|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Novak Djokovic won the end-of-season finale after two fantastic sets
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Outgoing director general urged to forgo £450,000 deal amid calls from Conservative backbenchers to review licence fee The outgoing BBC director general, George Entwistle, faced growing calls from politicians, from the prime minister down on Monday, to forgo some of his £450,000 payoff, amid Conservative backbench calls that the crisis of editorial standards should lead to a review of the continuance of the BBC licence fee. The BBC Trust defended the payout, which was twice the amount Entwistle was entitled to contractually, to ensure a speedy handover and his co-operation. If he had been dismissed, Entwistle would have been entitled to a full year's salary, and might have launched unfair dismissal proceedings, it was claimed. David Cameron led the condemnation, saying the size of the severance deal was "hard to justify". Maria Miller, the culture secretary, joined the criticism of the BBC Trust, saying it was wrong and hard to justify the payout to licence-fee payers. Later she suggested the National Audit Office investigate the payout, something the organisation said it would do. "Contractual arrangements are a matter for the BBC Trust," she said, "but the Trust also has responsibilities to ensure value for money for the licence fee payer. It is of course for Mr Entwistle himself to decide whether it is appropriate for him to accept those payments." The shadow culture secretary, Harriet Harman, also urged Entwistle to rethink his payoff, but warned that the BBC's competitors and commercial enemies were waiting to pounce and wound the corporation – a reference to the scale of criticism from News International. Miller assured MPs during a Commons statement that the BBC was an institution whose independence "is not and never will be in question". But Tory MPs widened the attack, urging Miller to ask the Trust chairman Lord Patten "what he intends to do about the excessive number of highly paid managers, which he now condemns as if he were a critic, rather than their boss." David Nuttall, the MP for Bury North, said he hoped "the debacle will bring forward the day when the British public will have the freedom to decide whether to pay to watch the BBC, rather than being forced to pay for it by the criminal law". Negotiations on the future cost of a TV licence are not due to start until 2015-16, but there is a feeling that the crisis will prompt the Conservatives into revisiting the regulation of the BBC in its 2015 election manifesto. At the moment, the licence fee is £145.50 for each household. The figure was frozen for six years in 2010, resulting in a 16% real-terms cut in BBC funds. Some backbenchers claimed development of technology such as iPlayers and iPads will make the licence fee unenforceable. The unanimous condemnation of the Entwistle payout, including claims it amounted to hush money, led to further calls mainly on the Tory right for Lord Patten, the Trust chairman, to join Entwistle in leaving the BBC. The move was also supported by the Labour MP John Mann. But Miller said Patten was needed to stay in office to ensure a period of stability, and to oversee the appointment of a new director general as well the handling of three reviews into the mistakes the BBC had made over the past months. The trust conceded Entwistle had been paid double the contractual entitlement. In a letter to the Commons culture select committee chairman, John Whittingdale, Patten said the payout was "justified and necessary." He wrote: "The alternative was long drawn-out discussions and continuing uncertainty at a time when the BBC needs all of its focus to be on resolving fundamental issues of trust in BBC journalism." He accepted that Entwistle's contract entitled him to only six months' payout if he resigned, but that he had been paid the equivalent of 12 months' salary. Patten wrote: "In the absence of George's honourable offer to resign, I would have had to speak to the trustees about the option of termination by us (which, fortunately, was not necessary). In these circumstances, George would have been entitled to 12 months' notice. "In circumstances where we needed to conclude matters quickly and required George's ongoing co-operation in a number of very difficult and sensitive matters, including the inquiries into issues associated with Savile, I concluded that a consensual resignation on these terms was clearly the better route". Whittingdale rejected the argument, and urged Entwistle to reconsider. Damian Collins, the Tory MP for Folkestone condemned "the extraordinarily generous payment to someone who did 53 days in the job. He's been paid effectively £10,000 a day for having done a job he failed at". This mood was echoed on the Labour benches with the culture select committee member Paul Farrelly warning: "The BBC Trust has compounded all the errors by agreeing to this misjudged double payoff and, in so doing, has made it doubly difficult for even the friends of the BBC, and there are many, to stand up for it". Entwistle had been paid much less than his predecessor, Mark Thompson, who earned £622,000 in his final year. Thompson's own salary dropped by about 25% during his eight years at the BBC. Tory MPs also repeatedly challenged the Labour MP and Labour vice-chairman, Tom Watson, to apologise for making allegations about a child abuse ring using the cloak of parliamentary privilege. They claimed his behaviour risked putting some witnesses to child abuse off giving evidence to inquiries. Tim Loughton, the former children's minister, said the "sensationalist celebrity scalp hunting by opposition members and shoddy reporting by Newsnight have undermined the possibility that witnesses will come back". Tony Baldry, a senior Tory, also complained "some parliamentarians were so keen to have a crack at the previous Thatcher government by way of association and innuendo that they made no, or no reasonable, effort to check the accuracy of their assertions and accusations." A third Tory MP Sarah Woolaston called on Watson to apologise. Watson, not in the chamber on Monday, has not withdrawn his claims and said they had not referred to the north Wales child care home. Harman made no reference to his claims, but there is some unease about whether Watson has evidence to back his case. Labour has been trying to balance the need to catch the popular mood of anger over the BBC's behaviour in the past month, and its fear that the BBC debacle will be exploited to destroy the corporation. Harman warned: "In the heat of the crisis there are dangers we must avoid. We should not trespass on the BBC's independence. While it's imperative that the BBC reinstate professional standards, it's important that the pendulum does not swing so far the other way that the BBC becomes cowed and retreats into risk avoidance. The BBC is a loved and trusted institution, but it has enemies waiting to pounce". She asked Miller to "stand up against the commercial competitions and political opponents who are lining up to attack and wound the BBC at this moment of crisis." Miller replied: "Ultimately, the only organisation that can restore the public's trust in the BBC is the BBC itself," adding that the organisation had moved decisively in recent days. "The immediate task for the BBC must be to address whatever failings there have been within the editorial process, particularly with Newsnight, in order to restore public trust in the BBC," she said. Miller insisted the reviews set up by the government into child abuse at care homes would continue: "None of the developments in recent days should overshadow the investigations into the alleged horrendous abuse of children in institutions around our country".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Committee of MPs described a director from Amazon as being 'deliberately evasive' and displaying 'outrageous' ignorance Senior executives from Amazon, Starbucks and Google were accused of diverting hundreds of millions of pounds in UK profits to secretive tax havens during a fraught exchange with a committee of MPs. Members of the public accounts committee described a director from Amazon as being "deliberately evasive" and displaying "outrageous" ignorance after he failed to say how much profit is generated in Britain or who owns the online retailer's Luxembourg-based holding company. A senior figure from Starbucks, which employs more than 7,000 staff in more than 800 outlets in the UK, was told he was not believed when he claimed the coffee chain did not make profits in Britain. An executive from Google admitted it operates in Ireland because of a low corporation tax rate there of 12.5% and was later accused by the committee chair, Margaret Hodge, of "immoral" behaviour. Hodge told the executives that UK taxpayers are increasingly frustrated by the use of tax havens and creative accounting by large firms trading in Britain. "People want to know why companies which benefit from an infrastructure paid for by them and are paying people low wages who receive taxpayer-funded tax credits from the exchequer are not paying their fair share," she said. Amazon avoids UK taxes by reporting European sales through a Luxembourg-based unit, MPs alleged. This structure allowed it to pay a rate of less than 12% on foreign profits last year – less than half the average corporate income tax rate in its major markets. Andrew Cecil, Amazon's director of public policy, was accused of being "totally evasive" after failing to explain who owned the company, and was unable to detail the income made by the Britain arm of his business. Hodge claimed the director was not a "serious person" to appear before the committee and vowed to order another senior executive to appear before it to fill in the blanks in his evidence. She asked why customers buying books through a UK website are billed from the UK and goods are delivered from UK centres but taxes are paid in Luxembourg. Cecil said some taxes are paid in Britain. Amazon.co.uk paid £1.8m in corporation tax on more than a £200m turnover for 2011. He added that the firm was being investigated by the tax authorities in France. Starbucks paid no corporation or income tax in the UK in the past three years, it emerged last month. The world's biggest coffee chain paid £8.6m in total UK tax over 13 years during which it recorded sales of £3.1bn. Troy Alstead, its global chief financial officer, faced repeated claims from MPs that it engaged in aggressive tax avoidance in the UK as he tried to explain its corporate affairs. He declined to give details publicly of a favourable rate granted it in the Netherlands on a proportion of profits transferred there in the form of an intellectual property "royalty" on UK shops. Dutch authorities wanted that to remain confidential, he claimed, prompting allegations it was a "sweetheart" deal that bosses wanted to keep under wraps. Tory MP Stephen Barclay said a reduction in the level of that royalty from 6% of sales to 4.7% after talks with HM Revenue & Customs appeared to be merely a "cosmetic" move. It resulted in an £8m increase in corporation tax, Alstead said. He was unable to give any breakdown of how either figure was calculated. Alstead claimed that globally Starbucks remains "an extremely high tax payer" but had failed to generate substantial UK profits. "Respectfully I can assure you there is no tax avoidance here," he said. Asked to say what rate the firm paid in Amsterdam, where it had a roasting operation, he said tax authorities there had asked for it not to be disclosed publicly. Google's filings show it had £2.5bn of UK sales last year, but despite having a group-wide profit margin of 33%, its main UK unit had a tax charge of £3.4m in 2011. The company avoids UK tax by channelling non-US sales via Ireland, an arrangement that allowed it to pay taxes at a rate of 3.2% on non-US profits. It also diverts some of its profits through Bermuda. Matt Brittin, the head of its northern Europe operation, said that Google operates in Ireland and Bermuda because they offer attractive tax rates. "Like any company you play by the rules [and] manage costs efficiently to offer fair value to shareholders," he said. "We're not accusing you of being illegal, we are accusing you of being immoral," replied Hodge. All three companies have been asked to supply further information to the committee. Another Amazon executive will be asked to appear before the committee in two weeks to respond to unanswered questions, Hodge said.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Game-by-game report: Will the world No1 or world No2 prevail in the final of the ATP World Tour Finals? Find out with Sean Ingle
