|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Seven crew members arrested on suspicion of operating vessels unsafely in territory's worst maritime accident in decades The company that owns the ferry involved in one of Hong Kong's deadliest accidents in decades has said it passed an inspection just last month, though officials have offered no explanation about how two boats collided on a clear night in one of the safest and most regulated waterways in Asia. Police have arrested seven crew members from both boats, including the captains, on suspicion of operating the vessels unsafely. Thirty-eight people on the second boat were killed, four of them children, and about 100 people on both vessels were taken to hospitals injured. The Lamma IV, owned by a utility company, was taking about 120 of its workers and their families to watch a fireworks display in Victoria Harbour on Chinese National Day when it collided with the Sea Smooth and partially sank. The ferry was damaged but made it to port. Salvage crews raised the half-submerged Lamma IV using three crane barges and later towed it to the island's shoreline. Heavy damage was visible, with part of the compartment at the stern torn away and railings bent and twisted. The government-required inspection of the Sea Smooth last month indicated no problems, Nelson Ng, general manager of Hong Kong and Kowloon (Ferry) Holdings said. He gave no further details, and was unable to say what the ferry did after the collision because the company has not talked to the captain, who is one of the crew arrested but remains in the hospital. Police have arrested four crew members from the Sea Smooth and three from the Lamma IV. Police Commissioner Tsang Wai-hung said both crews were suspected of having not "exercised the care required of them by law". The crash was Hong Kong's deadliest accident in more than 15 years and its worst maritime accident in more than 40. Large-scale accidents are rare in the semi-autonomous enclave off mainland China, which has one of Asia's most advanced infrastructures and economies, with first-rate public services. Some relatives of the dead went to the scene, off Hong Kong's south-western coast, to toss paper money on to the waters in honour of the victims on Tuesday, while others waited at the morgue for news about loved ones. Survivors told local media the Lamma IV had started sinking rapidly after the collision. One woman said she had swallowed a lot of water as she swam back to shore. A man said he had been on board with his children, and didn't know where they were. Yuen Sui-see, the director of operations of Power Assets Holdings, which owns the boat's owner, Hong Kong Electric, said the Lamma IV had been carrying 121 passengers and three crew members. That figure is well below its capacity, of more than 200. Power Assets Holdings officials said emergency payments of 200,000 Hong Kong dollars (£16,000) would be provided to the family of each person killed. The companies are part of the business empire of Li Ka-shing, Asia's richest man. Visiting a hospital on Tuesday, he told reporters: "I don't want to say too much. I just know that many people have passed away."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mitt Romney's campaign quick to pounce on gaffe by the vice-president, which comes on the eve of the first debate Vice-president Joe Biden has given Mitt Romney an unexpected gift on the eve of the first presidential debate: telling supporters at a campaign rally that the the middle class had been "buried" during Barack Obama's presidency. In a speech to supporters in Charlotte, North Carolina, Biden criticised Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's tax plan, asking: "How can they justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years?" The remarks were immediately seized upon by Romney's campaign team, who said Biden's remarks were a "stunning admission". Biden was forced to try and row back from his comments, telling a crowd in Asheville, North Carolina, that the "middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported". Biden was attempting to use his speech in Charlotte to attack Ryan ahead of the vice-presidential debate next week. Biden linked Ryan to Romney's leaked comments about the supposed dependency of 47% of Americans and said Republicans would increase taxes on most Americans to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. "This is deadly earnest. How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years? How in the Lord's name can they justify raising their taxes and these tax cuts?" he said. The Romney campaign was swiftly into action. "Vice-president Biden made a stunning admission today and we couldn't agree more: the middle class has been 'buried' under the last four years of this president's policies," said spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. "Under President Obama, the middle class has suffered from crushing unemployment, rising prices and falling incomes." Mitt Romney's twitter feed posted: "Agree with @JoeBiden, the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November." Democrats defended Biden's comments however, with spokeswoman Lis Smith criticising "another desperate and out-of-context attack from the Romney campaign". "As the vice-president has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy – and a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a return to those failed policies." Still, Biden was careful not to repeat the "last four years" line at his next stop on Tuesday. "The middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported," he told the crowd in Asheville, North Carolina, according to the Washington Post. It is not the first time Biden has been criticised for comments made at the stump. In August he told a crowd in Danville, Virginia, that Romney's plans to loosen bank deregulation would harm ordinary people. "They're going to put y'all back in chains," he added.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 3D printer firm Stratasys takes its equipment back from Defense Distributed after claiming the project violated firearms laws A group trying to design the world's first fully printable plastic firearm has seen its plans backfire after its 3D printer was seized back by the manufacturer. A week after the Guardian published details of the Wiki Weapon project, the team behind it, Defense Distributed, was told by the printer company that it violated federal firearms laws. Stratasys, the company that makes the uPrint SE 3D printer, said it had taken the decision on the basis of Defense Distributed's stated aims and its lack of a firearm manufacturer license. "It is the policy of Stratasys not to knowingly allow its printers to be used for illegal purposes," the company's legal counsel wrote in a letter to the group's spokesman, Cody Wilson. Whether Defense Distributed would have broken any laws in the printing and testing of prototype Wiki Weapons remains uncertain. The stated goal of the project is to create an open-source schematic that anyone can download. Wilson also was adamant that the Wiki Weapon would be free and that Defense Distributed had no intention of becoming a business. "Our intentions are not to break the law," said Wilson. "This is America; I don't need to register a thing." Under federal law, hobbyists creating pistols, handguns and some rifles do not have to register their creations with the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives (ATF) as long as they do not sell, trade or share their weapons. That said, the ATF requires the blueprints for "any other weapon" to be subject to ATF review before it is produced. Since 3D printing technology is so new, even the ATF doesn't have answer for what a Wiki Weapon would be. Wilson said he asked the bureau himself and the only answer he got was a shrug. "Basically, the law has not anticipated this," he said. "Current laws rely on conventional ideas of what a gun is." Despite the setback, Defense Distributed plans to press on with the project, albeit on a different path. To protect themselves from prosecution Wilson has decided to get a manufacturer's license and incorporate Defense Distributed into a company. The paperwork will likely take a couple months and cost a couple thousand dollars, but Wilson, a second-year law student at the University of Texas, has no interest in going to prison. He said he envisaged the group as a "distributed network of people" working towards a common goal. It would be a experiment steeped in what Wilson sees as some the most redeeming aspects of the internet: open-source, crowd funded and collaborative. That avenue no longer seems feasible, but the group remains committed to their goal. "This is the legal regime we exist in," said Wilson. "It's what this old world of legal hierarchy requires. I have to go thorough a legal process just to try something." This is the second delay the project has encountered since it started. The crowdsource funding website Indiegogo froze Defense Distributed account earlier this year claiming that project related to the sale of firearms. Shortly afterwards Defense Distributed secured the $20,000 it needed by using a direct distribution platform Bitcoin. Wilson said he never expected to have to become an arms manufacturer to pursue the project, but it seems necessary to go forward. "I've been contacted by some private equity groups interested in funding the project. They think this is the future," said Wilson. "We'll get there, but I guess I've got to turn into a capitalist before it's all said and done."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Andrew Sparrow and Paul Owen with rolling coverage of the Labour conference in Manchester, including Ed Miliband's speech
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Amid rumours of failing health and with the country's infrastructure crumbling, Hugo Chávez faces an election that will decide the fate of the Venezuelan revolution The comandante had not shown up for the rally, disappointing supporters in the sun-baked plaza, a triangle of cracked concrete amid a bustling outdoor market, but they made the best of it. A convoy of cars and trucks adorned with posters of the familiar jowly, smiling face slowly circled, blasting campaign songs from huge speakers. A middle-aged woman in red leggings shimmied to the beat of a campaign song blasting from speakers. Another handed out flyers with the election manifesto which outlined "five great historic objectives". One: "Defend, expand and consolidate national independence." Two: "Continue building Bolivarian socialism of the 21st century in Venezuela as an alternative to destructive and savage capitalism." Three: "Make Venezuela an economic, social and political power within the growing power of Latin America and the Caribbean." Four: "Develop a new international geopolitics forming a multicentric and pluripolar world to achieve equilibrium in the universe and guarantee planetary peace." Five: "Preserve life on the planet and save the human species." No one ever accused Hugo Chávez of thinking small. He casts politics as an existential contest between good and evil, the oppressed and the oppressor. The next battle is on Sunday, when he seeks a third term to extend his 14-year rule to 2019. There is a clenched tension in the streets, for no one knows what will happen. Some polls give the president a wide lead, others show him trailing. Wild rumours fill the air: Chávez's family is selling its cattle herds and trucks in anticipation of fleeing to Cuba; pro-Chávez militias are preparing to seal off parts of Caracas; the opposition is planning to assassinate Chávez. Nonsense, but people are worried enough to stockpile water, batteries, tinned food and toilet paper. The election will decide the fate of Chávez, 58, and his revolution. Lose, and the revolution dies. Win, and it survives, but only for as long as the leader has a pulse. Chávez, Gabriel Garcia Marquez once noted, had "a body of reinforced concrete". His energy was superhuman, his appetites prodigious. He drank more than 30 shots of sweet, black coffee daily, fuelling a routine that included 3am phone calls to ministers and aides. No longer. Cancer treatment has bloated and debilitated the comandante. After his diagnosis Chávez changed the slogan "Fatherland, socialism or death" to "We will live and we will win". All references to "muerte" in official discourse have been expunged. "There will be no death here, we must live," he instructed. But few believe his claims to be cured of a disease whose exact nature and location remains a closely guarded secret. Some palace insiders whisper it is terminal. The revolution hangs by a thread. There appears to be no plan B, no successor. Chávez surrounded himself mostly with mediocrities, valuing loyalty over competence or, it turned out, honesty. With the chief ailing they look lost. A rally in Catia, a Chávista bastion near the presidential palace, Miraflores, was abruptly cancelled in disarray. The foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, put on a brave face but a microphone caught his murmured words: "Que cagada." What a fuck-up. Not elegant but if Chávez loses it will be the campaign's epitaph. Chávez's absence from many rallies has given him the air of Banquo's ghost. He hovers in the form of television appearances, and occasional, relatively brief public appearances, an echo of the man who used to barnstorm the country and wade into crowds. Winning the election under such circumstances would be a triumph, and he may well pull it off, but it will not shake off the sense of fin de regime. His legacy will be debated for decades, much as people still argue over Juan Peron in Argentina. Many outsiders made up their minds long ago. There was Chávez the dictator who jailed opponents, sponsored terrorists and left his people hungry. And there was Chávez the hero who empowered the poor, deepened democracy and stood up to the US. While based in Caracas for the Guardian from 2006 to March this year I would hear both versions on trips abroad. Dublin, Shanghai, San Francisco, it didn't matter where, opinion was polarised and passionate. And completely depressing. This was Venezuela of fantasy, a cartoonish projection, each side parroting simplicities and distortions as revealed truth. The reality was more complex and fascinating but if I broached oil dependency, or details that determined the fate of the revolution, eyes would glaze over. Few wanted to hear nuances of political economy. They wanted tales of the demon or gospels of faith. There was, arguably, a duality to Hugo Chávez. The poor boy from the plains who loved to sing and tell stories rose up army ranks and attempted a bloody coup in 1992 against an unpopular but democratically elected government. Six years later he took Miraflores via the ballot box but in power created a personality cult, abolished term limits, curbed private media and put the armed forces, legislature, judiciary and state oil company, PDVSA, under his personal control. He turned a blind eye to Farc guerrilla camps near the Colombian border and hailed the likes of Mugabe, Gaddafi and Assad as brothers. But the same president was adored by millions of his people, won free (if not always fair) elections, survived a US-backed coup, accepted electoral defeat (a 2007 referendum), spent oil revenues on health clinics, literacy courses and social programmes, slashed poverty, devolved power to communal councils, stood up to George Bush over Iraq, encouraged regional pride and assertiveness across Latin America and did it all with charisma and flair. The occasional clowning and buffoonery which grabbed headlines concealed a shrewd, sophisticated political mind. Chávez, in other words, was – is – a hybrid: a democrat and autocrat, a