| |  | | | | | SHUTTING DOWN Feed My Inbox will be shutting down on January 10, 2013. To find an alternative service for email updates, visit this page. | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Venezuelan president said for the first time if his health worsens his successor would be vice president Nicolas Maduro Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez said on Saturday night that his cancer has returned and that he will undergo another surgery in Cuba. Chávez, who won re-election on 7 October, also said for the first time that if his health were to worsen, his successor would be vice president Nicolas Maduro. "We should guarantee the advance of the Bolivarian Revolution," Chávez said on television, seated at the presidential palace with Maduro and other aides. The president said that tests had shown a return of "some malignant cells" in the same area where tumours were previously removed. "I need to return to Havana tomorrow," Chávez said, adding that he would undergo surgery in the coming days. He called it a "new battle" - it is to be his third operation to remove cancerous tissue in about a year and a half. The 58-year-old president first underwent cancer surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011, after an operation for a pelvic abscess earlier in the month found the cancer. He had another cancer surgery last February after a tumour appeared in the same area. He has also undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Chávez said tests immediately after his re-election win had shown no sign of cancer. But he said he had swelling and pain, which he thought was due to "the effort of the campaign and the radiation therapy treatment." "It's a very sensitive area, so we started to pay a lot of attention to that," he said, adding that he had reduced his public appearances. Chávez made his most recent trip to Cuba on the night of 27 November, saying he would receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Such treatment is regularly used to help heal tissues damaged by radiation treatment. He said that he has been coping with pain and that while he was in Cuba thorough exams detected the recurrence of cancer. He arrived back in Caracas on Friday after 10 days of medical treatment in Cuba, but until Saturday night had not referred to his health. His unexplained decision to skip a summit of regional leaders in Brazil on Friday had raised suspicions among many Venezuelans that his health had taken a turn for the worse. Chávez said that he was requesting permission from lawmakers to travel to Havana. "I hope to give you all good news in the coming days," he said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Venezuelan president said for the first time if his health worsens, his successor would be vice president Nicolas Maduro Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez said on Saturday night that his cancer has returned and that he will undergo another surgery in Cuba. Chávez, who won re-election on 7 October, also said for the first time that if his health were to worsen, his successor would be Vice President Nicolas Maduro. "We should guarantee the advance of the Bolivarian Revolution," Chávez said on television, seated at the presidential palace with Maduro and other aides. The president said that tests had shown a return of some cancerous cells and that he would return to Cuba on Sunday for the surgery, his third operation to remove cancerous tissue in about a year and a half. He called it a "new battle." The 58-year-old president first underwent cancer surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and had another surgery last February after a tumour appeared in the same area. He has also undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Chávez made his most recent trip to Cuba on the night of 27 November, saying he would receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Such treatment is regularly used to help heal tissues damaged by radiation treatment. Chávez said he has been coping with pain. He said that he was requesting permission from lawmakers to travel and that he hoped to have good news after the surgery.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Prime minister announces decision hours after former leader Silvio Berlusconi confirms he will seek office again The Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, has announced that he will resign as soon as he has passed a key budget law, well ahead of the official end of his mandate in April, possibly leading to elections as early as February. Monti made the decision hours after former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said he would seek office again. It follows a week in which members of Berlusconi's Freedom People party abstained from voting for key bills in parliament. Monti said on Saturday he had received a "categorical judgment of no confidence" from Berlusconi's party. Berlusconi has said he will back the passing of the budget but will not guarantee further support for Monti's government of technocrats, who were drafted after Berlusconi resigned in November 2011 in the midst of scandals over his private life and a brewing economic crisis. Monti, who has depended on the votes of the Freedom People in parliament and Berlusconi's grudging support, has long said he would not seek to govern if his backing dried up. After weeks of indecision, Berlusconi kickstarted his comeback last week by accusing Monti of bringing Italy to "the edge of an abyss" with austerity policies that have reassured markets but have helped mire Italy in recession. On Saturday, Berlusconi – who is appealing against a tax fraud conviction and is on trial for paying an underage prostitute – said he was reluctantly taking the reins at his party again. "To win you need an acknowledged leader," he said. "It's not as though we didn't look for this leader. We did, and how, but there isn't one." In a pointed reference to Berlusconi's previous government, Monti warned on Saturday that Italy needed to avoid becoming, once again, "the detonator that could blow up the eurozone".When the Freedom People party withdrew parliamentary support from Monti on Thursday, the difference between German and Italian benchmark bonds rose by 30 points. Berlusconi will now launch an aggressive election campaign as he seeks to build his party's popularity back up from 15 per cent, which sees it far behind the centre-left Democratic party and in third place behind the Five Star movement led by comic Beppe Grillo. The 76-year-old media mogul has recently been photographed in the company of players from AC Milan, the team he owns, and confirmed his comeback on Saturday at the team's training ground, echoing his use of football metaphors when he first entered politics in 1994. "I am in the game to win," he said on Saturday. His main opponent at the coming elections is likely to be Pier Luigi Bersani, head of the Democratic party, who said Berlusconi's decision to undermine Monti was "irresponsible", and "betrayed a commitment made a year ago before the whole country". Berlusconi and Bersani could yet be joined on the hustings by Monti himself, if he decides to seek election at the head of a centrist grouping of politicians who are backing him.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Annulment of measure that sparked days of protests comes after military says constitution crisis could drag Egypt into 'dark tunnel' The Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, has scrapped a decree that had generated widespread unrest by awarding him near-absolute powers. But he insisted a referendum on a new constitution would go ahead as planned this week. The announcement, which is unlikely to placate Morsi's opponents, came after Egypt's military warned that failure to resolve a crisis over the drafting of the constitution would result in "disastrous consequences" that could drag the country into a "dark tunnel". Selim al-Awa, an official who attended a "national dialogue meeting" called by Morsi at the presidential palace in Cairo but boycotted by his opponents, said the Islamist-dominated discussion recommended removing articles that granted the president powers to declare emergency laws and shield him from judicial oversight. Earlier Egypt's military had issued a statement saying: "Dialogue is the best and only way to reach consensus. The opposite of that will bring us to a dark tunnel that will result in catastrophe and that is something we will not allow." Failing to reach a consensus was "in the interest of neither side. The nation as a whole will pay the price," it added. State radio and television interrupted programmes to read the military statement. A Muslim Brotherhood official welcomed the army's "balanced" line. Former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, now an opposition leader, said that the army was reacting to an "enormously dangerous" crisis. The statement came ahead of a new law to be issued by Morsi that will grant the armed forces the power to arrest civilians, alongside police forces, until a constitution is passed. The law makes the army responsible for the protection of state premises and maintaining security, and allows it the use of force if necessary to carry out these duties. The worst crisis since the revolution almost two years ago erupted after Morsi granted himself sweeping powers last month. Protests have also focused on a the new constitution, which opposition critics have condemned as illiberal. Morsi has been forced to retreat behind barbed wire, tanks and armed Revolutionary Guards now ringing his compound in the capital. Morsi's supporters forcibly dispersed a sit-in at the presidential palace in the middle of last week, triggering an escalation in violence that has so far resulted in seven deaths and around 700 injuries. Clashes have spread to other Egyptian cities. There have been increasing calls from protesters for Morsi to step down. The main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, refused to take part in the dialogue meeting, instead calling for the postponement of a referendum on the draft constitution, which is scheduled for 15 December. National Salvation Front member George Ishak told the Observer that the draft constitution had been "bloodied". On Friday, Mohammed ElBaradei, co-ordinator of the National Salvation Front, called on protesters to demonstrate peacefully. Activists broke through barbed-wire barricades around the palace on Friday evening. Some spray-painted "Down with Morsi" on tanks; others scrawled the word "leave" in red letters across posters of Morsi's face. "We are no longer calling for scrapping the decree and delaying the referendum," Samir Fayez, a Christian protester, said. "We have one demand in five letters: leave." Nearby, Mohamed Hassan, a Morsi supporter, suggested that the Muslim Brotherhood and its ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist allies could easily overwhelm their foes if they chose to mobilise their base. "The Brotherhood and Salafis by themselves are few, but they have millions of supporters who are at home and haven't taken it to the streets yet," said the 40-year-old engineer. Most of the protesters had dispersed from the palace by Saturday, although a modest presence remained. TV footage showed the military setting up a wall of cement blocks around the palace. The new law granting the military powers to arrest civilians and the use of force if necessary was passed by the supreme council of the armed forces, the military junta that governed Egypt during the transitional period before Morsi assumed power, six months ago. It was later overturned by Egypt's supreme administrative court. There had been severe opposition at that time to the law by both the Muslim Brotherhood and other political forces.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Paul Salopek will begin trip in Ethiopia and hopes to reach most southerly point of South America in seven years It will be a journalistic assignment like no other. Call it "the longest walk". In what is probably the longest, most arduous piece of reportage ever undertaken, Paul Salopek, an experienced writer for the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, is embarking on the astonishing task of retracing the journey taken by early man tens of thousands of years ago. Beginning in the exotic surroundings of the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia, Salopek will take an estimated 30 million steps, reaching his destination seven years later, three continents away at the most southerly point of South America. Along the way he will be writing stories for National Geographic at the rate of one long article a year, while maintaining a website that will be filled with regular multimedia updates from his 21,000-mile journey. After its starting point in Africa, his route will cross the Red Sea into the Middle East, traverse China, head into Siberia, cross the Bering Strait into Alaska and then walk all the way down the western coasts of North and South America. Speaking to the Observer as he was still putting the finishing touches to his journey's beginnings – and spending some time with his family – the 50-year-old said he saw himself carrying on an ancient human tradition of the roving poet or musician. "It is an old way of story-telling: the wandering bard. I am curious myself to see how it all turns out," Salopek said. "It is the notion of a questing story which we find in all cultures, that you have to go away from home and come back in order to truly discover what 'home' was," he added. But while Salopek may see himself in the same light as a Homeric character, he will be taking a laptop and video and audio recording tools. Salopek intends to record his journey, from its changing landscapes and its shifting skies and – most importantly of all perhaps – the voices and faces of the people he meets. Those samples will be taken every 100 miles or so and stored on an online database hosted by an "journalism laboratory". It will provide a unique record of a huge slice of the planet. "We will be creating a family portrait of humanity for the next seven years," he said. No one thinks the journey is going to be easy. The physical challenge of walking from Africa to South America will be arduous. But it is virtually impossible to plan ahead for a seven-year journey that will go through some of the globe's most dangerous political hotspots – such as Iran and central America. Borders will open or close as regimes rise and fall, potentially blocking his way. But Salopek says his journey will not falter. Like the early humans in whose steps he is following, he will simply adapt by shifting routes. "I will do the same thing as our ancestors did. I will pivot around obstacles," he said. But he admitted that the mental challenges were likely be harder than the physical task. He will face long periods of solitude, but at the same time be the centre of global attention. In order to relieve the pressure, Salopek says he will be going offline for some periods to rest and also because he wants his journey to record real stories, not to be a simple log of miles walked, blisters burst and shoes worn out. His wife, visual artist Linda Lynch, might also join him during some of those breaks. Although Salopek's journey might seem like a crazed plan, the highly experienced and well-travelled writer said he did not feel intimidated. During his time working for the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, Salopek has journeyed all over the world, won two Pulitzer prizes and earned a reputation for immersive, epic reporting. He once travelled 1,300 miles by mule across Mexico for a story and, while working in Sudan, was arrested as a suspected spy. Elsewhere, he has canoed through Congo and even worked as a commercial fisherman in New England. "I have moved around my whole life. I am very good at moving through different cultural membranes and I feel that I have been unconsciously preparing for this for many years," he said. His trip, which will be called the Out of Eden Walk, has been backed by numerous sponsors, including the Knight Foundation, Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. For the past year or so Salopek has been garnering backers, working out the first two years of his route, wrangling the necessary visas and doing vital preparation work. The theme – of retracing early man – was chosen in part because it would make his travelogue accessible and universal across the globe. "It is everybody's story. This journey belongs to everyone," he said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Current prime minister, Mario Monti, announces his intention to resign following disgraced media mogul's declaration Never a man to let defeat – or scandal – keep him down, the disgraced former prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi has announced he will run once again for the country's top job. With three colourful terms behind him, Berlusconi confirmed he would try for a fourth time to become premier, saying he was doing it out of "a sense of responsibility" days after his party withdrew its support for the technocrat government of the current prime minister, Mario Monti. The media mogul told reporters he was running to win and that "the campaign is already on". Monti, following a two-hour meeting with the Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, said that he intends to resign after checking to see if parliament can pass next year's budget law. In a statement released by Napolitano's office, Monti said he does not now feel that he has the support of parliament after Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party withdrew its support from his government this week. If the budget law can be passed "quickly", Monti said he would immediately confirm his resignation. The British betting firm Ladbrokes gave 3/1 odds on Berlusconi becoming the prime minister in 2013. Berlusconi stepped down last year amid a severe debt crisis. Allegations of his involvement with an underage prostitute and reports that he hosted sex-filled "bunga-bunga" parties also clouded his premiership. He has since been convicted of tax fraud and faces low favourability ratings in the polls. The three-time prime minister got his start selling vacuum cleaners and singing on cruise ships. In 1971, Berlusconi founded a local cable firm, Telemilano, which grew into the country's largest media company, Mediaset. He has since expanded his media empire to include Italy's largest publishing house, Mondadori, and the newspaper Il Giornale. Other business interests include owning the globally popular football club, AC Milan. Berlusconi entered politics in 1993, forming his own party and naming it after an AC Milan chant used by fans, Forza Italia, which means "go Italy". He rose to power the next year, winning the elections, and went on over the next 14 years to win twice more and lose twice, both times to Romano Prodi.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Software engineer is facing extradition to Belize after being arrested in Guatemala City with his 20-year-old girlfriend US software guru John McAfee, fighting deportation from Guatemala to Belize to face questions about the slaying of a neighbor, said Saturday he wants to return to the United States. "My goal is to get back to America as soon as possible," McAfee, 67, said in a phone call to Reuters from the immigration facility where he is being held for illegally crossing the border to Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend. "I wish I could just pack my bags and go to Miami," McAfee said. "I don't think I fully understood the political situation. I'm an embarrassment to the Guatemalan government and I'm jeopardizing their relationship with Belize." The two neighboring countries in Central America are locked in a decades-long territorial dispute and voters in 2013 will decide in a referendum how to proceed. Responding to McAfee's remarks, a US State Department spokeswoman said American citizens in foreign countries are subject to local laws. Officials can only ensure they are "treated properly within this framework", she said. On Wednesday, Guatemalan authorities arrested McAfee in a hotel in Guatemala City where he was holed up with his Belizean girlfriend. The former Silicon Valley millionaire is wanted for questioning by Belizean authorities, who say he is a "person of interest" in the killing of fellow American Gregory Faull, McAfee's neighbor on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye. The two had quarreled at times, including over McAfee's unruly dogs. Authorities in Belize say he is not a prime suspect in the investigation. Guatemala rejected McAfee's request for asylum on Thursday. His lawyers then filed several appeals to block his deportation. They say it could take months to resolve the matter. The software developer has been evading Belize authorities for nearly four weeks and has chronicled his life on the run in his blog. McAfee claims authorities will kill him if he turns himself in for questioning. He has denied any role in Faull's killing and said he is being persecuted by Belize's ruling party for refusing to pay some $2m in bribes. Belize's prime minister has rejected this, calling McAfee paranoid and "bonkers". After making millions with the anti-virus software bearing his name, McAfee later lost much of his fortune. For the past four years he has lived in semi-reclusion in Belize. He started McAfee Associates in the late 1980s but left soon after taking it public. McAfee now has no relationship with the company, which was later sold to Intel Corp. Hours after his arrest, McAfee was rushed to a hospital for what his lawyer said were two mild heart attacks. Later he said the problem was stress. McAfee said he fainted after days of heavy smoking, poor eating and knocking his head against a wall. He told Reuters he no longer has access to the internet and has turned over the management of his blog to friends in Seattle, Washington. On Saturday, they began posting a series of files claiming to detail Belize's corruption. Residents and neighbors in Belize have said the eccentric tech entrepreneur, who is covered in tribal tattoos and kept an entourage of bodyguards and young women on the island, had appeared unstable in recent months. Police in April raided his property in Belize on suspicion he was running a lab to make illegal narcotics. There already was a case against him for possession of illegal firearms. McAfee says the charges are an attempt to frame him. "People are saying I'm paranoid and crazy but it's difficult for people to comprehend what has been happening to me," he said. "It's so unusual, so out of the mainstream."