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | New National Coalition claims its 'accountability and unity' has assuaged concerns about arming rebels The Syrian opposition says it has been promised western military support in return for forming a united front, in advance of a donors' conference in London on Friday intended to consolidate the new rebel coalition. British officials say the conference will discuss purely non-lethal aid to the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, formed on Sunday in Doha, but neither British or French officials are ruling out arming the opposition in the coming months in an attempt to break the bloody deadlock in Syria. The conflict showed more signs of spreading as Israeli tanks fired at Syrian positions for the second time in as many days in response to Syria mortar fire landing on the Israeli-held Golan Heights, and a Syrian government jet bombed a rebel-held village just yards from the Turkish border. Turkey has raised the possibility of asking Nato to deploy Patriot anti-aircraft missiles along its southern border. It has yet to put a formal request to the alliance, but Turkish officials said that the latest bombing showed that it was necessary for it to strengthen the defences on its southern flank. Turkey, which has about 120,000 Syrian refugees on its territory, is also pushing for expanding western backing for the rebels. The new National Coalition, which claims to represent 90% of Syrian opposition groups, including the various rebel armed forces inside the country, said it expects to take Syria's seat at an Arab League meeting on Wednesday in Cairo, and then be recognised as the country's provisional government by western and Arab governments at a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" in Marrakech next month. "The international community realises the situation in Syria is unsustainable and that its own self-interest is at stake as it destabilises the region," said Yaser Tabbara, a coalition spokesman. "We have assuaged a lot of the concerns and fulfilled a lot of preconditions on the Syrian armed opposition in terms of accountability and unity, and I believe the international community is ready to invest in the opposition both militarily and politically. That is the sense we got in Doha." Tabbara said the coalition would be asking for "the types of weapons with which we can enforce our own no-fly zones", a reference to portable anti-aircraft missiles which the rebels have long been seeking. Western officials have had deep misgivings about providing such missiles in case they ended up in terrorist hands and were used against civilian airliners, but they are increasingly alarmed about the destabilising consequences of non-intervention. Qatar and Saudia Arabia have provided most of the rebels' arms supplies, but those weapons have gone disproportionately to extremist Salafist and jihadist groups, who have been increasingly prominent in Aleppo and other fronts in the civil war. Britain and the US are reviewing their current policy of restricting their assistance to non-military equipment. Spurred on by a prime minister frustrated with the military impasse and the rising death toll, the British government has announced it is opening talks with rebel commanders, while the French military are believed to be making contingency plans for supplying weapons. Welcoming the formation of the National Coalition, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, made a pointed reference to the prospect of arming the opposition. "France – who recognizes the Syrian people's right to defend themselves against the attacks of the criminal regime in Damascus – very much hopes this coalition can be quickly consolidated, enjoying the broadest possible support from Syrians and the international community," Fabius said. On the eve of Tuesday's Arab League meeting in Cairo, western officials have been urging the coalition leadership to act fast to turn the Doha agreement into an functioning alternative administration, to speed international recognition and arms supplies. "We are not entirely there," a European diplomat said. Syrian opposition leaders say, in return, they can only establish the necessary structures once they receive more western backing. "We keep hearing about this concept of sequencing," Tabbara said. "But we are in a Catch 22. We are told we will get the serious support once we have operational structures in place but we in the middle know things are more complex. In order to build a government with full authority inside the country we need support and political recognition. We are trying to balance this Catch 22 as delicately as we can, and try to move in parallel with the demands of the international community." Syria is likely to figure in the EU summit next month, but so far no member state has put the existing EU arms embargo on the agenda. Revising or lifting it would require the unanimous agreement of all 27 member states. UK lawyers are looking at whether the wording of the embargo agreement, allowing a state to supply weapons if it determines it "is intended solely for humanitarian or protective use", provides a loophole. Western capitals may hope that the credible threat of heightened intervention could be enough to persuade Russia and China to agree to a UN security council resolution putting sanctions on Assad. Russia has thus far been adamantly opposed to a punitive UN action against the regime, a close regional ally. Russia gave the new coalition a cool reception, urging it to negotiate with Assad and to reject "outside interference".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Woman who had affair with David Petraeus gave speech about the CIA chief's handling of the Libya assault last month The CIA has dismissed as "baseless" and "uninformed" claims made by the former lover of ex-agency chief David Petraeus that Libyan militants were held in secret US prisons prior to the deadly Benghazi consulate attack. Paula Broadwell, the biographer whose affair with Petraeus led to his abrupt resignation Friday, alleged that the assault, in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed, was an attempt to free men being detained in a covert CIA annex. Speaking last month at the University of Denver, Broadwell further alleged that Petreaus knew about the secret holding cells. President Barack Obama stripped the CIA of its power to take prisoners through an executive order signed soon after his inauguration in January 2009. It put an end to the controversial network of secret jails that operated under the administration of President George W Bush. The 11 September attack on the US consulate in Benghazi resulted in the deaths of four Americans. The assault – and what the White House was told about the need for additional security prior to the attack – has since been the subject of political debate in Washington. Congressional bodies are due to hold hearings about the incident on Thursday. Petraeus had been expected to give evidence but his resignation has seemingly robbed lawmakers of the chance to grill him over what he knew, and what he passed on to senior administration figures prior to the attack Broadwell's allegations over the motive of militants in attacking the consulate are likely to fuel speculation over the timing of Petraeus's resignation. In an answer to a question reading the CIA chief's handling of the incident, the biographer said: "Now, I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted." She added: "The challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position, he's not allowed to communicate with the press. So he's known all of this – they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in, in Libya. Within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening." The comments were recorded and posted in a YouTube clip which has since been taken down. On Monday, the CIA was quick to shoot down Broadwell's claims. "Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless," agency spokesman Preston Golson said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Long-awaited Troika report into Greece is still not finished, as IMF and Europe continue to argue over the country's debt levels. Agreement tonight looks unlikely
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Report claims that revenue from Marange fields has been channelled into 'parallel government' loyal to Robert Mugabe Diamonds worth at least $2bn (£1.26bn) have been stolen by the Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's ruling elite, international dealers and criminals, in "perhaps the biggest single plunder of diamonds the world has seen since Cecil Rhodes", a watchdog has claimed. Revenue that could have revived the country's ailing economy has been channelled into a "parallel government" of police and military officers and government officials loyal to Mugabe, according to Partnership Africa Canada (PAC), a group campaigning against "blood diamonds". The Marange fields in eastern Zimbabwe were discovered in 2006 and are one of the world's biggest diamond deposits. But funds from diamond sales have not reached the state treasury, says a PAC report, published on Monday to coincide with a Zimbabwe government conference on the diamond trade in Victoria Falls. Instead there is evidence that millions have gone to Mugabe's inner circle. "Marange's potential has been overshadowed by violence, smuggling, corruption and most of all, lost opportunity," says PAC. "The scale of illegality is mind-blowing" and has spread to "compromise most of the diamond markets of the world." The report, Reap What You Sow: Greed and Corruption in Zimbabwe's Marange Diamond Fields, describes the $2bn lost to the Zimbabwean treasury since 2008 as a "conservative estimate". Tendai Biti, the finance minister, said in his latest budget he had been promised $600m in diamond revenue for the national treasury to help rebuild neglected hospitals, schools and other public services. Only a quarter of that pledge has been received, he claims. The PAC names Obert Mpofu, mines minister since 2009 and a key Mugabe ally, as perhaps the biggest winner. He has amassed an unexplained personal fortune and is linked to a "small and tight group of political and military elites who have been in charge of Marange from the very beginning" and who are personally benefiting from the diamond sales, the report alleges. Mpofu spent more than $20m‚ "mostly in cash"‚ over the past three years, the report says, and owns vast swaths of land. "While Mpofu is not the only Zanu official benefiting from Marange's riches, his role as the chief guardian of Marange raises the most concern," the report says. Mpofu insists that western economic sanctions have prevented the government from getting fair prices for the diamonds on the international market. He has repeatedly refused to give exact figures on diamond revenues, the PAC claims. In 2010 leading industry insiders, including Filip van Laere, a Belgian diamond expert working for the Mugabe government, forecast the country could produce as much as 30m to 40m carats a year, worth about $2bn annually, the PAC report says. The diamonds are being mined and sold but the funds are not reaching the Zimbabwean treasury, according to the report. Instead they are going to Mugabe's allies, a group of Zimbabwean military generals and foreigners in South Africa, China, Dubai, India and Israel. Most of the revenue is lost through a lack of transparency in accounting for how many diamonds are mined, how much is earned from their sales, the underpricing of gems on world markets, smuggling and a "high level of collusion" by government officials. Records show that 10m carats of Marange diamonds were exported to Dubai in late 2012 for $600m, which the report says is half the value it should have been. This "underscores a price manipulation scheme perpetrated by Indian buyers and their Zimbabwe allies, with whom they are believed to share the spoils," the report says. PAC's researchers were also unable to trace a 2.5m carat stockpile, valued at around $200m, which mysteriously disappeared in November 2011. It charges that $300m in diamond sales never made it to the Zimbabwe treasury in 2011. The report also criticises the Kimberley Process for allowing the misuse of funds to happen. "Calls for greater transparency have been dismissed within the Kimberley Process," it says. "The lack of transparency surrounding Zimbabwe's diamond revenue is a matter of critical public interest and amplifies concerns for some time that these revenues are funding a parallel government" of Mugabe loyalists, many known to be building private mansions and buying luxury cars costing far in excess of their income from tax-funded salaries, the report adds. Analysts have warned that the diamond wealth could boost Mugabe's war chest for elections expected next year, giving it a huge advantage over prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. Mugabe's Zanu-PF dismissed the report as politically motivated. Rugare Gumbo, a party spokesman, said: "Our view is that PAC is just there to destabilise the situation in southern Africa. The Kimberley Process monitor and other monitors have been here and say it's being done properly. What people don't understand is that we had to bring order to a process that was chaotic." He added: "PAC don't believe we should benefit from the resources of our country. The scapegoat always is President Mugabe because of the regime change agenda." Mpofu told Voice of America: "I will not dignify those baseless accusations with a response. This is pure madness, rank madness really from a group that is sponsored by countries that do not want to see us benefiting from our diamonds. "They can continue to talk but we will not look back. Zimbabwe's diamonds are the best and they are hurting that they are not mining in Marange, that's all. We are used to this. They release reports ahead of major conferences and Kimberley plenary sessions but we are not fazed at all."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Senate to open inquiry into FBI's investigation of affair with Paula Broadwell amid questions of why Congress wasn't told Former CIA chief David Petraeus was said Monday to be "devastated" by the scandal-tainted collapse of his career, as those around his former lover warned of more to "come out" regarding the affair. "He sees this as a failure, and this is a man who has never failed at anything," said an unnamed friend, quoted on CNN. "It's going to take a long time" for him to move on from the scandal, retired army colonel Steve Boylan, a former spokesman for Petraeus, added in an interview with NBC's Today show. Boylan, who said he spoke with Petraeus over the weekend, said the former general's wife of 38 years, Holly, is "furious". He also said Petraeus ended the affair four months ago. Three days after the announcement that one of the biggest names in national security had stepped down from his post in disgrace, details of how the Petraeus affair became public are just beginning to emerge. "This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out," Paul Krantz, the father of Petraeus's mistress Paula Broadwell told the Daily News from his home in Bismarck, North Dakota. "There is a lot more that is going to come out … you wait and see. There's a lot more here than meets the eye." The FBI began to investigate Petraeus after it received complaints about "harassing" anonymous emails Broadwell sent to Jill Kelley, a state department military liaison who was friends with the general. In the course of reading Broadwell's emails, the FBI found sexually explicit correspondence with Petraeus, the New York Times first reported. The investigation of Petraeus began over the summer but was kept secret from Congress. One member of the Obama administration, attorney general Eric Holder, was informed of the investigation "by late summer", the Wall Street Journal quoted US officials as saying. President Barack Obama reportedly found out Thursday morning – just one day before the affair was made public. Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein found out when she saw the headlines. Feinstein has warned she will open a Senate investigation into the apparent delay in notification about an affair that "could have had an effect on national security". "We should have been told," Feinstein said on Fox News Sunday.