progressive and a bully. His "Bolivarian revolution", named after the 19th-century revolutionary Simón Bolivar, has embodied these contradictions. What, then, has it wrought these 14 years? For Ruth Guerrero, a Chavista canvasser in Petare, a hillside slum in eastern Caracas, the answer was simple. "Hope." The 56-year-old mother of three grew up poor and unemployed, unable to follow a yen for learning. Thanks to "Mision Robinson", an adult education course, one of myriad social programmes, Guerrero obtained a law diploma and now earns $380 a month teaching at a Bolivarian university. "Before that I had lived a life full of injustice. Chávez has been my teacher and leader." Guerrero's effort to hand out leaflets garnered little attention from passers-by, however, and she feared friends and neighbours would abandon Chávez. Polls show Petare voting for the opposition. "I'm worried. I keep telling them that the president doesn't like rubbish in the streets, or potholes, or insecurity, that he wants us to tackle them together." Guerrero was referring to the single most damning critique of the revolution, one that has nothing to do with Chávez's democratic credentials. Venezuela is falling apart. In the case of infrastructure, literally. Roads are crumbling, bridges falling, refineries exploding. A wheezing power grid condemns much of the country to rolling blackouts. Public hospitals, with a few exceptions, are dank, dingy affairs where patients must supply their own bedsheets, bandages and food. Prisons are filthy and riven by violence which claimed 500 lives last year. To massage statistics there was a tacit deal between authorities and some gang leaders to hang victims so they could be counted as suicide, a mid-ranking penal official told me. She had armfuls of documentation and grisly photographs. "But how can I use it? If I do, I'll be fired, lose my pension and then be prosecuted." Murder rates have more than doubled, filling morgues and making Caracas deadlier than Baghdad, reflecting an underfunded, politicised judicial system. Kidnappers, sometimes in league with police, snatch victims from cars, shopping malls, university campuses and bus stops. A recent security plan did not reassure – by some counts it was Chávez's 20th such initiative. Lack of security is one reason so many young Venezuelans are emigrating, giving Caracas the melancholy nickname City of Farewells. The economy is not falling apart. It is growing about 5% this year, with unemployment of around 8%. It is, however, warping. Under Chávez Venezuela, which claims bigger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, has seen prices leap from $9 a barrel to over $100, gushing about $980bn through PDVSA. Ahistoric bonanza begging a big question: where is the cash? Social programmes and subsidies – you can fill a car's petrol tank for around 50 cents – account for some, as do arms purchases and (mostly stalled) infrastructure projects. But much vanished. Chávez is no Mobutu. He did not build palaces in the jungle to store pink champagne. He did, however, create a tangle of economic controls which let opportunists in government, and those with friends in government, siphon off billions of public money. Few outsiders grasp how profoundly restrictions such as Cadivi – a currency control agency that tried to shore up the ever weakening Venezuelan bolivar – perverted the economy and spawned a class of high-rolling parasites nicknamed "boligarchs". Chávez occasionally complained about them but let them get rich as long as they supported the government. Their revolution has been one of dodgy bond issues, government contracts and currency manipulation, yielding yachts, Rolexes and Hummers. They pay fashion designers such as Giovanni Scutaro, who used to dress Chávez, astonishing sums for outfits. "When people from the United States and Europe come here and see our weddings, they go: 'Wow, so much money.' There is no equilibrium between perceptions from afar and the reality of what is happening inside the country," Scutaro says. Last week a Reuters investigation detailed how more than half of public investment churns into secretive funds controlled by Chávez with no oversight by auditors or congress. One fund, called Fonden, swallowed about $100bn. Some was spent on white elephants – an abandoned newsprint factory, a "city of aluminum" – and on ill-fated investments in Ecuadorean bonds and Lehman Brothers-issued derivatives. In a functioning, accountable democracy this would be a huge scandal but Venezuela's government – plus state prosecutors and media – ignores it. "That is not Chávez's money. That money belongs to 29 million Venezuelans and as such the information should be available to everyone," said Carlos Ramos, an opposition legislator. Harassing the private sector – investment evaporated amid expropriations – and bungled management of multiplying state enterprises translated into shrivelled agriculture and industry. Huge imports to fill the gap, though you would never guess it from Orwellian rhetoric trumpeting "food sovereignty" and "manufacturing independence". The result is increased dependence on oil, now accounting for 96% of export earnings versus 80% a decade ago. That is why so many Venezuelans end up on pavements selling knick-knacks (they are counted as employed), or watching the clock in decaying state enterprises. This does not add up to collapse. There are always petrodollars to stuff into cracks. But analysts say that, regardless of who wins the election, Venezuela faces a grim economic reckoning. The economy is growing now only because of a splurge in government spending and borrowing, mostly from China. In the headquarters of PDVSA, his office overlooking Avenida Libertador, one of Chávez's top oil officials told me that the boss started as a pragmatist but turned ideological after opponents tried to oust him in a 2002 coup and general strike – soon after which oil revenues began booming. Then, in hushed tones of heresy: "It was a historic opportunity that was wasted. He doesn't understand economics. Chávez doesn't know how to manage. As a manager he's a disaster." Venezuela's revolution has no gulags, no torture chambers, but in wasted potential lies tragedy. Here was a sublimely gifted politician with empathy for the poor and the power of Croesus – and the result, fiasco. Neither side likes to acknowledge it but the revolution is in many ways a continuum of oil-fuelled populism dating back half a century, notably that of the giddy, spendthrift 1974-79 administration of Carlos Andres Perez, the mercurial president Chávez tried to overthrow in 1992. The difference is Chávez had even more money, more power, more showmanship. It was easy to overlook the blunders while he strutted the stage, singing and dancing, blowing kisses, riding a bike, a horse, a tank, holding court from his desk, blending folk tales with ideological thunder, commandeering airwaves to talk and talk, sometimes for eight hours straight, oratorical marathons which exhausted aides, paralysed opponents and sucked up the oxygen. If Chávez were healthy he would have walked this election, his skills of enchantment steeled, as ever, by control of state resources and institutions. Instead, he has rationed his public appearances and relied on television to simulate the magic of old while his youthful opponent, Henrique Capriles, bursts into villages, towns and cities denouncing their dilapidation. When visiting the Caruachi hydro-electric plant to whip up support Chávez suffered the indignity of being heckled by workers demanding unpaid wages and the restoration of collective-bargaining rights. His microphone failed and a back-up sound system transmitted what sounded like shouts of "justicia", justice, at which point state television cut the broadcast. A nation accustomed to highly choreographed presidential events with handpicked audiences gasped at the glimpse behind the curtain. Chávez can boast genuine accomplishments. He put poverty and social exclusion at the forefront of debate. He made millions feel they had an ally in government. And he called time on US browbeating in Latin America. But the price was high. Gutted institutions, a caudillo (strongman) cult, economic dysfunction. After a recent spate of bad news – a prison riot, a collapsed bridge, an oil refinery accident – Chávez reached for a telling metaphor. "The show must go on." Maybe it will, maybe he will win, and live to rule. But what cost the spectacle? • Rory Carroll's book about Chávez, Comandante, will be published next March by Canongate in the UK and by Penguin Press in the US.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President says plummeting value of rial is fault of enemies abroad and at home, not his government's economic policies Iran's beleaguered president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has blamed the plummeting value of the national currency on a "psychological war" perpetrated by enemies abroad and opponents at home. Speaking as the rial hit an all-time low against the dollar, Ahmadinejad told reporters that the slump was the result of the "temporary problem" of the international embargo on importing Iranian oil. He said sanctions would only pressure the "people of Iran and not its government" and would not force Tehran to change its nuclear policy. "It's a battle," he told reporters in Tehran. "Enemies have managed to reduce our oil sales but hopefully we will compensate for this." He rejected suggestions that the crisis was the result of his government's economic incompetence. "Are these currency fluctuations because of economic problems? The answer is no," he said. "Is this because of government policies? Never … It's due to psychological pressure. It's a psychological battle." While he was speaking, the rial fell to a new record low. Ahmadinejad said Iranians would not retreat from the nuclear issue. "If anyone thinks that they can put pressure on Iran [to force us to change our policy], they are certainly wrong and they must correct their behaviour," he said. The Iranian president accused his conservative rivals of complicity in exacerbating the crisis over the rial, saying they had contributed to the situation by launching a propaganda campaign against him. The president pointed the finger at Ali Larijani, the parliament speaker, and criticised him for giving an interview in which Larijani said mismanagement accounted for 80% of the problems and the sanctions 20%, comparing government policy to "Robin Hoodian economics". "The respected head of parliament should come forward and help instead of giving interviews," Ahmedinejad said. The deputy speaker, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, echoed Larijani, saying on Tuesday that the government's only enemy was "illusion". At least one Iranian MP accused the government of manipulating the country's foreign currency reserves amid speculation that Ahmadinejad might be summoned for questioning. "The president has deliberately kept the market agitated," said Elias Naderan, of the parliamentary economics committee, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. "I really don't know what Mr Ahmadinejad is thinking. What plan does he have, what is his expectation of the system, and how does he plan to manage this disorder?" Despite several attempts to calm the markets, the government has failed to bring the rial under control. It has lost at least 57% of its value in the past three months after US and EU sanctions targeting the regime's nuclear programme came into effect in July. On Monday the rial experienced its biggest devaluation in a single day, dropping more than 15%. On Tuesday, a senior official indicated that the government was relying on its security services to curb speculators, who are blamed for the rial's drop. It was not clear how the move could be implemented as previous attempts to get the police to enforce the official exchange rate have failed. Many Iranians have lost faith in the rial and are now rushing to convert their assets and properties to foreign currency and gold. Meanwhile, an opposition website, kaleme.com, reported that Tehran's bazaar was planning to go on strike on Wednesday in reaction to the currency crisis and government plans to send security services to restore calm in the market. In his first domestic press conference since his visit to New York last week, the president also reacted to the speech made by Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, at the UN general assembly, in which he used a bomb illustration to draw red lines for Tehran's nuclear programme. Ahmadinejad said the diagram was "childish and primitive" and insulted the audience. "That drawing was only good for children, he should learn to draw better," he joked. Despite questions on his UN speech, Israel and Syria, the press conference was mostly dominated by the currency crisis and the internal power struggle between Ahmadinejad and his opponents in parliament and the judiciary. Ahmadinejad expressed regret over the arrest last week of his media adviser, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, and criticised his culture minister for speaking against a reformist newspaper, Shargh, which was closed down at the same time over a cartoon deemed insulting. Meanwhile, the French embassy in Tehran was attacked by a small group of people protesting against an anti-Islam film that infuriated the Muslim world for mocking the prophet Muhammad. About 30 protesters were said to have smashed a police guard post and thrown stones, though no casualties were reported.