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | EU, Australia and Norway also sign up to new carbon-cutting targets as fortnight-long conference in Qatar closes Poor countries have won historic recognition of the plight they face from the ravages of climate change, wringing a pledge from rich nations that they will receive funds to repair the "loss and damage" incurred. This is the first time developing countries have received such assurances, and the first time the phrase "loss and damage from climate change" has been enshrined in an international legal document. Developing countries had been fighting hard for the concession at the fortnight-long UN climate change talks among 195 nations in Qatar, which finished after a marathon 36-hour final session. Ronald Jumeau, negotiating for the Seychelles, scolded the US negotiator: "If we had had more ambition [on emissions cuts from rich countries], we would not have to ask for so much [money] for adaptation. If there had been more money for adaptation [to climate change], we would not be looking for money for loss and damage. What's next? Loss of our islands?" Ruth Davis, political adviser at Greenpeace, said: "This is a highly significant move – it will be the first time the size of the bill for failing to take on climate change will be part of the UN discussions. Countries need to understand the risks they are taking in not addressing climate change urgently." Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate secretary, said: "It's about helping the most vulnerable countries, and looking at how they can be more resilient." But the pledges stopped well short of any admission of legal liability or the need to pay compensation on the part of the rich world. The US had strongly opposed the initial "loss and damage" proposals, which would have set up a new international institution to collect and disperse funds to vulnerable countries. US negotiators also made certain that neither the word "compensation", nor any other term connoting legal liability, was used, to avoid opening the floodgates to litigation – instead, the money will be judged as aid. Key questions remain unanswered, including whether funds devoted to "loss and damage" will come from existing humanitarian aid and disaster relief budgets. The US is the world's biggest donor of humanitarian aid and disaster relief, from both government and private sources. It will be difficult to disentangle damage inflicted by climate change from other natural disasters. Another question is how the funds will be disbursed. Developing countries wanted a new institution, like a bank, but the US is set against that, preferring to use existing international institutions. These issues will have to be sorted out at next year's climate conference, in Warsaw, where they will be bitterly contested. Davis said: "This [text] is just the beginning of the process – you need to have a finalised mechanism. But it will concentrate minds on the fact that it is in the best interest of countries all over the world to start cutting their emissions quickly." Governments also rescued the Kyoto protocol, the initial targets of which run out at the end of this year. The EU, Australia, Norway and a handful of other developed countries have agreed to take on new carbon-cutting targets under the treaty, running to 2020. A separate strand of the negotiations, set up to accommodate the US because of its refusal to ratify Kyoto, was closed. This will allow unified discussions to begin on a global climate treaty that would require both developed and developing countries to cut their emissions. The treaty is supposed to be signed in 2015, at a conference in Paris, and come into effect in 2020. The next three years of negotiations on the treaty will be the hardest in the 20-year history of climate change talks because the world has changed enormously since 1992, when the UN convention on climate change was signed, and 1997, when the Kyoto protocol enshrined a stark division between developed countries – which were required to cut emissions – and developing countries, which were not. China was classed then as a developing country, and although it still has about 60 million people living in dire poverty, it is now the world's biggest emitter and will soon overtake the US as the biggest economy. It has made clear its determination to hang on to its developing country status, and that the countries classed as developed in 1997 must continue to bear most of the burden for emissions cuts, and for providing funds to poor countries to help them cut emissions and cope with climate change.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tens of thousands gather to cheer as Khaled Meshaal claims victory in last month's war and says more Israeli soldiers could be kidnapped Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal vowed Gaza's rulers would never give up "an inch of the land" to Israel in an uncompromising speech before tens of thousands of cheering supporters at a triumphalist "victory" rally in Gaza City. "Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land," he told the crowd on his first visit to Gaza. "We will never recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take." The supporters – many of them wearing Hamas green headbands and carrying Hamas flags – packed the open-air venue in rain and strong winds to celebrate the Islamist organisation's 25th anniversary and what it regards as a victory in last month's eight-day war with Israel. Among the crowd, which Hamas officials estimated at half a million, were some Fatah supporters, waving their faction's yellow flag. It was one of increasing signs in recent weeks that reconciliation between the two rival factions could become a more realistic prospect in the coming months. Patriotic songs forecasting the liberation of the whole land of Palestine blared from huge speakers, as children, some dressed in military garb, brandished plastic guns and toy rockets. Accompanied by Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza's de facto prime minister, Meshaal stepped through a giant model of a Hamas missile on to the stage, which took the form of a map of historic Palestine. Dressed in a dark coat and draped in a Hamas scarf, he repeatedly raised his hands in acknowledgement of the crowd's cheers. The Hamas leader, on Palestinian soil for the first time in four decades, also pledged to free thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, hinting that militants may attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips. "We will not rest until we liberate the prisoners. The way we freed some of the prisoners in the past is the way we will use to free the remaining prisoners," Meshaal said to cheers. Hamas held Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli conscript, for more than five years before releasing him in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in October 2011. Meshaal congratulated fighters from Hamas and other armed groups who targeted long-range missiles at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, saying: "We don't kill Jews because they are Jews. We kill the Zionists because they are conquerors and we will continue to kill anyone who takes our land and our holy places … We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone." The right of return for Palestinian refugees "is sacred to us and we will not forfeit it", he said. In a list of towns which refugees would reclaim, he included Safed, birthplace of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in a barbed reference to hints in a recent interview that Abbas was ready to compromise on this emotive issue. The rally was opened by a masked representative of Hamas's military wing, the Izzudin al-Qassam Brigades, who told the crowd: "We will cut the hand that extends in aggression against our people and leaders." Meshaal's speech, delivered from behind a bank of white flowers, began five hours after the start of the event. Hamas is in buoyant mood following last month's war with Israel, in which more than 160 Palestinians were killed and around 1,000 injured. Six Israelis also died in the conflict. The hardline faction, which has ruled Gaza since June 2007 after winning elections 17 months earlier, claims it won a victory despite the destruction of much of its arsenal of weapons, training facilities and offices. Following a ceasefire deal, Meshaal told a press conference in Cairo: "We have come out of this battle with our heads held high." Hamas feels that the conflict brought it significant international legitimacy, with a stream of regional political figures heading to Gaza to show solidarity with Palestinians under bombardment. Officials in Gaza said that around 1,000 visitors from abroad had travelled to the coastal enclave for Saturday's celebration, including delegations from Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain and Malaysia, in what was claimed as a further sign of international acceptance. Some in the crowd spoke of their desire for Palestinian unity. Wheelchair user Taghreed Abu Hatab, 40, said: "However hard it was for me to come, I made it. I was waiting for this day for a long time because it represents unity to us. I'm not Hamas, but we are all brothers, and on this day we are begging for unity." But Ibraheem Lutfy, 32, resented Hamas's claim of victory in the recent conflict. "It's not Hamas only that was resisting – all the factions were there," he said. "But Hamas wants to own the victory as if it was the only one resisting." He was not impressed by Meshaal's presence: "I never felt he did something special to me." On passing through the border with Egypt on Friday, the exiled Hamas leader kissed the ground and wept. Meshaal, 56, was born in the West Bank but left with his family at the age of 11 following the 1967 six-day war, in which Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. After surviving an Israeli attempt to assassinate him in 1997, he became leader of Hamas following the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2004. Until the beginning of this year, Meshaal's headquarters-in-exile was in Damascus. After refusing to support the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Meshaal now divides his time between Cairo and Doha. He is expected to leave Gaza on Sunday. The celebration was brought forward by a few days to hold it on the anniversary of the start of the first Palestinian intifada – uprising – in 1997.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Thousands cheer claims of victory in last month's war and warnings that more Israeli soldiers could be kidnapped Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal vowed Gaza's rulers would never give up "an inch of the land" to Israel in an uncompromising speech before tens of thousands of cheering supporters at a triumphalist "victory" rally in Gaza City. "Palestine is ours, from the river to the sea and from the south to the north. There will be no concession on an inch of the land," he told the crowd on his first visit to Gaza. "We will never recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel, no matter how long it will take." The supporters – many of them wearing Hamas green headbands and carrying Hamas flags – packed the open-air venue in rain and strong winds to celebrate the Islamist organisation's 25th anniversary and what it regards as a victory in last month's eight-day war with Israel. Among the crowd, which Hamas officials estimated at half a million, were some Fatah supporters, waving their faction's yellow flag. It was one of increasing signs in recent weeks that reconciliation between the two rival factions could become a more realistic prospect in the coming months. Patriotic songs forecasting the liberation of the whole land of Palestine blared from huge speakers, as children, some dressed in military garb, brandished plastic guns and toy rockets. Accompanied by Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza's de facto prime minister, Meshaal stepped through a giant model of a Hamas missile on to the stage, which took the form of a map of historic Palestine. Dressed in a dark coat and draped in a Hamas scarf, he repeatedly raised his hands in acknowledgement of the crowd's cheers. The Hamas leader, on Palestinian soil for the first time in four decades, also pledged to free thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, hinting that militants may attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips. "We will not rest until we liberate the prisoners. The way we freed some of the prisoners in the past is the way we will use to free the remaining prisoners," Meshaal said to cheers. Hamas held Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli conscript, for more than five years before releasing him in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in October 2011. Meshaal congratulated fighters from Hamas and other armed groups who targeted long-range missiles at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, saying: "We don't kill Jews because they are Jews. We kill the Zionists because they are conquerors and we will continue to kill anyone who takes our land and our holy places … We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone." The right of return for Palestinian refugees "is sacred to us and we will not forfeit it", he said. In a list of towns which refugees would reclaim, he included Safed, birthplace of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in a barbed reference to hints in a recent interview that Abbas was ready to compromise on this emotive issue. The rally was opened by a masked representative of Hamas's military wing, the Izzudin al-Qassam Brigades, who told the crowd: "We will cut the hand that extends in aggression against our people and leaders." Meshaal's speech, delivered from behind a bank of white flowers, began five hours after the start of the event. Hamas is in buoyant mood following last month's war with Israel, in which more than 160 Palestinians were killed and around 1,000 injured. Six Israelis also died in the conflict. The hardline faction, which has ruled Gaza since June 2007 after winning elections 17 months earlier, claims it won a victory despite the destruction of much of its arsenal of weapons, training facilities and offices. Following a ceasefire deal, Meshaal told a press conference in Cairo: "We have come out of this battle with our heads held high." Hamas feels that the conflict brought it significant international legitimacy, with a stream of regional political figures heading to Gaza to show solidarity with Palestinians under bombardment. Officials in Gaza said that around 1,000 visitors from abroad had travelled to the coastal enclave for Saturday's celebration, including delegations from Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain and Malaysia, in what was claimed as a further sign of international acceptance. Some in the crowd spoke of their desire for Palestinian unity. Wheelchair user Taghreed Abu Hatab, 40, said: "However hard it was for me to come, I made it. I was waiting for this day for a long time because it represents unity to us. I'm not Hamas, but we are all brothers, and on this day we are begging for unity." But Ibraheem Lutfy, 32, resented Hamas's claim of victory in the recent conflict. "It's not Hamas only that was resisting – all the factions were there," he said. "But Hamas wants to own the victory as if it was the only one resisting." He was not impressed by Meshaal's presence: "I never felt he did something special to me." On passing through the border with Egypt on Friday, the exiled Hamas leader kissed the ground and wept. Meshaal, 56, was born in the West Bank but left with his family at the age of 11 following the 1967 six-day war, in which Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. After surviving an Israeli attempt to assassinate him in 1997, he became leader of Hamas following the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2004. Until the beginning of this year, Meshaal's headquarters-in-exile was in Damascus. After refusing to support the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Meshaal now divides his time between Cairo and Doha. He is expected to leave Gaza on Sunday. The celebration was brought forward by a few days to hold it on the anniversary of the start of the first Palestinian intifada – uprising – in 1997.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Government statement gives no details of former South African president's condition but says there is no cause for alarm Former South African president Nelson Mandela has been admitted to hospital for medical tests, although the government said there was no cause for alarm. A statement on Saturday from the office of the South African president, Jacob Zuma, gave no details of the condition of the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader. "Former President Mandela will receive medical attention from time to time which is consistent with his age," the statement said. "President Zuma assures all that Madiba is doing well and there is no cause for alarm," it added, referring to Mandela by his clan name. Mandela, who became South Africa's first black president after the country's first all-race elections in 1994, was admitted to hospital in February because of abdominal pain but released the following day after a keyhole examination showed there was nothing seriously wrong with him. He has since spent most of his time in his ancestral home in Qunu, a village in Eastern Cape province. His frail health prevents him from making any public appearances in South Africa, although in the last few months he has continued to receive high-profile visitors, including former US president Bill Clinton.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Most key points resolved as delegates strive to reach agreement on 'loss and damage' compensation for poor nations The EU remains hopeful of securing a deal to rescue the Kyoto protocol as climate change talks dragged on into Saturday evening in Qatar, where 195 countries have gathered to thrash out a new deal on greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the key issues have been resolved, including a last-minute legal hitch affecting Poland. However, one sticking point emerged when Russia and Ukraine tried late in the day to reopen negotiations on the agreed text. Ministers were trying frantically to resolve the problem, which centred on so-called "hot air" – carbon credits issued under the Kyoto protocol to Eastern Bloc countries, based on their 1990 emissions. As their emissions crashed along with their inefficient industry after the fall of communism, these countries now have an excess of credits they want to be allowed to keep and sell. Other countries argue this would remove the "environmental integrity" of any new agreement. By 6pm Saturday – 24 hours after the deadline, and after a night spent locked in huddles of small groups of ministers – talks had still not reconvened for what should have been the penultimate meeting. Officials said it was impossible to predict when they might conclude. Other key issues are yet to be fully resolved, as the fortnight-long talks entered extra time. These included financial assistance for poor countries suffering the effects of climate change, and how to structure a proposed new global climate change agreement that would be signed in 2015 and come into force in 2020. But the marathon session left many delegates hopeful of rescuing a deal, amid the frustration and confusion of Friday night. "We have worked without a break and people realise we need to go home with something," said one delegate. Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate secretary, worked through the night, meeting with ministers from developed and developing countries in an attempt to secure a deal. Rumours and counter-rumours were flying throughout the day as ministers met in small groups to hammer out compromises. Some meetings were fractious, with delegates conscious of the need to avoid a breakdown. Such an outcome would be disastrous for the image of the summit with the eyes of the world upon the 195 governments meeting in Doha. Delegates were close to reaching an agreement to close down parallel negotiations set up after the protocol came into force in 2005, at the behest of the US, which has always rejected Kyoto. Closing that strand would enable unified negotiations to begin work on a proposed new global climate change agreement, which would require emissions cuts from both developed and developing countries. It would be signed in 2015 to come into force from 2020. Progress on other issues was still unclear late on Saturday afternoon, including whether and how poor countries would be compensated for the damage done to them by climate change – the so-called "loss and damage" clause. Developing countries wanted a new institution and framework to deal with this, but the US was opposed such a measure. However, a compromise was said to be possible that would allow the US to agree a new mechanism that fell short of the developing countries' strongest demands but would ensure the end results – of compensation and assistance to poor nations – were achieved.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Disgraced media mogul may look politically down and out, but he says he feels 'sense of responsibility' to the country Never a man to let defeat – or scandal – keep him down, the disgraced former prime minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi has announced he will run once again for the country's top job. With three colourful terms behind him, Berlusconi confirmed he would try for a fourth time to become premier, saying he was doing it out of "a sense of responsibility" days after his party withdrew its support for the technocrat government of the current prime minister, Mario Monti. The media mogul told reporters he was running to win and that "the campaign is already on". Monti took the loss of Berlusconi's support calmly, calling the situation "manageable", despite it increasing the likelihood of fresh elections. Although Italy's economy is still struggling, Monti is credited with calming the country's financial markets and rescuing it from financial disaster. Monti, who is a life-appointed senator, has said he will not stand in next year's vote, but is willing to step in afterwards if the result is not clear. The British betting firm Ladbrokes gave 3/1 odds on Berlusconi becoming the prime minister in 2013. Berlusconi stepped down last year amid a severe debt crisis. Allegations of his involvement with an underage prostitute and reports that he hosted sex-filled "bunga-bunga" parties also clouded his premiership. He has since been convicted of tax fraud and faces low favourability ratings in the polls. The three-time prime minister got his start selling vacuum cleaners and singing on cruise ships. In 1971, Berlusconi founded a local cable firm, Telemilano, which grew into the country's largest media company, Mediaset. He has since expanded his media empire to include Italy's largest publishing house, Mondadori, and the newspaper Il Giornale. Other business interests include owning the globally popular football club, AC Milan. Berlusconi entered politics in 1993, forming his own party and naming it after an AC Milan chant used by fans, Forza Italia, which means "go Italy". He rose to power the next year, winning the elections, and went on over the next 14 years to win twice more and lose twice, both times to Romano Prodi.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Minute-by-minute report: Comfortable wins for Arsenal and Chelsea, Sunderland fall into the relegation zone, QPR break Swindon Town's record for early-season haplessness, plus a seven-goal thriller as Norwich pip Swansea. Not a bad afternoon, all in all. Scott Murray was watching