The FBI investigation of Broadwell determined there was no threat to national security. The first elected official to know of the affair appears to have been Washington state congressman Dave Reichert, who brought the matter to the attention of House majority leader Eric Cantor. "Our office stands by the accuracy of the New York Times article as it pertains to Rep Reichert," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "We have no further comment about our involvement." Petraeus was scheduled to appear at a closed Senate hearing this week on the fatal attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Critics of the president sought to make the administration's early statements about the attack, which inaccurately described a spontaneous protest, an issue in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. That criticism has now expanded to allegations that Broadwell, who got to know Petraeus while writing his biography, was privy to classified information about the Benghazi attack.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The US could become self-sufficient, while 90% of Middle Eastern oil could go to China, according to new estimates The US will shed its long-standing dependence on Saudi Arabian oil within the next decade, redrawing the world's political systems, heralding a new era of geopolitics – and potentially leading to runaway global warming. In a report released on Monday, the world's foremost energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency (IEA), said the US will benefit from so-called unconventional sources of oil and gas, including shale gas and shale oil, derived from blasting dense rocks apart to release the fossil fuels trapped within. These sources could fuel the US's energy independence, and make the country the world's biggest oil producer by 2017. But if pursued with vigour, they would also lead to huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions that would put hopes of curbing dangerous climate change beyond reach. If this happens, more than 90% of oil and gas from the Middle East could be sold to Asia, and chiefly to rapidly developing countries such as China, within the same timeframe, the IEA has predicted. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, and one of the world's foremost authorities on energy and emissions, said the outlook for action on climate change was bleak, unless the US changed direction rapidly. "Climate change has been slipping down the agenda," he said. "It is not having a significant impact on energy investors." Companies were excited by the prospect of shale gas, which has been subject to widespread development in the US in the past decade, and shale oil, which relies on newer technology but is set for its own boom, according to the IEA's analysis. Birol said the outlook for cutting emissions was doubtful. "I don't see much reason to be hopeful that we will see reductions in carbon dioxide," he told the Guardian in an interview. "We have seen more carbon dioxide emitted this year." He pointed out that subsidies to fossil fuels had increased, even while government assistance for renewable energy around the world had been cut or thrown into doubt. But he said that if countries outside the US wanted to make their industries more competitive, they should invest in energy efficiency and renewables. He also called for progress at the United Nations climate change talks in Doha, at the end of this month. Europe could remain shackled to fossil fuel imports if it fails to develop its natural resources in the form of renewable energy, the IEA found in its World Energy Outlook, the definitive annual examination of the world's energy sources. Gas prices in the US are at present about five times cheaper than those of the EU, but that is unlikely to change in the short term because of the difficulty for the US in exporting gas. Instead, most of the US gas glut will be used domestically, which could drive down costs for industry and allow US manufacturers to undercut international competitors. Birol said the EU should exploit its potential for energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, in order to stay competitive. The IEA said that the result of new technology allowing the exploitation of new sources of fossil fuels would be a redrawing of the international energy map. In the past five decades, the US has relied increasingly on the Middle East for its oil. But if the US were to be self-sufficient in energy, as it could be by 2035, that would mark a huge shift in world politics. The relationships between the US and the Middle East have for decades been defined by the former's thirst for oil to fuel an automobile-driven economy. George W Bush tried to redraw this relationship after September 11 2001 by encouraging the use of biofuels in the US, made from turning maize into car fuel. But this endeavour has run into serious problems, as this year's drought pushed up grain prices and focused attention on the question of how far food crops could be turned into fuel without raising prices and compromising food production. Birol said the exploitation of "unconventional" fossil fuels represented the biggest redrawing of the energy map for decades. "This makes a huge difference," he said. But he said there was still hope of avoiding disastrous levels of climate change as a result, if companies opted to pursue energy efficiency, which could yield immediate benefits in cutting energy bills. Ed Matthew, director of the thinktank Transform UK, warned: "Energy independence will not increase national security in the US if it leads to runaway climate change. Ultimately the majority of fossil fuel reserves will need to be left in the ground. The US is a hotbed of technological innovation. It must use this creative muscle to develop a low-cost, clean energy revolution. It will only achieve this if the massive vested interests of the American oil industry are brought under democratic control." Rolf Wuestenhagen, director of the institute for economy and the environment at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, questioned whether the boom in shale gas in the US could continue in line with the predictions: "It seems surprising that IEA still expects half of the increase in global gas production by 2035 to come from unconventional gas. Is this wishful thinking?" Niall Stuart, chief executive of Scottish Renewables, said that the report showed that renewable energy was still being disadvantaged by subsidies poured into fossil fuels, in the UK, Europe and around the world. He said: "This puts into context the level of financial support given to fossil fuel-based electricity generators such as coal and gas compared to renewable energy. We hope these figures will silence the vocal minority of naysayers who repeatedly claim renewable technologies such as wind power are too expensive." The IEA also said that renewable energy had become an "indispensable part of the global energy mix" and could become the world's second biggest source of power generation by 2015.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Clash, 52, who voices Elmo, denies allegations that he had an inappropriate relationship with 16-year-old seven years ago The puppeteer behind beloved Sesame Street character Elmo has taken a leave of absence to prepare "action to protect his reputation" amid accusations of underage sex. Sesame Workshop said in a statement that a 23-year-old man contacted the company in June and claimed that he was 16 when he began a relationship with puppeteer Kevin Clash. Sesame Street said it spoke with the accuser twice and had a meeting with Clash. It also conducted its own investigation of the claims and could not substantiate the accuser's allegations of underage conduct. The investigation did say that Clash "exercised poor judgment and violated company policy regarding internet usage". Sesame Workshop said he was disciplined for this conduct and Clash has left the show indefinitely following the accusations. "Kevin insists that the allegation of underage conduct is false and defamatory and he is taking actions to protect his reputation," said Sesame Workshop. "We have granted him a leave of absence to do so." Clash, 52, has been with Sesame Workshop for more than 30 years and was the subject of 2011 documentary Being Elmo: a Puppeteer's Journey, which explored his role in making Elmo an integral part of US television. He has won multiple Daytime Emmys for his performances, and published an autobiography about his career in 2006 called My Life as a Furry Red Monster: What Being Elmo Has Taught Me About Life, Love and Laughing Out Loud. Sesame Workshop said: "Elmo is bigger than any one person and will continue to be an integral part of Sesame Street to engage, educate and inspire children around the world, as it has for 40 years."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | IDF says it made direct hit, believed to be on Syrian mobile artillery, in response to shell landing near post in Golan Heights Israeli forces have fired into Syria for the second day in a row after a mortar shell landed close to an army post in the Golan Heights, amid fears that Israel could become sucked into the conflict across the border. The Israeli military confirmed that tank shells fired by its troops in response to the mortar had made a direct hit. According to military sources, a Syrian mobile artillery battery was the target. An Israeli government official hinted that the Damascus regime could be deliberately targeting the Golan. "Up until yesterday, our assessment was that ordnance that had fallen in Israel was a spillover from the internal conflict inside Syria. Our assessment has changed in the past 24 hours," the official told the Guardian. On Sunday, the Israel Defence Forces fired across the ceasefire line between Syria and the Golan Heights – which Israel has occupied since 1967 – for the first time since the Yom Kippur war almost 40 years ago. Israel has filed complaints with the United Nations, whose forces patrol the demilitarised zone between Syria and the Golan, and warned that cross-border fire "will be responded to with severity". Mortars from Syria have landed in the Golan five times in the past week. There has also been some cross-border gunfire, and three Syrian army tanks briefly entered the demilitarised zone last weekend. Some Israeli observers fear that Syria's beleaguered president, Bashar al-Assad, may seek a confrontation with Israel as a way of rallying support for the regime after more than 18 months of civil war. Israel's military chief, Benny Gantz, warned a week ago that the "Syrian issue … could become our issue." On Sunday, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for restraint from both Israel and Syria. "The secretary general is deeply concerned by the potential for escalation. He calls for the utmost restraint and urges Syria and Israel to uphold the disengagement agreement, respect their mutual obligations, and halt firing of any kind across the ceasefire line," said a statement issued by his office. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 six-day war, and later annexed it. Although the two countries are still technically at war, the area has been relatively quiet. However, the Syrian government has demanded the return of the Golan as part of any peace agreement with Israel. About 20,000 Druze villagers living in the Golan identify strongly with Syria and there are close family links across the buffer zone. The Israeli government has been reluctant to comment publicly on the civil war in Syria but it is deeply concerned about instability in the region. It says Islamic jihadists are increasingly operating in Syria, the Egyptian Sinai and Gaza. Meanwhile, rockets continued to be fired from Gaza into southern Israel despite Egyptian efforts to broker a ceasefire after a weekend of escalating violence. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told a gathering of 50 ambassadors in Ashkelon, a city close to the Hamas-governed territory, that Israel had "the right and obligation to defend its citizens". Amid speculation that Israel may be preparing a ground operation inside Gaza to halt rocket fire, Netanyahu said: "We will not sit idly in front of recurrent attacks that occur almost daily, against our citizens and our children … None of your governments would accept such a situation. We do not accept such a situation, and I as prime minister of Israel am not prepared to accept this situation, and we will act to stop it." More than 20 people were treated for shock after a rocket hit a house in Netivot on Monday morning. Six Palestinians, including four civilians, were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza over the weekend.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Volunteers in affected neighbourhoods describe mounting problems with many people still trapped in their homes Beverly Stricklin stood with hundreds of others in a line outside a Coney Island church on Saturday night. After 11 days without heat or power, the 48 year-old single mother hoped to find socks and a blanket. A public housing resident, Stricklin suffers from a debilitating disease that requires bi-weekly medical appointments. She intends to see a doctor this week but is unsure where to go. Three blocks down the street, the neighborhood's only hospital remained closed. The Brooklyn facility was forced to evacuate its patients and lock its doors in the wake of superstorm Sandy nearly two weeks ago. Like many others in her neighborhood, Stricklin stayed in her home as Sandy battered the east coast, despite a mandatory evacuation order. As water filled the first floor of her building, she huddled with her 18-year-old daughter on a bed they pulled into the kitchen. "We didn't have anywhere to go," Stricklin said. A single flood lamp provided light inside Coney Island Gospel Assembly, where Stricklin sought help. Scores of volunteers – some wearing headlamps – handed out non-perishable food, baby supplies and clothing to a steady stream of residents. Due to the outpouring of volunteer support, Stricklin was able to acquire the supplies she needed, and then some. Sandy was over in a matter of hours, but for Stricklin and thousands of others the recovery process is far from through. While progress has been made, volunteers and residents say serious problems are mounting. The historic storm killed over 120 people in 10 US states – along with nearly 70 in the Caribbean – and knocked out power for 8.5 million. Roughly 120,000 New York and New Jersey customers remained without power through the weekend. In New York City, half of those entering their second week without heat, hot water or electricity – about 35,000 people – live in public housing. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said Sandy may have left as many as 40,000 people homeless. The Long Island Power Authority has faced harsh criticism for its response to the storm. As of Sunday evening, nearly 50,000 of the homes and businesses that rely on the company remained without power. An additional 55,000 were unable to connect to local grids due to flooded wiring and equipment. Sandy's New York death toll rose to 43 over the weekend. The NYPD revealed that on October 31, Queens resident Albert McSwain, 77, died after slipping in a wet, unlit stairwell. On Friday, police discovered the body of 64-year-old marine veteran David Maxwell, amid upturned furniture in his Staten Island residence. Volunteers in both Coney Island and Far Rockaway – a neighborhood on New York City's Rockaway Peninsula – described similar sets of challenges, among them elderly and mentally ill people trapped in their homes, without heat, power and access to medicine. Volunteers in both areas claimed to have encountered residents using stoves to heat their homes, inviting the risk of potential carbon monoxide poisoning. "The complications are building up by the minute," said Rockaway resident Brett Scudder, 38. "I know personally of a lot of people who are using their stoves to keep them warm." Since the storm hit, Scudder has been going door to door in his neighborhood checking on residents and organizing volunteers to do the same. "People are tired. They're frustrated. They want their lives to go back to the way they used to be," he said. Scudder says he has found residents moving back into homes with walls covered in mould and worries that respiratory illnesses could result. He believes that there are likely more dead bodies in homes that have not been searched. "I think we have some fatalities here that we're not seeing. I really do." With an estimated $50bn in damages, Sandy is the second most expensive disaster in US history, surpassed only by hurricane Katrina. President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit New York City's hardest-hit areas on Thursday. On Sunday, the US secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, made her second visit to the Staten Island since the storm struck. The island has suffered the highest concentration of Sandy-related deaths in the country. Many residents feel their borough was forgotten in the days immediately following the storm. Napolitano vowed to provide ongoing support for the island's recovering communities. "This is going to be here for the long term," she said. "And we are here for the long term as well." On the streets of Far Rockaway there were small signs of hope Sunday. Naomi Bachrach, 50, shouted for joy outside her two-story home. When asked why she was celebrating, Bachrach pointed to her garage. "Lights," she said. "You see that? Lights." For the first time since the storm struck, her family had power again. Members of the national guard were seen driving through Far Rockaway in camouflaged Humvees on Sunday. The previous day, the mayor's office – along with the national guard, the Red Cross, Fema and local organizations – established a hot food and clothing distribution center in the neighborhood. Hundreds of families tolerated long lines in a desolate supermarket parking lot to collect pre-packaged meals, cartons of water and donated clothing. Outside the Coney Island church on Saturday night, thousands of people were served hot meals provided by any unlikely collaboration of construction companies, pizzerias, plumbers, fashion designers and private citizens. Dino Redzic, co-owner of Uncle Paul's Pizza, a Manhattan restaurant, stayed up all night Friday preparing enough paninis to feed 6,000 people. By the time he finished volunteering Saturday night, the food was gone. "These people deserve a hot meal," Redzic said. Volunteer Cleo Wade agreed. A stylist for the upscale Manhattan clothing line, Alice and Olivia, Wade's company was among the first to respond in Coney Island by coordinating prominent New York restaurants to provide meals for residents. As a survivor of hurricane Katrina, Wade felt it was crucial to offer Sandy's victims meals they would enjoy. "We want to feed people what we eat. A lot of people are like 'just give them a quick meal or a ready meal or whatever,' but it's like, 'but you wouldn't eat that if somebody handed it to you,'" she said. Wade believes the people of Coney Island would do the same if Manhattan was in need. "The people of Coney Island are so amazing I bet you they would be the first ones helping us." For Coney Island resident, Yamilet Ramirez, 30, a mother of two young children, the volunteers were a godsend. "It's a blessing," she said. "Ain't no Thanksgiving out here. We're very happy they did this for us. It's really bad right now."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former director general of the BBC is new boss at the Times as fallout over Savile accusations takes down other executives Brushing off suggestions that a scandal engulfing former colleagues at the BBC would impact on his new job, Mark Thompson's tenure at the New York Times began Monday as the crisis at his old employer escalated. The paper's new boss has repeatedly insisted that he had no knowledge of the child abuse scandal linked to former star presenter Jimmy Savile now rocking the BBC. Hundreds of people, some as young as 12, are believed to have been sexually abused over the course of decades by Savile, once one of the BBC's best known stars. The scandal has sparked a police investigation, two official inquiries and led to the resignation of George Entwistle, Thompson's successor at the BBC, and several other key executives. "Like many people I'm very saddened by the recent events at the BBC. But I believe that the BBC is the world's greatest broadcaster. I have no doubt it will once again regain the public's trust both in the UK and around the world. It is full of people with real integrity and talent and I have no doubt it will get back on its feet really soon," Thompson told ITV News on Monday morning. Asked what the crisis would mean for his position at the Times, he replied: "It will not in any way affect my job." New York Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr sent an email to staff Monday morning welcoming Thompson, who joins, he wrote, at "a time of tremendous change and challenge". The email did not mention the fiasco at the BBC. Last month, as the scandal broke, Sulzberger gave Thompson his full support. "In the months leading to our decision to bring Mark to the Times Co, Michael Golden, our vice chairman, and I, along with the rest of our board of directors, got to know Mark very well," he wrote in a letter to staff. "Our opinion was then and remains now that he possesses high ethical standards and is the ideal person to lead our company." But his appointment in the face of the scandal has been questioned internally, most notably by Times public editor Margaret Sullivan. "His integrity and decision-making are bound to affect the Times and its journalism – profoundly. It's worth considering now whether he is the right person for the job, given this turn of events," she wrote in a recent column. Thompson was the BBC's director general from 2004 to October 2012. He was not in charge during the years when Savile is said to have engaged in widespread child abuse. The former children's TV presenter died last October, and Thompson was in charge as Newsnight, the BBC's flagship news programme, was preparing an expose of the Savile scandal. That programme was subsequently shelved, but the BBC did run a package of Christmas tributes to Savile, a decision that has ultimately led to senior resignations and heavy criticism at a parliamentary hearing. Thompson initially said he had no knowledge of the Newsnight programme. He later said he had a "chance meeting" with a journalist who mentioned the investigation into Savile. "I wasn't told any specific lines of inquiry and certainly not anything related to the BBC," he told the New York Times. Lecturing as a visiting professor at Oxford University earlier this month, Thompson once again said he had nothing to do with the decision to drop Newsnight's investigation into Savile. "Like many other people at the BBC and despite what you may have read, I had heard none of the stories about Jimmy Savile," he said. Thompson has agreed to answer questions by parliament and by the independent investigators examining the events at the BBC.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Parliamentary committee investigating tax paid by multinational companies says coffee chain's claim 'doesn't ring true' MPs have told a Starbucks executive that his claim that the coffee chain continually makes a loss in Britain "just doesn't ring true". Appearing before a committee investigating the tax paid by multinational companies, Troy Alstead, Starbucks's chief financial officer, denied lying to shareholders over the chain's accounts. Starbucks is reported to have paid nothing in corporation tax to the UK over the past three years, and has filed losses with Companies House for most of the years it has been operating in the UK. Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, questioned how that could happen when statements the committee had seen showed that a former chief financial operator said in 2007 the division had an operating profit rate of 15%. Alstead denied knowledge of the statements and said the first profit Starbucks made in the UK was £6m in 2006. Hodge questioned why the company had filed losses worth millions and then promoted the head of the UK business, Cliff Burrows, to take over the US operation. She said it did not ring true that the man in charge of such an unsuccessful division would be promoted. "You have run the business for 15 years and are losing money and you are carrying on investing here. It just doesn't ring true," Hodge said. "You are losing money. You have tried for 15 years and failed and you have promoted the guy who failed. It doesn't ring true Mr Alstead, that's what frustrates taxpayers in the UK." She added: "Are you lying to your shareholders?" Alstead replied: "Absolutely not. We are not at all pleased about our financial performance here. It is fundamentally true everything we are saying and everything we have said historically." The public accounts committee is also questioning Matt Brittin, chief executive of Google UK, and Andrew Cecil, public policy director at Amazon, in the wake of a wave of revelations about the tax affairs of international companies.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Governor Cuomo reportedly presented staggering inventory of repair needs as all residents set to have power restored New York officials are set to ask for more than $30bn in federal disaster aid to help recover from superstorm Sandy as power firms prepare to hook up the last remaining homes still without electricity. The state-owned Long Island Power Authority (Lipa) said it expected to restore power to most of the remaining 75,000 homes and businesses by the end of Tuesday – two weeks after the hurricane battered the region. Other utility firms in the region – ConEd in New York and units of Public Service Enterprise Group Inc and FirstEnergy Corp in New Jersey – restored service to almost all customers over the weekend. In all, Sandy left some 8.5 million electric customers without service in 21 states. The storm hit Lipa harder than any other power company, knocking out more than 1 million of its 1.1 million customers. Adding to its woes, a nor'easter last week knocked out power to 123,000 more customers, many of whom had had only just had their power restored after Sandy. Power firms said reconnecting cut off customers back to the grid proved to be the biggest challenge they have faced. But for many, the response by the utilities firms was not good enough. Lipa itself has said it is still unable to reconnect thousands of homes and businesses in the Rockaways due to flood damage making it difficult to repair electric cables. New York governor Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly attacked all of the affected New York power companies. "I share New Yorkers' frustration, I understand, we are not happy with the preparations or rate of recovery from the utilities companies. I promise the people of this state that utilities companies will be held accountable," the governor said last week. Cuomo is now spearheading the state's case for billions of dollars in federal assistance, according to a report Monday in the New York Times. The newspaper states that the governor's advisory panel have provided a staggering inventory of repair needs. Included is a requirement for $3.5bn to fix damaged bridges, $1.65bn to rebuild homes and $1bn to reimburse emergency services and city officials for overtime.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Long-awaited Troika report into Greece is still not finished, as IMF and Europe continue to argue over the country's debt levels. Agreement tonight looks unlikely
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | What can the flooded Italian city teach us about protecting our cultural treasures from hell and high water? Tourists lugging suitcases through waist-high water, or sitting at tables on Piazza San Marco in their swimwear. Pictures of Venice in flood are alarming and surreal; the inundation of 70% of the city following heavy rain – one of the most dramatic floods of modern times in Venice – is surely a catastrophe, an apocalypse. Well, not necessarily. We are used to thinking of Venice as a city in peril, a glorious relic of human creativity that is about to go under any day now – and suddenly the end looks closer. But there is another point of view. Venice is no longer alone in its peril. In the past few weeks we have even seen New York in peril. As climate change makes extreme weather more frequent, Venice looks less like a victim of the sea and more like an old survivor that can teach the rest of the world how to live with water. You barely notice, on a dry summer day when the waters are confined to their canals, how systematically the art treasures of Venice are kept on the upper floors of palaces and museums. One museum runs across the highest storey of the arcaded buildings that frame Piazza San Marco, while paintings in the Accadamia Galleries are similarly ensconced above ground. It is far more worrying to think about all the art in churches. But the fact is that no other city has such an acute awareness of borrowing its existence from water – or so much skill in that regard. In their art, the people of Venice are as happy on water as on land. Vittore Carpaccio's painting Hunting on the Lagoon, which dates from around 1490-95, shows young Venetians who seem totally amphibious in their lifestyle. They stand easily balanced in low-sided boats to shoot arrows at waterbirds, but Carpaccio makes it seem that these brightly dressed youths are the true waterbirds – graceful lords of the sea. That same confidence is on show in his picture The Miracle of the True Cross at the Rialto, in which Venetian men and women dot the dark waters of the grand canal in their elegant gondolas. In Gentile Bellini's 1500 painting The Miracle of the True Cross at the Bridge of San Lorenzo, meanwhile, priests swim in the canal searching for a lost relic. This may not seem so remarkable, but the ability to swim was rare 500 years ago. These Venetian clerics are so confident in the water that some are swimming in their religious robes . They are like dolphins, utterly at ease. Titian portrays a woman bathing in open water in his painting Venus Anadyomene – purportedly a mythic depiction of the goddess of love. Hunting and fishing, swimming and bathing – Venice has always known how to enjoy its waters. The city also knew how to draw wealth from those waters, as Venetian merchant ships spanned the seas. The palaces built by this commerce are monuments not just to luxury but prudence. Each has its living spaces and grand salons on upper floors, often with a covered courtyard on the ground floor that gives instant water access and is comparatively impervious to flooding. The city's finest house, the Ca' d'Oro, is a case in point. Its canal-level courtyard has a stunning marble pavement that is both beautiful and waterproof. This may seem terribly complacent. The perils of Venice are real; this treasury of civilisation does need protecting. But it is not all bad news. Or rather, as the news gets worse for the entire planet, Venice has some lessons to teach about how to live with the sea, in what the Most Serene Republic always boasted was a happy marriage.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Athens officials have given up hoping for a decision on their €31.5bn aid payment at tonight's meeting of eurozone finance ministers