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Eric Schneiderman brings case against investment bank, now part of JP Morgan, over mortgages sold between 2005 and 2007 The taskforce charged with prosecuting US banks behind the excesses of the housing boom and bust has brought its first case – to mixed reviews. President Barack Obama appointed New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman to head the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group in January in his state of the union address. "This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans," Obama said. Late on Monday, Schneiderman announced his first case would be against Bear Stearns, once one of Wall Street's biggest players and now part of JP Morgan. According to the complaint, Bear Stearns and its lending unit, EMC Mortgage, defrauded investors who purchased mortgage securities packaged by the companies from 2005 through 2007. The suit argues that wrongdoing was widespread at the firm, and that Bear Stearns made material misrepresentations about the quality of the loans in the securities, ignoring warning signs of trouble ahead as they sold them to investors. The same allegations have been made in several private lawsuits brought against JP Morgan. John Coffee, a professor at Columbia law school, said it was a "significant move" but said cynics were questioning both the timing and the target. "It's about time there was action, and this is a much broader case than we have seen so far, much broader than the risk-averse SEC [the US's top financial watchdog] would be prepared to bring," he said. "But it's Bear Stearns, not JP Morgan," he said. Coffee said Schneiderman had recently been eclipsed by Benjamin Lawsky, head of the recently formed New York department of financial services. Lawsky brought a high-profile case against Standard Chartered in August over allegations of money laundering. The case is similar to a number of private actions that have already been brought. In a statement, JP Morgan has claimed the case was brought "without ever offering us an opportunity to rebut the claims and without developing a full record — instead relying on recycled claims already made by private plaintiffs." Coffee said: "They wanted to bring this case quickly. A cynic might say they wanted to bring it before the election to show they are doing something." Peter Henning, a professor of law at Wayne State University, said the case was important because it was the first broad action brought by Obama's team. "The case says this was a pattern of behavior, not some small specific wrongdoing," he said. "But then it's an action against a defunct firm. You aren't going to see any significant reforms here," he said. Henning also said he did not expect any money to back to mortgage holders. The case is likely to lead to a settlement that will be paid out to other large institutions, not individuals. "If they are leading with their strongest suit, my reaction is largely a shrug of the shoulders," Henning said. Annemarie McAvoy of Fordham University, a former federal prosecutor, said this case was likely to be the "opening salvo" in a series of cases. "Clearly there were a lot of problems. It hasn't been as easy for regulators to bring cases as they would have liked." "But it wasn't JP Morgan that was responsible here," she said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ali Hussein Nassif died carrying out "jihadi duties" in Syrian city of Homs, militant group says One of Hezbollah's most senior operatives has been killed in Syria and buried in his home village in Lebanon's Bekaa valley, the militant group has confirmed. Ali Hussein Nassif, a founding member of the organisation, was killed near Homs over the weekend in what is believed to have been a roadside bomb explosion. A Lebanese government official confirmed on Tuesday that his body had been transferred from Syria through the Masnaa border crossing. Media outlets loyal to Hezbollah, including al-Manar television and the moqawama.org website both carried stories acknowledging Nassif's death, which they said had happened as he "carried out his jihadi duties". The reports did not specify where he had been killed. Officials in Nassif's home village of Buday suggested that seven other Hezbollah members had recently been wounded in Syria. A separate report claimed that a second Hezbollah member, Zain al-Abidin Mustafa had also been killed "while carring out his obligation". Senior party officials are reported to have traveled from Beirut to attend his funeral in the party's heartland of Baalbek. The issue of Hezbollah members fighting in Syria has remained deeply sensitive since the earliest days of the uprising. For most of the past 18 months, the Shia Islamic group had steadfastly denied that its members were in action alongside Syrian forces, despite emphatic claims from rebel groups and opposition figures. While openly acknowledging the party's support for the embattled regime of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had claimed it had only leant moral backing. However, new graves in cemetaries in Lebanon designtated for members deemed to have died as martyrs have steadily been dug throughout the summer. There has also been reported discontent among family members who had lost relatives. Until now, little fanfare, or even acknowledgement, had marked the burials and Tuesday's news reports, complete with photographs of Nassif's funeral procession, appear to mark a departure from a tactic of secrecy. In August, officials in Iran — Hezbollah's key patron — also candidly admitted that members of the country's armed forces were deployed in Syria, where the Alawite sect — which is aligned to Shia Islam — is entwined with the power base. Other Iranian officials later denied the admissions. Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, in particular the elite Quds Force unit, is a close ally of Hezbollah. Both are closely linked to the Assad regime. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah claim to act in unison as a resistance arc against Israel — the existence of which is Hezbollah's raison d'être. However the group has, until now, been circumspect about its activities elsewhere. Hezbollah's presence in Syria potentially amplifies a sectarian dimension of the now raging civil war. The anti-regime insurgency is led by the country's Sunni Islamic majority. A steadily increasing number of Sunni militant jihadists from outside Syria have also joined the fray since mid-July. The Assad regime has claimed since April 2011 that the popular uprising against it was an Islamist plot and has launched an evermore brutal crackdown against demonstrators and militias, which are composed largely of defectors from the regular military. Some defectors have provided eyewitness accounts of Hezbollah members being deployed alonsgide them while they were still serving in the Syrian army. Two defectors who spoke to the Guardian in August said they had seen the alleged Hezbollah operatives in Homs city and in the countryside near Qusayr, 15km from the Lebanese border. "They were very open about who they were and why there were there," one of the men said iin the Turkish town of Reyhanli. "They said they were there for Jihad and to help Assad defeat the terrorists."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Leader outlines a vision of an inclusive party and borrows from speech given by Tory leader Disraeli in 1872, also in Manchester Ed Miliband drew on the words of the former Conservative leader Benjamin Disraeli when he outlined his vision for Labour as an inclusive, "one-nation" party that can rebuild Britain from the recession. Miliband used his keynote address to the party conference to attribute his "faith" – the belief that people need to leave the world "a better place than we found it" – to his roots as the son of Jewish immigrants, and to his state-school background. In his third conference speech as leader – his second in Manchester – amid disappointing personal polling, Miliband performed a political landgrab by citing the one-nation speech Disraeli gave in April 1872 at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester to punch home his key message: that Labour is the party that can bring the country together. Miliband cited individual stories of people who feel the system does not work for them because Britain currently has "two nations, not one", such as a young person "brimming with life" who had written to 137 employers and failed to get a reply from any of them. In a well-received speech lasting over an hour and delivered without a script, to periodic waves of enthusiastic applause, he said Disraeli's speech 140 years ago had set "a vision of Britain where patriotism, loyalty, dedication to the common cause, courses through the veins of all and nobody feels left out". Recalling the one-nation spirit of Clement Attlee's Labour government, which rebuilt Britain after the second world war, he said: "I didn't become leader of the Labour party to reinvent the world of Disraeli or Attlee. But I do believe in that spirit, that spirit of one nation. One nation: a country where everyone has a stake. One nation: a country where prosperity is fairly shared. One nation where we have a shared destiny, a sense of shared endeavour and a common life that we lead together. That is my vision of one nation. That is my vision of Britain. That is the Britain we must become." In a speech light on policy announcements, he promised: • a crackdown on employers who don't pay the minimum wage to foreign workers, to stop the undercutting of Britons and prevent the exploitation of people who come here to work, and to end the "shady practices" of gangmasters. • a change in the rules to require companies to publish their accounts every three months, to encourage long-term investment. • a focus on "the forgotten 50%" who do not go to university, offering English and maths until they are 18, and a technical baccalaureate. • a "new deal with British business" under which companies would be given control over apprenticeship funding in return for committing to providing good training to young recruits. • and an end to public sector contracts to firm that don't invest in training the next generation. Punching home his one-nation message – a brand he used 46 times in all – he said: "Every time Britain has faced its gravest challenge, we have only come through the storm because we were one nation. But too often, governments have forgotten that message. "With one million young people out of work, we just can't succeed as a country. With the gap between rich and poor growing wider and wider, we just can't succeed as a country. With millions of people doing the hard work and effort but not rewarded, we just can't succeed as a country. "And with so many people having been told for so long that the only way to get on is to be on your own, in it for yourself, we just can't succeed as a country." He said he understood voters who turned their backs on Labour in 2010 amid the financial crisis and gave David Cameron "the benefit of the doubt", but he added: "I think we've had long enough to make a judgment." Miliband said the prime minister would next April be giving each millionaire in the country £40,000, "not just for one year, but for every year". "At the same time, they will be imposing a tax on pensioners. It is wrong, what they are doing. It shows their priorities. And David Cameron was not just writing the cheques; he was receiving one, too, Miliband said. He asked how many other cabinet ministers would benefit, and how Cameron could justify the move. Miliband's vision would ensure that people with disabilities were looked after but insist that those who were able to work, did so. He warned that if Labour won power in 2015, there would be many cuts that Labour "won't be able to reverse even though it would like to", with "tough settlements" ahead for the public services in the next parliament. But the Labour leader said that under his watch, a one-nation party would ensure "the broadest shoulders will always bear the greatest burden". "We will never cut taxes for millionaires and raise them for ordinary families," he said. "That is not being one nation. And here's the other thing: I will never accept an economy where the gap between rich and poor just grows wider and wider. In one nation, in my faith, inequality matters. It matters to our country." Miliband said his vision meant no going back to "old Labour" or representing "one sectional interest of our country". The party needed to be the party of the private, as well as the public sector, the party of the small business struggling against the odds, the party of the south just as much as the party of the north, and of the squeezed middle as much as the party of the poor. The Labour leader said it was also necessary to "move on" from New Labour. He said that despite its great achievements, it "was too silent about the responsibilities of those at the top, and too timid about the accountability of those with power". "In one nation, responsibility goes all the way to the top of society," he said. The biggest applause was reserved for the NHS, as Miliband attacked Cameron over the NHS reforms, saying he "broke his solemn contract with the British people" during the election campaign to protect the health service. This was "a contract that can never be repaired", he said. Miliband led the hall in a chorus of "No!" as he asked what the responses had been from doctors, nurses, paediatricians, radiologists, patients and the public to the reforms. The NHS was based not on "values of markets, money and exchange" but on those of care and co-operation, he said. "That is the magic of the National Health Service. That is why the British people love the National Health Service. And I am afraid the Tories have shown in government it is something they just don't understand."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | With the Republican party abuzz with criticism of the Romney campaign, the candidate hopes his debate strategy pays off Mitt Romney will use Wednesday's presidential debate with Barack Obama to try to get across a clear, unequivocal message after weeks in which he has been accused of leaving voters confused by frequently chopping and changing. Romney, in an interview with the Denver Post and at a late-night rally in Denver on Monday, offered a preview of his line of attack for the 90-minute debate. Central to his strategy will be to attempt to undo some of the damage caused by the secret video in which he dismissed 47% of Americans as freeloaders. He will list damning statistics showing the extent to which Americans have become dependent on the federal government, from food stamps to unemployment benefits. He will also attempt to work into the debate, even though it is supposed to be devoted exclusively to domestic policy, accusations that the White House obfuscated over the killing of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya. In a sign that Republicans have not yet given up on Romney with five weeks left to election day, one of the biggest of the conservative Super Pacs, American Crossroads, which is run by, among others, Bush's former adviser Karl Rove, announced Tuesday it had bought $16m in television and radio ads for a week-long blitz in the eight presidential swing states and in four Senate contests. If Crossroads had decided the election was now unwinnable, it would have shifted the bulk of the money to the Senate races. Instead, it is spending $11m on the presidential race and $5m on the Senate races. Romney's campaign team has been engaged for days over what strategy to pursue in the debate and in the weeks left to election day: whether to stick rigidly to the economy, as his main strategist Stuart Stevens advocates, or seek to exploit questions over Obama's handling of the Middle East. The internal debate remains unresolved, with campaign advisers briefing journalists that Romney is to adopt a scatter-gun approach in the coming weeks, tackling a range of issues across a broad spectrum. The Romney campaign has had three relaunches in as many weeks. In contrast with Obama, who is facing no criticism from Democrats over the way he is running his campaign, Republican politicians and conservative commentators have rounded on Romney for what they label a policy vacuum and sought to fill it with conflicting advice, ranging from offering specific policy points to switching to foreign policy. Ed Gillespie, one of Romney's campaign advisers, denied that the regular switches in messaging over the last few weeks reflected chaos and insisted it reflected the range of issues facing voters. In the Denver Post, Romney predicted that after the debate the lines between him and Obama would be clearer. "I think what's going to happen in this debate is each of us will get the opportunity to describe our pathway forward for America. And for the last several weeks and months, the president has dramatically distorted my own views. I look forward to the debate so people will understand what I actually believe." The main line from Romney, according to his campaign advisers, will be that the last four years have been disastrous and that voters don't want another four years of the same. At the rally in Denver on Monday night, Romney rehearsed his response to the secret video, arguing that the 47% were dependent on federal aid because of Obama's policies. The Republican candidate ran through a series of statistics: the number of people on food stamps had risen by 15 million; one in six live in poverty; 23 million are looking for work; and for 43 straight months, unemployment has stood above 8%. "The economy is not in recovery. We're not seeing a real recovery. The president's policies have not worked," he said. Conservatives hope that the election will eventually tighten and that the US media, keen to see a dramatic election finish, will jump on the slightest sign of recovery by Romney as a comeback. But the latest poll, from Quinnipiac University, shows no shift yet in Obama's lead, putting him at 49% to Romney's 45%. It records he has an 18% lead over Romney among women, 56% to 38%, and 94% to 2% among African Americans. Romney has a lead among men 52% to 42% while white voters back Romney 53% to 42%.