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Minute-by-minute report: Comfortable wins for Arsenal and Chelsea, Sunderland fall into the relegation zone, QPR break Swindon Town's record for early-season haplessness, plus a seven-goal thriller as Norwich pip Swansea. Not a bad afternoon, all in all. Scott Murray was watching
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Authorities say Israel Keyes, who killed himself in prison last week, gave police details about murdering eight others A self-confessed serial killer who killed himself in jail may have murdered almost a dozen people according to investigators who spent hours interviewing him before he died. Israel Keyes, 34, took his own life in prison in Anchorage, Alaska, last weekend. Before he died, he confessed to killing eight people, including a couple in Vermont whose murder he meticulously detailed. But the FBI and local police believe there may have been at least three more murders that he is responsible for. "We know, based on our talks with him, eight. But it could be as high as 11," FBI agent Eric Gonzalez told Reuters, adding that he would not be surprised if the toll went even higher. Keyes, who was arrested in Texas after his rental car was spotted by a camera inside an ATM, is known for sure to have killed three victims. They are 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, who was abducted from an Anchorage coffee stand in February, and Bill and Lorraine Currier in Vermont, who were murdered in 2011. He was caught after using Koenig's credit card. In some 40 hours of videotaped confessions Keyes detailed the attacks on the Curriers, revealing things never released to the public that could be known only to the investigators and the killer. In chilling terms he expressed no remorse and said he committed the crimes because he enjoyed them. He had chosen the Curriers simply because they fitted his desired profile of a couple with no children or pets who he could easily overcome. "There is no one who knows me or who has ever known me that knows anything about me, really," he said on one tape. In the videos Keyes also said he committed five other murders with four in Washington state and one on the east coast, with the body being disposed of in New York. But Keyes did not reveal the identities of his alleged victims. As a result investigators are seeking to build up a timeline of his movements during his adult life and compare them to unsolved murders and missing persons cases. Keyes said his first crime was a sexual assault in Oregon, in which he let the victim go. The rape happened between 1996 and 1998 near the town of Maupin after he got the girl away from her friends. The girl was between the ages of 14 and 18, and would be in her late 20s or 30s now. But no crime was reported at the time and the FBI is now seeking more information about it. Keyes told investigators he began actually killing people in 2001, when he was living in Washington state and working as a carpenter. He said all those he killed were adults who were strangers to him and that Koenig was his youngest victim. He said he often selected people hiking or at camp sites.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | King Edward VII hospital chairman accuses DJs of 'humiliating' staff, after death of nurse who took Duchess of Cambridge call The hospital that was duped by a radio station prank call into revealing details about the condition of the Duchess of Cambridge has written to the Australian station's owners, accusing its DJs of "humiliating" its staff with a "truly appalling" stunt. The letter, from the chairman of King Edward VII hospital in London, follows the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, 46, whose body was found at a property close to the hospital on Friday, in a suspected suicide. Saldanha had answered the prank call and transferred it through to the duchess's nurse. Lord Glenarthur, the hospital chairman, said Saldanha's death was "tragic beyond words" and urged the radio station to ensure the incident was never repeated. Glenarthur told Southern Cross Austereo, which owns the station whose DJs made and aired the call, that the immediate consequence of 2Day FM's "premeditated and ill-considered actions" led to the "humiliation" of Saldanha and another nurse. He wrote: "I appreciate that you cannot undo the damage which has been done but I would urge you to take steps to ensure that such an incident could never be repeated." Saldanha's family were said to be "very, very shocked" by her death, as the Metropolitan police released a photograph of the nurse. A family friend updated the press on the family's condition as relatives and friends comforted Saldanha's husband and teenage son and daughter at their home in Bristol. A single bouquet wrapped in pink paper was propped up against iron gates at the house. In a statement to the press, the family expressed deep sadness and asked the media to respect their privacy. The photograph of Saldanha released by the police, appeared to be a blurry passport-style picture and showed the Indian-born nurse with her hair pulled back. Details of Glenarthur's letter came after the chief executive of Southern Cross Austereo, Rhys Holleran, held a press conference to say that Saldanha's suspected suicide was "tragic", but that he was satisfied the presenters had broken no laws and could not have "reasonably foreseen" the events which unfolded. "We are very confident that we haven't done anything illegal," said Holleran. "We are satisfied that the procedures we have in place have been met. "Our main concern at this point in time is that what has happened is deeply tragic and we are incredibly saddened and we are incredibly affected by that." It is understood Saldanha had worked at the London hospital for four years and was the staff member who had answered a telephone call at 5.30am on Tuesday from the presenters posing as the Queen and the Prince of Wales. She had put the call through to a duty nurse, who then divulged medical details of the duchess's condition to the presenters. During a press conference in Melbourne, Holleran expressed "deep sorrow" at the events of the last 24 hours. He said had spoken to both of the presenters and said their show would remain off-air until further notice, out of respect. Both had been offered counselling. "Our main concern is for the family [of the nurse]. I don't think anyone could have reasonably foreseen this was going to be the result," he said. "I spoke to both presenters early this morning and it's fair to say they're completely shattered. These people aren't machines, they're human beings. We're all affected by this." Australians expressed shock and disbelief at the death of Saldanha. A spokesman for the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, said: "This is a terrible tragedy. Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this time." The federal communications minister, Stephen Conroy, described Saldanha's death as "dreadful and tragic". "My thoughts and sympathies are with Ms Saldanha's family, friends and work colleagues at this time," he said. Conroy confirmed that the independent broadcasting regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), had received complaints about the hoax call but said a decision about whether to investigate the prank call for possible breaches of the commercial radio codes of practice would be one for ACMA. • For confidential support call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | America's hippest art fair has a reputation for pool parties and hedonism, but sales this year are expected to top £1.5bn Half an hour into Wednesday's VIP preview of Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest contemporary art fair in the US, P Diddy sweeps in with his entourage. In aviator shades and dressed all in black, bar the Gucci logo on his T-shirt, Diddy is famous enough to turn heads even among the hip and wealthy visitors milling up and down the aisles. Now in its 11th year, ABMB remains the art event to see and be seen at. For the uninitiated, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and exhausted by ABMB. If you think London gets too crowded with events during the Frieze fair, stay away from Miami: this year there were at least 17 art fairs happening simultaneously. Art envelops the whole city with pop-up exhibits, new museum shows, film screenings, public sculptures (including a King-Kong-sized black dog) and street art by the likes of Shepard Fairey, the creator of the famous 'Hope' Obama poster. Then there's the parties, which attract musicians such as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams, movie stars including Will Ferrell and Demi Moore and reality TV star Kim Kardashian. On the opening night, Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch's wife, co-hosted a Chanel event at Soho House in South Beach, while an afterparty at a pop-up recreation of the Club Silencio from David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive attracted queues into the early hours outside the Delano hotel. Judd Tully, a writer for the magazine Art + Auction and veteran of the fair, says: "Miami is a party city. You either have to be young or a glutton for punishment." At the Delano late on Tuesday night, crowds are streaming from a party at its beach club to the next happening. At the White Cube gallery's soirée in Soho House, the uninvited, hoping to get in, jostle behind the barrier ropes. Inside it's a scrum as punters squeeze through packed bars to get to the beach and poolside DJ sets. Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and White Cube owner Jay Jopling are apparently ensconced in an undisclosed VVIP section. Status anxiety infects the conversation. At the poolside disco, a young Canadian collector complains that he may as well party to the early hours because "all of the good stuff is pre-sold. I'll probably get there and find some 80-year-old woman has bought what I want." The often hedonistic vibe has prompted criticism of the fair, including accusations that it attracts scenesters with little real interest in contemporary art. Wendy Cromwell, an art adviser and regular visitor based in New York, says the serious collector base has grown in recent years. "The kind of people who used to come down in the first few years just wanted to party and hang on to the coat-tails of the art world. But the fair has gained legitimacy with collectors. Even New York [art fairs] can't compete. The Armory show's lost its lustre, and at Frieze New York last year people were complaining that it wasn't as good as Miami." This year, ABMB's commercial significance has been heightened by the damage suffered during Hurricane Sandy by many of the participating New York galleries. Tully says: "Some of the dealers are really counting on this fair to make money to survive." Nichole Caruso of the Wallspace gallery in Manhattan says that its basement unit – containing hundreds of drawings, sculptures and paintings – was submerged. "It was like a swimming pool. Some of that work will be with conservators for months, even years." The value of the work offered for sale by the more than 260 participating galleries at ABMB is estimated to be £1.5bn. Notable early sales included Hirst's Capaneus, a kaleidoscopic assemblage of moths, butterflies, spiders and beetles that sold for £600,000, and Jeff Koons's almost life-size sculpture of silent film star Buster Keaton, with an asking price of between £3m and £3.5m. Koons provoked a bigger stir with the news that he would be showing with gallery owner David Zwirner next year in an apparent defection from Zwirner's arch-rival Larry Gagosian, the world's most powerful art dealer. However, there are more than the usual star names on offer. Although only 10% of the participating galleries are Latin American, the fair offers perhaps the most significant international exposure for artists from the region. This reflects the growing importance of wealthy South American collectors, particularly from Brazil, which the fair has helped to spur. The White Cube opened a new space in São Paulo just before this year's ABMB, with Gagosian set to follow next year. Among the works on display from São Paulo-based Galeria Nara Roesler is Brígida Baltar's The Singing of the Rebel Bird, a video installation comprising a film displayed in a wooden box that resembles a theatre stage, inspired by a house built by a Brazilian industrialist for his opera-singer mistress. Nearby, at the booth of Lima-based gallery Revolver, José Carlos Martinat's Experimental Protoype Community of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow offers a look at the dark side of Disney, with images of strikes by Disney staff, a rapist who wore a Mickey Mouse costume and a girl crushed between two rides at the Epcot centre in Orlando. Mexican artist José Davila's work, including ghostly photographic cutouts, also attracts deserved praise and attention. Elsewhere, Cuban art duo Los Carpinteros have created a latticed, circular bar installation on the South Beach waterfront. One of the artists, Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez, explains that the panopticon-shaped space, called Güiro, was inspired by the interior of a notorious Cuban jail – only here the jailer is a bartender and the prisoners are the drinkers. The installation, done in collaboration with Absolut Art Bureau, an offshoot of the vodka brand, is one of the less bling commercial artworks around the fair. Less subtle, but knowingly so, is BMW's display of a Le Mans racing car custom-painted by the American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer – known for her text aphorisms – emblazoned with the words "Protect me from what I want". Craig Robins, a Miami businessman who runs a property development firm, sees nothing wrong with this kind of commercial partnership. Indeed Robins, who is also a major collector and founder of the Design Miami fair, says ABMB's example has helped to spur gentrification of much of the city. His revitalisation of what is now known as the "Design District" involved turning abandoned factories into an artists' community and an upmarket shopping centre. "When you think of Miami, you think of this merger of culture and commerce," he says. Looking around this festival of high-price, high-end art, it's hard to disagree. See more from ABMB in our gallery
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former Florida governor cites Republican party's lurch to the right as reason for joining Democrats and Obama Former Florida governor Charlie Crist has completed his political conversion, announcing on Twitter that he has joined the Democrats as a result of the Republican party's swing to the right. The one-time GOP politician, who ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate as an independent, had earlier signalled his support for President Barack Obama and campaigned on his behalf ahead of the November election. News that Crist has formalised the move to the Democratic party will prompt speculation that he may lobby for a run at his old seat in the 2014 gubernatorial race in Florida. The 56-year-old politician tweeted out a picture of him and his wife Carole holding aloft a Florida voter registration application. The accompanying message read: "Proud and honored to join the Democratic Party in the home of President @BarackObama." According to the Tampa Bay Times, Crist signed the papers changing his affiliation from independent to Democrat at a Christmas reception at the White House. President Obama is said to have greeted the news with a fist bump. "I've had friends for years tell me, 'You know Charlie, you're a Democrat and you don't know it,'" Crist told the newspaper Friday night. In making the move from Republican to Democrat, the former state governor cited his former party's lurch to the right on issues such as immigration, education and the environment. Crist was elected Florida governor in 2006 while in the GOP. But in 2010, under a primary challenge from the right, he opted to run as an independent, losing a three-way Senate contest to rising Republican star Marco Rubio. In Florida, talk is likely to turn to a possible run in 2014 against governor Rick Scott. The two men have already clashed, recently over demands – rebuffed by Scott – to extend early voting in the state ahead of the 6 November general election. Crist would face a stiff challenge from established Democrats in the state if he were to run. Outgoing Florida Democratic party chairman Rod Smith joked in regards to the former Republican that just because someone joins the congregation, "you don't make them the preacher". Nonetheless, Republicans have sharpened their attacks on Crist, drawing attention to past statements in which the convert was openly critical of Obama. "Charlie Crist's first official act as a Democrat was to tell a lie about why he is now pretending to be one," the Florida GOP said in a statement early Saturday. "The truth is that this self-professed, Ronald Reagan Republican only abandoned his pro-life, pro-gun, conservative principles in 2010 after he realized that Republicans didn't want to send him to Washington DC as a senator, especially after he proved he couldn't do the job as governor."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | More than 200 teenagers were captured for a year at a time, characterised as 'enemy combatants' in US report to UN The US military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations. The State Department characterized the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the United Nations in Geneva updating US compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The US military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield", the report said. A few are still confined at the detention facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said. "Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, distributed this week. Most of the juvenile Afghan detainees were about 16 years old, but their age was not usually determined until after capture, the US report said. If the average age is 16, "This means it is highly likely that some children were as young as 14 or 13 years old when they were detained by US forces," Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's human rights program, said Friday. "I've represented children as young as 11 or 12 who have been at Bagram," said Tina M Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which represents adult and juvenile Bagram detainees. "I question the number of 200, because there are thousands of detainees at Parwan," Foster said Friday. "There are other children whose parents have said these children are under 18 at the time of their capture, and the US doesn't allow the detainees or their families to contest their age." Dakwar also criticized the length of detention, a year on average, according to the US report. "This is an extraordinarily unacceptably long period of time that exposes children in detention to greater risk of physical and mental abuse, especially if they are denied access to the protections guaranteed to them under international law," Dakwar said. The US State Department was called for comment on the criticism, and a representative said they were seeking an officer to reply. The previous American report four years ago provided a snapshot of the focus of the US military's effort in the endgame of the Bush presidency after years of warfare and anti-terrorism campaigns. In 2008, the US said it held about 500 juveniles in Iraqi detention centers and then had only about 10 at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. A total of some 2,500 youths had been detained, almost all in Iraq, from 2002 through 2008 under the Bush administration. Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008 in part on winding down active US involvement in the Iraq war, and shifting the military focus to Afghanistan. The latest figures on under-18 detainees reflect the redeployment of US efforts to Afghanistan. Because the teen detainees were not charged with any crime, "a detainee would generally not be provided legal assistance". They were allowed to attend open hearings and defend themselves, and a personal advocate was assigned to each detainee, the report said. "These are basically sham proceedings," Foster said. "The personal representatives don't do anything different for the child detainees than they do for the adults, which is nothing." The report added that "the purpose of detention is not punitive but preventative: to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield". It cited a 2004 US supreme court case, Hamdi v Rumsfeld, as establishing that "the law of armed conflict permits the United States to detain belligerents until the end of hostilities without charging such individuals with crimes, because they are not being held as criminals facing future criminal trial". The US military is fighting irregular forces al-Qaida, the Taliban, and an array of similar shadowy insurgent or terrorist groups. So it is not clear when "hostilities" would ever formally end, since there is no declaration of war and no enemy government to defeat. Only the United States can decide when it deems a conflict to be over, in those circumstances. Foster said that the teens seized are not in uniform or even typically taken in combat. "We're not talking about battlefield captures, we're talking about people who are living at home, and four or five brothers might be taken together. It might take them a year or more to figure out that one of them was younger than 18, to determine the identities of these kids," she said. In January, the State Department will send a delegation to Geneva to present the report to the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child, and to answer any further questions the UN committee members may have.