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as the Syrian opposition forms a broad coalition and Britain announces it is to host talks on 'further support' for the rebels
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Tim Davie to set out plans to rebuild trust in BBC
• Announcement expected on Newsnight's future
• Row over George Entwistle's £450,000 payout
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Lord Patten says in letter to John Whittingdale that governance body was ready to discuss 'option of termination'
• Patten says £450,000 payout to Entwistle was 'justified and necessary'
• Acting DG Tim Davie bungles first live Sky News interview Lord Patten has admitted that the BBC Trust would have considered firing George Entwistle at the weekend if he had not made his "honourable" offer to resign as director general. Patten said in a letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture select committee, that he and his fellow trustees were poised to discuss the "option of termination". Whittingdale is one of numerous critics of Entwistle receiving a full year's salary of £450,000 as part of the terms of his resignation, despite being in the job for only 54 days. The chairman's admission came on Monday as acting BBC director general Tim Davie appearing to walk away from his first live Sky News interview while he was still being questioned, although corporation insiders immediately insisted that it was a misunderstanding. Davie appeared to cut short the interview after being asked repeatedly whether Entwistle was responsible for the calamitous Newsnight film on 2 November that mistakenly linked a Conservative peer to allegations of child sexual abuse. Sky News presenter Dermot Murnaghan compounded the embarrassment for Davie by asking: "Are more heads going to roll?" as the director general attempted to awkwardly edge out of shot. Murnaghan said after the interview: "I bet he wouldn't do that to the BBC." Under the terms of his contract, Entwistle was entitled to six months' pay in lieu of service. "In the absence of George's honourable offer to resign, I would have had to speak to the trustees about the option of termination by us (which, fortunately, was not necessary)," Patten wrote in his letter to Whittingdale. "In these circumstances, George would have been entitled to 12 months' notice." Patten said the BBC Trust met with Entwistle and his advisers on Saturday night, which produced a negotiated settlement which was best for all parties. He added the trustees "expressed serious concerns" about how the 2 November Newsnight story was being handled. "Under the terms of George's contract the notice period for resignation is six months. The notice period for termination by the BBC Trust is 12 months. Both with the right for the trust to make payments in lieu of notice," Patten said. "In circumstances where we needed to conclude matters quickly and required George's ongoing co-operation in a number of very difficult and sensitive matters, including the inquiries into issues associated with Savile, I concluded that a consensual resignation on these terms was clearly the better route." The decision has been strongly criticised by MPs, culture secretary Maria Miller, who said the deal was "tough to justify", and her Labour shadow Harriet Harman. Patten said he consulted the BBC Trust's remuneration committee as well as taking legal advice and determined the payout avoided "long drawn-out" discussions fuelling "continuing uncertainty" at the corporation. "Our conclusion was that a settlement on these terms was justified and necessary," he added. "The alternative was long drawn-out discussions and continuing uncertainty at a time when the BBC needs all of its focus to be on resolving fundamental issues of trust in BBC journalism." Davie, speaking to BBC News in his first TV interview since taking control at the corporation and immediately before he appeared on Sky News, said that he is "getting a grip" on the situation and providing "clarity and leadership". "The BBC deserves strong leadership and that's what I want to bring," he added. "I have focused on creating a simple chain of command in news. I've got full grip of the situation by clarifying who is in charge." However, he again refused to be drawn on Entwistle's payout. "That is a matter for the trust, not a decision for the director general," he said. "In terms of getting a grip of the organisation having just come into the job I have to work on what I can control." He added that he was wary about taking swift disciplinary action against BBC staff. "I don't subscribe to the view you should act quickly in that regard and be unreasonable." Davie later told BBC Radio 4's The World at One that he hoped to speak to Lord McAlpine to apologise for the Newsnight broadcast. The former BBC director general, Mark Thompson, doorstepped by TV news journalists as he entered the New York Times Company offices in Manhattan for his first day in his new job as its chief executive, said he was very saddened by recent events at the corporation. "But I believe that the BBC is the world's greatest broadcaster. I have no doubt it will once again regain the public's trust both in the UK and around the world. It is full of people with real integrity and talent and I have no doubt it will get back on its feet really soon," Thompson added. He said the BBC crisis would not affect his new job "in any way". Thompson has faced scrutiny over what he knew about the Newsnight Jimmy Savile investigation that was dropped in late 2011 and more widely about whether he was aware of sex abuse allegations against the late Jim'll Fix It presenter when he was director general. He has admitted he was told about Newsnight's Savile story after it was axed, but has said he was never made aware of the wider allegations. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The US could become self-sufficient, while 90% of Middle Eastern oil could go to China, according to new estimates The US can shed its long-standing dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia and become the world's biggest oil producer within the next decade, the world's foremost authority in energy said on Monday. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said that the result of new technology allowing the exploitation of new sources of unconventional fossil fuels would be a redrawing of the international energy map. In the past five decades, the US has relied increasingly on the Middle East for its oil. But within little over 20 years, the US could be self-sufficient in all forms of energy and 90% of Middle Eastern oil could be headed for China, according to new IEA estimates. So-called unconventional sources of oil and gas, including shale gas and shale oil, will fuel the US's energy independence, with huge implications for geopolitics – and for climate change. If governments and companies opt for cheaper fossil fuels in place of environmentally sustainable sources of energy such as wind and sun, then hope of cutting greenhouse gas emissions will be lost. The US becoming the world's biggest oil producer would mark a huge shift in world politics. The relationships between the US and the Middle Eastern have for decades been defined by the former's thirst for oil to fuel an automobile-driven economy. Fatih Birol, chief economist of the IEA, said it was the biggest redrawing of the energy map seen for decades. "This makes a huge difference," he said. But he said there was still hope of avoiding disastrous levels of climate change if companies opted to pursue energy efficiency, which could yield immediate benefits in cutting energy bills and carbon emissions.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Judges rule that, despite Jordanian assurances, Islamist cleric faces risk of trial based on evidence obtained by torture The radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada has won his latest legal challenge against being sent back to Jordan where he faces allegations of plotting bomb attacks. The ruling by the special immigration appeals commission (Siac) is a setback for the home secretary, Theresa May, who personally secured assurances from the Jordanian authorities that he would not face a trial based on evidence obtained by torture. She intends to fight the ruling, and the Home Office immediately gave notice of its intention to go directly to the court of appeal. Mr Justice Mitting and the two other senior judges who allowed Qatada's appeal said that despite those assurances a real risk remained that he would face a trial based on such evidence. They said changes needed to be made to the Jordanian criminal code before they could be satisfied that the risk no longer existed. The Home Office expressed disappointment, saying the judges had applied the wrong test. "The government strongly disagrees with this ruling. We have obtained assurances not just in relation to the treatment of Qatada himself, but about the quality of the legal processes that would be followed throughout his trial," it said. "Indeed, today's ruling found that 'the Jordanian judiciary, like their executive counterparts, are determined to ensure that the appellant will receive, and be seen to receive, a fair retrial'. We will therefore seek leave to appeal today's decision." But the Siac ruling makes clear that while the judges agreed the Jordanian assurances meant Qatada would not face ill-treatment or torture, they could not be satisfied that previous evidence obtained by torture would not be admitted at any retrial. Qatada, whose real name is Mohommed Othman, has waged a seven-year fight against his deportation. He has previously been described by the British courts as "a truly dangerous individual at the centre in the United Kingdom of terrorist activities associated with al-Qaida". The three Siac judges – Mitting, Peter Lane and Dame Denise Holt – have recommended that Qatada now be released on bail but with 16-hour curfew conditions. No final decision has yet been made to release him. The ruling is a blow to the home secretary's renewed strategy of deporting international terror suspects with diplomatic assurances about their future treatment. May travelled to Jordan to negotiate the fresh assurances, but without the legal backing of British judges the deportation cannot go ahead. The radical cleric has been released for three brief periods since he was first incarcerated in Belmarsh prison in 2002 under emergency anti-terror legislation. When he was released this year he faced the most draconian bail conditions ever imposed in Britain, including a 22-hour curfew. Qatada is regarded as having wide and high-level support among Islamist extremists. The al-Qaida leadership made threats this year in relation to his possible deportation. The home secretary came close to deporting Qatada in April when she tried to get him on a plane by certifying his opposition to his removal as "manifestly unfounded" and putting him on a fast-track to the airport. But confusion over the deadline for Qatada to appeal against a Strasbourg human rights ruling thwarted the attempted deportation. The European court of human rights ruled in January that there was a real risk Qatada would face a retrial based on torture-tainted evidence from his co-accused, Abu Hawsher and Al-Hamasher, over charges relating to bomb attacks on American and Israeli targets in Jordan in the late 1990s. The key passage of the Siac ruling upheld that judgment: "The secretary of state has not satisfied us that, on retrial, there is no real risk that the impugned statements of Abu Hawsher and Al-Hamasher would be admitted probatively against the appellant. "Until and unless a change is made to the [Jordanian] code of criminal procedure and/or authoritative rulings are made by the court of cassation or constitutional court which establish that statements made to a public prosecutor by accomplices who are no longer subject to criminal proceedings cannot be admitted probatively against a returning fugitive and/or that it is for the prosecutor to prove to a high standard that the statements were not procured by torture, that real risk will remain," the judges said. "For the reasons given on the article 6 issue [on torture], we are satisfied that the secretary of state should have exercised her discretion differently and should not have declined to revoke the deportation order. Accordingly, this appeal is allowed," they concluded.