are found killed by firearms. They shoot because something moves."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Violence subsides in Beirut, but opposition steps up campaign to oust prime minister after assassination of security chief Lebanon's opposition bloc has urged rioting supporters to return to their homes as it steps up its campaign to oust the country's prime minister in the wake of the assassination last Friday of the security chief Major General Wissam al-Hassan. Clashes in the capital and in the northern city of Tripoli, a hub of the opposition, subsided on Monday, with streets largely calm for the first time since Hassan was killed by a car bomb. The leader of the opposition bloc, Saad Hariri, and other key figures in the March 14 alliance have, however, stepped up a campaign to force the prime minister, Najib Miqati, to step down, claiming his troubled 18 months in the job have given political cover to the Syrian regime, which it has accused of orchestrating Hassan's death. March 14 officials continued their attacks on the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, claiming the killing of the Internal Security Forces general was part of a deliberate campaign to export the Syrian civil war to other areas of the region, including Lebanon and Jordan. Assad has yet to comment on the assassination, the highest profile attack on an anti-Syrian figure since the killing of the country's former leader, Rafiq Hariri, in 2005, also with a large car bomb. Syria's information minister described the bombing in the east Beirut suburb of Sassine as "a cowardly act". One former Lebanese minister said a bombing of a senior March 14 target had been anticipated and had been a key reason for Saad Hariri remaining in exile between Saudi Arabia and Paris. "Assad said 12 months ago that if Damascus burns, then so will the rest of the region," he said. "He was always going to do this. And now he has. "And what we are seeing elsewhere in the region is no coincidence." As the Syrian civil war grinds inexorably towards its 20th month, Jordan is steadily joining Lebanon and Turkey as neighbours with increasing border problems related to Syria. Jordanian intelligence officials said on Monday that they were actively exploring whether an alleged terrorist plot involving Syrian nationals and targeting shopping malls, embassies and other key sites could have links to Syrian regime officials. "This is one line of inquiry and it is a strong one," a Jordanian official said, the day after 11 suspects were arrested in a sweep. "They came from Syria, the materials came from Syria. We have been monitoring these people since the outset." Turkey, meanwhile, has fired shells into Syrian territory around 70 times since five of its citizens were killed by a shell fired from inside Syria almost two weeks ago. Local media reports say the shelling has been in response to each separate incident, meaning the volume of incoming fire appears to be deliberate. Asked about recent border clashes between Turkish and Syrian forces, Sezgin Tanrikulu, deputy leader of Turkey's main opposition party, the Republican People's party (CHP), said the situation was perilous. "We are on the threshold of war. Anything can happen. You just can't tell. Most people, the mainstream, oppose it [war with Syria]. Turkey should pressure the Syrian opposition, rein them in, and push for a ceasefire." Fuat Keyman, director of the Istanbul Policy Centre and professor of international relations at Sabancı University, said the risk of a regional conflagration was growing. "As it stands, the Syrian crisis is very dangerous, not just for Turkey but also because it could spread to Lebanon and Jordan. You could 'lose' the Arab spring amid a nasty regional conflict." Serhat Guvenc, professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, said Turkey's leaders had underestimated Assad's staying power and had failed to rally Nato support for setting up border buffer zones. As a result they were moderating their anti-regime statements. "Now they are trying to lower Turkey's profile. The substance of their overall policy has not changed but their rhetoric has changed," he said. There is little mood for rhetorical compromise in Lebanon though, whose leaders, including Miqati and the president, Michel Sulieman, have tried in vain to insulate the country from the gathering crisis in Syria by disengaging from their troubled neighbour. The country's government bloc, known as March 8, comprising the Shia political blocs, led by the powerful militia Hezbollah and half of the Christian community, has remained staunchly supportive of Syria throughout the insurrection. March 14, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims, has been implacably opposed. Miqati, who was chosen to lead the country after Saad Hariri's government was ousted in January last year, has had the difficult task of trying to steer a government through such a fraught landscape. He has regularly been accused by the vanquished bloc of refusing to oppose Syrian interests. However, March 14 has not until now publicly called for his removal. The leader of Lebanon's Druze sect, Walid Jumblatt, whose backing of the March 8 government has so far secured its tenure, said he was opposed to ousting Miqati. Writing in al-Anbaa magazine, he said: "Insisting on the government's resignation will lead Lebanon to a vacuum and the country into the Syrian regime's trap."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Manslaughter convictions handed down after people of L'Aquila received reassurances prior to earthquake that killed 300 An Italian judge sent shockwaves through the scientific world on Monday when he sentenced seven of the country's leading experts on natural disasters to six years each for giving false assurances before the earthquake that hit the city of L'Aquila in 2009. More than 300 people died after a 6.3-magnitude tremor hit the central Abruzzo region. The earthquake wrecked L'Aquila's historic centre, injured more than 1,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless. The seven defendants, who belonged to the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, were accused of offering an unjustifiably optimistic assessment to the local population a week before the disaster. By then, the area had been hit by some 400 tremors over a period of four months and a local researcher had warned of the risk of a major earthquake, largely on the basis of abnormal radon emissions. But after an extraordinary meeting of the commission in L'Aquila, one of the experts told a press conference that the situation was "normal" and even "favourable" because potentially destructive energy was being released through the tremors. The prosecution, which brought charges of multiple manslaughter, maintained that lives could have been saved had people not been persuaded by the assurances to remain in the area. The sentences handed out by judge Marco Billi were higher than those demanded by the prosecution, which had asked for the accused to be given four years each. The judge also imposed on all seven lifetime bans from holding public office and ordered the defendants to pay compensation of €7.8m. Marcello Petrelli, a lawyer for one of the experts, called the outcome of the trial "astounding and incomprehensible". In Italy, convictions are not considered definitive until after an appeal, so it is unlikely that any of the defendants will go to jail immediately. But the sentences are expected to cause uproar among scientists worldwide. Several international bodies had warned that a guilty verdict could deter scientists from advising governments in future. Enzo Boschi, the former president of Italy's National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology, said he was "dejected and in despair". He said he had been convinced that he would be acquitted, "because I have never reassured anyone. I defy anyone to find in writing or speech, on television or elsewhere a reassurance by me concerning the Aquila earthquake." Luciano Maiani, the incumbent president of the Major Risks Commission, said the verdict marked "the death of the services provided to the state by professors and professionals. It is impossible to supply the state with advice in a professional and composed way under this crazy judicial and media pressure. This does not happen in any other country in the world." Giampaolo Giuliani, the researcher who became the "Cassandra" of the disaster after his warnings were ignored, said he had expected lighter sentences. "I do not derive any pleasure [from the outcome]", he said. "No conviction can repay us for what happened."