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Statement on state media warns country against entering 'dark tunnel' after clashes over Morsi powers and constitution The Egyptian military has urged rival political forces to solve their disputes via dialogue and save the country from being dragged into a "dark tunnel" of increasing violence. A statement from a military spokesman was read out on state radio and television made no mention of President Mohamed Morsi, whose contentious draft constitution and decrees granting himself extraordinary powers and judicial immunity sparked days of violence. But it said a solution to the political crisis should not contradict "legitimacy and the rules of democracy". The spokesman said the military's duty was to protect national interests and secure vital state institutions. "The armed forces … realise their responsibility to preserve the higher interests of the country and to secure and protect vital targets, public institutions and the interests of innocent citizens," the statement said. "The armed forces affirm that dialogue is the best and only way to reach consensus," it added. "The opposite of that will bring us to a dark tunnel that will result in catastrophe and that is something we will not allow." The military's attempt to defuse the political crisis came as the spiritual leader of Morsi's party, the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, also urged Egyptians to disown violence, saying that working through the ballot box was the best way to lift the country out of its turmoil. Brotherhood "supreme guide" Mohammed Badie said on Saturday morning that the group's supporters did not initiate the violent clashes outside the presidential palace in which at least seven people died and 700 were injured. Morsi has called for a meeting with his opponents to discuss the crisis. The opposition has rejected talks, saying Morsi must first cancel the referendum on the draft constitution set for 15 December. Mohamed ElBaradei, the opposition National Salvation Front's chief co-ordinator and a Nobel laureate, called on opposition groups to shun dialogue with Morsi. We want "a dialogue not based on an arm-twisting policy and imposing fait accompli", he said on Twitter. George Ishak, another opposition leader, said: "Whoever has killed his own people has lost legitimacy." Morsi insists the decree is necessary to end Egypt's turbulent transitional period and that his special powers would lapse once the new constitution was passed. Critics complain that his powers exceed even those wielded by the deposed Hosni Mubarak, who ruled for nearly 30 years.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Foreign secretary says he has seen some proof that Assad's forces are preparing to launch chemical attack against rebels William Hague has said he has seen "some evidence" that Bashar al-Assad's regime is preparing to use chemical weapons against Syrian rebels. The foreign secretary would not give specific details of the intelligence, also seen by the US, but said it was enough to renew warnings to Assad that his regime would face action if they were deployed. American satellites and other tools have reportedly detected increased activity at several chemical weapons depots in Syria. At least one military base is also said to have been ordered to begin combining components of Sarin nerve gas to make it ready to use. The Syrian regime has denied any plans to use chemical weapons against it own people. Speaking to the BBC at a security conference in the Gulf on Saturday morning, Hague was asked whether he had seen proof that Syria was preparing such weapons. "We have seen some evidence of that," he said. "We and the US, as I said in parliament this week, have seen some evidence of that and that is why we have issued strong warnings about it. We have done so directly to the Syrian regime." Pressed on what kind of evidence he had seen, Mr Hague replied: "We absolutely cannot be specific about that because clearly those are intelligence sources that these things come from. "But we have seen enough evidence to know that they need a warning and they have received that warning." Amid speculation that the regime could be targeted with air strikes, Hague said the use of chemical weapons would be a "major change in situation". Hague's words came amid claims from Russia, Syria's principal ally in the UN security council, that a series of leaks from the Pentagon and US state department about Assad's ability to deploy chemical weapons was being used by Obama to underpin threats of military action against his regime. The claims have been met with incredulity by the Kremlin, which has suggested they are being used as a pretext to increase pressure on Assad and prepare for the use of force. The US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, and the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, have also stepped up warnings to Syria over its alleged stockpile of chemical weapons. "I think there is no question that we remain very concerned," said Panetta. "Very concerned that as the opposition advances, in particular on Damascus, that the regime might very well consider the use of chemical weapons. The intelligence that we have causes serious concerns that this is being considered. "The president of the United States has made very clear there will be consequences, there will be consequences if the Assad regime makes a terrible mistake by using these chemical weapons on their own people," Panetta added. Clinton said Assad would cross "a red line" if he used chemical weapons. She said Washington was concerned that "an increasingly desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons, or might lose control of them to one of the many groups that are now operating within Syria".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Delegates who worked through night fail to agree on key issues such as Kyoto protocol, but remain hopeful of rescuing deal Talks on a new climate deal ground on through Friday night in Qatar, as countries failed to agree on key issues including: rescuing the Kyoto protocol, finance and compensation for poor countries suffering the effects of climate change, and how to structure a proposed new global climate change agreement. The negotiations, which have gone on for more than a fortnight, looked set to last for most of Saturday. But the marathon session left many delegates hopeful of rescuing a deal amid the frustration and confusion of the night. "We have worked without a break and people realise we need to go home with something," said one delegate. The EU is understood to have proposed a deadline of 3pm Saturday (12pm GMT) for adopting final amendments, but every deadline that has been set so far in the last days of talks has been breached. Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate secretary, worked through the night, meeting with ministers from developed and developing countries in an attempt to secure a deal. Rumours and counter-rumours were flying as ministers met in small groups and huddles of twos and threes to hammer out compromises. Some meetings were fractious, with delegates conscious of the need avoid a breakdown, which would be disastrous for the image of these talks with the eyes of the world upon the 195 governments meeting in Doha. A deal to continue the Kyoto protocol beyond the end of this year, when its first set of targets expire, looked to be within grasp. In addition, an agreement to close down a parallel set of negotiations set up after the protocol came into force in 2005, at the behest of the US, which has always rejected Kyoto. Closing that strand would enable unified negotiations to begin work on a proposed new global climate change agreement, which would require emissions cuts from both developed and developing countries. It would be signed in 2015 to come into force from 2020. Progress on other issues was still unclear on Saturday morning, including whether and how poor countries would be compensated for the damage done to them by climate change – the so-called "loss and damage" clause. Developing countries wanted a new institution and framework to deal with this, but the US was opposed to any new institution. However, a compromise was said to be possible that would allow the US to agree a new mechanism that fell short of the developing countries' strongest demands but would ensure the end results – of compensation and assistance to poor nations – were achieved. Talks started a fortnight ago with a limited agenda and a deal on the key issues looked likely. But in the final three days, during the so-called "ministerial segment" when environment ministers arrive to take over from officials, the talks got out of hand. Countries turned their back on compromises and retreated to their entrenched positions. Many blamed the Qatari hosts for failing to take a firm grip and allowing the negotiations to get out of hand. One participant said: "It's like the Qataris think it's a World Cup, but this is not a game of football – these are serious negotiations about the future of the planet. They have not taken this seriously – they have not got a grip." Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defence Capital, said: "There's a cultural mismatch between the Qatari team and this process. They think deal-making is beneath them. They are not managing very well." One delegate accused the Qataris of going home early on Thursday instead of working through the night on the draft texts, as hosts are expected to. One problem is that, as the UK's negotiator put it, "nothing is agreed till everything is agreed". That means that the conference is unlikely to be able to rescue the Kyoto protocol unless the other items of business are also resolved. The Qataris also came under fire for not putting forward their own plans for cutting emissions and providing money for poor countries. It had been hoped that as hosts they might galvanise the region, including Saudi Arabia, into doing more on climate change and using a small slice of their oil wealth to satisfy developing country demands for funds. Qatar, the world's third biggest exporter of natural gas, is also the world's biggest per capita emitter of carbon – 50 tonnes a year, compared to 17 for the US and 1.4 for India. The country makes the majority of its $170bn annual income from oil and gas. Nick Mabey, chief executive of the green thinktank E3G, echoed the views of many: "We think the level of wealth of Qatar and their responsibility for emissions means that they should be contributing. "It would add a lot of momentum to the talks if they made a financial pledge, and would encourage other countries in the region to show solidarity and help countries that are afflicted by the burning of fossil fuels."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Leader returns from exile to mark founding of Palestinian Islamist group at gathering that Fatah rivals are due to attend The Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is to lead a rally in Gaza on Saturday to mark the founding of his Islamist group and celebrate what he claims is "victory" over Israel. At least 200,000 Palestinians are expected to attend the outdoor event, which is likely to be used by Meshaal to promote Hamas's growing stature in the Arab world and push the case for reconciliation with its secular political rival, Fatah. Thousands of supporters, many holding aloft Hamas's green flag, gathered on rain-sodden wasteland ahead of the rally. Patriotic music blasted from loudspeakers, including the recent hit Strike a Blow at Tel Aviv. The song refers to rockets Hamas fired at the Israeli city in last month's eight-day conflict, and a huge model of the Gaza-made M75 missile that took aim at both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem dominated the outdoor stage set up for the speeches. "This is a day of victory," said Ahmed Shaheen, 60, sitting with his young children in front of the massive platform. "The presence of Khaled Meshaal is a sign of this victory." Meshaal, 56, is on his first visit to the Gaza Strip and was moved to tears on Friday by the ecstatic reception he received from flag-waving crowds as he toured the tiny territory, which is home to 1.7 million Palestinians. His trip comes just two weeks after the conflict with Israel that killed some 170 Palestinians and six Israelis. An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire brought an end to the fighting. Hamas claims it won the war. Israel disputes this, saying it not only killed Hamas's military commander, but also caused significant damage to its arsenal of rockets. The fighting boosted Hamas's standing in the region, winning it the support of Arab neighbours, many of whom used to treat the group as a pariah before the Arab spring uprisings ushered in several sympathetic Islamist governments. "Israel must now be fuming as it watches this Gaza victory," said Abu Waleed, 52, as he stood in a crowd on Friday, waiting to catch a glimpse of Meshaal, who survived a 1997 assassination attempt by Israeli Mossad agents in Jordan. Delegations from Qatar, Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt and Bahrain were all expected to attend Saturday's rally, which commemorates the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas and the start of the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, against Israel on 8 December 1987. Local Fatah leaders are due to attend – the first time the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas's faction has taken part in such an event since at least 2007, when it fought a brief civil war with Hamas in Gaza that Hamas won. "Meshaal's speech will outline the priorities of the Hamas movement in the coming future, and especially the implementation of reconciliation [with Fatah]," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. Clearly aware of the yearning among ordinary Palestinians for an end to the divisions that have weakened their cause on the world stage, Meshaal repeatedly returned to the subject during his many stops around Gaza on Friday. "With God's will … reconciliation will be achieved. National unity is at hand," Meshaal shouted through a microphone at the ruins of one house destroyed last month by an Israeli air raid that killed 12 civilians, including four children. But reconciliation is easier said than done. While Hamas promotes armed resistance against Israel, Fatah says it wants a negotiated deal. Equally problematic is that both are embedded in their power bases, with their own security forces that they do not want to give up. Meshaal ran Hamas from exile in Syria from 2004 until January this year when he quit Damascus because of President Bashar al-Assad's war against Sunni Muslim rebels, whose religion and politics are closer to those of the Palestinians. He now divides his time between Qatar and Cairo. His abrupt departure from Syria initially weakened his position within Hamas: ties with Damascus and Tehran had made him important, and with those links damaged or broken, rivals based within Gaza had started to assert their authority. Despite regaining the initiative during the Israeli conflict, working closely with Egypt to secure the truce, he says he plans to step down as leader shortly. Hamas has been staging a secretive leadership election for the last six months and some insiders said the huge welcome Meshaal has received in Gaza will put pressure on him to stay on as the group's overall chief.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Gangnam style singer says he will 'forever be sorry' after calling for American soldiers to be killed at a 2004 concert The South Korean rapper Psy, whose Gangnam Style video became a viral sensation, has apologised for past anti-American tirades ahead of a charity concert in which he will perform in front of Barack Obama and his family. The 34-year-old rapper, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, was forced to apologise after reports emerged that he had rapped lyrics calling for American soldiers to be killed at a 2004 concert held to oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq. In a statement, the singer said he regretted using such violent language, but said the comments were made at a time when emotions were running high over the Iraq war and the deaths of the two South Korean schoolgirls who were run over by a US military vehicle. "As a proud South Korean who was educated in the United States and lived there for a very significant part of my life, I understand the sacrifices American servicemen and women have made to protect freedom and democracy in my country and around the world," he said. "While I'm grateful for the freedom to express one's self, I've learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I'm deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted. I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words." In Dear American, a song written by the South Korean rock band N.EX.T, he sang about "slowly and painfully" killing US soldiers and their families. The lyrics reportedly included the lines: "Kill those fucking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives; Kill those fucking Yankees who ordered them to torture; Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers; Kill them all slowly and painfully." In another outburst the same year, he protested the deaths of the teenage girls; in 2002, he reportedly smashed a model of a US tank on stage. About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea, which sent about 3,600 soldiers to Iraq in 2004 but later scaled down the deployment amid strong public opposition at home. Gangnam Style is the most-watched video ever on YouTube, attracting more than 900 million hits so far. The song is expected to earn Psy as much as $8 million this year alone. It remains to be seen whether the revelations will affect the his popularity in the US, where he has appeared on Saturday Night Live, Today and Ellen, and inspired Gangnam Style parodies by, among others, US military cadets . US media reported that an online petition to ban the rapper from the Christmas in Washington concert on 21 December had quickly fizzled out. Concert organisers said Psy's appearance would go ahed as scheduled. The White House confirmed that Obama would be attending the fund-raising event with his family, as is customary for sitting US presidents.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Rhys Holleran said 2Day FM radio presenters responsible for the hospital hoax call could not have 'reasonably foreseen' tragedy The CEO of the Australian radio station responsible for the prank call to the hospital treating the Duchess of Cambridge has described the suspected suicide of the nurse who took the call as "tragic", but said he is satisfied the presenters have broken no laws. Rhys Holleran, head of the Austereo network, which owns the radio station 2Day FM, said on Saturday the presenters could not have "reasonably foreseen" the events which unfolded. "We are very confident that we haven't done anything illegal. We are satisfied that the procedures we have in place have been met," he said. "Our main concern at this point in time is that what has happened is deeply tragic and we are incredibly saddened and we are incredibly affected by that." Jacintha Saldanha, 46, a nurse at the private hospital treating the pregnant Duchess was found dead three days after taking the hoax call from the 2Day FM presenters. It is understood Saldanha, a mother of two teenage children who had worked at the London hospital for four years, was the staff member who had answered a telephone call at 5.30am on Tuesday from the presenters posing as the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Believing them to be genuine, she had put the call through to a duty nurse, who then divulged medical details of the duchess's condition to the presenters. During a press conference in Melbourne, Holleran expressed "deep sorrow" at the events of the last 24 hours. He said had spoken to both of the presenters and said their show will remain off air until further notice out of respect. Both have been offered counselling. "Our main concern is for the family (of the nurse). I don't think anyone could have reasonably foreseen this was going to be the result," he said. "I spoke to both presenters early this morning and it's fair to say they're completely shattered. "These people aren't machines, they're human beings. We're all affected by this." All advertising on 2Day FM has been suspended by its owner, Austereo, from Saturday afternoon. "They want to keep their advertisers happy and they just pulled the advertising, only on 2DayFM 104.1 in Sydney, at least until Monday, just to keep advertisers happy right now," Austereo spokeswoman, Sandy Kay, told Fairfax Media. "They're reassuring and speaking to advertisers but they've pulled them for the moment until they've cleared it all up with them." Asked if the response was due fears of an avalanche of advertiser boycotts, Kaye told Fairfax Media: "I guess it probably is. They're not words that have been given to me, but I guess that's the understanding. The words that were given to me were 'in order to keep advertisers happy'." Earlier on Saturday, Australian retailers had begun withdrawing advertising from the station. The supermarket giant, Coles, said in a statement on its Facebook page: "We understand Australians are clearly angry and upset by what appear to be tragic consequences of the 2Day FM UK hospital prank," Coles said on its Facebook page. "We have instructed 2Day FM to remove all Coles group advertising from the station." Telecommunications heavyweight, Telstra, had also pulled its advertising before the suspension. A spokesman for Telstra told the Australian newspaper the telco had suspended "advertising on the station until an investigation into the issue has concluded". Australians across the country expressed shock and disbelief at the tragic death of Jacintha Saldanha. A spokesman for the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard said in a statement: ''This is a terrible tragedy. Our thoughts are with her family and friends at this time.'' The federal communications minister, Stephen Conroy, also described Saldanha's death as "dreadful and tragic". "My thoughts and sympathies are with Ms Saldanha's family, friends and work colleagues at this time," he said in a statement.
Conroy confirmed that the independent broadcasting regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), had received complaints about the hoax call but said a decision about whether to investigate the prank call for possible breaches of the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice would be one for ACMA.
ACMA has not currently launched an investigation. In a statement, it's chairman, Chris Chapman, said: "The ACMA does not propose to make any comments at this stage, but will be engaging with the licensee, Today [sic] FM Sydney, around the facts and issues surrounding the prank call."