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Congress steps up pressure on Obama with accusations of a cover-up over assault that left ambassador Chris Stevens dead Senior Republicans in Congress have written to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, claiming to have evidence of a previously undisclosed attack on the US consulate in Benghazi and threats to American ambassador in Libya in the months before he was killed. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House oversight and government reform committee, and Jason Chaffetz, chairman of a subcommittee on national security, are demanding Clinton hand over information about previous attacks and threats as Republicans step up pressure on the White House with accusations of incompetence and a cover-up over the assault that killed the US ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other American officials last month. The letter says that US diplomats in Libya made repeated requests for increased security at the Benghazi consulate but were rejected by officials in Washington. The congressmen have called a hearing for October 10 and want Clinton to reveal what the state department knew about earlier incidents and how it responded to the growing security threat. Issa and Chaffetz have disclosed an attack on the US consulate on April 6 in which two Libyan former guards at the building who had been fired threw a homemade bomb over the fence. No one was hurt. That incident came two months before a bomb blew a large hole in the consulate gates, again without causing casualties. The second attack was already public knowledge. Issa and Chaffetz say that whistleblowers also pointed to other incidents that should have caused the US administration to better protect its diplomats in Benghazi. These include threats made openly on Facebook. An attack on the International Red Cross compound in May was followed by a claim of responsibility on Facebook which said it was a "message for the Americans disturbing the skies over Derna" – taken to mean US drones flying over a Libyan city that was a recruiting ground for anti-US insurgents in Iraq. The letter says that the following month a Facebook page linked to supporters of the dead Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, directly threatened Stevens and included a reference to his jogging route. Issa and Chaffetz say that "after stopping these morning runs for about a week, the ambassador resumed them." Issa and Chaffetz also say that weeks before the assault that killed Stevens' and three other officials, Libyan guards at the consulate employed by a British company, Blue Mountain Group, were warned by family members to resign because of rumours of a looming attack. The New York Times on Monday reported that some American officials believe that the relatively small scale and swift response by Libyan security guards to the earlier incidents may have led to a false sense of security. Republicans accuse the Obama administration of misreading the warning signs in the run-up to the full scale attack on the Benghazi consulate on September 11, and then of covering up the true nature of what they say was a well-planned terrorist assault with links to al-Qaida. Senior Democrats accuse Republicans of playing politics with Stevens' death. The administration has rejected a call from congressman Peter King, chairman of the House homeland security committee, for Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, to resign after she presented the White House's initial claim that the attack was spontaneous and a reaction to a short anti-Muslim video on You Tube that prompted protests across the Middle East. Issa and Chaffetz say the evidence in their letter demonstrates that the assault on the Benghazi consulate was well planned. "It was clearly never, as administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest," the letter said. King echoed the criticism and accused the Obama administration of an intelligence failure in not reading the warning signs and giving sufficient protection to the consulate and Stevens. "Why did the administration ignore these warning signals over the last few months? We had attacks on our own consulate, we had attacks on the British ambassador, we had attacks on the Red Cross," he told Fox News on Tuesday. "It's such a dangerous area and yet nothing was done as far as securing the compound there. The ambassador was travelling with minimal security. And then when the event did occur, the administration went on for more than a week, two weeks, denying it was a terrorist attack." Republicans accuse the administration of shifting position after it acknowledged on Friday that there was a "deliberate and organised terrorist attack". However, there remains a strong difference of opinion over what that means. Republicans are choosing to equate "terrorist attack" with al-Qaida. A steady stream of members of Congress have appeared on Fox News to suggest that a Libyan militia could not have launched such a comprehensive and well-armed assault without outside help. Some critics point to the precision of mortar attacks during the assault which suggest well trained fighters, although they could have served in Gaddafi's army. Administration officials point out that there are several militias in Benghazi armed with weapons seized from Gaddafi's military during last year's revolution, which could have launched the assault on their own initiative. King accused the administration of a cover-up. "It fits into the president's narrative that there's not really a threat from al-Qaeda, there's just a threat from a few radicals out there who get excited about a video," he told Fox News. "The Obama administration has a view of the world and, whether they do it intentionally or not, they end up selectively putting in facts that fit into their narrative. The president's narrative is that al-Qaida has been decimated and the war against terrorism has been won, and now we can turn our attention to the Pacific." Another member of Congress, Marsha Blackburn, went so far as to compare the alleged cover-up with Watergate. "This is why we need an independent counsel and we need the investigations top begin immediately," she told Fox News. "Benghazi-gate is the right term for this. This is very, very serious; probably more serious than Watergate." Sorting the claims and counter-claims has been made more complicated by the failure of FBI investigators to visit Benghazi because of fears for their security. The Libyan government on Tuesday said plans are finally being made for FBI agents to travel to the city but that details of the cooperation agreement between the US and Libya on the investigation have still to be finalised. The state department said on Monday that it has now pulled all US officials out of the city and closed the consulate there. "Everybody who was in Benghazi and posted there has been withdrawn," said the state department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland. The US embassy in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, remains open with reduced staffing.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow the day's developments after the US state department suggested a video showing the captured journalist Austin Tice may have been staged by the Syrian government
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Eyewitnesses say one vessel went down within 10 minutes of the collision in one of territory's worst maritime disasters Six crew members from two Hong Kong ferries have been arrested after 38 people died in one of the worst maritime disasters in the territory's history. Hong Kong's chief executive has announced an inquiry into the collision, which took place off Lamma Island, about a mile south-west of Hong Kong. One of the ferries, used by the power company Hong Kong Electric, was taking more than 120 people to watch the fireworks in Victoria Harbour to celebrate China's National Day. The other ferry, owned by the Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry (HKKF) company, was returning with passengers from Hong Kong Island. The collision happened just before 8.30pm local time, when more than 100 people were thrown into the water from the Hong Kong Electric boat. Rescue work continued on Tuesday , with officials warning that passengers could be trapped inside the half-sunken HK Electric ferry. A crane was also brought in to lift the boat out of the water. After the collision, the HKKF vessel continued into Yung Shue Wan harbour, on Lamma. Some passengers on the HKKF suffered light injuries as they were thrown from their seats. The HK Electric boat was allowed to carry up to 200 passengers, the company said, denying that it had been too full. According to passengers, the ship went down very fast, within 10 minutes of the collision, giving any passengers trapped inside very little time to escape. Government departments sent 28 rescue boats and two helicopters quickly to the scene. Thirty passengers were dead at the scene, while a further eight were pronounced dead in hospitals across the territory. Police appealed for more information on the incident. Hong Kong's secretary for security, Lai Tung-kwok, said at a press conference police had arrested six people. "They are being investigated for endangering people's lives at sea." The territory's police commissioner, Andy Tsang, said those arrested were involved in the operation of both vessels, and he did not rule out more arrests. One Hong Kong resident, Tina Tucker, who was staying with friends in Pak Kok on Lamma, described what she could see from the shore as the night's dramatic rescue continued. "I saw the bow sticking out of the water, Titanic style," she said. "The helicopters were circling with big searchlights across the surrounding water, as were a lot of smaller boats with lights. "There are a number of sampans and junks that have come for a look, but the police have been patrolling and keeping them at a distance." Chris Head, 48, a Lamma resident of 18 years who was on the HKKF ferry, told the South China Morning Post: "Initially we were trying to put on our life jackets, so we were more concerned with that. But after a few minutes, probably about five, I could see that the end – I couldn't tell whether it was the bow or the stern – of the boat was sticking vertically out of the water." Hong Kong's transport system is generally efficient, and fatal incidents are rare. Relatives of those who died visited mortuaries and paid their respects to the dead by throwing paper money into the sea. Hong Kong's chief executive, CY Leung, visited survivors of the incident in hospitals and announced an inquiry. The Lamma Strait is a busy shipping channel. More ferries than usual were scheduled on Monday, which was a public holiday to celebrate National Day, and was also part of an extended weekend marking the mid-autumn festival.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | On the eve of the first presidential debate in Denver, Oliver Burkeman takes a look at the last-minute preparations To: Mitt Romney
From: Stuart Stevens, Chief Campaign Strategist
Subject: Eve-of-debate final thoughts Mitt – So here we are. The intensive rehearsals are over. You've memorised your zingers. We've tested the hidden device we'll be using to deliver a small but uncomfortable electric shock if you mention Cadillacs or luxury yachts, or start singing "Who let the dogs out?". We've even practised the Giuliani Escape Hatch, whereby you hilariously pretend to take a phone call from your wife. And now, if I could give you only one word of advice, it would be this: relax. Don't think about the fact that Wednesday is unequivocally the most important night of your entire career – definitely don't think about that! Just slip into your jeans, crack open a cold one (caffeine-free Coke) and self-deport to your happy place. In Denver, I want to see the graceful, easeful, flowing Mitt. The Mitt who floats like a butterfly. Mitt the dancer. I know he exists – I've seen him. S === To: Mitt Romney
From: Stuart Stevens, Chief Campaign Strategist
Subject: Re: Eve-of-debate final thoughts Actually, on second thoughts I was thinking of Rafalca. Never mind. But give it your best shot! Be a dressage horse out there! But a manly one. (And don't mention dressage. Or horses.) S === To: Mitt Romney
From: Stuart Stevens, Chief Campaign Strategist
Subject: URGENT Sorry for the short notice – just had quick chat with Matt Rhoades and we've decided we're going to withdraw zinger six. Zinger six is out. OK? No zinger six. That's the one where you were going to say: "My opponent thinks I've got no respect for 47% of Americans, but I tell you, I'm 100% American!" We'd be OK if the media wasn't in the tank for Obama, but since they are, it could get us into trouble. Also, it's shit. S === To: Mitt Romney
From: Stuart Stevens, Chief Campaign Strategist
Subject: Good news! Hey, how about this, big guy? According to Nobiaspolling.blogspot.com, you've pulled eight points ahead of Obama in key swing states! EIGHT POINTS! This differs a bit from our internal polling, but apparently these guys are using a cutting-edge psephological technique that involves defining Louisiana and North Dakota as "key swing states". How's that for a little pre-debate morale boost? Atta boy! S === To: Mitt Romney
From: Stuart Stevens, Chief Campaign Strategist
Subject: Interesting. Little tip from our mole inside PBS: Apparently, if you focus very intently on the bridge of Jim Lehrer's nose for at least 30 seconds, his lovely kindly eyes start to go wobbly and he slips into a fugue state from which you can effectively seize control of his thoughts and bodily movements. Might be worth a try? S === To: Mitt Romney
From: Stuart Stevens, Chief Campaign Strategist
Subject: Final thoughts OK, I really don't want to distract you any further at this point, but just to summarise all the advice you've been getting over the past days: you have to kick butt, and you have to come off as likable. Also, you have to be spontaneous, but based entirely on pre-memorised phrases. In short: you need to be a genial attack dog. Like Seamus, of blessed memory, except simultaneously more vicious and more lovable. And if anyone's got the "people skills" to pull that off, it's you
S PS. Visualisation tip, based on a book I've been reading about public speaking: imagine that your whole audience is plutocrats at a fundraiser (so you feel comfortable) – but plutocrats who've just lost millions of dollars as a result of a failed private-equity deal (so you show empathy). That's the sweet spot! === To: Mitt Romney
From: Stuart Stevens, Chief Campaign Strategist
Subject: I'm three whiskeys in at this point Heyyyy … we did our best, right?? Can't fault us on that. I mean, I'm not giving up or anything – we can still win this thing, yadda, yadda, yadda – but what a wild ride that was, huh? Crazy. Running for president. Us! Can you believe it? I love you, man. I mean it: I love you. The hotel bartender is giving me funny looks now, but I don't care. We've had a blast, haven't we? Oh, man. Good times. S PS. This is actually a really clever reverse-psychology trick to get you to think that you've already lost, so that you relax and hit it out of the park. PPS. I am drunk though. For real. PPPS. Wait, I'm not supposed to TELL you about the reverse-psychology trick. Ah, screw it! Now it probably won't work. PPPPS. I'm really drunk. Going to bed now. === To: David Axelrod, Senior Campaign Adviser
From: Barack Obama