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Manslaughter convictions handed down after people of L'Aquila received reassurances prior to earthquake that killed 300 An Italian judge sent shockwaves through the scientific world on Monday when he sentenced seven of the country's leading experts on natural disasters to six years each for giving false assurances before the earthquake that hit the city of L'Aquila in 2009. More than 300 people died after a 6.3-magnitude tremor hit the central Abruzzo region. The earthquake wrecked L'Aquila's historic centre, injured more than 1,000 people and left tens of thousands homeless. The seven defendants, who belonged to the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, were accused of offering an unjustifiably optimistic assessment to the local population a week before the disaster. By then, the area had been hit by some 400 tremors over a period of four months and a local researcher had warned of the risk of a major earthquake, largely on the basis of abnormal radon emissions. But after an extraordinary meeting of the commission in L'Aquila, one of the experts told a press conference that the situation was "normal" and even "favourable" because potentially destructive energy was being released through the tremors. The prosecution, which brought charges of multiple manslaughter, maintained that lives could have been saved had people not been persuaded by the assurances to remain in the area. The sentences handed out by judge Marco Billi were higher than those demanded by the prosecution, which had asked for the accused to be given four years each. The judge also imposed lifetime bans from holding public office and ordered the defendants to pay compensation of €7.8m (£6.4m). Marcello Petrelli, a lawyer for one of the experts, called the outcome of the trial "astounding and incomprehensible". In Italy, convictions are not considered definitive until after an appeal, so it is unlikely that any of the defendants will go to jail immediately. But the sentences are expected to cause uproar among scientists worldwide. Several international bodies had warned that a guilty verdict could deter scientists from advising governments in future. Enzo Boschi, the former president of Italy's National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology, said he was "dejected and in despair". He said he had been convinced that he would be acquitted, "because I have never reassured anyone. I defy anyone to find in writing or speech, on television or elsewhere a reassurance by me concerning the Aquila earthquake." Luciano Maiani, the incumbent president of the Major Risks Commission, said the verdict marked "the death of the services provided to the state by professors and professionals. It is impossible to supply the state with advice in a professional and composed way under this crazy judicial and media pressure. This does not happen in any other country in the world." Giampaolo Giuliani, the researcher who became the "Cassandra" of the disaster after his warnings were ignored, said he had expected lighter sentences. "I do not derive any pleasure [from the outcome]", Giuliani said. "No conviction can repay us for what happened."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Woman was granted a four-year restraining order against suspect Radcliffe Haughton last week after reports of threats A woman whose husband is suspected in a fatal spa shooting said he threatened to throw acid in her face and jealously terrorised her "every waking moment", according to court documents. Officials on Monday said the woman was among those killed. Authorities say Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, 45, killed three women, wounded four others, and then turned the gun on himself Sunday at the Wisconsin spa where his wife worked. His wife, Zina Haughton, 42, was killed, the Waukesha County medical examiner's office said. In a written request for a restraining order filed on 8 October, Zina Haughton said her husband was convinced she was cheating on him and that he also vowed to burn her and her family with gas. He said he would kill her if she ever left him or called the police, according to the court papers obtained Monday by the Associated Press. "His threats terrorise my every waking moment," she wrote. Haughton was arrested earlier this month for slashing his wife's tires. She was granted a four-year restraining order on Thursday. Under the order, Haughton was prohibited from owning a firearm. Police responded last year to reports of domestic violence at the Haughton home. Radcliffe Haughton was charged with disorderly conduct, but the charge was later dismissed because a witness failed to appear in court. Brookfield police chief Dan Tushaus said he wasn't aware of a motive in Sunday's shooting. "I can tell you we're not seeking additional suspects," he said at a news conference Sunday evening. "The community can feel safe." A .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun was used in the attack, said agent Tom Ahern of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
While officers initially thought the gunman had fled the building, they later found his body in a locked room. Tushaus said investigators were still working to identify the victims. Haughton's father, Radcliffe Haughton Sr, spoke to the AP shortly before police announced that they had found his son's body. He said he had last spoken to his son a few days ago but didn't know anything was wrong. He begged his son to turn himself in. After learning of his son's death, he said only: "This is very sad." It was the second mass shooting in Wisconsin this year. Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran and white supremacist, killed six people and injured three others before fatally shooting himself in August at a Sikh temple.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Iranian president tells head of judicial system it is his constitutional right to inspect prison where media adviser is held Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has lambasted the country's judiciary for not allowing him to visit Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where his media adviser is currently held behind bars. Ahmadinejad on Monday wrote an unprecedented letter to Sadeq Larijani, the head of the judicial system, protesting that his constitutional right and duty required him to inspect the prison although officials have signalled he would not be welcome. The letter, published on the president's government website, disclosed that Larijani had previously dispatched a "top secret" communique, warning that the request to visit Evin was not in the best interests of the country. Evin, situated in the north of the Iranian capital, is home to the country's many political prisoners as well as some of its most respected human rights activists and journalists, including the prominent lawyer Nasrin Sotodueh. At the time of the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iranian revolutionaries who seized Evin vowed to convert it into a museum to show the injustice under the late Shah, unaware that it was soon to be re-opened and used as a notorious prison where thousands of leftwingers were massacred in the 1980s. "You have twice insisted that inspecting Evin prison is not in the best interests of the country and you have said that you disapprove of it," he wrote. "But the constitution does not require any permission or approval from the judiciary for the president in administering his legal duties." Ahmadinejad's opponents in the parliament and the judiciary have speculated that the president intended to visit Evin in order to highlight the case of his close ally and top aide Ali Akbar Javanfekr, who is serving a six-month prison term there. Javanfekr was put on trial last year as the publisher of "materials contrary to Islamic norms", a reference to a series of articles about the chador, the full-length cloak worn by Iranian women. He was arrested in late September while Ahmadinejad was addressing the UN general assembly in New York, a sign that the president's influence over Iranian politics is dwindling. In his letter, Ahmadinejad insinuated that his visit was not aimed at meeting Javanfekr but to make sure the law was being justly administered by prison officials. "How come that administering the constitution is not in the best interests of the country?" he asked. "If that kind of view prevails in the judiciary, can't we assume that some of the constitutional laws and basic human rights are being violated or neglected – or sacrificed for the best interests of individuals in the judiciary? "In a situation where the president, who is the representative of the people and administrator of the law, is being so easily accused by you, how can people of this country, who have no supporter except God, make sure they have judicial security?" In recent years, Evin has also been frequented by many people who are or were working for the regime, including the son and daughter of the former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who were arrested in September. In Evin, Javanfekr and a number of the president's allies are kept not far from many opposition protesters who were arrested in the aftermath of the country's 2009 disputed presidential election which saw Ahmadinejad taking the office for a second term amid unrest and allegations of fraud. It is the first time Ahmadinejad has used such a strongly worded statement against the country's judiciary, which is one of Iran's main political institutions along with the parliament and the presidency. Some activists said it was hypocritical of Ahmadinejad not to have requested such a visit in 2009, amid allegations that prisoners faced torture. However, Ali Motahari, an influential MP and an outspoken critic of the president, said that he should be allowed to inspect Evin, urging him to meet other prisoners, too. On Sunday, Iran's prosecutor general, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, embarrassed Ahmadinejad in public by saying that he could not go to Evin. "We must pay attention to major issues … Visiting a prison in these circumstances is a minor issue," he said, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. "If we have in mind the best interests of the nation, a [prison] visit in these circumstances is not appropriate." The row is seen as the latest setback for Ahmadinejad and his team in an extraordinary power struggle at the top of the Iranian regime between conservatives close to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and those supporting the president. In light of the setbacks, Ahmadinejad has lost a great deal of his influence, becoming increasingly marginalised, with analysts speculating that he is being used by his former allies as a scapegoat for the regime's problems.