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Islamist cleric to be freed after judges rule that despite Jordanian assurances he faces risk of trial based on evidence obtained by torture The radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada is to be released from Long Lartin high security prison after winning his latest legal challenge against being sent back to Jordan, where he faces allegations of plotting bomb attacks. Qatada, who was once described by a Spanish judge as Osama bin Laden's righthand man in Europe, is to be released on Tuesday on an electronic tag to enforce a 16-hour curfew between the hours of 4pm and 8am and under severe restrictions as to who he can meet. His release, following a ruling by the special immigration appeals commission (Siac), is a setback for the home secretary, Theresa May, who personally secured assurances from the Jordanian authorities that Qatada would not face a trial based on evidence obtained by torture. She intends to fight the ruling, and the Home Office immediately gave notice of its intention to go directly to the court of appeal. Mr Justice Mitting and the two other senior judges who allowed Qatada's appeal said that despite those assurances a real risk remained that he would face a trial based on such evidence. They said changes needed to be made to the Jordanian criminal code before they could be satisfied that the risk no longer existed. The Home Office expressed disappointment, saying the judges had applied the wrong test. "The government strongly disagrees with this ruling. We have obtained assurances not just in relation to the treatment of Qatada himself, but about the quality of the legal processes that would be followed throughout his trial," it said. "Indeed, today's ruling found that 'the Jordanian judiciary, like their executive counterparts, are determined to ensure that the appellant will receive, and be seen to receive, a fair retrial'. We will therefore seek leave to appeal today's decision." But the Siac ruling makes clear that while the judges agreed the Jordanian assurances meant Qatada would not face ill-treatment or torture, they could not be satisfied that previous evidence obtained by torture would not be admitted at any retrial. Qatada, whose real name is Mohammed Othman, has waged a seven-year fight against his deportation. He has previously been described by the British courts as "a truly dangerous individual at the centre in the United Kingdom of terrorist activities associated with al-Qaida". The three Siac judges – Mitting, Peter Lane and Dame Denise Holt – recommended his release on bail. His lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, QC, told the court: "There is no justification for continuing to deprive Mr Othman of his liberty. Enough is enough, it has gone on for many, many years." The ruling is a blow to the home secretary's renewed strategy of deporting international terror suspects with diplomatic assurances about their future treatment. May travelled to Jordan to negotiate the fresh assurances, but without the legal backing of British judges the deportation cannot go ahead. The radical cleric has been released for three brief periods since he was first incarcerated in Belmarsh prison in 2002 under emergency anti-terror legislation. When he was released this year he faced the most draconian bail conditions ever imposed in Britain, including a 22-hour curfew. Qatada is regarded as having wide and high-level support among Islamist extremists. The al-Qaida leadership made threats this year in relation to his possible deportation. The home secretary came close to deporting Qatada in April when she tried to get him on a plane by certifying his opposition to his removal as "manifestly unfounded". But confusion over the deadline for Qatada to appeal against a Strasbourg human rights ruling thwarted the attempted deportation. The European court of human rights ruled in January that there was a real risk Qatada would face a retrial based on torture-tainted evidence from his co-accused, Abu Hawsher and Al-Hamasher, over charges relating to bomb attacks on US and Israeli targets in Jordan in the late 1990s. The key passage of the Siac ruling upheld that judgment: "The secretary of state has not satisfied us that, on retrial, there is no real risk that the impugned statements of Abu Hawsher and Al-Hamasher would be admitted probatively against the appellant. "Until and unless a change is made to the [Jordanian] code of criminal procedure and/or authoritative rulings are made by the court of cassation or constitutional court which establish that statements made to a public prosecutor by accomplices who are no longer subject to criminal proceedings cannot be admitted probatively against a returning fugitive and/or that it is for the prosecutor to prove to a high standard that the statements were not procured by torture, that real risk will remain," the judges said. "For the reasons given on the article 6 issue [on torture], we are satisfied that the secretary of state should have exercised her discretion differently and should not have declined to revoke the deportation order. Accordingly, this appeal is allowed," they concluded.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Palestinians refuse to postpone attempt to get 'non-member state' status at UN despite personal appeal by US president The Palestinian leadership has rejected a personal appeal by Barack Obama to delay its bid to win recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations general assembly, insisting that it will submit a resolution no later than 29 November. The US president telephoned Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Sunday to reiterate his opposition to the move. The Palestinians have circulated a draft resolution to the 193 countries of the UN which seeks support for "non-member state" status. Senior Palestinian official Mohammed Shtayyeh told a press conference in Ramallah: "We are not postponing this step under any circumstances." The final date of the submission of the resolution will be announced by the Arab League in Cairo on Tuesday. The most important reason for the move was "to preserve the two-state solution" to the conflict, he said. The Palestinians were prepared to return to talks with Israel after winning recognition at the general assembly, but non-member state status would "create new terms of reference for any future negotiations", he said. "We're hoping the UN bid becomes a pressure mechanism on Israel to come to the negotiating table with serious proposals." The Palestinians, who need only a simple majority, are confident of winning at least 130 votes. The United States vetoed an attempt last year to be admitted to the UN as a full member state, but there is no right of veto at the general assembly. European Union countries are expected to split, with around 12 voting in favour. Britain, which has made vigorous efforts to persuade the Palestinians to delay the move, is expected to oppose the resolution, in line with the United States. Israel and the US have warned that punitive measures could follow the move. Israel is threatening to select from a "toolbox" of measures, which include withholding tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the authorisation of further settlement expansion and – according to some accounts – even the annexation of parts of the West Bank to take the main settlement into Israel. The US is likely to concentrate on punitive financial measures. "We may have difficult times ahead," Shtayyer said. But Arab countries had pledged to contribute $100m (£63m) each month "to provide a safety net if there are consequences [to the UN bid]". "When people speak about punishment measures, it makes us wonder what we did to deserve this. We don't think such a [step] deserves any punishment," he said. The Palestinians were pursuing peaceful measures through a multilateral forum, he said. "We have been asked to choose between bread and freedom. Our choice is both. Of course we need bread but we need freedom as well." A successful bid would allow the Palestinians to become members of international bodies, such as the international criminal court, which is a major factor in Israel's opposition. Shtayyer said: "If anyone is worried about this court or that, it would be better if they did not commit atrocities against the Palestinian people." He said they had already postponed the move until after the US election, but would not countenance further delays. The Palestinian leadership hoped to see more US engagement to resolve the conflict in Obama's second term. However, the Palestinians "are not going into negotiations that are humiliating. We are not interested in using negotiations as an umbrella for the intensification of [Israeli] colonisation." Palestinian negotiators would continue to demand a freeze on settlement expansion as a precondition of fresh talks. The draft resolution specified that the state of Palestine should be based on the internationally recognised pre-1967 border known as the Green Line, but that final borders could be determined in talks. The Palestinian leadership wanted to avoid creating "high expectations for our people. We know that this measure does not end the occupation."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Campaigners, MPs and Taxpayers' Alliance agree large companies are exploiting loopholes in international tax regimes Google, Amazon and Starbucks will face aggressive and detailed questioning by MPs on Monday over their decision to base their European businesses outside the UK to avoid paying full UK tax. Responding to a growing public anger over corporate tax avoidance and heightened by high-profile government cuts to public services, the public accounts select committee will be asking Google, Amazon and Starbucks to explain structures such as Ireland- and Luxembourg-registered offices which incur lower tax rates, and also how they charge their own subsidiary companies for services, a practice known as transfer pricing. The session begins at 3.15pm, with Google UK chief executive Matt Brittin and Amazon public policy director Andrew Cecil due to appear. Starbucks chief financial officer Troy Alstead and UK managing director Kris Engskov will also give evidence. The companies' tax avoidance methods have been criticised by MPs, while even the Taxpayers' Alliance – which usually criticises the levels of tax demanded by government – told the Guardian that "some big companies with clever accountants can exploit loopholes to minimise their bills" with the result that "families are left feeling short-changed." Economist and tax campaigner Richard Murphy said there is strong and consistent evidence that even if companies haven't acted illegally, they have conspired to pay less tax. "These are legal artifices created to result in paying less tax," he said. "The avoidance is in setting up the structure and they chose to set it up that way." Charlie Elphicke MP told the Commons on 5 November that Amazon had paid an effective UK tax rate of 2.5% on 2011 earnings of £309bn. Google paid 0.4% on £2.5bn. Starbucks paid nothing, though its UK earnings were £365m. Committee chair Margaret Hodge told the Guardian that the movement against corporate tax avoidance had huge bipartisan support across the House of Commons as well as growing public awareness, and could ultimately damage the reputation of the companies concerned. "Most of these companies proclaim a strong corporate responsibility ethos, yet the most basic responsibility they have is to pay their fair share into the common purse," she said. "The fact that they create jobs is an absurd argument. We have to ensure that where companies are making money in the UK, they pay their fair share, and there is a duty on HMRC to do all it can to ensure those rules are strictly and fairly adhered to." Hodge conceded that international regulation is needed to prevent companies choosing to locate their profits in low-tax zones, but said there is also growing appetite across Europe for action, not least because of a new and ambitious tax director at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pascal Saint-Amans. The OECD has been asked by G20 finance ministers to strengthen standards around tax for multinationals. The French government has been bullish about tax avoidance, with unconfirmed reports that authorities sent a $1bn (£629m) a tax bill to Google for a four-year period of financial transfers to its Ireland holding. Google told the Guardian no bill had been received. Since then it has lost an appeal in a Paris court to invalidate the search and seizure of documents by the French tax authorities, and was forced to pay costs. "Google has not received any tax assessment from the French tax administration," the company said. "We have and will continue to co-operate with the authorities in France. Google complies with tax law in every country in which the company operates and with European laws." Amazon is under particular scrutiny because of its registered base in Luxembourg, which allowed it to generate £3.3bn of sales in the UK last year yet pay no corporation tax. It has also been able to pay 3% VAT on UK book sales, rather than the 20% UK rate, though last month the European Commission ordered that Luxembourg close that loophole. Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Murphy said tax avoidance has become a mainstream electoral issue, though any reform would be long-term rather than sudden and radical. He noted significantly more co-ordination and interest at national and international levels, and that it is beginning to dawn on ministers that companies should not be able to divide themselves into different legal entities and "pretend to charge each other". "There is no requirement in law to maximise profit for shareholders, and it is very unclear in US law too," Murphy said. "But there is a legal duty to act in the best interest of shareholders and that doesn't necessarily mean minimising the tax bill – it might mean operating a business that is attractive to customers." Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said in a statement that the UK tax system has lost its legitimacy. "Britain's hideously complex tax code means some big companies with clever accountants can exploit loopholes to minimise their bills," he said. "Others can take advantage of how HMRC are busy trying to administer an unwieldy set of rules, instead of chasing down those who try to abuse the system. Families are left feeling short changed and let down by their politicians. Sinclair added: "We need serious tax reform to ensure everyone pays no more or less than their fair share." During the first hearing with HMRC officials last Monday, Hodge said that individuals and small businesses in her constituency complained of feeling harassed over tax collection, while larger corporates were invited in for coffee and able to sign up to tax efficiency schemes offered by the largest four accountancy firms. "The corporate sector has grown since 2004-05, even despite the events of 2008-09 and a double-dip recession," said Hodge, questioning Lin Homer, chief executive and permanent secretary of the HMRC. "It has grown, yet you are taking more from … hard-working individuals paying their PAYE than you are from corporations … You are saying you are doing that deliberately because government wants to make this an easy place to be." Homer replied: "The government's position on multinationals is that we do want them to see the UK as competitive… We do expect everybody to pay their fair share. Corporation tax has been coming down, but not to those [5.5% advertised to KPMG clients] levels." The committee could eventually recommend a change in regulation to end the practice of transfer pricing, advise that tax returns are made public or increase HMRC resources. HMRC has already said that budget cuts will make it difficult to prioritise corporate tax avoidance. It faces real-terms budget cuts of £2.1bn, despite the government pledging an extra £917m to combat corporate tax avoidance, and is also expected to lose 15,000 of its 65,000 staff over the next five years.