Subject: Re: Debate prep, final thoughts Thanks for your thoughts. You ask: "Are you feeling calm about the whole thing?" – you're joking, right? Of course I'm calm. Look, I know what I'm doing here. I get it. I have to keep my answers short, and when Romney starts talking and talking … I should let him. Oh, and I need to "avoid being condescending". Yeah, look, I think you'll find I know how to avoid being condescending. I got this. BHO
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Athens has been told to cut the Greek minimum wage cut and make pension reforms as the negotiations with its international lenders drag on
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ACLU hails decision as judge Robert Simpson says 2012 voters will not have to show photo identification before casting ballots A judge in Pennsylvania has put on hold a key provision of the state's contested voter ID law that required all voters to show an authorised photocard before they could cast their ballot in November's presidential election. Judge Robert Simpson of the Pennsylvania commonwealth court allowed most of the state's new voter ID law – one of the toughest in the country – to stand. But he put on hold a provision that would have required anyone unable to produce photo ID to file a preliminary vote and then validate their ballot within six days of the vote by producing the card. The judge's preliminary injunction on the photo card requirement will last only for the 2012 presidential election. Simpson said he had decided to impose it because "I am not still convinced that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the commonwealth's implementation of a voter identification requirement for purposes of the upcoming election". The ruling is subject to a possible appeal by the state to the Pennsylvania supreme court. Advocates for voting rights hailed the judgement as a victory for their cause. Wendy Weiser, an expert on the subject at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU school of law, said the ruling would help to keep US elections free, fair and accessible to all. "Implementing a sweeping new voter ID law so close to an election would prevent eligible citizens from voting and having their say in our democracy. We are pleased the court refused to allow politicians to manipulate the system for their own benefit by rushing through new voting requirements that would keep out legitimate voters." The Pennsylvania voter ID law was one of the most egregious examples of a spate of hardline legislation that has swept the country. Since January 2011, 19 states have passed a total of 24 laws that erect new hurdles to voting, the most common of which is a requirement to show photo ID cards. Proponents of the laws have insisted they are necessary to combat fraudulent ballots. But in practice, proven examples of fraud at the ballot box are fleetingly rare, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union have argued the measures disenfranchise vulnerable communities such as ethnic minorities, older people, disabled people and the young. The Pennsylvania legislation caused extra consternation earlier this year when Mike Turzai, leader of the Republicans in the Pennsylvania assembly, said at a rally of party members: "Voter ID, which is going to allow governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania. Done." The law also caused alarm after Pennsylvania election officials released figures that suggested that some 758,000 registered voters did not have valid photo cards – suggesting up to 9% of the electorate could be disenfranchised. In his deliberations, Simpson rejected the 9% figure as inflated, but he also found that the state's claim that just 1% of voters were without valid identification was an underestimate. The battle over Pennsylvania's voter ID law has been so fierce in part because of the state's rich crop of electoral college votes – it holds 20 of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. In 2008, Obama won the state with 54% of the vote to John McCain's 44%. This year most polls are putting Obama again comfortably in the lead in Pennsylvania. The Real Clear Politics tracker poll has the president eight points head on 50% to Mitt Romney's 42%.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of the Labour conference in Manchester, including Ed Miliband's speech
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former IMF chief remains under investigation over alleged complicity in pimping operation Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, will not face a criminal investigation over the alleged group rape of a Belgian sex worker after French prosecutors dropped their preliminary inquiry. Strauss-Kahn, once a Socialist French presidential hopeful, remains under formal investigation in France over alleged complicity in a pimping operation as part of an inquiry into a prostitution ring centred on the luxury Carlton hotel in Lille. Police are examining whether sex workers were procured for orgies with Strauss-Kahn and flown across the world to him while he was head of the IMF. During police interviews for the Carlton case, two Belgian sex workers had described group sex in December 2010 at a Washington hotel with Strauss-Kahn and others, while he was head of the IMF. One detail in their testimony caught the attention of investigators. The witness statements suggested a sex worker had said no to certain sex acts, but that her wrists were held down and the acts went ahead. The sex worker in question, now 26, had said in her witness statement to Belgian police: "I didn't shout, but I clearly said in a raised voice that I didn't want to." Although the woman did not file a legal complaint for rape, French officials opened their own preliminary inquiry to establish whether rape charges could be brought against Strauss-Kahn and other men present. The French prosecution service said on Tuesday that after a preliminary inquiry, the issue would not be pursued. The sex worker had written to judges saying that she had consented to the sex act and would not file a complaint. Le Monde reported that in her letter, the sex worker had said that if her hands were held down, it was because it was a "sex game" and she had initially "refused" but had then "accepted without force". The Carlton hotel prostitution inquiry continues and Strauss-Kahn is still being formally investigated over pimping. His lawyers have said he denies involvement in pimping, saying he did not know women at the orgies were sex workers and that he did not pay them. He has denied any violence. Strauss-Kahn is a political pariah in France since his arrest over the alleged attempted rape of a New York hotel worker in May 2011. Criminal charges against him were dropped by prosecutors, citing concerns about the credibility of the accuser. But the hotel worker, Nafissatou Diallo, is currently pursuing a civil case against him in New York.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Athens has been told to cut the Greek minimum wage cut and make pension reforms as the negotiations with its international lenders drag on
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates after the US state department suggest video showing the captured journalist Austin Tice may have been staged by the Syrian government
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | One agent killed and another wounded on horseback patrol in Naco, 100 miles south-east of Tucson at the US-Mexico border A US border patrol agent was killed and another wounded in a shooting early Tuesday in Arizona near the US-Mexico line, according to the border patrol. The agents were shot while patrolling on horseback in Naco, Arizona, at about 1.50am local time Tuesday, the border patrol said in a statement. The agents who were shot were on patrol with a third agent, who was not harmed, according to George McCubbin, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing about 17,000 agents. McCubbin said he had no further information on the shooting. The wounded agent was airlifted to a hospital after being shot in the ankle and buttocks. He is in surgery and expected to recover, McCubbin said. Authorities have not identified the agents, who were assigned to the Naco station, about 100 miles south-east of Tucson. The last agent fatally shot on duty was Brian Terry, who was killed in a shoot-out with Mexican bandits near the border in December 2010. The shooting was later linked to the Operation Fast and Furious gun smuggling operation. The border patrol station in Naco was recently named after Terry. The FBI and Cochise County sheriff's office, which are investigating the shooting, did not immediately return calls Tuesday morning.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Guardian survey reveals marked drop compared to 2008 as Democrats attack GOP for trying to suppress minority voters The Democratic and Republican parties are struggling to engage new voters in this year's presidential race, with an apparent deficit of enthusiasm suppressing the number of people who have registered to vote ahead of the 6 November election. A Guardian survey of six of the most crucial swing states upon which the outcome of the presidential ballot is likely to depend has found that new voter registrations recorded between January and August this year are markedly down compared with the same period in 2008. The drop is particularly pronounced in several states for the Democrats – a likely indication that Barack Obama's re-election team has been unable to match the exceptional levels of voter excitement generated by his candidacy four years ago. The six states included in the Guardian survey – Colorado, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia – are all being bitterly fought over by Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney. Backed by their respective Democratic and Republican parties, both candidates have sought to maximise turnout by running registration drives in an attempt to attract new voters to their cause. The Republicans this year have also pursued an aggressive policy of challenging voter rolls in an attempt to wheedle out what they claim are fraudulent names. The Democratic party and voter rights organisations have accused the Republicans of acting maliciously in an attempt to suppress the number of black, poor, elderly and young people registering to vote. The biggest decline among registered voters within the surveyed swing states was in Florida. Between January and July this year, the state added 224,750 voters – 82,638 fewer than the same period in 2008. A similar comparison of the first seven months of 2012 and 2008 shows a dip in voter registrations of 25,486 in Iowa, 23,009 in Virginia, 19,199 in Nevada and 9,566 in Colorado. The declines look particularly dramatic on the Democratic side, largely as a reflection of how well the Obama campaign did in mobilising new voters in its first run on the presidency in 2008. This year it has clearly struggled to repeat the performance. In Iowa, Democrats registered 69,301 voters between January and August 2008, but over the same period this year the party's voter roll dropped by more than 45,000 as a result of the voting rolls being purged. Republicans in Iowa by contrast held relatively steady – they put on 7,515 voters in the first eight months of 2008 and 5,671 this year. If previous elections are any indication, however, swing states will see a bump in voter registrations in the final two months before the election. In 2008, Iowa registered 3,232 more Democratic voters in September and 7,076 in October. A spike was also felt in Nevada, where Democrats registered 32,729 voters in September and 26,550 voters in October. In 2008, Obama's Florida registration efforts played a crucial role in securing him the state, and with it the presidency. That year, the Democrats registered a thumping 196,490 voters while Republicans signed up just 54,394. Yet in 2012, Democrats have only mustered about a quarter of their huge successes last time round: 50,909 voters. Republicans have also held steady in this state with 56,154 new registrants this year compared to 54,394 in 2008. Voting rights experts in Florida blame the overall slump in registrations this year – with 82,638 fewer voters being registered between January and July than in the same period in 2008 – on a spate of aggressive legislation coming out of the Republican-controlled state assembly. The laws, which included threats of criminal prosecution for volunteers should they not follow the rules by the letter, had such a chilling effect that many non-partisan organisations suspended their voter registration operations entirely. The League of Women Voters of Florida stopped registration drives for more than a year, until the courts intervened and overturned the new laws on the grounds that they were unconstitutional. The league's president, Deirdre Macnab, said that the Guardian's figures confirmed the pernicious impact of voter suppression laws in the state. "The voter suppression laws have served to inhibit and repress crucial voices that need to be heard in our elections. They were playing politics with our voting rights," she said. Macnab added that the suspension of voter registration drives had a particularly adverse impact on communities that traditionally suffer from low election turnout such as poor people, ethnic minority voters, students, older and disabled people. All those groups tend to lean towards the Democratic party, helping to explain the fact that registration is sharply down for Democratic voters this year while Republican figures have remained stable. In Ohio, voter rights activists are reporting low levels of political enthusiasm. This classically politically divided state, which Obama won in 2008 with just 51.5% of the vote, is showing a clear drop in the number of new registered voters. The manner in which Ohio tabulates its data makes it difficult to compare with other states. Whereas most states compile an aggregate of registered voters, Ohio only counts how many new voters register every month. That said, the trend stands when comparing new registration numbers month to month. In July and August 2008 Ohio registered 76,227 and 81,479 voters respectively. In 2012 during the same months voter rolls were 51,964 and 78,681. Sean Sukys, a volunteer with Rock The Vote in Ohio, which encourages young people to participate in the democratic process, said he had been taken aback by how many people said they didn't care about the election this year. "It's surprising to me that they'd say they didn't care about the future of the country – but then America is not the most educated population so maybe it's only to be expected." While the decrease in registrations may have something to do with the tone of the election itself, the Lawyers' Committee's manager for legal mobilization Eric Marshall cited voting restrictions as an undeniable contributor. "Our voter registration system is stuck in the 19th century. Unfortunately, the discourse in our democracy right now is more focused on policies that make it hard for certain people to vote," he said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Federal task force brings suit in New York civil court over packages sold to investors during US housing boom The federal mortgage task force that was formed in January by the justice department filed its first complaint against a big bank Monday, citing a broad pattern of misconduct in the packaging and sale of mortgage securities during the housing boom. The civil suit against Bear Stearns & Co, now a unit of JP Morgan Chase, was brought in New York state court by Eric T Schneiderman, the state attorney general. Schneiderman is also a co-chairman of the task force, known as the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. The