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Americans say Heriberto Lazcano, head of the Zetas cartel, was killed by marines – and that the narco-traffic trade is imploding DNA samples have confirmed that the man killed in a shootout with Mexican marines earlier this month and whose body was removed from a funeral home the following day was Heriberto Lazcano, the head of the Zetas drug cartel, a senior US diplomat said on Monday. Mexico said it intends to exhume the druglord's parents to verify the genetic match, but William Brownfield, the US state department's top drug policy official, said Washington was already sure that the dead man was Lazcano, and that his killing reflected the Zetas cartel's implosion and a possible turning point in the war on drugs in Mexico. "We know they got this guy because they were able to pull enough DNA off the body before the body was retrieved from the funeral home where it was obviously not carefully secured," ambassador Brownfield, the US assistant secretary of state for the bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told the Guardian during a visit to London. "So there is near 100% certainty that he is gone." "The Zetas are on the run," Brownfield said. "They are being pounded by the Mexican government which has devoted a lot of attention to the Zetas because, among organisations that are incredibly vicious and bloody the Zetas are probably the worst of them. "Second, the Zetas are being devoured by the two other principal cartels, the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel who, in a marriage from hell, have got together to decimate the Zetas." Brownfield said that as a consequence of this two-sided assault, the most formidable narcotics organisation in Mexico, is now in its death throes. "I lived through this with the Medellin and the Cali cartels and I think I know what the death throttle of a dying drug cartel sounds like, and it sounds like indiscriminate killing and ... a decapitation of your command and control so 19 year-old kids with virtually no education whatsoever are making decisions. It sounds like parts of the organisation turning on other parts of the organisation," the US diplomat said. Brownfield, a long-serving ambassador in Latin America, predicted that a rival cartel would now wrest the Zetas' dominant position in the drugs trade, and that US and Mexican policy would then be to target the usurper, and so on, until the trafficking gangs were forced elsewhere. "You take them down one by one. You don't try to take on all organised crime at the same time and you whittle them down until the target has been neutralised and to a large extent killed off by fellow criminals. And then you pick your next target and you do that two or three times and then eventually the law of market economics come into play and the criminal organisation says [this is getting] really expensive … and they say let's go do business somewhere else," Brownfield said. "That is when Mexico will become a much more peaceful and livable country. My own view is we are already crossed the point of return. It will probably be two years before we know for sure, but my own view is that we hit that turning point during the course of this year in Mexico." He said that cocaine consumption in the US had dropped 40% over the six years and Colombian cocaine production has dropped by more than a half over roughly the same period. Adam Isacson, of the independent Washington Office on Latin America agreed that the drug wars were becoming less bloody but cautioned that the flow of drugs northwards has been largely unaffected, with marijuana and heroin taking the place of cocaine as American tastes change. "The violence statistics are beginning to go down and in a few years they may be substantially down, but I would be surprised if the flow of drugs through Mexico are very different from what they are now.. "What is happening is that you are seeing less violence often through the different configuration of the cartels who are choosing to go about their business in a different way. It is a grim grinding war of attrition, but it shows you can change the cartels' behaviour to be more pacific, more discreet, using bribery for example more than violence." Colombia still supplies the overwhelming bulk of cocaine bound for the US. Most is flown out through Honduras, from where it is sent on by river and road through Mexico, making the country's lawless northern jungle the new front in the drug war. Brownfield compared the battle to close the flow of drugs into the US to squeezing a balloon. "In 2000, we squeezed the balloon hard in Colombia. One impact thereof was to push trafficking organisations to move their operations to Mexico. "Four years ago, we began to squeeze that balloon hard in Mexico and the logical result is a transfer of their operational bases to Central America. Beginning this year we are beginning to squeeze pretty hard in the northern triangle of Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras." Brownfield said that pilot schemes in Guatemala and Honduras, in which community aid and police support are focused on "model precincts" had been proven to be effective. But US joint operations in Honduras have been suspended after the Honduran air force shot down two small planes, and US counter-narcotics agents got involved in firefights in which civilians were alleged to have been killed. "They jumped out of the gate a bit fast and now they have had to put it on hold," Isacson said. Brownfield said: "I agree it takes time. At the end of the day the one thing I would suggest is: we don't have to create paradise in Central America to drive the traffickers away. We only have to increase their costs of doing business by about 10% and at that stage the law of market economics takes over and they'll move their business away."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | DNA samples confirm that man killed in shootout earlier this month was Heriberto Lazcano, the head of the Zetas drug cartel DNA samples have confirmed that the man killed in a shootout with Mexican marines earlier this month and whose body was removed from a funeral home the following day was Heriberto Lazcano, the head of the Zetas drug cartel, a senior US diplomat said on Monday. Mexico said it intends to exhume the druglord's parents to verify the genetic match, but William Brownfield, the US state department's top drug policy official, said Washington was already sure that the dead man was Lazcano, and that his killing reflected the Zetas cartel's implosion and a possible turning point in the war on drugs in Mexico. "We know they got this guy because they were able to pull enough DNA off the body before the body was retrieved from the funeral home where it was obviously not carefully secured," ambassador Brownfield, the US assistant secretary of state for the bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told the Guardian during a visit to London. "So there is near 100% certainty that he is gone." "The Zetas are on the run," Brownfield said. "They are being pounded by the Mexican government which has devoted a lot of attention to the Zetas because, among organisations that are incredibly vicious and bloody the Zetas are probably the worst of them. "Second, the Zetas are being devoured by the two other principal cartels, the Gulf cartel and the Sinaloa cartel who, in a marriage from hell, have got together to decimate the Zetas." Brownfield said that as a consequence of this two-sided assault, the most formidable narcotics organisation in Mexico, is now in its death throes. "I lived through this with the Medellin and the Cali cartels and I think I know what the death throttle of a dying drug cartel sounds like, and it sounds like indiscriminate killing and ... a decapitation of your command and control so 19 year-old kids with virtually no education whatsoever are making decisions. It sounds like parts of the organisation turning on other parts of the organisation," the US diplomat said. Brownfield, a long-serving ambassador in Latin America, predicted that a rival cartel would now wrest the Zetas' dominant position in the drugs trade, and that US and Mexican policy would then be to target the usurper, and so on, until the trafficking gangs were forced elsewhere. "You take them down one by one. You don't try to take on all organised crime at the same time and you whittle them down until the target has been neutralised and to a large extent killed off by fellow criminals. And then you pick your next target and you do that two or three times and then eventually the law of market economics come into play and the criminal organisation says [this is getting] really expensive … and they say let's go do business somewhere else," Brownfield said. "That is when Mexico will become a much more peaceful and livable country. My own view is we are already crossed the point of return. It will probably be two years before we know for sure, but my own view is that we hit that turning point during the course of this year in Mexico." He said that cocaine consumption in the US had dropped 40% over the six years and Colombian cocaine production has dropped by more than a half over roughly the same period. Adam Isacson, of the independent Washington Office on Latin America agreed that the drug wars were becoming less bloody but cautioned that the flow of drugs northwards has been largely unaffected, with marijuana and heroin taking the place of cocaine as American tastes change. "The violence statistics are beginning to go down and in a few years they may be substantially down, but I would be surprised if the flow of drugs through Mexico are very different from what they are now.. "What is happening is that you are seeing less violence often through the different configuration of the cartels who are choosing to go about their business in a different way. It is a grim grinding war of attrition, but it shows you can change the cartels' behaviour to be more pacific, more discreet, using bribery for example more than violence." Colombia still supplies the overwhelming bulk of cocaine bound for the US. Most is flown out through Honduras, from where it is sent on by river and road through Mexico, making the country's lawless northern jungle the new front in the drug war. Brownfield compared the battle to close the flow of drugs into the US to squeezing a balloon. "In 2000, we squeezed the balloon hard in Colombia. One impact thereof was to push trafficking organisations to move their operations to Mexico. "Four years ago, we began to squeeze that balloon hard in Mexico and the logical result is a transfer of their operational bases to Central America. Beginning this year we are beginning to squeeze pretty hard in the northern triangle of Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras." Brownfield said that pilot schemes in Guatemala and Honduras, in which community aid and police support are focused on "model precincts" had been proven to be effective. But US joint operations in Honduras have been suspended after the Honduran air force shot down two small planes, and US counter-narcotics agents got involved in firefights in which civilians were alleged to have been killed. "They jumped out of the gate a bit fast and now they have had to put it on hold," Isacson said. Brownfield said: "I agree it takes time. At the end of the day the one thing I would suggest is: we don't have to create paradise in Central America to drive the traffickers away. We only have to increase their costs of doing business by about 10% and at that stage the law of market economics takes over and they'll move their business away."