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Royal commission to investigate churches, state care facilities, schools, charities, child services agencies and police Australia is to hold a wide-ranging judicial inquiry into child sex abuse in the country, including investigations into religious organisations, state care facilities, schools, not-for-profit groups and the responses of child services agencies and the police. The royal commission follows growing pressure for a national inquiry after a senior police officer last week alleged that the Catholic church had covered up evidence involving paedophile priests. However, the inquiry's scope is expected to cover a wide range of institutions involved in the care of children. "Child abuse, child sex abuse is a vile thing – it's an evil thing done by evil people," said prime minister, Julia Gillard, announcing the royal commission on Monday. "It's not just the evil of the people who do it. There has been a systemic failure to respond to it. The allegations that have come to light recently about child sexual abuse have been heartbreaking. These are insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject. There have been too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil." The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference released a statement saying it supported the royal commission and that child abuse was an issue for the entire community, not just the Catholic church. While the statement acknowledged there were significant problems in some Catholic dioceses and religious orders, it rejected suggestions there were systemic problems of sexual abuse in the church. "It is unacceptable, because it is untrue, to claim that the Catholic church does not have the proper procedures, and to claim that Catholic authorities refuse to co-operate with the police," the statement said. The most senior figure within the Catholic church in Australia, Cardinal George Pell, also welcomed the royal commission. "Public opinion remains unconvinced that the Catholic church has dealt adequately with sexual abuse. Ongoing and at times one-sided media coverage has deepened this uncertainty," he said. The conservative opposition leader, Tony Abbott, who once trained to be a Catholic priest, said earlier on Monday he would support a "wide-ranging" commission that did not focus solely on the Catholic church. "Any investigation should not be limited to the examination of any one institution," he said in a statement. The prime minister's announcement of a judicial inquiry follows allegations last week by a police officer of a cover-up by the Catholic church into child sexual abuse in the Hunter region, north of Sydney. "I can testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the church," he wrote in an open letter to the New South Wales state premier, Barry O'Farrell. Fox, a veteran of decades of investigations into child sexual abuse, said he had "irrefutable" evidence of a cover-up involving a number of diocese bishops. "It potentially goes even higher than that," he told ABC television. The following day, the New South Wales state government launched a special commission of inquiry to examine the police investigations of priests in the Hunter region of the Newcastle-Maitland diocese. In that area, about two hours drive north of Sydney, there are 400 known victims of child sexual abuse. Eleven priests have been charged and convicted since 1995 and six Catholic teachers have been convicted. Three priests are currently on trial. Last month, police in the state of Victoria accused the Catholic church of intimidation, secrecy, destroying evidence, and failing to report accusations against the clergy in a state-based parliamentary inquiry into sexual abuse. Deputy Police Commissioner Graham Ashton told the inquiry that the church had also hindered justice by failing to report a single case of child sex abuse in more than 50 years. "The process is designed to put the reputation of the church first and victims second," he said. The government aims to consult widely before establishing the exact parameters of the judicial inquiry, which is expected to start in 2013 and take several years to complete.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We get the full lowdown on GTA V from co-writer Dan Houser and find out how the game's skewed vision of LA was conceived Two helicopters swoop down over the city, zigzagging between looming skyscrapers. They are searching for a third chopper, and they find it, hovering beside an anonymous government building. Quickly, the craft glides away from its pursuers while a gunman leans out and fires back. This is an aerial shoot-out, hundreds of feet above the densely crowded streets, a breathtaking action set-piece, befitting the most vainglorious Hollywood blockbuster. But you are in control; it's your movie. And as shots ring out, one chopper spirals out of the sky, black smoke billowing from its shattered tail. In the background, a neon pink sunset detonates across the sky. This is Grand Theft Auto V, the latest title in a series that has dragged video games kicking and screaming onto the cultural agenda. When the first details started leaking across the web last Thursday, social media channels went into meltdown as gamers scrambled for titbits of information. Many will be talking about little else for the next three months. Developed at Rockstar's Edinburgh studio, with input from several of the publisher's other developers around the globe, GTA V is another darkly humorous crime adventure, crammed with sleazy gangsters, corrupt politicos and dodgy cops. While GTA IV took place in Rockstar's cold, shadowy version of New York – the ironically titled Liberty City – the latest title heads cross-country to Los Santos, a monstrous, sprawling pastiche of Los Angeles. Here we meet lead character Michael, an ageing bank robber who fulfils that most fecund of crime-fiction archetypes: a crook who's made good, retired to a fancy house, but now misses the excitement of the old days. In the demo Rockstar shows us, he starts out sunbathing by the pool like Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast, the city shimmering in the distance beyond his landscaped gardens. The player is able to get up and explore the bleached stucco mansion, passing the tennis court (you can play a match if you like), then bumping into Michael's bored wife as she clambers into a sports car on the front drive. "If you want to know where I am, read your credit card statement," she yells as tyres squeal. "I'm feeling lucky, I'll check the hospitals!" he calls back. And slowly but surely, his previous career begins to beckon.
The basic structure is similar to previous titles. There is a series of missions which have to be completed to tell the over-arching story, but when you're not taking part in these, you're free to explore the environment; driving the endless roads, discovering mini-games, meeting characters, and generally getting into trouble. But GTA V will also make some radical structural changes. In the past, players would have controlled a lone character all the way through the game. Here, you have three, switching between them at will. Alongside Michael, there's Franklin, a young kid working in vehicle repo for a bunch of Armenian gangsters, and the fascinating Trevor, a psychotic career criminal with a shady military background. These guys all have their own skills and specialities and will often attempt missions together, the player sticking with one character throughout the task, or swapping back and forth, relying on the computer to control the others. Why the change? Why three characters? "It was partly just to do something totally new," says Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar and co-writer of all the Grand Theft Auto titles since GTA London. "Partly, too, it was because at that point we were deep into the work on the two DLC episodes of GTA IV, and we thought, well, the bits where all the stories crossover is kind of cool, so why don't we just do that in one game? So okay, let's just do multiple characters. With Michael we wanted this older guy who's still tough, but he's retired. That's a great way to start a game – at the end. That seemed fresh. "Franklin was the next one we came up with because we wanted a younger character, just so he could be the guy on the up, contrasting with the guy on the down – one could mentor the other. And in some ways, I suppose, Franklin is most like your traditional GTA protagonist. And then out of nowhere, the idea of Trevor came to us. He is the guy who does everything awful, relentlessly! He has his own charm, but he … he's a relentless maker of mischief. Not without some principles though, but totally different principles to Michael – an exact opposite take on what it means to be a protagonist in a GTA world. Michael is more about ego and Trevor is more about id, I suppose". This provides an interesting gameplay dynamic, but it is also about story. Instead of telling one tale which heightens toward a single dramatic finale, GTA V cuts between these three interlocking narratives, drawing parallels and distinctions between the men. And instead of one set-piece conclusion, the game is structured around a series of five or six mega-heists which take place throughout the game, and which other missions lead up to. The idea is to get gamers into big set-piece thrill-fests like GTA IV's Three Leaf Clover much more quickly. Some of the artwork Rockstar has released shows the characters jumping out of a van with gas masks, overalls and machine guns, bringing to mind Michael Mann's movie Heat. Like that film, this seems to be a game about professional criminals and the weird working relationships they maintain amid the testosterone and violence. Relationships seem key. In GTA IV, some people felt all that stuff got annoying – looking after Niko's cousin Roman, taking calls from gangsters wanting to hang out, catching up with girlfriends. There's no romance this time, but the phone is back ("we've evolved it to reflect the modern world with smartphones," says Dan), although it seems the interplay between the main characters will be the focus. "You have other people you can hang out with, but the main people you choose are the other protagonists," he says, stressing that the intricacies are still being worked on. "If you're playing as Michael and you want to play a game of tennis, you can call up Franklin and ask him. You are actually getting to see the main bulk of the story and also spend time with these people off-mission – that side of it gives it a vibrancy that's a lot stronger than with Roman or anyone else. "On the emotional narrative side, it's stronger just because of the nature of the rest of the game, and on the mechanics side, hopefully we've just designed it better, we've smoothed off the rough edges of it and made it a stronger part of the game". On the subject of Roman, there have been rumours other characters from previous games will turn up in GTA V. Dan says that no one before GTA IV will be in it – the move to HD created a schism in this fictional universe, rendering CJ, Tony and co, as mythical characters from a bygone era. But will we see stories from the previous game looping into this one? "I think that might be too mannered," says Houser. "Nico had a particular kind of story and we're trying to make this different. We might allude to things from that world, but we didn't want it to feel like, well, here's the opposite of an immigration story – we wanted a fresh take on what it means to be a criminal in this world of hyper-real Americana". It looks like there will be a new approach to music too. Inspired by Rockstar's successes with Red Dead and Max Payne, missions will now be accompanied by an interactive score rather than radio play. "We though could do something interesting if we scored missions in GTA," says Houser. "Obviously we didn't want to lose radio stations, so we thought we'd do both. "Exactly how we're going to balance between the two we're not entirely sure yet – we're still trying to figure that out. But we have some very cool people doing the score, different people, who will work in the same stem-based system that we used in the other games". You forget how important music is in this game – and then you watch the GTA V demo and see Trevor leaping into a battered old truck and screaming off into the desert playing Radar Love, and it all comes back. It will be interesting to see how a score competes. Meanwhile, there's another reason why there are three lead characters: GTA V is too geographically immense for a lone protagonist to explore. This is the largest environment Rockstar has built, big enough – as many previews have pointed out already – to contain the last two GTA titles as well the publisher's vast Western adventure Red Dead Redemption. Like LA itself, Los Santos is a patchwork of neighbourhoods with a downtown area, a gang-infested southern district, and the prosperous areas in the hills. But the game world extends out into the fictitious state of San Andreas, Rockstar's interpretation of southern California. There are farmlands, deserts, villages, mountains; there is even a functioning ecosystem teeming with wildlife. Trevor lives in a stinking shack out in Blaine County, a deserted coastal region, modelled on California's Salton City. The first time we meet him, he's on the john having a noisy bowel movement; Rockstar never shies away from these sorts of details. Importantly, the whole map is open from the start. Players can take a chopper and fly out over the hills, parachuting down onto the peak of Mount Chiliad. They can jet-ski, mountain bike, play golf, exercise. They don't have to, they just can. The city streets are teeming with mini-tasks and money-making endeavours. During our demo, we watch Franklin driving around downtown and notice a Gruppe 6 security van pull into a petrol station – we can turn that over for some quick cash, but will inevitably attract some fervent attention from the cops. Out in the sticks, beyond the city limits, the feel is more Red Dead Redemption, with dynamic encounters amid the wilderness; Game Informer's recent feature on the game mentions hitchhikers and broken down cars; all potential traps for unwary explorers. "Environment is important," says Houser. "Games are very geographical – they present space almost better than they present time, and we try to use that, to showcase variety between different landscapes. It's this idea of a digital holiday: being able to explore spaces that don't really exist is one of the the things that's fascinating about open world games. It's not just about doing the activities we've set, there's also a sense of being there. "If we've done a good job, the shoot-outs are fun but so is cruising through the world in a car you really like, listening to music – if these elements feel somehow consistent with each other, then we're on the right path to something cool". And, yes, the shoot-outs do look like fun. In the mission we're shown, Michael, Trevor and Franklin have been employed by a covert agency, the FIB, to swipe a prisoner from another set of government operatives. It involves piloting a helicopter to a downtown building, rappelling down a rope, smashing in through the windows, and getting back into the craft with your confused and terrified hostage. Michael is the one doing the smash and grab, while Trevor pilots the helicopter and Franklin lurks on a nearby rooftop with a sniper rifle, picking off enemy targets. Again, you can keep swapping between them, grabbing different aspects of the action, or you can stick with one protagonist, concentrating on your own key skills. It's exciting stuff, it's what we've always loved GTA for – that sense of freedom, of anarchy, in a functioning world. The sense that extraordinary things will happen. We don't know much else about the missions yet; but Houser is keen to stress one key aspect. "We've focused on variety," he explains, "I don't think players will say, 'I'm constantly being told what to do, and I go there, I do it, I leave and I do everything in exactly the same way!' I definitely don't think that will be a problem". And space is important, space is a big issue. Some have already questioned why GTA V needs to be so huge. But Houser bats the concerns right back. "We wanted to make a big place, as much as anything, to allow you to fly," he laughs. "A lot of the decisions, we're talking about them here on a philosophical level, but they're also practical decisions, too: we're making a game. You have to understand the medium. On an obvious level we wanted