''These events are a tragedy for all involved and I pass on my heartfelt condolences to the family of the deceased nurse in London,'' he said. The Duchess of Cambridge, who was admitted to the hospital on Monday afternoon with acute morning sickness, hyperemesis gravidarum, was discharged on Thursday. In a statement, St James's Palace said the duke and duchess were "deeply saddened" at the news of the nurse's death. "Their thoughts and prayers are with Jacintha Saldanha's family, friends and colleagues at this very sad time." A St James's Palace spokesman added that the palace had "at no point" complained about the hoax incident. "On the contrary, we offered our full and heartfelt support to the nurses involved and hospital staff at all times". But the call was deeply embarrassing for the hospital, which is the medical institution of choice for the royal family. It is understood that the hospital, which had described the hoax as deplorable, was not disciplining the nurses involved. In a statement it said: "We can confirm the tragic death of a member of our nursing staff, Jacintha Saldanha. Jacintha has worked at the King Edward VII hospital for more than four years, She was an excellent nurse and well-respected and popular with all of her colleagues. "We can confirm that Jacintha was recently the victim of a hoax call to the hospital. The hospital had been supporting her throughout this difficult time". John Lofthouse, the hospital's chief executive, added: "Everyone is shocked by the loss of a much-loved and valued colleague". Lord Glenarthur, the hospital chairman, said: "This is a tragic event. Jacintha was a first-class nurse who cared diligently for hundreds of patients during her time with us. She will be greatly missed". In a statement released through the Metropolitan Police, her family said: "We as a family are deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved Jacintha. We would ask that the media respect our privacy at this difficult time." • For confidential support call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as protesters march towards the presidential palace after President Mohamed Morsi's defiant speech
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The supreme court has decided to take on cases related to the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 in California. Follow the decisions live
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for six months. In a rare interview, we ask the WikiLeaks founder about reports of illness, paranoia – and if he'll ever come out The Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge looks rather lavish from the street, but inside it's not much bigger than a family apartment. The armed police guard outside is reported to cost £12,000 a day, but I can see only three officers, all of whom look supremely bored. Christmas shoppers heading for Harrods next door bustle by, indifferent or oblivious to the fact that they pass within feet of one of the world's most famous fugitives. It's almost six months since Julian Assange took refuge in the embassy, and a state of affairs that was at first sensational is slowly becoming surreal. Ecuador has granted its guest formal asylum, but the WikiLeaks founder can't get as far as Harrods, let alone to South America, because the moment he leaves the embassy, he will be arrested – even if he comes out in a diplomatic bag or handcuffed to the ambassador – and extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Assange says he'll happily go to Stockholm, providing the Swedish government guarantees he won't then be extradited on to the US, where he fears he will be tried for espionage. Stockholm says no guarantee can be given, because that decision would lie with the courts. And so the weeks have stretched into months, and may yet stretch on into years. Making the whole arrangement even stranger are the elements of normality. A receptionist buzzes me in and checks my ID, and then a businesslike young woman, Assange's assistant, leads me through into a standard-issue meeting room, where a young man who has something to do with publicity at Assange's publishers is sitting in front of a laptop. There are pieces of camera equipment and a tripod; someone suggests coffee. It all looks and feels like an ordinary interview. But when Assange appears, he seems more like an in-patient than an interviewee, his opening words slow and hesitant, the voice so cracked as to be barely audible. If you have ever visited someone convalescing after a breakdown, his demeanour would be instantly recognisable. Admirers cast him as the new Jason Bourne, but in these first few minutes I worry he may be heading more towards Miss Havisham. Assange tells me he sees visitors most days, but I'm not sure how long it was since a stranger was here, so I ask if this feels uncomfortable. "No, I look forward to the company. And, in some cases, the adversary." His gaze flickers coolly. "We'll see which." He shrugs off recent press reports of a chronic lung infection, but says: "I suppose it's quite nice, though, actually, that people are worried about me." Former hostages often talk about what it meant to hear their name on the radio and know the outside world was still thinking of them. Have the reports of his health held something similar for him? "Absolutely. Though I felt that much more keenly when I was in prison." Assange spent 10 days in jail in December 2010, before being bailed to the stately home of a supporter in Suffolk. There, he was free to come and go in daylight hours, yet he says he felt more in captivity then than he does now. "During the period of house arrest, I had an electronic manacle around my leg for 24 hours a day, and for someone who has tried to give others liberty all their adult life, that is absolutely intolerable. And I had to go to the police at a specific time every day – every day – Christmas Day, New Year's Day – for over 550 days in a row." His voice is warming now, barbed with indignation. "One minute late would mean being placed into prison immediately." Despite being even more confined here, he's now the author of his own confinement, so he feels freer? "Precisely." And now he is the author of a new book, Cypherpunks: Freedom And The Future Of The Internet. Based on conversations and interviews with three other cypherpunks – internet activists fighting for online privacy – it warns that we are sleepwalking towards a "new transnational dystopia". Its tone is portentous – "The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen" – and its target audience anyone who has ever gone online or used a mobile phone. "The last 10 years have seen a revolution in interception technology, where we have gone from tactical interception to strategic interception," he explains. "Tactical interception is the one that we are all familiar with, where particular individuals become of interest to the state or its friends: activists, drug dealers, and so on. Their phones are intercepted, their email communication is intercepted, their friends are intercepted, and so on. We've gone from that situation to strategic interception, where everything flowing out of or into a country – and for some countries domestically as well – is intercepted and stored permanently. Permanently. It's more efficient to take and store everything than it is to work out who you want to intercept." The change is partly down to economies of scale: interception costs have been halving every two years, whereas the human population has been doubling only every 20. "So we've now reached this critical juncture where it is possible to intercept everyone – every SMS, every email, every mobile phone call – and store it and search it for a nominal fee by governmental standards. A kit produced in South Africa can store and index all telecommunications traffic in and out of a medium-sized nation for $10m a year." And the public has no idea, due largely to a powerful lobby dedicated to keeping it in the dark, and partly to the legal and technological complexity. So we spend our days actively assisting the state's theft of private information about us, by putting it all online. "The penetration of the Stasi in East Germany is reported to be up to 10% of the population – one in 10 at some stage acted as informers – but the penetration of Facebook in countries like Iceland is 88%, and those people are informing much more frequently and in much more detail than they ever were in the Stasi. And they're not even getting paid to do it! They're doing it because they feel they'll be excluded from social opportunities otherwise. So we're now in this unique position where we have all the ingredients for a turnkey totalitarian state." In this dystopian future, Assange sees only one way to protect ourselves: cryptography. Just as handwashing was once a novelty that became part of everyday life, and crucial to protecting our health, so, too, will we have to get used to encrypting our online activity. "A well-defined mathematical algorithm can encrypt something quickly, but to decrypt it would take billions of years – or trillions of dollars' worth of electricity to drive the computer. So cryptography is the essential building block of independence for organisations on the internet, just like armies are the essential building blocks of states, because otherwise one state just takes over another. There is no other way for our intellectual life to gain proper independence from the security guards of the world, the people who control physical reality." Assange talks in the manner of a man who has worked out that the Earth is round, while everyone else is lumbering on under the impression that it is flat. It makes you sit up and listen, but raises two doubts about how to judge his thesis. There's no debate that Assange knows more about the subject than almost anyone alive, and the case he makes is both compelling and scary. But there's a question mark over his own credentials as a crusader against abuses of power, and another over his frame of mind. After all the dramas of the last two and a half years, it's hard to read his book without wondering, is Assange a hypocrite – and is he a reliable witness? Prodigiously gifted, he is often described as a genius, but he has the autodidact's tendency to come across as simultaneously credulous and a bit slapdash. He can leap from one country to another when characterising surveillance practices, as if all nations were analogous, and refers to the communications data bill currently before the UK parliament in such alarmist terms that I didn't even recognise the legislation and thought he must be talking about a bill I'd never heard of. "A bill promulgated by the Queen, no less!" he emphasises, as if the government could propose any other variety, before implying that it will give the state the right to read every email and listen in on every mobile phone call, which is simply not the case. It's the age-old dilemma: are we being warned by a uniquely clear-sighted Cassandra, or by a paranoid conspiracy theorist whose current circumstances only confirm all his suspicions of sinister secret state forces at work? But first, the hypocrisy question. I say many readers will wonder why, if it's so outrageous for the state to read our emails, it is OK for WikiLeaks to publish confidential state correspondence. "It's all about power," he replies. "And accountability. The greater the power, the more need there is for transparency, because if the power is abused, the result can be so enormous. On the other hand, those people who do not have power, we mustn't reduce their power even more by making them yet more transparent." Many people would say Assange himself is immensely powerful, and should be held to a higher standard of accountability and transparency. "I think that is correct," he agrees. So was WikiLeaks' decision to publish Afghan informers' names unredacted an abuse of power? Assange draws himself up and lets rip. "This is absurd propaganda. Basic kindergarten rhetoric. There has been no official accusation that any of our publications over a six-year period have resulted in the deaths of a single person – a single person – and this shows you the incredible political power of the Pentagon, that it is able to attempt to reframe the debate in that way." Others have wondered how he could make a chatshow for a state-owned Moscow TV station. "I've never worked for a Russian state-owned television channel. That's just ridiculous – the usual propaganda rubbish." He spells it out slowly and deliberately. "I have a TV production company, wholly owned by me. We work in partnership with Dartmouth Films, a London production company, to produce a 12-part TV series about activists and thinkers from around the world. Russia Today was one of more than 20 different media organisations that purchased a licence. That is all." There is no one to whom he wouldn't sell a licence? "Absolutely not. In order to go to the hospital, we must put Shell in our car. In order to make the maximum possible impact for our sources, we have to deal with organisations like the New York Times and the Guardian." He pauses. "It doesn't mean we approve of these organisations." I try twice to ask how a campaigner for free speech can condone Ecuador's record on press controls, but I'm not sure he hears, because he is off into a coldly furious tirade against the Guardian. The details of the dispute are of doubtful interest to a wider audience, but in brief: WikiLeaks worked closely with both the Guardian and the New York Times in 2010 to publish huge caches of confidential documents, before falling out very badly with both. He maintains that the Guardian broke its word and behaved disgracefully, but he seems to have a habit of falling out with erstwhile allies. Leaving aside the two women in Sweden who were once his admirers and now allege rape and sexual assault, things also ended badly with Canongate, a small publisher that paid a large advance for his ghosted autobiography, only to have Assange pull out of the project after reading the first draft. It went ahead and published anyway, but lost an awful lot of money. Several staff walked out of WikiLeaks in 2010, including a close colleague, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who complained that Assange was behaving "like some kind of emperor or slave trader". It clearly isn't news to Assange that even some of his supporters despair of an impossible personality, and blame his problems on hubris, but he isn't having any of it. I ask how he explains why so many relationships have soured. "They haven't." OK, let's go through them one by one. The relationship with Canongate… "Oh my God!" he interrupts angrily, raising his voice. "These people, we told them not to do that. They were wrong to do it, to violate the author's copyright like that." Did he ever consider giving his advance back? "Canongate owes me money. I have not seen a single cent from this book. Canongate owes me hundreds of thousands of pounds." But if he hasn't seen any money, it's because the advance was deposited in Assange's lawyers' bank account, to go towards paying their fees. Then the lawyers complained that the advance didn't cover the fees, and Assange fell out with them, too. "I was in a position last year where everybody thought they could have a free kick. They thought that because I was involved in an enormous conflict with the United States government. The law firm was another. But those days are gone." What about the fracture with close colleagues at WikiLeaks? "No!" he practically shouts. But Domscheit-Berg got so fed up with Assange that he quit, didn't he? "No, no, no, no, no. Domscheit-Berg had a minor role within WikiLeaks, and he was suspended by me on 25 August 2010. Suspended." Well, that's my point – here was somebody else with whom Assange fell out. "Be serious here! Seriously – my God. What we are talking about here in our work is the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people – hundreds of thousands – that we have exposed and documented. And your question is about, did we suspend someone back in 2010?" My point was that there is a theme of his relationships turning sour. "There is not!" he shouts. I don't blame Assange for getting angry. As he sees it, he's working tirelessly to expose state secrecy and save us all from tyranny. He has paid for it with his freedom, and fears for his life. Isn't it obvious that shadowy security forces are trying to make him look either mad or bad, to discredit WikiLeaks? If that's true, then his flaws are either fabricated, or neither here nor there. But the messianic grandiosity of his self-justification is a little disconcerting. I ask if he has considered the possibility that he might live in this embassy for the rest of his life. "I've considered the possibility. But it sure beats supermax [maximum security prison]." Does he worry about his mental health? "Only that it is nice to go for a walk in the woods, and it's important – because I have to look after so many people – that I am close to the peak of my performance at all times, because we are involved in an adversarial conflict and any misjudgment will be seized upon." Does he ever try to work out whether he is being paranoid? "Yes. I have a lot of experience. I mean, I have 22 years of experience." He'd rather not say to whom he turns for emotional support, "because we are in an adversarial conflict", but he misses his family the most. His voice slows and drops again. "The situation is, er, the communication situation is difficult. Some of them have had to change their names, move location. Because they have suffered death threats, trying to get at me. There have been explicit proposals through US rightwing groups to target my son, for example, to get at me. The rest of the family, having seen that, has taken precautions in response." But it has all been worth it, he says, because of what he's achieved. "Changes in electoral outcomes, contributions to revolutions in the Middle East, and the knowledge that we have contributed towards the Iraqi people and the Afghan people. And also the end of the Iraq war, which we had an important contribution towards. You can look that up. It's to do with the circumstances under which immunity was refused to US troops at the end of 2011. The documents we'd published directly were cited by Iraqis as a reason for discontinuing the immunity. And the US said it would refuse to stay without continued immunity." Assange says he can't say anything about the allegations of rape and sexual assault for legal reasons, but he predicts that the extradition will be dropped. The grounds for his confidence are not clear, because in the next breath he adds: "Sweden refuses to behave like a reasonable state. It refuses to give a guarantee that I won't be extradited to the US." But Sweden says the decision lies with the courts, not the government. "That is not true," he snaps. "It is absolutely false. The government has the final say." If he's right, and it really is as unequivocal as that, why all the legal confusion? "Because there are enormous powers at play," he says, heavy with exasperation. "Controversy is a result of people trying to shift political opinion one way or another." And so his surreal fugitive existence continues, imprisoned in a tiny piece of Ecuador in Knightsbridge. He has a special ultraviolet lamp to compensate for the lack of sunlight, but uses it "with great trepidation", having burned himself the first time he tried it. His assistant, who may or may not be his girlfriend – she has been reported as such, but denies it when I check – is a constant presence, and by his account WikiLeaks continues to thrive. Reports that it has basically imploded, undone by the dramas and rows surrounding its editor-in-chief, are dismissed as yet more smears. The organisation will have published more than a million leaks this year, he says, and will publish "considerably more" in 2013. I'm pretty sure he has found a way to get rid of his electronic tag, because when I ask, he stares with a faint gnomic smile. "Umm… I'd prefer not to comment." Assange has been called a lot of things – a terrorist, a visionary, a rapist, a freedom warrior. At moments he reminds me of a charismatic cult leader but, given his current predicament, it's hardly surprising if loyalty counts more than critical distance in his world. The only thing I could say with confidence is that he is a control freak. The persona he most frequently ascribes to himself is "gentleman", a curiously courtly term for a cypher–punk to choose, so I ask him to explain. "What is a gentleman? I suppose it's, you know, a nice section of Australian culture that perhaps wouldn't be recognised in thieving metropolises like London. The importance of being honourable, and keeping your word, and acting like a gentleman. It's someone who has the courage of their convictions, who doesn't bow to pressure, who doesn't exploit people who are weaker than they are. Who acts in an honourable way." Does that describe him? "No, but it describes an ideal I believe men should strive for." • Cypherpunks: Freedom And The Future Of The Internet, by Julian Assange, is published by OR Books at £11; available exclusively from orbooks.com.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Justices to review Prop 8 and decide on constitutionality of Doma in move heralded by activists as 'enormously satisfying' The US supreme court will take up the issue of same-sex marriage for the first time, agreeing to hear two cases that could decide whether gay and lesbian Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals. In a long-awaited announcement on Friday, the justices confirmed that they will review California's Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage. They will also decide on the constitutionality of a provision in the Defence of Marriage Act (Doma), Section 3, that limits health, pension and tax benefits to heterosexual couples by defining marriage solely as an act between one man and one woman. The hearings are expected to take place in March, with the court delivering its rulings by the end of June. The Doma case was brought by Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old widow who was forced to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes after the death of her spouse, Thea Spyer, in 2009 because their marriage was not recognized under federal law. After the justices made their announcement, Windsor told the Guardian she was "delirious with joy". "I think Doma is wrong for all of the various ways in which it discriminates against same sex married couples and against gays all together," Windsor said. "It's enormously satisfying and fulfilling and exciting to be where we are now." Spyer, she said, would have been proud of her achievement. "I think she'd be so proud and happy and just so pleased at how far we have come. It's a culmination of an engagement that happened between us in 1967 when we didn't dream that we'd be able to marry." Four lower federal courts and two appeals courts have ruled against Doma. In Windsor's case, the second circuit court of appeals in October upheld a lower court ruling that Section 3 of Doma was unconstitutional. Windsor is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and attorneys from Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. James Esseks, director of the ACLU lesbian gay bisexual and transgender project, said: "The four decades that Edie Windsor spent with her late spouse are a testament to the words 'in sickness and in health, till death do us par. After building their lives together and getting married, it is unfair for the federal government to treat them as though they were legal strangers." The justices will also review California's Proposition 8 gay marriage ban, which was approved by voters in November 2008, five months after a state supreme court ruling that legalised same sex unions. In February, the San Francisco-based US ninth circuit court of appeals found Prop 8 to be unconstitutional, ruling that the state of California could not take away the right to same-sex marriage after previously allowing it. But the judges ruled narrowly in a way that only affected California and not the rest of the country. The US supreme court will hear arguments on the merits of that ruling. They will have the option of upholding that ruling in the same narrow fashion, applying it only to California. Or, which seems less likely, they could recognise a federal right to marriage equality. In agreeing to take on the two cases, the supreme court is setting itself up to tackle an issue that has traditionally divided America, but which has seen a significant shift in public opinion over the last decade. According to polling by Gallup, 53% of Americans now believe that same-sex marriage should be recognised by the law as valid, and extended the same rights as traditional marriage. In 1996, when Doma was enacted, just 27% agreed that gay unions should be seen on a par with heterosexual ones. More than two-thirds were against gay marriage, according to Gallup, compared to 46% now. Barack Obama came out in favour of same-sex unions earlier this year – he had previously said his views on the matter were evolving. In November, voters in Washington, Maryland and Maine became the first to approve gay marriage at the ballot box. It adds to a growing list of states recognising same-sex unions, including New Hampshire, Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia. But 31 states have amended their constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriage. North Carolina was the most recent example in May. At federal level, Doma deprives homosexual couples who are married in any of the states of tax, healthcare and pension benefits. In addition, it means that same sex couples do not enjoy the same immigration rights granted to the spouses of heterosexual US citizens. The Obama administration decided last year to stop defending Doma in court, leaving it to the Republicans under the leadership of House speaker John Boehner to prop up the law. But the White House has failed to propose striking the legislation down through Congress, instead encouraging the supreme court to rule on the issue. On Twitter, Nanci Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said: "I'm confident Supreme Court will discard Doma and Prop 8 into the dustbin of history. Let's get this over with and on to the future!" Campaigners on both sides of the debate welcome the justices' decision. Evan Wolfson, founder and president of pressure group Freedom to Marry, said: "By agreeing to hear a case against the so-called Defence of Marriage Act, the court can now move swiftly to affirm what 10 federal rulings have already said: [that] Doma's 'gay exception' to how the federal government treats married couples violates the constitution and must fall. "When it comes to the whole federal safety net that accompanies marriage – access to social security survivorship, health coverage, family leave, fair tax treatment, family immigration, and over 1000 other protections and responsibilities – couples who are legally married in the states should be treated by the federal government as what they are: married." Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association, a body opposed to same-sex marriage, said: "It is good that the supreme court has taken up these issues, what is needed is clarity at a national level. I'm optimistic that the supreme court will rule in favour of natural marriage, that is one man, one woman." "There is a huge risk, obviously, but with an issue of this magnitude, I'm confident the supreme court will exercise restraint." But he added that overturning Doma in the supreme court would represent "the end of democracy in the US."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sadness and anger in beach community as local authorities' failure to deal with dead whale leads to fears for public safety It washed into Malibu magnificent and macabre, a gleaming, lifeless fin whale. But after just five days on a beach favoured by Hollywood celebrities, it as is if a meat grinder had shredded Moby-Dick. The smooth bluish-grey blubber which glistened on Monday, drawing crowds of awed onlookers to Little Dume beach, was by Friday a bleached carcass that had been ravaged by scientists, birds, insects, sun and surf. "It was quite beautiful at first but I can't believe this now," said Angela Cancilla-Herschel, a California Wildlife Center volunteer, surveying the ruins. "This is quite shocking. It's unbelievable." Waves lapped at bone and disintegrating flesh, the stench putrid. It is thought the 40ft young male, weighing 40,000lbs, collided with a vessel, probably while it was surfacing for air, and came ashore dying or dead. Fin whales are an endangered species. The whale ended up on a beach between Paradise Cove and Point Dume state beach, a quiet, scenic spot beneath bluffs where Barbra Streisand, Matthew McConaughey and other stars have palatial homes. Authorities have disagreed over who has responsibility for the carcass, leaving it to fester as a meal for scavengers and a grim attraction for humans. Scientists removed internal organs and opened the whale's spine to take samples for a necropsy. Flocks of seagulls gorged on the bonanza. Some of the trickle of onlookers who trekked to the site on Friday, however, said the whale retained its majesty. "It's beautiful, man. It's sad but it's a magnificent creature. I've never seen one before," said Rico Rivera, 31, a research assistant. "It came on the beach to die so maybe they should just leave it here." Ingrid De La O, a realtor, agreed that the sight of the whale was sad but amazing. "You don't understand the immensity of of a whale until you see it up close." Her boyfriend, Neil Strauss, a writer, said that regardless of its decomposition, the whale remained a marvel of nature. "Elsewhere in the world, or at other times, it would be turned into food or oil for lamps," he said. "Now scientists take samples and everyone just watches it rot." The city of Malibu suggested that Los Angeles county should take responsibility. County officials said the whale was on a private beach and so nothing to do with them, though in fact it is a public beach. Others have said that California's state parks service ought to take charge. The carcass has disintegrated to such an extent that towing it out to sea is no longer feasible. "It's not physically capable of being moved because of its condition," Kevin Marble, of the LA county Lifeguards, told Malibu Patch. "It's so embedded in sand that they won't be able to get it out. The body will be pulled apart." One mooted option is burial at the beach, but the beach is rocky and without easy access for mechanical digging equipment. Some have suggested burning the whale. "No one is taking responsibility or action. I'm hearing excuse after excuse after excuse," said James Respondek, a local realtor and surfer. The remains could drift out to sea and create a "chum line", attracting sharks, he said. "This is a public-safety issue. I'm still going to surf but what about
my eight-year-old? Or all the other surfers?"