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | German chancellor and French president both tell Irish taoiseach that Ireland is a 'special case', offering fresh hope of deal on its banking debts
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live coverage as Romney and Obama prep for final debate meeting as latest polls put the candidates neck and neck
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | German chancellor tells Irish taoiseach that Ireland is a 'special case', offering fresh hope of deal on its banking debts
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow how the day unfolded as clashes in Beirut between Sunni and Shia gunmen appeared to confirm fears that the conflict in Syria is spreading to Lebanon in the wake of Friday's bomb attack in Beirut
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former Cuban leader describes reports of stroke as 'nonsense' after week of speculation Fidel Castro has proved he is not only alive but still kicking with a scathing attack on the "imperialist media" for spreading rumours that he was either dead or in a neuro-vegetative state. Accompanying a photograph of him reading last Friday's edition of the Cuban Communist party newspaper, the 86-year-old revolutionary issued a personal health bulletin in which he described reports that he had suffered a stroke as "nonsense" and claimed he did not even suffer from headaches. The article – sarcastically entitled "Fidel Castro is in his death throes" – followed a week of rumours about Castro's demise, following his apparent failure to publicly congratulate his ally and friend Hugo Chávez for winning the Venezuelan presidential election on 7 October. The former president of Cuba had not been seen in public since March, when he met Pope Benedict, and had not made a statement since June, when he published the last of what had been a regular column called Reflections. Since he handed power to his brother, Raúl, in 2006 citing health reasons, there have been repeated false alarms about Fidel Castro's health. But the speculation hit a new level of intensity last week thanks to social networks, the Cuban diaspora and a doctor who claimed to have inside information. José Marquina reportedly lives in Spain, practises in Florida and is neither a specialist in oncology nor neurology, but was widely quoted as saying Castro was in a neuro-vegetative state. "He has suffered an embolic stroke and recognises absolutely no one," he told reporters last week. Marquina – who says he has close connections inside the Venezuelan medical community – gained a huge online following earlier in the year for reports that Chávez's cancer had spread to his liver, which would make it difficult for him to campaign. His comments on both leaders have been carried by the Miami Herald and Spain's rightwing ABC newspaper among others. Last week, Castro's children and the Cuban government dismissed the rumours of a deadly or debilitating stroke as "absurd". On Thursday, the Cuban media published a congratulatory message from Castro to a medical school on its 50th anniversary. At the weekend, the former Venezuelan vice-president Elías Jaua said he had met Castro for five hours and showed photographs of the encounter in Havana. "He had the courtesy of bringing me to the hotel," Jaua told Associated Press, adding that Castro looked "very well". Staff at the Hotel Nacional said the former president's health was "great" and that he was "coherent and affectionate" to employees. This failed to quash the rumours, especially after Castro failed to vote in person during Sunday's municipal elections. The state-run Trabajadores newspaper reported that Castro had sent in an absentee ballot from his home – a right it said was extended to all citizens with "impediments". "I don't understand anything. If they said #FidelCastro was at Hotel Nacional, why didn't he go to the Electoral College, to vote?" asked a dissident blogger, Yoani Sanchez, in a tweet. Castro has now waded directly into the debate with a strident article that characteristically goes far beyond suggesting reports of his death have been somewhat exaggerated. "Although many people are taken in by the mass media, almost all of which are in the hands of the privileged and wealthy who publish this nonsense, fewer and fewer believe in them," he wrote, singling out the "Venezuelan doctor" and ABC for criticism. Castro said Cuba had been the victim of a misinformation campaign for more than half a century, referring to the recent 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Less characteristic was his self-effacing explanation for why he stopped writing a regular column. "I stopped writing Reflections because it is no longer my role to fill up newspaper pages that should be devoted to other national tasks," he said. He signed off with a final poke at those who reported his demise. "I don't even remember what it feels like to have a headache," he writes. "To prove how much they lie, see the photos accompanying this article." The images are credited to his son Alex. One shows him raising his arm in an orchard, wearing a red and blue check shirt, a broad-brimmed straw hat and supported by a metal walking stick. In another, he is reading Friday's edition of Granma. On Monday morning, residents of Havana said they had also seen TV images of Castro at home. "Last week, I thought he was dead. That's what everyone on the street was saying. But today on TV, he was very well," said Carmen Gonce, a retired journalist. "In Cuba, we are great fantasists. People say many things. Sometimes they are true. Sometimes they are not."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Armstrong to be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles
• UCI will not appeal Usada's 'reasoned decision' Although Lance Armstrong was finally and definitively cast out of his sport and stripped off his seven Tour de France titles on Monday, the cycling world will have to wait a while longer to discover whether or not new winners will be declared for the races held between 1999 and 2005. Pat McQuaid, the president of the UCI, the International Cycling Union, announced at a press conference in Geneva on Monday that the governing body has accepted the verdict of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), which concluded last week that Armstrong and his US Postal and Discovery Channel teams had colluded in what it called "the biggest doping conspiracy in the history of sport". The UCI will not be taking an appeal against Usada's 1,000-page "reasoned decision" to the court of arbitration for sport, with McQuaid making it clear that he would now like to erase the former seven-times champion from cycling's history. "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling," McQuaid declared. "He deserves to be forgotten." On Friday his management committee will meet to decide whether the runners-up in those seven Tours will be retrospectively handed a winner's yellow jersey, or whether the top step of the podium will be left blank in the record books, with an accompanying asterisk. The complication of elevating riders from second and third places is that so many of them – the likes of Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso – have subsequently been implicated in one or more of the various doping scandals that have brought the reputation of the sport to its lowest point at a time, paradoxically, when cycling as a sport and a recreation is enjoying a resurgence of popularity. The committee will also discuss whether or not Armstrong will be made to refund his Tour prize money. Traditionally the winner's cheque is divided between all nine riders of his team; since Usada's case against Armstrong implicates his colleagues, then a wholesale recovery of the money would seem to be justified. McQuaid also announced that the UCI will be supporting Usada's decision to hand reduced six-month suspensions to all the currently active riders who admitted doping as part of Armstrong's Tour campaigns, and on whose evidence the case depended. McQuaid denounced as "absolutely untrue" the claims made by Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton, two of Armstrong's former team-mates, that their team leader had given more than $100,000 to the UCI in order to persuade them to cover up an alleged positive test for EPO at the 2001 Tour de Suisse. The money was said to have been used to buy a blood analysis machine to increase the effectiveness of the UCI's dope testing programme. While admitting that Armstrong had indeed made two donations, one of $25,000 in 2002 and another of $100,000 promised in 2005 and paid in 2007, McQuaid said that any suggestion of a cover-up was "absolutely untrue". In similar circumstances, he said, he would accept further donations from riders. Friday's committee meeting will also consider the possibility of setting up some sort of truth and reconciliation process on the lines of that utilised by the South African government in the wake of apartheid, including the notion of an amnesty. "The trouble is that amnesty means different things in different languages," Philippe Verbiest, the UCI's legal advisor, said on Monday. "It's not something that you can figure out in one day." The idea of an amnesty does not, however, appear to extend to journalists. McQuaid confirmed that he and Hein Verbruggen, fromer UCI president, will be continuing their legal action for defamation against the Irish journalist and former rider Paul Kimmage, one of a handful of reporters who showed the persistence and courage to pursue the Armstrong story through years of veiled and explicit threats. "It's a straight defamation case," McQuaid said. "He called us corrupt." Kimmage's supporters have raised a significant sum of money to help with his defence.