complaint contends that Bear Stearns and its lending unit EMC Mortgage defrauded investors who purchased mortgage securities packaged by the companies from 2005 through 2007. The firms made material misrepresentations about the quality of the loans in the securities, the lawsuit said, and ignored evidence of broad defects among the loans that they pooled and sold to investors. Moreover, when Bear Stearns identified problematic loans that it had agreed to purchase from a lender, it was required to make the originator buy them back. But Bear Stearns demanded cash payments from the lenders and kept the money, rather than passing it on to investors, the suit contends. Unlike many of the other mortgage crisis cases brought by regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the action does not focus on a particular deal that harmed investors or an individual who was central to a specific transaction. Rather, the suit contends that the improper practices were institutionwide and affected numerous deals during the period. A spokesman for Schneiderman declined to comment on the filing. A representative of JP Morgan, which acquired Bear Stearns in a fire sale in March 2008, said it would contest the allegations. ''We're disappointed that the New York AG decided to pursue its civil action without ever offering us an opportunity to rebut the claims and without developing a full record – instead relying on recycled claims already made by private plaintiffs," said Joseph Evangelisti, the bank's spokesman. He added that the allegations all predate JP Morgan's acquisition. To be sure, the allegations in the suit against Bear and EMC are not new. The task force complaint closely echoes legal arguments made in recent years by numerous private litigants trying to recover losses in mortgage securities. Most of these cases continue to inch their way through the courts. Late last week, for example, JP Morgan lost a round in one of these battles when Jed S Rakoff, a federal judge in Manhattan, rejected the bank's request to dismiss a complaint brought by Dexia, a Belgian-French bank. The European bank had bought $1.6bn in mortgage securities issued by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, another institution taken over by JP Morgan during the credit crisis. Nevertheless, some lawyers who are battling the large banks and investment firms on behalf of mortgage investors said they welcomed the action by the task force. Gerald H Silk, a lawyer at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann in New York, said: "The government's action represents a complete validation of the cases brought by investors who were duped by the fraudulent sale of mortgage-backed securities by JP Morgan, WaMu and Bear Stearns." The suit encompasses work begun by Schneiderman's office in the spring of 2011, according to people briefed on the investigation. The attorney general subpoenaed documents from JP Morgan Chase and from large mortgage insurers that had also brought cases against the banks for failing to live up to their promises about the types and quality of mortgages placed in loan pools and sold. New York investigators also capitalized on a cooperation agreement struck by Andrew Cuomo, the previous attorney general, with Clayton Holdings, a major firm in the business of evaluating mortgages. The firm provided documents and emails showing that Bear Stearns routinely ignored major defects on loans it was purchasing and pooling so that it could preserve its relationship with mortgage originators. After the mortgage fraud task force was created in early 2012, Schneiderman's office combined its efforts with the department of housing and urban development, the SEC, the inspector general of the federal housing and finance agency, the FBI and the department of justice.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Terror suspect wanted in US accused of 'abuse of process' in last-ditch appeal on medical grounds Legal arguments aimed at delaying the extradition of the Islamist cleric Abu Hamza and four other terrorist suspects are "much too late" and an "abuse of process", the high court has been told. After eight years of appeals through British and European courts, James Eady QC, for the government, said, "there must be finality in litigation." He added: "Those who litigate before the courts cannot store up points so as to achieve a delay that is to their advantage. That is all the more important in the context of extradition proceedings where there's a strong public interest. Justice delayed is justice denied. "It's incumbent on those challenging extradition to raise whatever points they have as soon as is possible. The courts will not continue a fresh cycle of proceedings if they have not done so. "It's an abuse to store up a point. The consequence of a store-up approach is to create unnecessary delay running contrary to the public interest." Lawyers for terrorist suspects facing imminent extradition to the US, including Abu Hamza, are due in court to make last-ditch appeals against their removal. The cleric, who was jailed for seven years for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred, has been fighting extradition since 2004. His lawyers are applying for an injunction delaying his deportation on the grounds of the 53-year-old's medical condition. They are seeking permission for him to be given an MRI scan. His medical condition, it is argued, has deteriorated partially because of sleep deprivation and continued confinement. Babar Ahmad, a computer expert, has been held in a UK prison without trial for eight years after being accused of raising funds for terrorism through a website. Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary are accused of being aides to Osama bin Laden. The court list does not mention the fifth suspect, Syed Talha Ahsan. The claims are being heard before Sir John Thomas, president of the Queen's bench division, and Mr Justice Ouseley. Last week, the European court of human rights in Strasbourg rejected further appeals to its upper chamber, agreeing with an earlier ruling that the human rights of the five terrorist suspects would not be violated by the prospect of life sentences or solitary confinement in a US "supermax" prison. The decision was seen as clearing the way for their deportation. The Home Office believes the decision should have exhausted legal avenues and is preparing to send them to the US as soon as possible. Supporters of Ahmad and Ahsan called for them to be prosecuted in this country for their alleged connection to an extremist website. But the director of public prosecutions has rejected that request. In a statement, Keir Starmer said he declined to support the charges. He said: "I have refused to give my consent to Mr [Karl] Watkin to bring a private prosecution against Mr Ahmad and Mr Ahsan for offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. "The underlying evidence in support of these alleged offences is in the possession of the USA. The material provided to me in support of the proposed private prosecution has been carefully considered by a specialist lawyer in the CPS special crime and counter-terrorism division." Starmer said he had also consulted the attorney general, Dominic Grieve. "I have received written confirmation that the Metropolitan police service do not intend to refer any further documents or other material to the CPS for consideration," the DPP added. The grounds of Ahmad's application to the high court was that the DPP must be given more time to consider whether or not a private prosecution against him and Ahsan can go ahead in the UK. It is not clear whether the court will still be prepared to hear any claim given the DPP's decision. Karl Watkin, the businessman who brought the private prosecution, said: "The DPP's decision smacks of a determined effort to extradite both these men [Ahmad and Ahsan]. Yet their case is worlds apart from that of convicted Egyptian terrorist Abu Hamza. "The public will decry this decision as it supports a trial of British men thousands of miles from Britain, where the alleged crime was committed, simply because, in the DPP's opinion, the evidence is too weak to prosecute here. "If that's not outsourcing our criminal justice system, I don't know what is. To my mind, if you commit a crime in Britain, you get convicted in Britain. These two should be tried here and, if guilty, go to prison here. In my view, the evidence is clear and I have instructed my lawyers to consider asking the courts to order the DPP and attorney general to think again." On Monday night the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, put out a statement calling for Ahmad to be put on trial in the UK. He said: "Clearly the UK-US Extradition Act [2003] is unfairly balanced. In the case of Babar Ahmad, if there was a crime committed it was committed in this country. "There is absolutely no reason why this gentleman should not be produced before the British courts, arraigned and asked to answer to whatever his crimes are here in the UK." The court has allowed two days for the applications to be heard. Lawyers for Fawwaz are appealing against deportation on two grounds: prison conditions in the US and claims that the intelligence services have withheld crucial evidence. The missing material, it is alleged, would, if disclosed, undermine the case against him. The solicitor Gareth Peirce, a veteran of innumerable terrorism cases, is representing Ahmad and Ahsan.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 150 police reinforcements will track criminals threatening violence or boasting about crimes on Facebook and Twitter The New York police department is planning to double the size of its gang unit to 300 detectives to combat teen violence fueled by dares and insults traded on social media. Rather than target established street gangs involved in the drug trade, the reinforcements will focus mainly on "looser associations of younger men who identify themselves by the block they live on, or on which side of a housing development they reside," police commissioner Raymond Kelly said in prepared remarks. "Their loyalty is to their friends living in a relatively small area and their rivalries are based not on narcotics trafficking or some other entrepreneurial interest, but simply on local turf," Kelly added. "In other words: 'You come in to my backyard and you get hurt. You diss my crew and you pay the price.'" The remarks were provided in advance of Kelly's appearance Tuesday in San Diego at a gathering of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Under the new plan, the NYPD gang unit will work more closely with other divisions that monitor social media for signs of trouble. Kelly cited a recent case in which investigators used Facebook to track a turf war between two Brooklyn crews named the Very Crispy Gangsters and the Rockstars. The case resulted in dozens of arrests for shootings and other mayhem. "By capitalizing on the irresistible urge of these suspects to brag about their murderous exploits on Facebook, detectives used social media to draw a virtual map of their criminal activity over the last three years," Kelly said. Detectives have seen instances where a gang member has taunted rivals by circulating a photo of himself posing in front of their apartment building. Orders of protection also have been posted as a means of intimidation, Kelly said. The NYPD has developed strict guidelines for investigators using social networks "to instill the proper balance between the investigative potential of social network sites and privacy expectations," Kelly said. The rules allow officers to adopt aliases for their online work as long as they first get permission from the department. They also will use special laptops that protect their anonymity. Staffing for the expanded unit will come from gradual redeployment from other areas of the department, not from new hires.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mikheil Saakashvili says opposition led by Bidzina Ivanishvili will form new government after defeating UNM in parliamentary poll Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has conceded defeat in parliamentary elections, saying the opposition led by the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili will form the country's new government. In a TV address, Saakashvili said his ruling United National Movement (UNM) had lost to Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream coalition. He urged Georgians to respect the result. "We think their [the opposition's] views are wrong, but democracy works this way," he said. Officials figures have yet to be confirmed but government sources said the coalition would have 84 parliamentary seats and the UNM 66. Ivanishvili's six-party coalition appears to have won about 51% of the popular vote, with 41% for UNM and 9% for other parties. The results are a blow to Saakashvili, who led Georgia's rose revolution in 2003. They also amount to an extraordinary moment in its post-Soviet history, with power transferred for the first time democratically and thus-far peacefully between rival political forces. Georgia is now entering a new, messy and uncertain transitional era. The new parliament is set to nominate Ivanishvili to become prime minister. Saakashvili then has to approve the nomination and could, theoretically, reject it twice, triggering a constitutional crisis. On Tuesday, however, Raphaël Glucksmann, a senior presidential adviser, said that Saakashvili would not seek to thwart Ivanishvili. "Saakashvili is very disappointed [with the result]. But one thing he is certain about is that leaders don't cheat in elections, and don't govern against the popular will," he told the Guardian, adding that the "political dynamics" were with the opposition. The big political question is whether Saakashvili and Ivanishvili can co-operate, in the wake of an election campaign characterised by mutual vitriol. Government sources painted Ivanishvili, who made his $6.4bn (£4bn) fortune in Russia, as a Kremlin stooge; the opposition branded Saakashvili a tyrant. Under Georgia's constitution, the president will retain executive powers and carry on until the end of his term next October. After that Georgia shifts from a presidential to a parliamentary system. Over the next 12 months, then, Saakashvili will have to work closely with Ivanishvili, the likely prime minister, and consult with him on foreign policy and agree to his state budget. Ghia Nodia, a former education minister who now runs a Tbilisi thinktank, said: "You have Saakashvili's emotionality and Ivanishvili's bizarre character. But it's in both their interests to co-operate. "If Ivanishvili accepts this power-sharing arrangement, he will see it as a transitory stage towards acquiring full power," he said. Nodia said the president deserved credit for allowing the democratic process to take its course: "Whatever happens next, Saakashvili has vindicated himself to an extent. He is not a perfect democrat. But he is more democrat than autocrat. In autocracies, oppositions can't win elections." Excluding the Baltic states, the only former Soviet country where an incumbent leader has conceded an election is Ukraine, with President Viktor Yushchenko accepting defeat in 2010. Since then, however, the winner, Viktor Yanukovych, has rapidly dismantled Ukraine's democratic structures, impervious to EU and US concern. On Tuesday some pessimists said they feared that Ivanishvili might be tempted to emulate Yanukovych and could mete out judicial punishment to his defeated political enemies. "The deep divisions in the country are slightly threatening. I sense vengeance, not just among people in the street but among [Georgian Dream] politicians who will be in the new parliament," Nodia said. Another unanswered question is Ivanishvili's policy towards Russia. The tycoon has said his foreign policy priorities are similar to Saakashvili's, and include European integration and Nato. But he also pledged to improve relations with Vladimir Putin and Russia, which have been disastrous since the 2008 Russian-Georgian war. If Ivanishvili does pursue Nato membership, this will put Georgia on a collision course with the Kremlin. Russia welcomed the preliminary results of Georgia's parliamentary election on Tuesday, saying ties that had been frozen in the wake of the 2008 war could be renewed following Saakashvili's defeat. "We are definitely looking forward for a fresh, new non-hostile, sober leadership in Georgia," Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, told the Guardian. A new leadership would be "very good, very positive for us", he continued. "If they have more political wisdom under a new leadership, then lots and lots of new roads can be opened for the country." Russia cut ties with Georgia in the wake of the 2008 war over South Ossetia, and both Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the current prime minister who was president at the time of the war, have refused to speak to Saakashvili. Relations are expected to improve under Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s. Peskov said the Kremlin had had no contact with Ivanishvili in the run-up to the vote. "We don't know him," he said. "We'll continue to watch very closely the preliminary results in Georgia, where the people are not in favour of the acting authorities so they should be changed." Georgian government sources said they had not been expecting to lose Monday's election. Opinion polls had put Saakashvili's party in front. They conceded that a video broadcast on 19 September showing prison officers beating and raping inmates with broom handles had turned public opinion against the authorities. Voters in the Georgian Orthodox church – unhappy with the government's socially liberal policies – had also supported the opposition in huge numbers, they said. Speaking at a victory rally on Monday night, Ivanishvili described his political plan as very simple. "When our victory is officially confirmed, I hope … parliament will approve me as a prime minister," he told Channel 9 television, which he owns.