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President Obama and John Boehner are negotiating directly to resolve fiscal cliff, as messy US job data shows confusing picture
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Australian radio presenters taken off air after suspected suicide of mother-of-two A nurse at the private hospital treating the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge has been found dead in a suspected suicide three days after being duped by two Australian radio presenters in a hoax call. The body of Jacintha Saldanha, 46, a mother of two teenage children, was found at her lodgings close to the King Edward VII hospital, central London, at 9.25am on Friday. It is understood Saldanha, who lived with her family in Bristol but had worked at the London hospital for four years, was the staff member who had answered a telephone call at 5.30am on Tuesday from Sydney's 2Day FM presenters posing as the Queen and the Prince of Wales. Believing them to be genuine, she had put the call through to a duty nurse, who then divulged intimate medical details of the duchess's condition to the presenters. Police and an ambulance were called to a flat in Weymouth Street, central London, at 9.25am where they found Saldanha's unconscious body. Attempts to revive her were unsuccessful, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Scotland Yard said the death "is not being treated as suspicious at this stage". The duchess, who was admitted to the hospital on Monday afternoon with acute morning sickness, hyperemesis gravidarum, was discharged on Thursday. In a statement, St James's Palace said the duke and duchess were "deeply saddened" at the news of the nurse's death. "Their thoughts and prayers are with Jacintha Saldanha's family, friends and colleagues at this very sad time." A St James's Palace spokesman added that the palace had "at no point" complained about the hoax incident. "On the contrary, we offered our full and heartfelt support to the nurses involved and hospital staff at all times". After the prank, Prince Charles appeared to brush off the incident, joking with reporters when he arrived at an event at HMS Belfast: "How do you know I'm not a radio station?" But the call was deeply embarrassing for the hospital, which is the medical institution of choice for the royal family. It is understood when presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian rang the hospital, no receptionist was on duty as it was too early, so Saldanha answered the phone. Greig, pretending to be the Queen, asked to speak to "my granddaughter Kate". In the call, the nurse can be heard saying "Oh yes, just hold on, Ma'am", before transferring Greig to a duty nurse. The hoax made international headlines on Wednesday and Thursday. Delighted with the success of "our easiest prank call ever", the duo had been replaying the call on the station. But, as news of the death broke, the two, said to be "deeply shocked" took down their Twitter accounts and the station announced they would not return to their radio show until further notice. It is understood that the hospital, which had described the hoax as deplorable, was not disciplining the nurses involved. In a statement it said: "We can confirm the tragic death of a member of our nursing staff, Jacintha Saldanha. Jacintha has worked at the King Edward VII hospital for more than four years, She was an excellent nurse and well-respected and popular with all of her colleagues. "We can confirm that Jacintha was recently the victim of a hoax call to the hospital. The hospital had been supporting her throughout this difficult time". John Lofthouse, the hospital's chief executive, added: "Everyone is shocked by the loss of a much-loved and valued colleague". Lord Glenarthur, the hospital chairman, said: "This is a tragic event. Jacintha was a first-class nurse who cared diligently for hundreds of patients during her time with us. She will be greatly missed". In a statement released through the Metropolitan Police, her family said: "We as a family are deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved Jacintha. We would ask that the media respect our privacy at this difficult time." Neighbours near the family home in Bristol said she lived with her partner, Ben, and son , 16, and daughter, believed to be 14. She stayed in London when she was working and lived with her family on days off. One said: "They're a lovely family – Ben gives my lad a lift when he goes refereeing at Bristol Rovers." Another said: "I've always known her as the doctor, she was always very smartly dressed. Their son was always really into football, we always saw him with a ball kicking it about with his friends. She was a lovely woman, every time I saw her she would talk to me." Another described her as very "smiley and bubbly". Neighbours said she used to joke she was a "nurse for the queen". Before going to work at the royal family's favoured hospital, she had worked at North Bristol NHS Trust, which runs Frenchay and Southmead Hospitals in the city. Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said it was deeply saddening: "This is tragic news, and the thoughts of all at the Royal College of Nursing go to the family of Jacintha Saldanha." Lofthouse said on Tuesday the hospital was considering whether to take action against the radio station. After the show was aired, the station apologised, but continued to promote its hoax, playing clips of the records, and calling it "the prank call the world is talking about". On Friday, as the backlash grew, both DJs were subjected to abuse and threats on Twitter. There were calls for them to lose their jobs.The radio station's Facebook page was bombarded with thousands of abusive comments from outraged users. Scotland Yard is investigating and is treating the death as "unexplained". In a statement, it said: "Police were called at 9.25am on Friday, December 7, to a report of a woman found unconscious at an address in Weymouth Street, W1." "London ambulance service attended and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Inquiries are continuing to establish the circumstances of the incident. The death is not being treated as suspicious at this stage". In a statement, the London Ambulance service said: "We were called at 9.25am this morning to an address on Weymouth Street. We sent two ambulance crews and a duty officer. Sadly the patient, a woman, was dead.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Site takes step towards legitimacy as euro accounts now subject to same protection as bank holdings The virtual currency Bitcoin took a step towards legitimacy today as its eurozone wing joined the ranks of PayPal and Worldpay by becoming a registered payment services provider (PSP) under European law. Under a deal made in France with the investment firm Aqoba and the Crédit Mutuel bank, Bitcoin-Central now has an international bank ID number, meaning the network will be able to send and receive transfers to and from other banks and issue debit cards for users. In a post on the Bitcoin forum, Bitcoin staffer davout announced: "At Paymium we spent lots of time and energy talking about Bitcoin to our regulating bodies, the Banque de France, the ACP (French equivalent of the American SEC), TRACFIN (AML French supervising body) etc. We engaged all these resources with one goal in mind: get these people to know Bitcoin, advocate our beloved crypto-currency and listen to them, help them think until they finally reach the same conclusion as we did: there's nothing wrong with people being free. "There's nothing wrong with people freely exchanging value, we don't hurt anybody, we're not forcing anyone to use Bitcoin, we simply want to see our dream and the future of money become a reality." The virtual currency has seen significant growth since it launched in 2009 with an estimated 10.5m bitcoins currently being traded. One bitcoin is currently worth £8.54, after peaking at nearly £18 in June 2011, meaning the Bitcoin empire represents £89.6m of trading value. Bitcoin magazine's editor, Vitalik Buterin, told the BBC the deal would encourage more growth and make it more accessible to new users. It will also mean balances held in euros by Bitcoin will be subject to the same protection and compensation laws as cash held in conventional banks. "The more we see governments and banks being willing to deal with Bitcoin, the more comfortable a lot of organisations are going to be making the step forward themselves," he said. Despite a fiercely dedicated userbase in the tech community, Bitcoin's ubiquity and the anonymity of its users have also made it an attractive exchange platform for criminals, leading to a call by the US Senate in 2011 to investigate the site for tax evasion and money laundering. The chairman of the non-profit Bitcoin Foundation, Peter Vessenes, said in October that the site was battling against barriers to more widespread adoption. "There's a lot to love [but] … there are botnet operators, hackers, and Ponzi-scheme runners floating around our space," he said. "As the Bitcoin economy has evolved, we have all noticed barriers to its widespread adoption – [programs] that attempt to undermine the network, hackers that threaten wallets, and an undeserved reputation stirred by ignorance and inaccurate reporting."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Syria's ally Russia casts doubt on flurry of leaks from Pentagon and state department that Assad is preparing sarin gas A flurry of leaks from the Pentagon and US state department accusing Syria of preparing to use chemical weapons is being used by the Obama administration to underpin threats of military action against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The US claims have been met with incredulity by Syria's principal ally, Russia, which has suggested they are being used as a pretext to increase pressure on Assad and to prepare for the use of force. In recent days, NBC News has reported anonymous US officials as saying that Syria has loaded chemical weapons into bombs and that Assad is prepared to use them against his own people. The New York Times quoted anonymous officials as saying the Syrian military has moved chemical weapons in preparation for their use. One official said: "The activity we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation." Wired magazine's Danger Room blog reported that the Assad regime has "begun combining the two chemical precursors needed to weaponize sarin gas". CNN on Friday quoted a Pentagon official as saying the US had updated its military options for a potential strike against Syria. The official told CNN the US "has all the firepower it needs in the region" to attack Syria if Barack Obama orders it. The leaks come as the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, and the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, step up warnings to Syria over alleged chemical weapons. "I think there is no question that we remain very concerned, very concerned that as the opposition advances, in particular on Damascus, that the regime might very well consider the use of chemical weapons. The intelligence that we have causes serious concerns that this is being considered," said Panetta. "The president of the United States has made very clear there will be consequences, there will be consequences if the Assad regime makes a terrible mistake by using these chemical weapons on their own people." Clinton said Assad would cross "a red line" if he used chemical weapons. She said Washington was concerned "an increasingly desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons, or might lose control of them to one of the many groups that are now operating within Syria". It is not clear if the Pentagon and state department leaks are co-ordinated, but they have had the effect of sharply increasing the pressure on Syria and its allies, particularly Russia, which has resisted outside intervention in the crisis. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, this week accused Washington of inventing a non-existent chemical weapons threat as a pretext for military action – a charge that has echoes of US claims about Iraq before the 2003 invasion. "As soon as we get these rumours [about chemical weapons] we engage in constructive démarche; when we get confirmation that nothing of that type is happening we share this information with our American colleagues," Lavrov said. The alleged chemical weapons threat has been used by Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to justify deploying Patriot missiles in neighbouring Turkey. NBC quoted US officials as saying the Syrian government had ordered its chemical weapons corps to "be prepared" which Washington interpreted as a directive to begin bringing together the components needed to turn Syria's chemical stockpiles into weapons. "The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped on to the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said," according to NBC. The military is "awaiting final orders" from Assad to use chemical weapons, US officials told NBC. CNN quoted a US official as saying they had received fresh intelligence last week "when satellite imagery showed the movement of trucks and vehicles at sites where chemicals and weapons were stored". "We assume the aircraft are in close proximity to the munitions," the official said. Other leaks report that the US is training Syrian rebels to secure chemical weapons they may capture (http://alpha.syriadeeply.org/2012/12/to-secure-chemical-weapons-us-trains-rebels-brigades/£.UMIFkrvi_C9) and that the Pentagon has tens of thousands of troops in the region ready to be deployed in Syria if needed.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nurse Jacintha Saldanha, who was working on reception when Australian DJs made prank call, dies in suspected suicide A member of staff at the private hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was treated for acute morning sickness has died in a suspected suicide two days after the hospital was duped by a hoax call from an Australian radio station, it has emerged. The woman, confirmed by the hospital to be Jacintha Saldanha, a nurse who was working on the reception of King Edward VII hospital when the prank call was made, was found unconscious at an address near the London hospital just before 9.30am on Friday. The hospital said in a statement: "It is with very deep sadness that we confirm the tragic death of a member of our nursing staff, Jacintha Saldanha. "Jacintha had worked at the King Edward VII hospital for more than four years. She was an excellent nurse and well-respected and popular with all of her colleagues. "We can confirm that Jacintha was recently the victim of a hoax call to the hospital. The hospital had been supporting her throughout this difficult time." Saldanha was married and is understood to have had two children. Her family said in a brief statement: "We as a family are deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved Jacintha. We would ask that the media respect our privacy at this difficult time." A St James's Palace spokesman said the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were "deeply saddened" by the news. "At no point did the palace complain to the hospital about the [hoax] incident," he said. "On the contrary, we offered our full and heartfelt support to the nurses involved and hospital staff at all times." Radio DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian, from Sydney's 2Day FM station, rang the hospital in the early hours of Tuesday after the duchess's admission. Greig pretended to be the Queen, while Christian was in the background as "Prince Charles". Greig asked to speak to "my granddaughter Kate". Saldanha thought she was speaking to the Queen and told Greig: "Oh yes, just hold on ma'am". She then put the call through to a duty nurse, who divulged intimate medical details about the duchess. In a statement the radio station and its owner, Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), said they were deeply saddened by Saldanha's death "and we extend our deepest sympathies to her family and all that have been affected by this situation around the world". "Chief executive officer Rhys Holleran has spoken with the presenters. They are both deeply shocked and at this time we have agreed that they not comment about the circumstances. SCA and the hosts have decided that they will not return to their radio show until further notice out of respect for what can only be described as a tragedy." The Twitter accounts of Greig and Christian have been taken down since the news of Saldanha's death broke. Earlier they had replayed extended clips of the prank call. Twitter users have called for the pair to lose their jobs, they have been subjected to abuse and Greig has received what appear to be threats on the social networking site. The radio station is reportedly already serving two five-year licence probations after serious breaches of the regulator's code. It is understood the dead woman's next of kin have been informed. John Lofthouse, the hospital's chief executive, said: "Our thoughts and deepest sympathies at this time are with her family and friends. Everyone is shocked by the loss of a much-loved and valued colleague." Lord Glenarthur, chairman of the hospital, said: "This is a tragic event. Jacintha was a first-class nurse who cared diligently for hundreds of patients during her time with us. She will be greatly missed." Scotland Yard has launched an investigation and is treating the death as "unexplained". In a statement, it said: "Police were called at approximately 9.25am on Friday, December 7, to a report of a woman found unconscious at an address in Weymouth Street, W1. "London ambulance service attended and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Inquiries are continuing to establish the circumstances of the incident. The death is not being treated as suspicious at this stage". In a statement, the ambulance service said: "We were called at 9.25am this morning to an address on Weymouth Street. We sent two ambulance crews and a duty officer. Sadly the patient, a woman, was dead at the scene." The St James's Palace spokesman said: "The duke and duchess of Cambridge are deeply saddened to learn of the death of Jacintha Saldanha. Their royal highnesses were looked after so wonderfully well at all times by everybody at King Edward VII hospital, and their thoughts and prayers are with Jacintha Saldanha's family, friends and colleagues at this very sad time." The prank call was deeply embarrassing for the hospital, which is the medical institution of choice for the royal family. Lofthouse said on Tuesday the hospital was considering whether to take action against the radio station. He added: "I've received advice that what the Australian broadcasters did may well have broken the law. On the other hand, they've apologised for it so we're going to have a long and careful think about what, if anything, we do." The prank call was pre-recorded and vetted by lawyers before being broadcast to listeners in Sydney. In their initial apology the two presenters said: "We were very surprised that our call was put through. We thought we'd be hung up on as soon as they heard our terrible accents. "We're very sorry if we've caused any issues and we're glad to hear that Kate is doing well." The royal couple had made no comment about the hoax call. But Prince Charles appeared to make light of it, joking with journalists at an engagement on Thursday: "How do you know I am not a radio station?" Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: "This is tragic news, and the thoughts of all at the Royal College of Nursing go to the family of Jacintha Saldanha. "It is deeply saddening that a simple human error due to a cruel hoax could lead to the death of a dedicated and caring member of the nursing profession." A former neighbour of Saldanha described her as a "nice, lovely lady''. The woman lived next door to Saldanha, her two sons and partner, Benedict "Ben" Barboza, in Bristol several years ago. "What a terrible tragedy – just before Christmas as well," she said. "Those two young boys – they'll be heartbroken. "Her and Ben were a lovely couple. They didn't live here very long, but they were such nice neighbours. They kept themselves to themselves mostly. "It's so sad, so tragic. They always spoke to us – she was such a nice lady. I didn't know what she did for a living, but I knew she was a good person, as far as I knew. "It's devastating to hear she's gone – and in such circumstances that could be so easily avoided."