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | UCI announce decision to strip Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles, but Pat McQuaid refuses to resign Preamble: Morning all. Whatever the UCI say in Geneva today this is a huge day for cycling. The governing body is to announce its response to the United States Anti-doping Agency's scathing report on Lance Armstrong and the US Postal team that "ran most sophisticated doping scheme in sport". You wouldn't put it past the UCI to buck the trend and leap to Armstrong's defence but by far the most likely outcome, surely, will be the removal of the American's seven Tour de France titles between 1999 and 2005, even if they opt not to endorse the conclusions of the Usada report wholesale. Who will get them in his stead? This piece from Blazin Saddles illustrates the problem with that. Jan Ullrich, for example, came second three times behind Armstrong - in 2000, 2001 and 2003 - but has since seen all his results since 2005 wiped off due to doping. Might it not be a better option for the UCI, if they do indeed banish Armstrong's record from the books, to simply leave the winner's spot blank for those seven Tours as the strongest possible anti-doping statement. The UCI itself also has some very awkward questions to answer. The UCI president, Pat McQuaid, has already successfully sued Floyd Landis after Armstrong's former team-mate accused the governing body of a cover-up. Usada repeated those allegations in their report, with both Landis and Tyler Hamilton alleging that the UCI were aware of a positive EPO test for Armstrong at the 2001 Tour of Switzerland, a suggestion that the governing body have vehemently denied in the past and, presumably, will deny again today. For a more thorough and in-depth rundown of the issues today, I'd advise a look at the always brilliant INRNG blog. 11.38am: The best piece of writing on Armstrong over the weekend came, in my book at least, from Paul Kimmage. Big reveal of Cancer Jesus is well worth checking out. 11.46am: And it's mentioned in the standfirst above, but worth mentioning again – all our Lance Armstrong-related content can be found by one easy click here. It goes right the way back to Armstrong's early doping denials. Some of the pieces back then can remind you why there's a real sadness behind this story to go along with the catharsis. 11.53am: The French newspaper Le Parisien are claiming that the UCI will accept Usada's sanctions and strip Armstrong of his seven Tour titles, which could be, as they claim, an exclusive, or just a fairly safe stab. 11.59am: Right, here we go then. The press conference is due to begin at midday. 12.01pm: Introductions out of the way, president Pat McQuaid to start … 12.03pm: McQuaid: This is not the first time that cycling have reached a crossroads … it will find a new path foreward. 12.03pm: UCI confirm they will strip Armstrong of his seven titles. 12.04pm: McQuaid: "Armstrong has no place in cycling." 12.05pm: "Something like this must never happen again," says McQuaid. 12.06pm: Question on wider implications of report. McQuaid: "The UCI has concentrated on the Usada report in relation to Lance Armstrong and the other riders. We haven't got into the other elements in the report." 12.07pm: Is McQuaid's position tenable? "Why took over as president I made the fight against doping my priority. It remains my priority … there's still more work to be done. I have no intention of resigning." 12.09pm: So far it's as predicted. Armstrong scrubbed from history. UCI and McQuaid sticking to their guns (or ignoring the things they, for some reason, haven't got round to looking at yet). 12.11pm: McQuaid now saying that the UCI didn't have the right tools at the time. "When EPO came in the whole situation changed." 12.12pm: McQuaid: "I'm sorry that we couldn't catch every damn one of them and throw them out of the sport at the time." 12.13pm: McQuaid also making clear he wasn't UCI president at the time of Armstrong's Tour wins. He took the position in 2006. If that the Nomfup defence? 12.15pm: Will UCI support efforts to get prize money back from Tour de France wins? "This is one of the things that we'll be discussing at a special committee on Friday. We'll need a change of rules." 12.16pm: Which part of the report most surprised McQuaid? "I have to admit I was sickened by what I read in the Usada report. The story of how Zabriskie was coerced, and in some ways forced, into doping is mind-boggling." 12.18pm: How will Armstrong be remembered? "Armstrong deserves to be forgotten in cycling now." To an extent I agree, but surely you keep him in mind as an example and a cautionary lesson for the future. 12.20pm: How can cycling go forward when some of the men involved with the running of teams are former dopers? "It is possible that people who have made mistakes in the past can help the sport in the future." 12.22pm: McQuaid says placings for the seven Lance Tours will be discussed in the Friday meeting. Maybe they should've had that meeting before today? It's quite an important one. 12.25pm: Philippe Verbiest, the UCI lawyer, in answer to a question about Landis's statements in the report and the UCI's decision to sue him previously. "The only problem UCI had with Floyd Landis was him saying the positive test had been covered up. There was no positive test," says Verbiest. 12.27pm: UCI press pack says that Armstrong was tested 218 times, notes @NHoultCricket on Twitter. Armstrong always claimed he was the most tested athlete in the world with over 500 tests. 12.30pm: How can you find a new path forward? "Sport advances and the fight against doping advances," says McQuaid. "The tools we have now are much more advanced than they were in the early 2000s." 12.32pm: First mention of Rabobank withdrawal from the sport. "The sponsors that we have understand the work the UCI is doing and understand that attitudes in teams and their entourage have changed." McQuaid confident that Rabobank will be replaced. 12.34pm: Do you think the sport will ever be free of doping? "There's no doubt this is a crisis, it's the biggest crisis cycling has ever faced [Quotes a bit of pre-prepared JFK] I like to look at this crisis as an opportunity to recognise that our sport is in danger and that everyone needs to work together to go forward. Will it ever be free of doping? To be honest with you I'd say no." 12.38pm: How has technology improved since 2005? Mario Zorzoli, the UCI's chief medical adviser points to biological passports and tests for growth hormone. Labs are working on the detection of blood transfusions. 12.40pm: Suggestions that Armstrong bought off the UCI are "absolutely untrue" says McQuaid. 12.40pm: Will legal action continue against journalist Paul Kimmage? "The case against Kimmage is nothing to do with Usada and Armstrong," says McQuaid. "It's about a journalist who accused me and my predecessor of being corrupt. It's a straight defamation case." So, yes then. 12.44pm: McQuaid on other US Postal riders. "We look at an enormous, sophisticated cheating programme … I feel sorry for the guys they competed against." 12.46pm: McQuaid reels off long, long list of doping cases he's had to deal with since becoming president. "It's been a pretty horrific seven years I've had as president. But I'm confident the landscape in the peloton has changed." 12.48pm: "Rabobank has a minus 17 million Euros confidence in the UCI," reckons Bonnie Bolding. "The UCI can expect, after this press conference, other sponsors to follow suit and withdraw their brands and money. Then the UCI might stop wringing its hands and set up better mechanisms to stamp out this sort of cheating." 12.49pm: McQuaid again insists there was no cover up by UCI of a positive Armstrong test and that there was no positive test. 12.50pm: Says UCI will still accept financial contributions from riders in the future. "The UCI aren't like Fifa with billions in the bank." 12.51pm: That statement, by the way, was on the back of a question about whether the UCI were right to accept donation from Armstrong. 12.52pm: Think it's fair to say that the funding question was the first time McQuaid has looked really uncomfortable. 12.55pm: McQuaid says there's a meeting scheduled with all teams in early December to discuss the issue and the route forward. "The UCI is listening and prepared to listen." 12.56pm: And that's that. To emphasise the headline point once more: Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from cycling for life. 1pm: And a full recap: • UCI accepts Usada decision in full and won't go the court of arbitration for sport.