somewhere big so you can fly properly – we have a lot of missions that involve flying, in helicopters or whatever, it was logical. Also, Jet skis work better around LA than they would in New York. "We're using the environment to let us have toys we couldn't have had otherwise. And equally, we're using the story and environment to introduce missions that can be more extreme. In some ways we wanted the game to have a larger-than-life Hollywood feel; the stories we heard in LA, we wanted to capture them in the game. If the place isn't informing what we're doing, we're not using it correctly." Los Angeles. Los Santos. After the bleak, chilly despair of GTA IV this an enormous tonal shift, recalling the sun-streaked abandon of GTA: Vice City, the eighties-obsessed PlayStation 2 masterpiece that some feel is the best title in the series. And although the follow-up to that title, GTA: San Andreas, explored a little of this place, GTA V already feels like it has plunged into the decadent heart of the city like no game before it. Driving around the intricately detailed streets, we spot tributes to landmarks like Muscle beach and the Hollywood sign, we see mime artists and weirdos patrolling the pavements, there's a guy dressed as Jesus – that guy is really out there in Santa Monica, posing for photos with tourists. There are dodgy fast food joints with names like The Lucky Plucker, there are juice bars and boutiques. The sense of place is incredible; a sort of skewed, woozy take on the real thing. Los Angeles. Los Santos. The two are inextricably linked, but it is LA that the game is really thinking about. "Since 2008, we've been going out there for for a week or two at a time with different groups from the team," says Houser. "Our researchers did an incredible job of finding us some of the strangest people – retired cops, people with a knowledge of the LA underworld – and we'd hang out with them ... just to see what happened. Whatever skill we have is in taking all of that stuff and amalgamating it into something that feels cohesive. There can't be any particular science to that – the interpretation of the world is our skill, that's where the art is. There's enormous pleasure in wandering about in LA with people who've done crazy things". Perhaps only a video game could capture the essence of a contemporary city in this way. Houser shies away from such hyperbole, he knows GTA V must function as a game more than anything else, but the team working on it have wider ambitions, too. I ask him if GTA means anything. "I hope so!" he laughs, "otherwise it's pointless! Without being too annoying and avoiding the question, hopefully the games say lots of different things; but I think that for us, the correct response is to turn the question around and ask, what do they mean to you? "It's not for us to sit there and say, well, this is what it's about. We've got lots of themes we want to explore, be it about advertising, about dreams, immigration, about being an assassin and what that means – some of which will work, plenty of which will probably fail. But it's not for us sit there and say that. Our statement is the game". Baudrillard would love the version of America that Rockstar has constructed, a hyper-real theme park of violence, corruption and excitement. But you don't have to think about it. You don't have to think at all. GTA V might be about friendship or ambition or regret, but it also looks to be a game in which you can blast through the streets in a truck, boot filled with guns; a game where you can pilot a jet fighter over the Californian landscape; where you can bike down a mountain or jet ski into that fluorescent sunset. GTA has always been about possibilities. That is why it is so exciting to see the series return, amid the indie titles it has inspired, and the Triple A titles that have grown up in its shadow. Grand Theft Auto pushes at what game worlds are, it is inarguably ambitious. Yet sometimes it just wants to blow up helicopters above the streets of downtown Los Santos. And that, in the end, is absolutely fine.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow how the day unfolded as Israel responded to mortar fire on the Golan Heights and the Syrian opposition looked for support and recognition from the international community after the formation of a new coalition
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Signs that slowing global growth and tensions with China are nudging the world's third-largest economy into recession Japan's economy shrank in the September quarter for the first time since last year, adding to signs that slowing global growth and tensions with China are nudging the world's third-largest economy into recession. The 0.9% fall in GDP was in line with expectations, although a decline in capital expenditure was much steeper than forecast. Sony and Panasonic have slashed spending plans to cope with massive losses as they struggle with competitive markets and a strong yen. The fall in GDP translated into an annualised rate of decline of 3.5%, government data showed on Monday. While US growth showed a modest pick-up in the third quarter, Japan and the eurozone economies are shrinking. "The GDP data confirms that the economy has fallen into a recession," said Tatsushi Shikano, senior economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo. "It is set for a second straight quarter of contraction in the current quarter." A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. The data kept government pressure on the Bank of Japan to boost monetary stimulus even after it eased policy in October for the second straight month as a strong yen and a territorial row with China exacerbate weak demand for exports. Japan's economy minister, Seiji Maehara, said the central bank should pursue powerful policy easing to boost the economy, although the BOJ governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, shot back that the government should do its bit too. Many analysts expect the BOJ to leave policy unchanged at a review next week, but some believe it will bost stimulus again at a meeting on 19-20 December, shortly after the US Federal Reserve is due to meet. External demand accounted for 0.7 percentage points of July-September GDP contraction, matching the median projection. Japan's exports fell 5.0% in July-September, the biggest slide since a 6.0% decline in April-June last year, the data showed. A row with China over sovereignty of islands in the East China Sea sparked violent protests in China and the boycott of Japanese goods, which added to the slide in exports, particularly for carmakers such as Nissan. Private consumption – which accounts for roughly 60% of the economy – fell 0.5% in the third quarter against a median forecast of a 0.6% drop. Capital expenditure tumbled 3.2%, the fastest pace of decline since a 5.5% drop in April-June 2009, as companies turned more pessimistic about earnings from domestic and overseas markets. In Japan's ailing electronics sector, Sony plans to reduce capital spending by 29% in the year to March 2013 and Panasonic plans a 27% cut, after incurring huge losses in their TV manufacturing businesses. The companies are struggling to compete with more nimble rivals, such as South Korea's Samsung Electronics and America's Apple, and with a steady rise in the yen, which makes exports from Japan more expensive. Analysts said Japanese companies faced too many uncertainties to plan future spending with confidence and that was unlikely to change in the current quarter. Resolving the protracted euro zone debt crisis is no nearer, US tax increases and government spending cuts in early 2013 could tip America into recession unless Congress acts, and adding domestic uncertainty Japan's The prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, has promised to call a national election soon to break a political deadlock. Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities, said business investment would fall again in the fourth quarter as the global economy recovers only gradually. "If some of these uncertainties are removed, it is possible for things to improve," Adachi said. He forecast capital expenditure will fall 0.5% in October-December and then rise 0.7% in January-March. Japan's economy outperformed most of its Group of Seven peers in the first half of this year on robust private consumption and spending for reconstruction following last year's earthquake. But growth has stalled since then. Second-quarter growth was revised down in the latest figures by half to just 0.1%. The last quarterly economic contraction was in October-December 2011, when GDP fell 0.3%. With the economic effect of rebuilding from last year's earthquake and tsunami fading, the government acknowledged last week that its index of leading indicators gauge fell to a level suggesting the onset of a recession. "I cannot deny the possibility that Japan has fallen into a recession phase," Maehara told reporters after the data was released. He said he expected the BOJ to pursue powerful policy easing, although in a speech BOJ head Shirakawa stressed that flooding markets with cash alone would not inflate the economy when interest rates were near zero. The government should boost the economy's growth potential with deregulation and structural reform, he said. "Exports and output are likely to remain weak, and domestic demand won't increase enough to make up for the weakness in exports," he said. The BOJ set a 1% inflation target and eased policy in February. It followed up with further stimului based on asset-buying in April, September and October on mounting evidence the economy was on the cusp of a recession. The eurozone is expected to report on Thursday that the economy shrank by 0.2 % in the third quarter, extending a 0.2 % contraction in the second quarter.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Congress questions FBI delay in reporting CIA chief's affair as details of a 'harassed' second woman emerge The dramatic downfall of CIA chief David Petraeus has given rise to political intrigue in Washington as a drip-feed of details concerning his clandestine affair mixes with serious questions over the timing of the resignation. Over the weekend it emerged that his relationship with biographer Paula Broadwell was discovered by FBI agents while they investigated harassing emails she allegedly sent to a second woman, who was named on Sunday by the Associated Press as Jill Kelley, a state department military liaison. The scandal comes at a particularly sensitive time. Petraeus had been due to give evidence before a Congressional body this coming Thursday concerning the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in which four Americans were killed, including America's ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. It is now thought that Petraeus will not attend the session, robbing politicians of the opportunity to question an "absolutely necessary witness", according to Peter King, chairman of the House homeland security committee. White House and intelligence officials have suggested that there is no connection between the timing of Petraeus's resignation and the evidence session on the Benghazi attack. But in Washington, questions are being asked as to why the FBI appeared to have sat on the information it uncovered regarding the affair before handing it on to other authorities some time later. Intelligence officials have suggested that Petraeus was first questioned over the nature of his relationship with Broadwell two weeks ago. But it was only on the night of the presidential election that national intelligence director James Clapper was notified of the affair. It is thought that Clapper then advised the CIA chief to resign. Even then, it was not until the next day that the White House was informed of the situation. It then took a further day before newly re-elected President Barack Obama was told that his intelligence chief was to tender his resignation. Meanwhile, the Senate intelligence committee only heard about the matter on Friday, just hours before the CIA director announced he was to step down. Further confusing the timeline of events were reports on Sunday that leading House Republican Eric Cantor had been informed by an FBI whistleblower of the brewing Petraeus scandal two weeks ago. If true, it would raise the prospect that the affair was known in Washington circles before Friday's resignation. House Republican King said on Sunday that the account of who knew what and when "doesn't add up", saying that there were a lot of unanswered questions. The FBI had an "obligation" to tell the president as soon as they had identified a possible security breach, he told CNN's State of the Union. Meanwhile, other politicians said that Petraeus may still be compelled to give evidence concerning the 11 September attack in Benghazi. "We may well ask him," senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Sunday. Congress is keen to question the former four-star general over what the CIA knew in advance of the assault, and importantly, what it had told the White House in regards to the nature of the terrorist threat. In the run-up to last week's election, senior Republicans accused the White House of misleading Americans over claims that it was not made aware of requests to bolster security in advance of the assault. It is on this point that Petraeus was expected to be questioned at Thursday's Congressional hearing. Following his resignation, it is thought that his former deputy, Michael Morell, will testify before Washington in his place as acting director of the CIA. Morell is slated to meet with Congressional figures on Wednesday to discuss the Petraeus affair in a bid to curtail lingering suspicions over the timing of the resignation. The political fallout from Friday's resignation comes amid a personal crisis for a man often referred to as the leading American military mind of his generation. In the days following his announcement to step down, a steady flow of leaks to the US media have given more detail to the affair that cost Petraeus his job. The makings of his downfall were in a series of apparently vicious emails sent by his lover – a 40-year-old former army reservist who co-authored All In, a fawning biography of the CIA chief – to Kelley, a state department liaison to the military's Joint Special Operations Command. It is thought that the threatening nature of the missives led the Florida-based recipient to seek the protection of the FBI. An investigation of Broadwell's personal email account uncovered letters of an explicit nature between her and Petraeus, who has been married for the past 38 years to his wife Holly. It was then that agents approached the CIA chief directly. Having eliminated the threat of a security breach, it was decided that no further action would be taken by the FBI. But the damage to Petraeus's reputation was clear, and having consulted with Clapper, the decision to resign was made. In a letter to staff explaining his move, the now outgoing CIA boss said: "Such behaviour is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organisation such as ours." Others close to Petraeus had an even more blunt assessment of the scandal. "He screwed up, he knows he screwed up," said Steve Boylan, a retired army officer and Petraeus's former spokesman.
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