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Outrage grows after senior officer claimed troops in Afghanistan were on the lookout for 'children with potential hostile intent' The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for "children with potential hostile intent". In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as "deeply troubling", army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as "military-age males", had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces. "It kind of opens our aperture," said Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. "In addition to looking for military-age males, it's looking for children with potential hostile intent." In the article, headlined "Some Afghan kids aren't bystanders", Carrington referred to a case this year in which the Afghan national police in Kandahar province said they found children helping insurgents by carrying soda bottles full of potassium chlorate. The piece also quoted an unnamed marine corps official who questioned the "innocence" of Afghan children, particularly three who were killed in a US rocket strike in October. Last month, the New York Times quoted local officials who said Borjan, 12, Sardar Wali, 10, and Khan Bibi, eight, from Helmand's Nawa district had been killed while gathering dung for fuel. However, the US official claimed that, before they called for the strike on suspected insurgents planting improvised explosive devices, marines had seen the children digging a hole in a dirt road and that "the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission". Last year, Human Rights Watch reported a sharp increase in the Taliban's deployment of children in suicide bombings, some as young as seven. But the apparent widening of the US military's already controversial targeting policy has alarmed human rights lawyers and campaigners. Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah specialising in counter-terrorism, said Carrington's remarks reflected the shifting definitions of legitimate military targets within the Obama administration. Guiora, who spent years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip, said: "I have great respect for people who put themselves in harm's way. Carrington is probably a great guy, but he is articulating a deeply troubling policy adopted by the Obama administration. "The decision about who you consider a legitimate target is less defined by your conduct than the conduct of the people or category of people which you are assigned to belong to … That is beyond troubling. It is also illegal and immoral." Guiora added: "If you are looking to create a paradigm where you increase the 'aperture' – that scares me. It doesn't work, operationally, morally or practically." Guiora cited comments made by John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, in April, in which he "talked about flexible definitions of imminent threat." Pardiss Kebriaei, senior attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a specialist in targeted killings, said she was concerned over what seemed to be an attempt to justify the killing of children. Kebriaei said: "This is one official quoted. I don't know if that standard is what they are using but the standard itself is troubling." The US is already facing criticism for using the term term "military-aged male" to justify targeted killings where the identities of individuals are not known. Under the US definition, all fighting-age males killed in drone strikes are regarded as combatants and not civilians, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. This has the effect of significantly reducing the official tally of civilian deaths. Kebriael said the definition was reportedly being used in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. "Under the rules of law you can only target civilians if they are directly participating in hostilities. So, here, this standard of presuming any military aged males in the vicinity of a war zone are militants, already goes beyond what the law allows. "When you get to the suggestion that children with potentially hostile intent may be perceived to be legitimate targets is deeply troubling and unlawful." Children in conflict zones have additional protections under the law. Kebriael, who is counsel for CCR in a lawsuit which seeks accountability for the killing of three American citizens – including a 16 year old boy – in US drone strikes in Yemen last year, said that the piece also raised questions over how those killed in that incident were counted. "Were they counted as military-aged males or were they counted as children with potentially hostile intent or were they counted as the innocent bystanders they were?" In a speech in April setting out the context for the US programme of targeted killings, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan spoke about a threshold of "significant threat', which was widely seen as introducing a lower criteria than "imminent threat". Brennan said: "Even if it is lawful to pursue a specific member of al-Qaida, we ask ourselves whether that individual's activities rise to a certain threshold for action, and whether taking action will, in fact, enhance our security. For example, when considering lethal force we ask ourselves whether the individual poses a significant threat to US interests. This is absolutely critical, and it goes to the very essence of why we take this kind of exceptional action." An Isaf spokesman, Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, told the Marine Corp Times that insurgents continue to use children as suicide bombers and IED emplacers, even though Taliban leader Mullah Omar has ordered them to stop harming civilians. There have been more than 200 children killed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by the CIA and Joint Special Operating Command, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | National Salvation Front says president has lost legitimacy as opponents and supporters take to the streets again Egypt's opposition National Salvation Front (NSF) has angrily rejected calls by the president, Mohamed Morsi, for a national dialogue and warned that he has lost legitimacy after recent unrest and bloodshed. Amid new demonstrations in Cairo by supporters and opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood leader there was no sense that the country's now violent political crisis was easing as the second anniversary of the 2011 revolution approaches. "Egypt is Islamic, it will not be secular, it will not be liberal," angry crowds chanted at a funeral procession for two Morsi supporters at the city's al-Azhar mosque on Friday. Opposition leaders were scorned as "murderers". Thousands took to the streets again and marches from different parts of the capital converged on the presidential palace in Heliopolis, now surrounded by barbed wire, tanks and scores of Republican Guardsmen. At one section a wall had been built overnight to keep protesters at bay. Later hundreds of protesters broke through the barricades but the troops offered no resistance. Other opposition supporters remained in Tahrir square in the centre of town. "After the bloodshed we will not put our hands in the hands of those who killed new martyrs," declared Hamdeen Sabahi, another leading figure in the NSF. Mohamed ElBaradei, the NSF's chief co-ordinator and a Nobel laureate, called on opposition groups to shun dialogue with Morsi. We want "a dialogue not based on an arm-twisting policy and imposing fait accompli," he said on Twitter. George Ishak, another opposition leader, said: "Whoever has killed his own people has lost legitimacy." As the crowds swelled later in the evening there was more pressure on the barricades manned by the Republican Guard. The military had set up barbed wire along the perimeter of the palace, and in one section a cement-block wall. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers were parked behind the barricades. Eventually protesters broke through, the stationed troops offering no resistance and in some cases removing the barricades. Protesters spilled through the barbed wire and moved to the palace gates. Some stood on the tanks as the troops remained while the protesters had the run of the perimeter, as they did last Tuesday after a similar rally, though in that case the police were manning the barricades and they withdrew completely. Egypt, scene of the second and biggest revolution of the Arab spring, was plunged into crisis on 22 November when Morsi issued a controversial decree stripping the judiciary of any power to challenge presidential decisions. Clashes between his supporters and opposition protesters on Wednesday claimed seven lives and caused 700 injuries, with the opposition holding the president directly responsible. Morsi addressed the nation late on Thursday but failed to offer any concessions on a decree granting him extraordinary powers and judicial immunity or on a referendum he has called for 15 December on a draft constitution that has been rejected by the opposition. He called for dialogue with opposition starting on Saturday but the NSF rejected the call unless the decree was first revoked and the referendum cancelled. "We maintain our demands to revoke the decree and cancel the constitution," Ishak said. "Morsi promised a constitution that would have national consensus. This constitution doesn't and now it is bloodied." Morsi insisted that the decree was necessary to end Egypt's turbulent transitional period and that his special powers would lapse once the new constitution was passed. Critics complain that his powers exceed even those wielded by the deposed Hosni Mubarak, who ruled for nearly 30 years. But the draft has also been attacked for its weaknesses on rights and freedoms and a creeping sense of religiosity in the text. It has also been criticised for the mainly Islamist and male makeup of the assembly that drafted it after Christian, female and liberal members withdrew. Morsi also railed in his speech against hired thugs connected to some members of the opposition who were behind Wednesday's violence. He did not place any blame on his own supporters who headed to the presidential palace that day to break up a sit-in only hours after the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, had announced that its supporters were on their way there. Late on Thursday the US president, Barack Obama, called Morsi to express his "deep concern" over the recent protests. The White House said Obama welcomed Morsi's call for talks but stressed they should be "without preconditions". In Cairo one demonstrator was seen carrying a placard reading: "Obama. Your bitch is our dictator." Rival protests also took place in Alexandria and Luxor in the south. The two sides pelted each other with stones outside the headquarters of the Brotherhood office in the Nile delta city of Kom Hamada in the province of Beheira. In the Delta industrial city of Mahalla, protesters cut railways and announced a sit-in until the cancellation of Morsi's decrees and next week's referendum.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Malcolm Harris, who has been in a battle with prosecutors over the privacy of his tweets, has plea deal withdrawn by judge An Occupy Wall Street protester who has been fighting with prosecutors to keep some of his tweets private looks likely to face trail next week after a judge withdrew his offer of a plea deal. When he appeared in court on Friday, Malcolm Harris had expected to be sentenced to time served for disorderly conduct during a demonstration on the Brooklyn bridge in October 2011. Instead, he was told that the case will go to trial on 12 December as planned. It follows the refusal by the judge to rule over a motion concerning whether his tweets could be used in the event of a trial. The move raises the prospect that a series of tweets by Harris could become public. Prosecutors want to use them as evidence, but Harris's lawyer fears may be used to prosecute others. Harris, 23, was one of hundreds arrested in the mass march across the Brooklyn bridge at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests last year. His case has received heightened media attention due the questions raised about who owns the rights to messages posted on Twitter. Prosecutors say tweets posted by Harris show that the defendant was aware that he was breaking police orders relating to the protest. The New York district attorney's office issued a subpoena to Twitter in January, calling on the firm to hand over "any and all user information, including email address, as well as any and all tweets posted" between 15 September and 31 October 2011. Harris initially attempted to block the move, but was told that he had no proprietary interest to his own messages. Twitter also fought the subpoena, noting that its own terms and conditions explicitly state that users "retain their right to any content they submit, post or display on or through". But New York judge Matthew Sciarrino rejected the company's arguments, and ordered Twitter to hand over the messages to the court. Twitter eventually complied with the demand, although the tweets have so far remained sealed. In attempting to plead guilty Friday, Harris's legal team were hoping to settle the criminal charge while keeping alive an appeal over the legality of the DA's subpoena. But Sciarrino refused to rule on a motion relating to whether the tweets could be used as evidence in a trial, saying that it was the preserve of the trial judge alone to decide. As such, the case looks likely to go to trial on 12 December. Prosecutors in the case are seeking a sentence of 10 days community service. Responding to the development, Harris tweeted: "Woah, that was not what was supposed to happen." "Show trial it is," he added in a subsequent message.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Brian McClendon presides over Google's ambitious attempt to map the world, from street plans to penguins and beyond Eight years ago, Google bought a cool little graphics business called Keyhole, which had been working on 3D maps. Along with the acquisition came Brian McClendon, aka "Bam", a tall and serious Kansan who in a previous incarnation had supplied high-end graphics software that Hollywood used in films including Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. It turned out to be a very smart move. Today McClendon is Google's Mr Maps – presiding over one of the fastest-growing areas in the search giant's business, one that has recently left arch-rival Apple red-faced and threatens to make Google the most powerful company in mapping the world has ever seen. Google is throwing its considerable resources into building arguably the most comprehensive map ever made. It's all part of the company's self-avowed mission is to organize all the world's information, says McClendon. "You need to have the basic structure of the world so you can place the relevant information on top of it. If you don't have an accurate map, everything else is inaccurate," he says. It's a message that will make Apple cringe. Apple triggered howls of outrage when it pulled Google Maps off the latest iteration of its iPhone software for its own bug-riddled and often wildly inaccurate map system. "We screwed up," Apple boss Tim Cook said earlier this week. McClendon, pictured, won't comment on when and if Apple will put Google's application back on the iPhone. Talks are ongoing and he's at pains to point out what a "great" product the iPhone is. But when – or if – Apple caves, it will be a huge climbdown. In the meantime, what McClendon really cares about is building a better map. This not the first time Google has made a landgrab in the real world, as the publishing industry will attest. Unhappy that online search was missing all the good stuff inside old books, Google – controversially – set about scanning the treasures of Oxford's Bodleian library and some of the world's other most respected collections. Its ambitions in maps may be bigger, more far reaching and perhaps more controversial still. For a company developing driverless cars and glasses that are wearable computers, maps are a serious business. There's no doubting the scale of McClendon's vision. His license plate reads: ITLLHPN. Until the 1980s, maps were still largely a pen and ink affair. Then mainframe computers allowed the development of geographic information system software (GIS), which was able to display and organise geographic information in new ways. By 2005, when Google launched Google Maps, computing power allowed GIS to go mainstream. Maps were about to change the way we find a bar, a parcel or even a story. Washington DC's homicidewatch.org, for example, uses Google Maps to track and follow deaths across the city. Now the rise of mobile devices has pushed mapping into everyone's hands and to the front line in the battle of the tech giants. It's easy to see why Google is so keen on maps. Some 20% of Google's queries are now "location specific". The company doesn't split the number out but on mobile the percentage is "even higher", says McClendon, who believes maps are set to unfold themselves ever further into our lives. Google's approach to making better maps is about layers. Starting with an aerial view, in 2007 Google added Street View, an on-the-ground photographic map snapped from its own fleet of specially designed cars that now covers 5 million of the 27.9 million miles of roads on Google Maps. Google isn't stopping there. The company has put cameras on bikes to cover harder-to-reach trails, and you can tour the Great Barrier Reef thanks to diving mappers. Luc Vincent, the Google engineer known as "Mr Street View", carried a 40lb pack of snapping cameras down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and then back up along another trail as fellow hikers excitedly shouted "Google, Google" at the man with the space-age backpack. McClendon, pictured, has also played his part. He took his camera to Antarctica, taking 500 or more photos of a penguin-filled island to add to Google Maps. "The penguins were pretty oblivious. They just don't care about people," he says. Now the company has projects called Ground Truth, which corrects errors online, and Map Maker, a service that lets people make their own maps. In the western world the product has been used to add a missing road or correct a one-way street that is pointing the wrong way, and to generally improve what's already there. In Africa, Asia and other less well covered areas of the world, Google is – literally – helping people put themselves on the map. In 2008, it could take six to 18 months for Google to update a map. The company would have to go back to the firm that provided its map information and get them to check the error, correct it and send it back. "At that point we decided we wanted to bring that information in house," says McClendon. Google now updates its maps hundreds of times a day. Anyone can correct errors with roads signs or add missing roads and other details; Google double checks and relies on other users to spot mistakes. Thousands of people use Google's Map Maker daily to recreate their world online, says Michael Weiss-Malik, engineering director at Google Maps. "We have some Pakistanis living in the UK who have basically built the whole map," he says. Using aerial shots and local information, people have created the most detailed, and certainly most up-to-date, maps of cities like Karachi that have probably ever existed. Regions of Africa and Asia have been added by map-mad volunteers. 'People want to be found'Why do they do it? Manik Gupta, who led the Map Maker project in India before moving to Google HQ, says its a very human thing to want to put yourself on the map: "People want to be found. They want you to know where they live, where they come from." It's a labour-intensive process for Google as well as its army of unpaid helpers. It's also the fastest-updating map in history. Google even maintains a live stream, on which you can watch edits happening in real time. "The fact is the real world is changing. Chasing the real world is our measure. It's not how we compare to our competitors, it's how we compare to the real world," says McClendon. It's not just the great outdoors that Google wants to map. The company is increasingly interested in mapping indoors. McClendon was recently in Tokyo's Shinjuku station, the world's busiest transport hub with 35 platforms, more than 200 exits and 3.64 million people per day. Google has it mapped. Once he has his map, McClendon says the real challenge is what not to show. The iconic London Underground map, a design classic that is easy to read if not geographically accurate, is an example of the old-world idea of a map. "They reduced it down to the most readable form that still contains all the information. They've done that so everybody can read that. But imagine if you saw the London underground system only as you use it," he says. A personal map would let you know which lines are busy and would change to reflect your working pattern, the time of day or what you do at the weekend. "The ability to remove information allows you space to provide another level of more personalized information," says McClendon. "A map that tries to answer every question for every person is effectively unreadable." Google's domination of the map world has some people worried. The company has run into difficulties over privacy, not least in Germany where Street View was abandoned after clashes with the authorities. Google was fined by US authorities after it was found that its Street View cars were collecting private information from people's wireless networks. Steven Romalewski, director of the mapping service at the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, says Google has been instrumental in opening up the new era of mapping, but adds that he worries that there isn't enough competition. "I wouldn't want to see one entity controlling the base map," he says. McClendon says: "There will always be multiple providers. I don't see us effectively owning the map. We are making a version of the world, as accurate as we can make it." World domination has never sounded so benign.