• Therefore Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from cycling for life.
• Who, if anyone, is to be awarded those titles is to be decided on Friday.
• UCI president Pat McQuaid says he won't be resigning over the issue.
• McQuaid denies UCI covered up a positive Armstrong test in 2001.
• Suggestions that Armstrong bought off the UCI are "absolutely untrue" says McQuaid.
• UCI will continue to take donations from cyclists, as they did from Armstrong, despite potential for conflict of interest issues.
• McQuaid will continue legal action against journalist Paul Kimmage. 1.04pm: Right, that's it from the press conference. I think it's fair to say that the reaction of the cycling community, on Twitter at least, has been almost entirely negative about McQuaid's performance. Stick around on site for all the news, reaction and comment on the fallout, but from me, cheerio!
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • 'Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling,' says UCI
• Cycling's world governing body accepts Usada findings Lance Armstrong "has no place in cycling" and has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after the sport's world governing body, the UCI accepted the findings of the United States Anti-Doping Agency's investigation. Armstrong refused to co-operate with Usada, who earlier this month published a 1,000-page report that concluded the Texan and his United States Postal Service team ran "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen". In accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code, the UCI had 21 days to respond, until 31 October, and the president Pat McQuaid announced on Monday that cycling's world governing body would accept Usada's findings and ratified the sanctions imposed on Armstrong. The former rider has been stripped of all results since 1 August, 1998 and banned for life. At a media conference in Geneva, McQuaid said: "The UCI will not appeal to the court of arbitration for sport and it will recognise the sanctions that Usada has imposed. "The UCI will ban Lance Armstrong from cycling and the UCI will strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling." McQuaid, whose organisation has long battled a major doping problem throughout the sport, added: "This is not the first time cycling has reached a crossroads and has had to start anew." He said he would not be resigning. Eleven former team-mates of Armstrong testified against him to Usada, receiving six-month bans. These suspensions were also ratified by the UCI, which thanked the riders for giving evidence. McQuaid said: "The UCI will also recognise the sanctions imposed on the riders who testified against Lance Armstrong; UCI indeed thanks them for telling their stories." The UCI, particularly the leadership of McQuaid and the honorary president Hein Verbruggen, who was president at the time of Armstrong's record run of Tour success, have met criticism over the Usada investigation. Allegations have been made against the UCI that McQuaid dismissed. "UCI has nothing to hide in responding to the Usada report. The UCI has called a special meeting of the management committee next Friday to discuss this report and the measures which the UCI wishes to put in place in order that we are never faced with such a situation in the future." McQuaid was steadfast in his belief that cycling has a positive future. "This is a landmark day for cycling. Cycling has endured a lot of pain as it has absorbed the impact of the Usada report. "UCI promised to prioritise our analysis of the report and to provide an early response and we've done that. My message to cycling, to our riders, to our sponsors and to our fans today is: cycling has a future. "This is not the first time that cycling has reached a crossroads or that it has had to begin anew and to engage in the painful process of confronting its past. "Stakeholders and fans can be assured that it will find a new path forward. We're here to answer your questions and to say to the cycling community: UCI is listening and is on your side. "We've come too far in the fight against doping to return to our past. Cycling has a future and something like this must never happen again."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | London-based rights group says man in his 50s has died after setting himself on fire in Gansu province A Tibetan man in his 50s is believed to have died after setting himself on fire in the latest protest against Chinese rule over the Himalayan region, a London-based rights group has said. Free Tibet said the man, identified as Dhondup, set fire to himself near the prayer hall at the remote Labrang monastery in China's north-western Gansu province. The monastery is one of the most important outside Tibet and the site of numerous protests by monks following deadly ethnic riots in Tibet in 2008 that were the most sustained Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in decades. Free Tibet said Monday's self-immolation was the first to take place there, and that there had been heavy restrictions in place in the area in recent months. Citing a witness, it said the monastery manager and other monks prevented police from taking Dhondup's body away. Calls to the government in Xiahe county, where the monastery is located, the Xiahe communist propaganda department and Xiahe public security bureau rang unanswered. Dozens of Tibetans have set themselves on fire since March 2011 in ethnic Tibetan areas of China in protest over what activists say is Beijing's heavy-handed rule in the region. Many have called for the return of their spiritual leader, the exiled Dalai Lama. The government has confirmed some, but not all, of the self-immolations. "Tibetan protests are escalating," the Free Tibet director, Stephanie Brigden, said in a statement. "Dhondup is the eighth Tibetan in the last month alone who has risked his life to protest Chinese rule; seven of the eight have died." She said China's government should recognise that Tibetan demands for freedom cannot be extinguished by force and that it "must enter into meaningful dialogue with Tibetan representatives, supported by the international community". Chinese authorities routinely deny Tibetan claims of repression and have accused supporters of the Dalai Lama of encouraging the self-immolations. The Dalai Lama and representatives of the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile in India say they oppose all violence.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Corporation says Peter Rippon blogpost is 'inaccurate or incomplete in some respects' and makes multiple corrections
Poll: Should Peter Rippon have resigned? The Newsnight editor, Peter Rippon, is to step aside, as the BBC was forced to admit that his programme was aware of allegations that Jimmy Savile had abused teenagers on the corporation's premises and had unearthed information not previously known to the police. The BBC said that Rippon's initial explanation as to why he killed off a Newsnight investigation into Savile in December of last year was "inaccurate or incomplete in some respects". The corporation has made three corrections to a blogpost written by Rippon, which was published on 2 October, when the Savile abuse allegations first became public. In one correction, the BBC said that Rippon was wrong to write "we found no evidence against the BBC". In fact, the Newsnight team had uncovered "some allegations of abusive conduct on BBC premises" – although there was "no allegation" that BBC staff were aware of Mr Savile's alleged activities. The BBC also determined that Rippon was incorrect when he wrote: "We are confident that all the women we spoke to had contacted the police independently already. We also had no new evidence against any other person that would have helped the police." Instead, the BBC statement continued, the truth was that "It appears that in some cases women had not spoken to the police and that the police were not aware of all the allegations." Newsnight's key evidence came from Karin Ward, who said she had been a victim of Savile and who had repeatedly told programme makers she had never gone to the police. The third correction demanded is more minor. The BBC notes that Rippon had said there was no evidence that anybody from Duncroft approved school, where Savile appears to have perpetrated abuse in the 1970s, "could or should" have known about the allegations. In fact, the correction continues "some allegations were made (mostly in general terms) that some of the Duncroft staff knew or may have known about the abuse." Lord Patten's BBC Trust also weighed in, saying it was "deeply concerning" that there had been "inaccuracies in the BBC's own description of what happened in relation to the Newsnight investigation". The trust said that it was right that BBC director general George Entwistle had corrected those inaccuracies – and had demanded and received confirmation that the impending Nick Pollard inquiry will also establish why Rippon's blog needed to be corrected. Rippon's suspension comes hours before a Panorama investigation into what happened at Newsnight in November and December of last year airs on BBC1. The one-hour programme focuses intensely on Rippon and his decision to halt his programme's investigation into Savile. Emails seen by Panorama will show that Rippon was initially keen on airing the Newsnight investigation, which had gathered information on abuse by the Jim'll Fix It star from women who had lived at Duncroft in the 1970s. But he suddenly changed his mind between 25 November and 30 November last year – demanding that reporters on the investigation prove that the Crown Prosecution Service chose not to charge Savile in 2007 because he was too old – a hurdle the Newsnight team thought was unachievable. Newsnight reporter Liz MacKean believed that Rippon was feeling under pressure from his bosses, writing in an email to a friend on 30 November that: "PR [Peter Rippon] says if the bosses aren't happy … [he] can't go to the wall on this one." But Rippon says that he had always dropped the film