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Two authors among 23 fellows selected to receive no-strings-attached grant of $500,000 over the next five years Junot Díaz's debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, won him a Pulitzer; his short story collections brought him international acclaim. Now the 43-year-old's "spare, unsentimental prose" and "raw, vernacular dialogue" have landed him a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" grant. Twenty-three new MacArthur fellows were named by the MacArthur Foundation yesterday. They will each receive a no-strings-attached grant of $500,000 over the next five years – widely known as a "genius" grant – to allow them "unprecedented freedom and opportunity to reflect, create, and explore". From a geochemist to a paediatric neurosurgeon, to the authors Díaz and Dinaw Mengestu and the historian Dylan C Penningroth, the fellows were all chosen "for their creativity, originality and potential to make important contributions in the future". Díaz, said the foundation, offers "powerful insight into the realities of the Caribbean diaspora, American assimilation, and lives lived between cultures" in his novel and two collections of short stories, Drown and This Is How You Lose Her. Born in the Dominican Republic but resident in the US since his teens, the author "eloquently" unmasks the immigrant's life, said the foundation, creating "nuanced and engaging characters struggling to succeed and often invisible in plain sight to the American mainstream". Each fellow is told of his or her grant in a phone call "out of the blue", said the foundation. Díaz said it would be "transformational". "It allows you to focus on your art with very little other concerns. It's kind of like a big blast of privilege," said the author, who is also a professor at MIT. The 34-year-old Ethiopian-born Mengestu, author of the novels The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How to Read the Air, was awarded his MacArthur grant for "enriching [the] understanding of the little-explored world of the African diaspora in America in tales distilled from the experience of immigrants whose memories are seared by escape from violence in their homelands". Mengestu said that when he received the phone call about the $500,000 (£310,000) grant, he was in Africa, at a books festival in Nairobi. "It was obviously amazingly overwhelming and at the same time felt remarkably appropriate to be there and to be in a community that I felt I was desperately trying to reach out to," said the author and journalist. "Part of what the MacArthur fellowship does is remind me that the work I've done is relevant – not necessarily what I write about, but the people who populate my work. That those people have a significance and meaning that sometimes might be overshadowed or lost in the larger narrative of the world, and it's important to keep writing out of those experiences." Historian Penningroth, author of The Claims of Kinfolk, was given his grant for "unearthing evidence from widely scattered archives to shed light on shifting concepts of property ownership and kinship among African American slaves and their descendents following emancipation". Previous recipients of MacArthur awards include The Wire creator David Simon and the novelists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Yiyun Li and Cormac McCarthy, with 873 people picked since the programme was set up in 1981. The fellows are selected following a series of formal suggestions by hundreds of anonymous nominators, with a committee of around 12 members – also anonymous – making final recommendations to the foundation. Robert Gallucci, the president of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, said that this year's 23 fellows "demonstrate the power of creativity". "The MacArthur fellowship is not only a recognition of their impressive past accomplishments but also, more importantly, an investment in their potential for the future," he said. "We believe in their creative instincts and hope the freedom the fellowship provides will enable them to pursue unfettered their insights and ideas for the benefit of the world."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Eyewitnesses say one vessel went down within 10 minutes of the collision in one of territory's worst maritime disasters Six crew members from two Hong Kong ferries have been arrested after 37 people died in one of the worst maritime disasters in the territory's history. Hong Kong's chief executive has announced an inquiry into the collision, which took place off Lamma Island, about a mile south-west of Hong Kong. One of the ferries, used by the power company Hong Kong Electric, had 124 people on board as it carried them to watch the fireworks in Victoria Harbour to celebrate China's National Day. The other ferry, owned by the Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry (HKKF) company, was returning with passengers from Hong Kong Island. The collision happened just before 8.30pm local time, when more than 100 people were thrown into the water from the Hong Kong Electric boat. Rescue work is continuing , with officials warning that passengers could be trapped inside the half-sunken HK Electric ferry. A crane was also brought in to lift the boat out of the water. After the collision, the HKKF vessel continued into Yung Shue Wan harbour, on Lamma. Some passengers on the HKKF suffered light injuries as they were thrown from their seats. The HK Electric boat was allowed to carry up to 200 passengers, the company said, denying that it had been too full. According to passengers, the ship went down very fast, within 10 minutes of the collision, giving any passengers trapped inside very little time to escape. Government departments sent 28 rescue boats and two helicopters quickly to the scene. Twenty-nine passengers were dead at the scene, while a further eight were pronounced dead in hospitals across the territory. Police appealed for more information on the incident. Hong Kong's secretary for security, Lai Tung-kwok, said at a press conference police had arrested "six individuals this afternoon. They are being investigated for endangering people's lives at sea." The territory's police commissioner, Andy Tsang, said those arrested were involved in the operation of both vessels, and he did not rule out more arrests. One Hong Kong resident, Tina Tucker, who was staying with friends in Pak Kok on Lamma, described what she could see from the shore as the night's dramatic rescue continued. "I saw the bow sticking out of the water, Titanic style," she said. "The helicopters were circling with big searchlights across the surrounding water, as were a lot of smaller boats with lights." "There are a number of sampans and junks that have come for a look, but the police have been patrolling and keeping them at a distance." Chris Head, 48, a Lamma resident of 18 years who was on the HKKF ferry, told the South China Morning Post: "Initially we were trying to put on our life jackets, so we were more concerned with that. But after a few minutes, probably about five, I could see that the end – I couldn't tell whether it was the bow or the stern – of the boat was sticking vertically out of the water." Hong Kong's transport system is generally efficient, and fatal incidents are very rare. Relatives of those who died visited mortuaries and paid their respects to the dead by throwing paper money into the sea. Hong Kong's chief executive, CY Leung, visited survivors of the incident in hospitals across Hong Kong, and announced an inquiry. He arrived at Ap Lei Chau, towards the south side of Hong Kong Island, on Monday evening to receive updates from the emergency services. The Lamma Strait is a busy shipping channel. More ferries than usual were scheduled on Monday, which was a public holiday to celebrate National Day, and was also part of an extended weekend marking the mid-autumn festival.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A digest of Arnie's 650-page, aptly-named autobiography, Total Recall – from muscles to movies and from Maria to Mildred Like most profoundly unfunny people, Arnold Schwarzenegger is very proud of his sense of humour. Hardly a page goes by in Total Recall, his whopping 650-page memoir, without a reference to some sticky situation he got out of through cunning use of deadpan or a passing zinger – for example, when he debated Arianna Huffington during the 2003 California gubernatorial race: "If she got overly dramatic, I could say, 'I know you're Greek' or 'Switch to decaf.'"
The other thing you learn from Arnie's book is that everything in life has a bodybuilding analogy. Once in office, losing a dispute with the labor unions was like "losing to Frank Zane in Miami [Mr Universe, 1968] when I first came to America." Bonnie Garcia, the state legislator he got into trouble with for referring to as "very hot" because of her "black and Latino blood", reminded Arnie of "Sergio Oliva, the Cuban weightlifting champion I battled for the Mr Olympia title back in the 1970s." I'm sure Ms Garcia was thrilled by this news. There are many, many more delights in the book, particularly if you imagine them being read aloud to you by Schwarzenegger. Here are 15 of the best: 1. As a boy in rural Austria, Arnie was given a Hitler storybook, depicting the triumphs of the Third Reich, with space for a child to stick in his own pictures, and which was one day quietly removed from the house. When he asked his mother what happened to it, "All she would say was, 'We had to give it up.'" 2. Arnie was so obsessed with coming to America, he tried translating his name into English, but it didn't really work. "Black corner" was the nearest he got, although "'black plowman'," he writes, "would be closer." In his first film, a B movie called Hercules, producers suggested he be billed as Arnold Strong, since no one could pronounce Schwarzenegger and it was too long for the movie poster. His accent was so thick they dubbed over him. 3. At 18 years old, Arnie had 19-inch biceps and built a bodybuilding routine to put Zoolander to shame. "I started to see how I could choreograph my moves and ride the melody like a wave – quiet moments for a concentrated, beautiful three-quarter back pose, flowing into a side chest pose as the music rose and then – wham! – a stunning most-muscular pose at the crescendo."
4. This is an actual sentence in the book: "Finally, I smiled and hit my double-biceps pose, one of my best. That brought a roar from the crowd. Sergio answered with his trademark two-arm overhead victory pose. Again, the crowd went nuts, chanting 'Sergio! Sergio!' I executed a chest pose, which he started to match but then thought better of it, shifting to a 'most-muscular' shot. More screams for Sergio. I did my best trademark pose – the three-quarters back – but that wasn't enough to turn it."
5. He thinks Nixon was a great guy and a fabulous president, if you overlook Watergate. 6. In his early 20s, Arnie put down every last cent he made as a bricklayer and from his mail order fitness pamphlets, on a six-family block in LA that became the foundation of a multimillion-dollar real estate empire. (The building cost $215,000. He put down $27,000, borrowed another $10,000 from a friend, and took out a mortgage on the rest. He quadrupled his money in three years. Within 10 years, he was in position to buy an entire city block in Santa Monica: $7m for 39,000 square-feet. For any of you with lingering doubt: he's not a dummy.) 7. When Arnie was in his 20s, his father would still return letters he had written to him with spelling mistakes marked up and corrected. 8. After meeting a 21-year-old Maria Shriver at a celebrity tennis tournament, the first words Arnie said to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, her mother, were: "Your daughter has a great ass." (Eunice replied, "That's very nice.") As Arnie says, meeting these kind of people could have been intimidating, but luckily, he had "the kind of personality that put people at ease". 9. Arnie thought Shriver was beautiful, brilliant and an amazing catch. Or as he phrases it, "The fling with Brigitte Nielsen underlined what I already knew: I wanted Maria to be my wife." 10. Arnie despairs of most artists' crapness with money and rightly points out that: "Picasso would go into a restaurant and do a drawing or paint a plate for a meal. Now you go to these restaurants in Madrid, and the Picassos are hanging on the walls, worth millions of dollars. That wasn't going to happen to my movies."
11. This is an actual sentence in the book: "I was mad as hell because I felt that every one of the killings in Conan [the Barbarian] was well shot and extraordinary. So what if the first thing you see is Thulsa Doom raiding Conan's boyhood village and that his mother's head goes flying through the air?"
12. It is a very, very long wait for the first reference to Mildred the housekeeper. Arnie summarises his affair and the birth of his love-child thus: "Mildred had been working in our household for five years, and all of sudden, we were alone in the guest house. When Mildred gave birth the following August, she named the baby Joseph and listed her husband as the father. That is what I wanted to believe and what I did believe for years."
13. He presents his reticence on the matter as an extension of his devotion to public service: "At the time I found out for sure that Joseph was my son, I didn't want the situation to affect my ability to govern effectively."