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jobless rate falls to lowest level since December 2008 but data shows sharp downward revisions to previous two months The US unemployment rate has fallen to 7.7%, its lowest level in four years, as the economy appeared to shrug off the looming fiscal cliff and the effects of superstorm Sandy. The Labor Department said on in its latest nonfarm payrolls report on Friday that 146,000 new jobs were added in November. The unemployment rate dropped from 7.9% to 7.7%, its lowest level since December 2008. But November's rise was tempered by sharp downward revisions to the prior two months. October's nonfarm payrolls rose 138,000, down from the initially reported 171,000, and September was up 132,000, not 148,000. While long-term unemployment remained high and gains from the last two months were trimmed back, November's figures were higher than expected. Business leaders have publicly stated that hiring is slowing in the face of the year end budget crisis now roiling Washington. And Sandy, which hit the densely populated east coast with devastating consequences at the end of October was expected to affect hiring through the month. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had predicted a gain of 80,000 in payrolls and a 7.9% jobless rate. The news came as talks over averting the fiscal cliff crisis appeared to be stalling in Washington. Republican House speaker John Boehner told reporters that Barack Obama was "slow-walking" the economy to the edge of the fiscal cliff, and that the president has "wasted another week." "It's time for the president – if he's serious – to come back with a counter offer," Boehner said. US stock markets initially reacted positively to the jobs news, but appeared to be losing momentum by lunchtime. David Semmens, a senior US economist at Standard Chartered, said the fall in the unemployment rate was largely a "mirage". The participation rate, which measures the percentage of people in the workforce, dipped in November to 63.6% from 63.8%, driving the decline in the unemployment. "That said, it is a positive report. Sandy does not appear to have slowed hiring," he said. Semmens said companies were making the hires that they needed, but that it was clear hiring was far slower than it would be if the fiscal cliff were resolved. "Companies are hiring people that they have to hire, but they are behind in the cycle. I would expect this number to be far better if and when there is a resolution," he said. Semmens said the rise in stock markets may have been driven by the fact that this was yet another mixed report. Unemployment is falling, slowly, and the economy appears to be recovering, but not at a pace that is likely to change the Federal Reserve's policy of low interest rates and quantitative easing. Private companies accounted for all of the month's gains, adding 147,000 jobs during November. The government cut another 1,000 jobs. The retail sector added 53,000 jobs as the holiday season started and there were gains in professional services like computer-systems design and healthcare. The construction industry shed 20,000 jobs, while manufacturers cut 7,000 positions. Joan Entmacher, the vice-president at the National Women's Law Center, said the report showed signs of improvement but that major problems remained. "One critical but overlooked fact in today's unexpectedly strong jobs data is that more than four in 10 jobless women and men are unable to find work despite searching for more than six months. "But unless Congress acts quickly, over 2 million long-term jobless workers will see their unemployment insurance benefits cut off in just three weeks [if there is no resolution to the fiscal cliff]. Ending these benefits would not only harm the families who depend on them, but would also pull billions of dollars out of our economy, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Germany's central bank has cut its GDP forecasts, warning that 2013 will be much weaker than previously thought
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | US secretary of state also condemns republican dissident terrorists as she visits Stormont assembly The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has condemned the violent loyalist protests this week that have forced an MP to flee her home in east Belfast, as well as the continued terrorism of republican dissidents. During her visit to Northern Ireland on Friday as part of a four-day tour of Europe, Clinton expressed support for Naomi Long, the Alliance party MP for Belfast East. Long was visited by police officers in the early hours of Friday morning to warn her of a death threat against her and advise her to move out of her home. The Alliance party has been subjected to arson attacks on its offices and the homes of councillors since Monday's vote at Belfast city hall to end the practice of flying the union flag 365 days a year. Alliance councillors, who hold the balance of power on Belfast city council, forced through a compromise motion that would allow the union flag to fly on designated days only – a move that infuriated hardline loyalists and sparked a week-long spell of rioting in Protestant areas. Long, a former lord mayor of Belfast, said: "I refuse to allow this threat to stop me from delivering the valuable constituency service which I have developed since first elected in 2001, a service to all of the people of east Belfast. "This is not an attack on an individual or on a party, but a wanton attack on the democratic process. It is long past time that this vicious campaign of intimidation and violence was brought to a permanent end." Commenting on the street disorder and intimidation directed against the non-sectarian Alliance party, Clinton said: "The work of peace not complete. I condemn the attacks this week. There will always be disagreements in democratic society but violence is never an acceptable response." She made her remarks while meeting the first minister, Peter Robinson, and the deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, at the Stormont assembly. Robinson has issued an appeal for the disturbances connected to the union flag dispute to end. However, there are further loyalist protests planned for this weekend, with a demonstration outside Belfast city hall on Saturday. A casualty of that protest has been a march from Belfast's Royal Victoria hospital to highlight the need to retain paediatric cardiac surgery. The Children's Heartbeat Trust has cancelled its protest due to fears of trouble erupting in the city centre on Saturday afternoon. Clinton's eighth visit to Northern Ireland also coincided with the detention of four suspected senior republican dissidents in Derry and the discovery of a new type of mortar bomb during the arrest operation on Thursday night. The bomb – known as an explosively formed projectile – is similar to devices used by Islamic insurgents to kill British and US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Chief Superintendent Stephen Martin said the weapon was capable of piercing armoured vehicles and could kill those inside. It was discovered in a car stopped by a police patrol in the Creggan area of Derry on Thursday night. Four men in their 40s were arrested, three inside the car and another nearby. Praising the police for intercepting the weapon, Ronnie McKeegan of the Ulster Unionist party said: "If the bomb had reached its destination I dread to think of what the consequences would have been. "I would like to congratulate the PSNI for their prompt actions in the city which undoubtedly saved lives and property from being destroyed." The four men have been taken to Antrim police station for questioning.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Quake and tsunami jolts north-east Japan, striking regions hardest-hit in 2011 disaster that killed 20,000 people Japan escaped largely unscathed on Friday after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake shook the north-east coast. It was, however, a chilling reminder of the 9.0 quake that struck the area in March 2011, triggering a tsunami that killed almost 20,000 people and a triple meltdown at the nearby Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Initially, the appearance on TV screens of a tsunami warning, and repeated announcements to remember last year's tragedy and flee the coast, prompted fears of a second disaster in less than two years in the worst-affected prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. Less than an hour later, a tsunami washed ashore in Ishinomaki, one of the hardest-hit towns in last year's tragedy, where the rebuilding process has barely begun. Mercifully, this time the wave was just a metre high. Two hours after the quake struck 150 miles offshore at 5:18pm local time, the meteorological agency cancelled its tsunami warning. Narita airport closed briefly for safety checks and phone lines were temporarily jammed by the large volume of calls. Several, much smaller, tsunamis lashed other parts of the coast, including Soma city, which lies just outside the 12-mile (20km) evacuation zone imposed around the Fukushima plant. On Friday, as on 11 March 2011, the earthquake appeared to have cause minimal damage – testimony to the unrivalled ability of specially designed Japanese buildings to withstand violent seismic activity that could potentially kill thousands in many other countries. Buildings swayed for several minutes as far away as Tokyo; nearer the epicentre, where coastal towns and villages are largely deserted swaths of flattened land, people fled to higher ground. For all the relief that catastrophe had been diverted, Friday's earthquake would have added to the anxieties of the 325,000 people in the region still living in temporary accommodation. "I was in the centre of the city the very moment the earthquake struck," Chikako Iwai, a resident of Ishinomaki, told Reuters. "I immediately jumped into the car and started running towards the mountains. I'm still hiding inside the car. I have the radio on and they say the cars are still stuck in the traffic. I'm planning to stay here for the next couple of hours." Thoughts quickly turned to the Fukushima plant, declared stable by authorities a year ago but where workers have yet to begin the dangerous task of removing molten fuel from damaged reactors and the long, costly process of decommissioning. The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said workers had been ordered to shelter inside buildings around the plant, but added that there was no sign of damage or radiation leaks. Police reported that five people had been injured, including a 75-year-old woman who fell while heading for higher ground. Thanks to Japan's warning system, people in the area had up to six minutes to take precautions between the first estimate of the quake's intensity and the moment it struck. The earthquake measured a lower five in Miyagi prefecture on Japan's scale of one to seven, which measures the amount of shaking a quake causes rather than its intensity. Earthquakes of that strength can damage older buildings and roads, which do not have the strict quake-resistant features introduced after more than 6,000 people died in an earthquake in Kobe, in January 1995.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Report tallying funding surge in election's final weeks shows massive influx of cash from Super Pacs and the campaigns The 2012 presidential election broke the $2bn milestone in its final weeks, becoming the most expensive in US political history, according to final federal finance reports. The reports detailed a last-minute cascade of money from mega-donors and an onslaught of spending by the Obama and Romney campaigns and Super Pacs. The final campaign finance tallies filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thrusday included nearly $86m in fundraising for the losing presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney, in the election's last weeks. That final burst brought the Romney campaign's total for the election to above $1bn. Final fundraising and spending totals for President Barack Obama's victorious drive also topped $1bn. Surpassing the $2bn mark was long expected after an election season dominated by the supercharged competitive pressures that both campaigns faced in mounting massive fundraising blitzes to stoke expensive media ad battles and ground wars. The Obama and Romney campaigns each mobilized competing squads of ultra-wealthy fundraisers, sought aid from free-spending allied Super Pacs and deployed multimillion-dollar media broadsides and armies of organizers. The final thrust of fundraising included a massive late surge of $33m in donations to pro-Romney political committees from a single billionaire, Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson. In all, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, gave Romney and other Republican candidates $95m during the election season, closing in on the gambling magnate's vow to give $100m to Republican causes. Despite Romney's bitter election loss, his national finance chairman on Thursday declared a fundraising victory. Spencer Zwick said "every dollar we raised was put to use in the effort to elect Mitt Romney" and described the totals as "the most successful in Republican party history". Both campaigns already were nearing $1bn each in expenditures by late October, and Super Pacs supporting Obama and Romney had spent more than $500m in media ads. Politically oriented nonprofit "social welfare" organizations that do not have to declare their finances or identify their fundraisers have spent hundreds of millions more on so-called issue ads. The main pro-Romney Super Pac, Restore Our Future, brought in $22m in the campaign's final weeks, finishing with $152m for the entire campaign. Adelson and his wife provided $10m of that last-minute total as well as $23m to American Crossroads, another pro-Romney Super Pac headed by veteran Republican strategist Karl Rove. Other top late donors to Restore included Larry Ellison, head of software giant Oracle Corp, who gave $3m, and Houston Texans owner Robert McNair, who gave $1m. The Renco Group, a New York company headed by investor Ira Rennert, also gave $1m. The rival Super Pac supporting Obama, Priorities USA Action, reported raising $15m during the last weeks of the campaign. The group was run by a group of former White House aides. The committee's final haul accounted for about 20% of roughly $78m in contributions this election cycle. The group's top donors included Renaissance Technologies investors James H Simons and Henry Laufer, who each gave $1.5m. Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner, Texas lawyer Steve Mostyn, and Stephen Robert, also of Renaissance, also gave $1m, as did the Laborer's International Union of North America. But Adelson was the election's single most influential donor. His post-election Super Pac total does not quite match that figure, but the casino magnate also hinted broadly he would also give millions more to Republican-leaning nonprofits that do not have to report their war chests to the FEC but instead provide confidential figures to the Internal Revenue Service. Along with his dominant presence in the presidential race, Adelson also poured money into Super Pacs backing several Republican Senate candidates in the final weeks of the election. More than $1.5m in Adelson money went to a Super Pac backing Republican candidate George Allen in Virginia, $1m to a committee aiding Michigan candidate Peter Hoekstra and $500,000 to a Super Pac supporting senator Scott Brown. All were defeated. Adelson recently told the Wall Street Journal that he would double his investment in Republican causes by the next election and he has the financial muscle to do it. His massive campaign donations are backed by his lucrative casino holdings in the US and Macau. The most recent November quarterly statement of his Las Vegas Sands Corp estimated that Adelson's casino revenues surged $1.11bn in the first nine months of 2012 compared with the same period in 2011. In late November, Adelson's company announced a special dividend of $2.75 a share in anticipation of the threatened "fiscal cliff" rise in federal tax rates. The dividend move netted Adelson who owns more than half of Sands' 820m shares an estimated personal gain of as much as $1.2bn, according to financial analysts. Adelson's role as the premiere fundraiser in American politics could be complicated by his casino company's continuing struggles with the federal government over tax revenues and Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations focusing on possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which targets money-laundering and international bribery. Sands' recent quarterly statement acknowledged the federal probes as well as negotiations with the IRS over "unrecognized tax benefits" highlighted by a tax audit of the company's Macao and Singapore casino earnings between 2005 and 2009. Sands cited a "possible settlement of matters presently under consideration at appeals in connection with the IRS audit".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 'Where is the party, then?' jokes Venezuelan president on arrival in Caracas after 11-day stay in Havana Hugo Chávez arrived back in Caracas in the early hours of Friday morning after an 11-day stay in Havana for post-cancer treatment. The unannounced arrival came amid mounting rumours that the recently re-elected president, who declared himself cancer-free earlier this year, had suffered a health setback following an intense campaign race. His arrival was broadcast on the morning news programme on state-run TV, which showed him joking and catching up with members of his cabinet who had gone to greet him on the tarmac. "What time is it? 3am? This is the perfect hour to go party. Where is the party, then?" Chávez said. Flanked by his vice-president, Nicolas Maduro, and his two daughters, Chávez, who has been in power since 1998, said he was happy to be back and looking forward to another victory in the upcoming regional elections, which he has said will secure him a "perfect victory". "Today is 7 December it's been two months since October's victory, but yesterday it was 14 years since the 6 December [presidential] victory. We have gone from victory to victory," he said. Chávez made no mention of his absence from the Mercosur summit to be held on Friday in Brasilia. This would have been Venezuela's first meeting as a full member of the regional trade bloc. The charismatic leader, known for his long televised addresses that can run up to four hours, had not appeared in public since 15 November. Since being diagnosed with cancer 18 months ago Chávez has undergone three surgeries and received most of his medical treatment in Havana. In the past his departures to Cuba have all been televised. On this occasion there were no photos or videos of the president's departure or his stay in Cuba, and no return date had been specified.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | More than 400 missing and 310,000 homeless after typhoon Bopha strikes southern island of Mindanao Rescuers were digging through mud and debris on Friday to retrieve more bodies strewn across a farming valley in the southern Philippines by typhoon Bopha. The death toll from the storm has passed 500, with more than 400 people missing. More than 310,000 people have lost their homes since the typhoon struck the island of Mindanao on Tuesday and are crowded inside evacuation centres or staying with relatives, relying on food and emergency supplies being rushed in by government agencies and aid groups. "I want to know how this tragedy happened and how to prevent a repeat," the president, Benigno Aquino III, said during a visit to New Bataan, the town that took the brunt of the storm with ferocious winds and rains lashing the area. Officials have confirmed 252 dead in Compostela Valley province, including New Bataan, and 216 in nearby Davao Oriental province. Nearly 40 others died elsewhere and more than 400 are still missing, about two-thirds in New Bataan alone. "We are going to look at what really happened. There are allegations of illegal mining, there are allegations of the force of nature," said the interior secretary, Mar Roxas, who travelled with Aquino. "We will find out why there are homes in these geohazard locations." Government geological hazard maps show that the farming town of New Bataan, population 45,000, was built in 1968 in an area classified as "highly susceptible to flooding and landslides". Most of the deaths were in the valley, which is surrounded by steep hills and crisscrossed by rivers. Flooding was so widespread there that places people thought were safe, including two emergency shelters, became among the deadliest. Poverty is widespread in the Philippines, and the disaster highlights the risks that some take in living in dangerous areas in the hope of feeding their families. "It's not only an environmental issue, it's also a poverty issue," the environment secretary, Ramon Paje, said. "The people would say: 'We are better off here. At least we have food to eat or money to buy food, even if it is risky.'" On another part of Mindanao last December, 1,200 people died when rivers overflowed after a powerful storm. Then and now, raging flash floods, logs and large rocks carried people to their deaths. The bureau of mines and geosciences had issued warnings before the typhoon to people living in flood-prone areas, but in Compostela Valley, nearly every area is flood-prone.
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