for "editorial reasons". Had the Newsnight film run, the BBC2 programme would have been the first to reveal that Savile was linked to sexual abuse. Instead, earlier this month, an ITV documentary was first to expose Savile – whose teenage victims, the Met police said earlier this week, may number in excess of 200. Rippon has offered no explanation as to why he stopped work on the programme and did not ask the investigating team to research further in an effort to see if the sexual abuse story could be verified. In October, five women spoke to ITV's Exposure programme. Rippon joined Newsnight in 2008 – and had previously worked at Radio 4 as the editor of PM and The World at One. But his reign at the programme so far has been underscored by long-term decline in viewing, with one programme being viewed by as few as 200,000 people. Damian Collins, a Conservative MP on the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said it would discuss on Tuesday whether to launch a broader investigation into Newsnight's Savile report. Entwistle is due to appear before the committee on Tuesday morning to face questions about the BBC's handling of the Savile sex abuse scandal. Collins told the Guardian: "I think that the committee will have to discuss it when we meet tomorrow. "Now we know the BBC had new witness statements, why did they sit on them at the time? Why didn't they hand them to the police? It's a big question for me for George Entwistle tomorrow and it's a big gap in the internal investigations that they have launched. "I want to hear what George Entwistle has to say about this tomorrow and the BBC has to conclude it's own investigation in December. It will be discussed when we meet privately before [Entwistle appears] tomorrow morning. It may be the best time [to launch a broader investigation] is in December because it's not far away. I'd like to see what is said by Entwistle first and see the Nick Pollard review in December." Sir Christopher Bland, the former BBC chairman, told the BBC News channel the allegations were "very serious" but warned against jumping to conclusions about Rippon stepping aside. "It is very early days and the atmosphere is so heady that it's foolish to jump to huge and overarching conclusion," Bland said. "Until those investigations take place and we can see what they reveal then I think everybody needs to be careful about jumping to conclusions. All these are serious charges and I wouldn't disagree with John [Simpson]'s view that is it serious, but the worst for 50 years? Let's see what the investigations come up with." • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova to serve sentences in Russia's 'harshest prisons' in Perm and Mordovia Two members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot have been sent to remote prison camps to serve their sentences, the group has said. Maria Alyokhina, 24, will serve the rest of her two-year term at a women's prison camp in Perm, a Siberian region notorious for hosting some of the Soviet Union's harshest camps. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, has been sent to Mordovia, a region that also hosts a high number of prisons. "These are the harshest camps of all the possible choices," the band said via its Twitter account on Monday. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for performing an anti-Putin "punk anthem" in a Moscow cathedral in February. They argued that their conviction was part of a growing crackdown on free speech and political activism in Russia. They are expected to serve the rest of their sentences, which end in March 2014, in the camps, where conditions are reportedly dire. A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released earlier this month after being given a suspended sentence. Pussy Riot's supporters have argued that her release was designed to give the appearance of mercy from the authorities. Confusion reigned on Monday as relatives and lawyers tried to assess exactly where the women were sent. Both Perm and Mordovia host several prison camps, some of which comprised the Soviet-era gulag system. Prison authorities declined to comment on the women's whereabouts. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova had petitioned to serve their sentences in Moscow, arguing that they wanted to be close to their children. Alyokhina has a five-year-old son named Filipp, while Tolokonnikova has a four-year-old daughter named Gera.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | German chancellor tells Irish taoiseach that Ireland is a 'special case', offering fresh hope of deal on its banking debts
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as overnight clashes in Beirut between Sunni and Shia gunmen appear to confirm fears that the conflict in Syria is spreading to Lebanon in the wake of Friday's bomb attack in Beirut
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In the West Bank's Jewish settlements, 'facts on the ground' entrench divisions between Israel and the Palestinians At the eastern tip of the Israeli settlement of Ariel, cranes and earth-movers are at work on the college campus, which stretches across a hill overlooking the villages and valleys of the West Bank. Eleven miles from the internationally recognised Green Line separating Israel from the Palestinian Territories, construction is under way of buildings to accommodate a projected growth from 13,000 to 20,000 students over the next 10 years. In September, the college passed a significant milestone when the Israeli cabinet voted to upgrade the college to a university as a matter of "national importance". Backing the move, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the cabinet that Ariel was "an inseparable part of Israel" and would remain so in the future. The decision, concerning a settlement which is illegal under international law and whose future is a key determinant of a viable Palestinian state and the peaceful resolution of a decades-old conflict, was not universally acclaimed. Urging Israel to reconsider, British foreign secretary William Hague said it would "deepen the presence of the settlements in the Palestinian territories and will create another obstacle to peace". Deeper inside the West Bank, a few miles east of Ariel, construction workers are also busy. Earlier this year, Israel approved plans for 600 homes in the settlement of Shiloh and its outpost, Shvut Rachel. "This community has doubled in size in 20 years, and there is no question that there will be further growth. The demand for homes is much greater than supply," said Shiloh's former mayor, David Rubin. Further south, Israel a year ago announced plans for a settlement across the Green Line close to Jerusalem. The 2,600 homes of Givat Hamatos, plus expansion of neighbouring Gilo and Har Homa, will increase the separation of Palestinian areas of the city from the West Bank, reducing the likelihood of East Jerusalem becoming the capital of a future Palestinian state. These three places illustrate a pattern of settlement growth that mocks Barack Obama's demand, issued early in his presidency, that Israel should halt expansion as an impediment to peace. Entrenchment of "facts on the ground" has led a growing number of people, on both sides of the conflict, to declare that creating a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state to resolve the conflict is now impossible. The "two-state solution", they say, is dead. In June 2009, less than six months into his presidency, Obama addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his keynote speech on the Middle East in Cairo. Restating US commitment to a two-state model, he said the Palestinians must abandon violence, and develop their capacity to govern. By most reckoning, the Ramallah leadership has ticked both boxes. On the Israeli side, Obama said the US did not accept the legitimacy of Jewish settlements. "It is time for these settlements to stop," he said bluntly. There followed protracted negotiations between the US and Israeli governments which resulted, in November 2009, in Netanyahu reluctantly acceding to a temporary construction freeze in West Bank settlements. East Jerusalem was exempt, with the completion of any buildings whose foundations were already laid. In anticipation of the moratorium, the number of construction starts rose significantly in the run-up to November. Critics denounced the freeze as a farce, but the settlers were incensed and relations between Netanyahu and Obama nosedived. Relations between the two allies were "in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart," Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the US, memorably said in mid-2010. The freeze ended in September 2010, despite US efforts to secure an extension. Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians swiftly broke down as settlement construction resumed, since when the "peace process" has been in a catatonic state. Obama was heavily criticised for his early focus on settlements. But, according to one observer, "the problem was not Obama's identification of the settlement issue as a critical obstacle to the resumption of talks and, beyond that, to the two-state model itself – it was his failure to stick with it in the face of Netanyahu's intransigence". In the past two years, US officials have issued routine condemnation of settlement expansion plans but real pressure from Washington has eased. In June, Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank had risen by 15,000 over the previous 12 months, to a record 350,000. Most of the growth was in small hardline settlements deep inside the West Bank. An additional 200,000 Jews live in settlements in East Jerusalem. In the New York Times, s ettlers' leader Dani Dayon pronounced the Jewish presence across the Green Line "an irreversible fact". Predicting the numbers in Jewish colonies in the West Bank would top 400,000 by 2014, he wrote: "Trying to stop settlement expansion is futile." The international community should relinquish its "vain attempts to attain the unattainable two-state solution". He said: "Our presence here has now passed a point of non-return. It's irrevocable, a fait accompli." The status quo, while not ideal, was "immeasurably better than any feasible alternative". In the face of the "facts on the ground", others are proposing alternative courses of action. Some on the Israeli right have called for annexation of the West Bank. The Palestinian population can either accept living under Israeli rule with limited rights or leave, they say. Critics say this would be akin to apartheid and make Israel a pariah state. Others have called for a more modest, but unilateral, annexation of the 9.4% of the West Bank which will lie between the Green Line and Israel's separation barrier when it is complete. Defence minister Ehud Barak recently proposed that settlers outside the three main blocs – Ma'ale Adumim, Gush Etzion and Ariel – should be evacuated or choose to live under Palestinian rule. The barrier would become what its critics have always charged – Israel's new border. "It would be best to reach agreement with the Palestinians but, barring that, practical steps must be taken to begin the separation," he said in a newspaper interview. Blue White Future, a relatively new organisation, also argues for "constructive unilateralism", by which it means Israel withdrawing to the security barrier, with voluntary evacuation and compensation for those in settlements beyond. "Once Israel announces it has no sovereignty claims east of the fence, most [settlers] will move westwards," said Orni Petruschka, co-chairman. Some have even suggested the "cantonisation" of the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority would be given autonomy in five cantons around the main West Bank cities of Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron, with Israeli sovereignty over the rest of the territory. There are also growing Palestinian voices declaring the end of the two-state model. "The two-state solution died long ago, with Israel's refusal to confront the settlement movement," said Palestinian analyst Diana Butto. "Unless this colonial project is addressed completely, there cannot be two states, only apartheid." The battle now, she said, was for universal rights within the one state that is in de facto existence. Among those still fighting for a two-state model are European diplomats in Jerusalem who have identified a handful of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements as "game changers". Significant growth in these places would signal crossing a red line, they say. "There's a year, or 18 months maximum, before it's over," said one. Molad, a young leftist Israeli thinktank, says it is fighting an "irreversibility thesis". According to director Avner Inbar, "talk of the end of the two-state solution is irresponsible. The two-state solution is not only the best framework, it's the only one that will work. None of the advocates of one state talk of the likely consequences. It would result in dramatic and possibly catastrophic violence." Barring the unexpected, the most likely course is continuation of the status quo – Netanyahu's preferred option and so, it seems, Republican candidate Mitt Romney's, judging by a recently leaked video. But as many analysts and diplomats point out, the "status quo" in practice means the entrenchment and growth of settlements. A reinvigorated second-term Obama presidency could change that. In an interview with ABC in July, the president was asked if there was anything he believed he had failed at, that "has you desperate to get that second term to atone for?" There were "a bunch of things that we didn't get done that I think were important," replied Obama. On foreign policy, he said, "I have not been able to move the peace process forwards in the Middle East in the way I wanted". Faith, as well as time, has been lost. "Obama has learned this is not an issue that will win him any votes. I am not someone who believes a second-term president will act any differently that he did in his first term," said Butto. According to Dayon, "Obama has learned the limitation of his powers to make change here. President Obama of 2012 will not be the same as President Obama of 2008 because he now realises he cannot deliver." Back in Ariel, students are hurrying between classes at the start of term. At the Moskowitz School of Communications, named after the US bingo magnate Irving Moskowitz, who has spent millions of dollars funding the settlement enterprise in the West Bank, 24-year-old Adi said she was thrilled at the institution's new university classification. "It will give graduates better status and better job prospects. Yes, of course, we are situated in the middle of a conflict, but a city like Ariel is very valuable to Israel. We cannot give it up." Down the road in Shiloh, David Rubin dismissed the idea of evacuating any settlements. "We're supposed to hand over our heartland? This is my country, where my roots are, where my history is, where my destiny is, where the Jewish people were born, exiled from and returned to. This community will never be destroyed. There will never be a deal with the Palestinians."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Iranian president's influence weakens further as judiciary blocks request to visit Evin jail, where press adviser is serving time Iran's judiciary has blocked a request by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Tehran's Evin prison, where a top presidential aide is being held, in a further sign of his waning influence. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, the president's press adviser and head of the state news agency IRNA, was sent to Evin in September to serve a six-month sentence for publishing an article deemed offensive to public decency. He was also convicted of insulting Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on his personal website, though it is unclear how or when this happened. Ahmadinejad's request to visit Evin, made public this month, was seen by Iranian media and commentators to be linked to Javanfekr's detention, although there has been no official confirmation this was the case. The judiciary turned down the request on Sunday, saying it was not in the best interests of the country as it faces an economic crisis, which parliamentary rivals are blaming as much on mismanagement by Ahmadinejad's administration as western sanctions. "We must pay attention to major issues," the prosecutor general, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, said on Sunday, according to the Mehr news agency. "Visiting a prison in these circumstances is a minor issue. If we have in mind the best interests of the nation, a [prison] visit in these circumstances is not appropriate." Ahmadinejad has seen his influence wane within Iran's factionalised political structure since a public spat with Khamenei in 2011. The feud between Iran's elected and unelected leaders erupted in public after Khamenei, who holds ultimate power, reinstated the intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, whom Ahmadinejad had sacked. Conservative rivals of Ahmadinejad in parliament say his administration has mishandled the currency crisis and other economic fallout from the sanctions levied against Iran's disputed nuclear programme. According to Iranian law, Ahmadinejad is not allowed to run for a third term in the June 2013 presidential elections.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Twitter and other social media sites have been abuzz with claims of Castro's demise Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro says he doesn't even suffer from headaches, in an article he published in state media on Monday, criticising those who spread rumours he was on his deathbed. The article is accompanied by photos taken by his son Alex that show the 86-year-old revolutionary leader standing outside wearing a checked shirt and straw hat, including one in which he is seen reading Friday's copy of the Communist party newspaper Granma. "I don't even remember what a headache feels like," Castro claims, adding that he was releasing the photos to show "how dishonest" the rumour-mongers have been. The article, published on the state-run Cubadebate website, is the latest evidence the former Cuban president is alive and seemingly well after more than a week of intense speculation he was seriously ill. Twitter and other social media sites have been abuzz with claims of Castro's demise. On Sunday, a visiting former Venezuelan vice-president released a photograph of a meeting he said he had the previous day with Castro, and a hotel manager also present for part of the meeting claimed Castro's health was "magnificent". In Monday's article, Castro says he had been dealing with disinformation about Cuba since the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He criticised western media he said were in the pocket of the rich, and singled out Spain's ABC newspaper for publishing comments by a Venezuelan doctor who claimed to have information that Castro had suffered a stroke and had only weeks to live. Castro has been out of the public eye since March, when he received the pope. He also stopped writing his regular opinion pieces, called Reflections, the last of which was published in June. Former Venezuelan vice-president Elias Jaua said he met Castro for five hours and showed AP photos of the encounter, quashing rumours of ill health. Jaua also confirmed Castro personally accompanied him to the Hotel Nacional after their encounter on Saturday, in which they talked about politics, history, culture and tourism. "He had the courtesy of bringing me to the hotel," Jaua said Sunday, adding that Castro looked "very well". In the article on Monday, Castro explains that he chose to stop the opinion pieces of his own accord, not because he was too sick to continue them. "I stopped publishing Reflections because it was really not my role to take up pages in our press which are needed for other work the country requires," he wrote. Castro stepped down in 2006 following illness, handing power to his brother, Raúl.
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