14. He is sorry and would like to get back together with Maria. 15. This is an actual sentence in the book: "Maria and I are very different in that way. She grew up in a world where a sharp line was drawn between friends and the help. With me, there is almost no line."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Court ruling follows billion-dollar Samsung fine for infringing Apple patents and too closely mimicking its designs A US court has lifted a temporary sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, allowing the company to sell the product in the US. While the Galaxy 10.1 is an older model, the lifting of the ban could still help Samsung in the runup to the pivotal holiday shopping season. The court had previously fined Samsung a billion dollars for infringing Apple patents and too closely mimicking its designs. "We are pleased with the court's action today, which vindicates our position that there was no infringement of Apple's design patent and that an injunction was not called for," Samsung said in a statement. Separately, Samsung filed a motion on Monday against Apple in a California court saying the iPhone 5 had infringed on some of the company's patents – and indicated that it will begin legal action aimed at banning it from sale in the US, a move which could cripple Apple's business. "We have always preferred to compete in the marketplace with our innovative products, rather than in courtrooms. However, Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition," Samsung said in a statement. It said it had "little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights". Samsung is said to be the world's largest smartphone maker, ahead of Apple, but lags in the tablet field, where it sold an estimated 2m devices in the second quarter of this year against Apple's 17m iPads. The world's top two smartphone makers are locked in patent disputes in 10 countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative market. The legal fight began last year when Apple sued Samsung in multiple countries, and Samsung countersued. Since then though neither side had won a decisive victory – until Apple's billion-dollar win, which is now being disputed by both sides. Samsung claims the jury used flawed reasoning, while Apple is seeking to raise the damages by about $700m ($433m). Meanwhile, Samsung's use of patents deemed essential to standards such as 3G networking has triggered an antitrust investigation by the European commission which could lead to a fine if it is found to have abused its ownership of those patents. The injunction on the Galaxy tablet had been put in place ahead of the month-long trial which Apple won in the US. However, the jury found that Samsung's tablet had not violated Apple's D'889 "trade dress" patent – essentially covering the cosmetic appearance of Apple's iPad – which was the basis for the tablet injunction, and Samsung argued the sales ban should be lifted. "The court does not agree with Apple that Samsung's motion for dissolution of the 26 June preliminary injunction cannot be fairly decided without resolving Apple's post-trial motions," Judge Lucy Koh said in her ruling. Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mariano Rajoy has told regional presidents that he will not seek external help this weekend, amid reports that Germany wants Madrid to wait
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Officials investigate after remains of Terry Vance Garner are found in animal enclosure Oregon authorities are investigating how a farmer was eaten by his pigs. Terry Vance Garner, 69, never returned after he set out to feed his animals last Wednesday on his farm near the Oregon coast, the Coos county district attorney said on Monday. A family member found Garner's dentures and pieces of his body in the pig enclosure several hours later, but most of his remains had been consumed, the district attorney, Paul Frasier, said. Several of the pigs weighed 320kg (700lb) or more. It is possible Garner had a medical emergency, such as a heart attack, or was knocked over by the animals, then killed and eaten, Frasier said, adding that at least one pig had previously bitten Garner. The possibility of foul play is being investigated as well. "For all we know, it was a horrific accident, but it's so doggone weird that we have to look at all possibilities," Frasier told the Register-Guard newspaper. A pathologist was unable to identify a cause or manner of death, the newspaper reported. The remains will be examined by a forensic anthropologist at the University of Oregon. Garner was "a good-hearted guy" who cared for several huge adult sows and a boar named Teddy, said his brother, Michael Garner, 75, of Myrtle Point. "Those animals were his life," Michael Garner said. "He had all kinds of birds, and turkeys that ran all over the place. Everybody knew him." Michael Garner said one of the large sows bit his brother last year when he accidentally stepped on a piglet. "He said he was going to kill it, but when I asked him about it later, he said he had changed his mind," the brother said. Domestic pigs are not typically known to be as aggressive as their feral cousins, but "there is some degree of danger associated with any animal", John Killefer, head of the animal and rangeland sciences department at Oregon State University in Corvallis, told the newspaper. While pigs "are more omnivorous than other farm animals, [such as] cows", Killefer said the case was highly unusual. Most pigs are raised until they reach a market weight of between 113kg and 136kg, while breeding female pigs rarely weigh more than 181kg, Killefer said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | European stock markets fall as the saga of Spain's bailout continues
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Court ruling follows billion-dollar Samsung fine for infringing Apple patents and too closely mimicking its designs A US court has lifted a temporary sales ban on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, allowing the company to sell the product in the US. While the Galaxy 10.1 is an older model, the lifting of the ban could still help Samsung in the runup to the pivotal holiday shopping season. The court had previously fined Samsung a billion dollars for infringing Apple patents and too closely mimicking its designs. "We are pleased with the court's action today, which vindicates our position that there was no infringement of Apple's design patent and that an injunction was not called for," Samsung said in a statement. Separately, Samsung filed a motion on Monday against Apple in a California court saying the iPhone 5 had infringed on some of the company's patents – and indicated that it will begin legal action aimed at banning it from sale in the US, a move which could cripple Apple's business. "We have always preferred to compete in the marketplace with our innovative products, rather than in courtrooms. However, Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition," Samsung said in a statement. It said it had "little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights". Samsung is said to be the world's largest smartphone maker, ahead of Apple, but lags in the tablet field, where it sold an estimated 2m devices in the second quarter of this year against Apple's 17m iPads. The world's top two smartphone makers are locked in patent disputes in 10 countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative market. The legal fight began last year when Apple sued Samsung in multiple countries, and Samsung countersued. Since then though neither side had won a decisive victory – until Apple's billion-dollar win, which is now being disputed by both sides. Samsung claims the jury used flawed reasoning, while Apple is seeking to raise the damages by about $700m ($433m). Meanwhile, Samsung's use of patents deemed essential to standards such as 3G networking has triggered an antitrust investigation by the European commission which could lead to a fine if it is found to have abused its ownership of those patents. The injunction on the Galaxy tablet had been put in place ahead of the month-long trial which Apple won in the US. However, the jury found that Samsung's tablet had not violated Apple's D'889 "trade dress" patent – essentially covering the cosmetic appearance of Apple's iPad – which was the basis for the tablet injunction, and Samsung argued the sales ban should be lifted. "The court does not agree with Apple that Samsung's motion for dissolution of the 26 June preliminary injunction cannot be fairly decided without resolving Apple's post-trial motions," Judge Lucy Koh said in her ruling. Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | European stock markets fall as the saga of Spain's bailout continues
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Eyewitnesses say one vessel went down within 10 minutes of the collision off Lamma Island At least 37 people have been killed in a ferry collision in Hong Kong, prompting the territory's chief executive to announce an inquiry into the incident. The collision on Monday evening took place off Lamma Island, which lies about a mile south-west of Hong Kong. One of the ferries, used by Hong Kong Electric, had 124 people on board as it carried them towards Hong Kong where they were due to watch the National Day fireworks in Victoria harbour. The other ferry, owned by Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry (HKKF), was returning with passengers from Hong Kong Island. Rescue work was continuing on Tuesday as officials said there may be passengers trapped inside the half-sunken HK Electric ferry. The collision happened at 8.30pm local time, after which the HKKF vessel continued into Yung Shue Wan harbour on Lamma. The HK Electric boat was allowed to carry up to 200 passengers, the company said. According to passengers, the ship went down very fast – within 10 minutes of the collision – giving any passengers trapped inside very little time to escape. There were several dozen people in the water to be rescued, police reports said. A number of emergency boats appeared quickly on the scene as two helicopters shone beams over the site. Twenty-eight people were confirmed dead at the scene, as injured and shocked passengers were transported to hospitals on Hong Kong Island. A number of passengers on the HKKF boat suffered injuries as they were thrown from their seats with the impact, but there were no deaths reported. Hong Kong resident Tina Tucker, who was staying with friends in Pak Kok on Lamma Island, described what she could see from the shore. "I saw the bow sticking out of the water, Titanic style," she said. "The helicopters were circling with big searchlights across the surrounding water as were a lot of smaller boats with lights." "There was a large crane on a big tug trying to lift it this morning, but they didn't get very far, so they've now brought in a larger boat. There are a number of sampans and junks that have come for a look, but the police have been patrolling and keeping them at a distance." Chris Head, 48, a Lamma resident of 18 years who was on the HKKF ferry, told the South China Morning Post: "Initially we were trying to put on our life jackets so we were more concerned with that. But after a few minutes, probably about five, I could see that the end – I couldn't tell whether it was the bow or the stern – of the boat was sticking vertically out of the water." Hong Kong largely has an efficient transport system, and incidents involving fatalities are very rare. Hong Kong's chief executive, CY Leung, promised an inquiry into the incident. He arrived at South Horizons towards the south side of Hong Kong Island on Monday evening to receive updates from the emergency services. Other government officials went to the hospitals to see the passengers as they came in. The Lamma Strait is a busy shipping channel. There were more ferries than usual scheduled on Monday as it was a public holiday to celebrate China's National Day, which was also part of an extended weekend marking the mid-autumn festival.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | European stock markets expected to fall as the saga of Spain's bailout continues
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates after the US state department suggest video showing the captured journalist Austin Tice may have been staged by the Syrian government
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | More than 100 people rescued after crash between two boats near Lamma Island, off south-west coast of Hong Kong A boat packed with revellers on a long holiday weekend has collided with a ferry and sunk off Hong Kong, killing at least 36 people and injuring dozens, authorities said. The boat was carrying utility company workers and their families to famed Victoria Harbour to watch a fireworks display in celebration of China's national day and mid-autumn festival. The two vessels collided on Monday night near Lamma Island off the south-west coast of Hong Kong Island. The government said 36 bodies had been recovered as of Tuesday morning and the search was continuing. More than 100 people were rescued and sent to hospitals, and nine had serious or critical injuries, it said in a statement. After daybreak, the boat was half-submerged with its bow pointing almost straight up. A barge was tied alongside it, apparently to stabilise the sunken boat and keep it from tipping further. The government statement said low visibility and obstacles on the boat were making rescue efforts difficult. It said the possibility people were still in the vessel or missing could not be ruled out, though it did not give numbers. "There was a boat that came in close and crashed," said Yuen Sui-see, director of operations at Power Assets Holdings Ltd, which was using the vessel to take staff on the outing. "After the crash, the other boat continued away, it didn't stop." He denied the vessel was overloaded, saying it was carrying 121 passengers and three crew but had capacity for more than 200 passengers. Local news reports said the boat was hit by a ferry operated by the Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry company on a regularly scheduled service. RTHK said the captain of the other ship, which was slightly damaged but able to return to port, was afraid to stop in case it sank, too. "All of Hong Kong's emergency forces are focused here," said Hong Kong's leader, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. "Wide-ranging rescue work is being carried out on in the sea, land and in the air." Leung said he didn't know what caused the collision but promised a thorough investigation. Survivors said the boat started sinking rapidly after the collision. One woman told local television she swallowed a lot of water as she swam back to shore. Another man said he didn't know where his children were. Neither gave their names. Lamma is the third-biggest island in Hong Kong and near one of the Chinese coastal city's busiest shipping lanes. The island is home to about 6,000 people, including many of the former British colony's expatriate workers.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | High court to consider requests from Abu Hamza and other terrorist suspects against their extradition to the US Lawyers for terrorist suspects facing imminent extradition to the US, including the radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza, are due in court to make last-ditch appeals against their removal. Applications for injunctions halting the deportation of Abu Hamza, Babar Ahmed, Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary are listed for the Royal Courts of Justice. The court list does not mention the fifth suspect, Syed Talha Ahsan. The men, who are all in custody, are not expected to appear in court. The applications follow an announcement by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, that he will not support a private criminal action against two of the men, Ahmad and Ahsan, thereby clearing away another legal obstacle to their deportation. Hamza, who was jailed for seven years for soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred, has been fighting extradition since 2004. Ahmad, a computer expert, has been held in a UK prison without trial for eight years after being accused of raising funds for terrorism through a website. Al Fawwaz and Bary are accused of being aides to Osama bin Laden. The claims will be heard before Sir John Thomas, president of the Queen's Bench Division, and Mr Justice Ouseley.
Last week, the European court of human rights in Strasbourg rejected further appeals to its upper chamber, agreeing with an earlier ruling that the human rights of the five terrorist suspects would not be violated by the prospect of life sentences or solitary confinement in a US "supermax" prison. The decision was seen as clearing the way for their deportation following an eight-year battle through British and European courts. The Home Office believes the decision should have exhausted legal avenues and is preparing to send them to the US as soon as possible. All five are making desperate, last-ditch attempts to oppose the process. Supporters of Ahmad and Ahsan called for them to be prosecuted in this country for their alleged connection to an extremist website. But the DPP has rejected that request. In his statement, Starmer declined to support the charges. He said: "I have refused to give my consent to Mr [Karl] Watkin to bring a private prosecution against Mr Ahmad and Mr Ahsan for offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. "The underlying evidence in support of these alleged offences is in the possession of the USA. The material provided to me in support of the proposed private prosecution has been carefully considered by a specialist lawyer in the CPS special crime and counter-terrorism division." Starmer said he had also consulted the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, QC. "I have received written confirmation that the Metropolitan Police Service do not intend to refer any further documents or other material to the CPS for consideration," the DPP added. The grounds of Ahmad's application to the high court was that the DPP must be given more time to consider whether or not a private prosecution against him and Ahsan can go ahead in the UK. It is not clear wether the court will still be prepared to hear any claim given the DPP's decision.
Karl Watkin, the businessman who brought the private prosecution, said: "The DPP's decision smacks of a determined effort to extradite both these men [Ahmad and Ahsan]. Yet their case is worlds apart from that of convicted Egyptian terrorist Abu Hamza.
"The public will decry this decision as it supports a trial of British men thousands of miles from Britain, where the alleged crime was committed simply because in the DPP's opinion, the evidence is too weak to prosecute here.
"If that's not outsourcing our criminal justice system, I don't know what is. To my mind, if you commit a crime in Britain, you get convicted in Britain. These two should be tried here and, if guilty, go to prison here. In my view, the evidence is clear and I have instructed my lawyers to consider asking the courts to order the DPP and attorney general to think again."
Before hearing the DPP's announcement, Babar Ahmad's family had said: "We are simply asking for the court to put a hold on Babar's extradition so that the DPP has the necessary time and space to make a decision on the material provided to him in April 2012 which was kept hidden from him by the police for eight years." Labour's justice spokesman, Sadiq Khan, has supported calls for Ahmad to be prosecuted in the UK for his alleged involvement in an extremist website. Watkin is separately seeking permission from magistrates to bring a private prosecution against Ahmad and Ahsan for other criminal that do not require the DPP's consent. Legal sources suggested the home secretary, Theresa May, has discretion about whether or not to suspend an extradition order even if a private prosecution has begun.
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