| |  | | | | | 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 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Battery in one plane explodes followed by fuel leak in another, both at Boston airport and owned by Japan Airlines Two Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes have been the subject of safety scares within two days at Boston airport in the US, adding to concerns about the aircraft. On Monday, an electrical fire erupted on one of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners operated by Japan Airlines at Boston Logan international airport. Authorities said a battery in the auxiliary power unit aboard the plane jet had suffered "severe fire damage". On Tuesday at the same airport, a fuel leak forced a different 787 operated by JAL to cancel takeoff. Massachusetts Port Authority spokesman Richard Walsh said the plane was towed back to the gate after about 150 litres (40 gallons) of fuel spilled. He said the plane had 178 passengers and 11 crew members on board. Walsh said the plane was evaluated and departed that afternoon. A JAL spokeswoman said the crew had reported a "mechanical issue". The two incidents have extended a series of problems that have dogged the jet for more than a month and increased concern about the plane. The fire broke out on an empty Dreamliner jet parked at a gate in Boston. Officials said a battery in the auxiliary power system exploded around 10.30am, shortly after passengers had disembarked. A mechanic inspecting the jet discovered smoke while performing a routine post-flight inspection.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are looking into what caused the problem, which came within weeks of Boeing enduring a string of other electrical problems that briefly grounded three of the planes. The new jet also has suffered an engine failure and fuel leaks in the 14 months it has been in service. The electrical fire is troubling in part because the 787 relies heavily on electrical power to drive onboard systems that in other jet models are run by air pressure generated by the engines. The new jet also suffered an electrical fire during a test flight, prompting a redesign of electrical systems. Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said on Monday: "We are aware of the event and are working with our customer." The Dreamliner is Boeing's first jet to be made of carbon composites rather than aluminium, a change that reduces the plane's weight and allows it to use less fuel. Since entering service in October 2011 the plane has repeatedly made headlines for mechanical problems. In July 2012, the FAA investigated an incident in which a 787 engine made by General Electric Co blew apart on the ground in South Carolina, prompting changes in how the engines are made, maintained and inspected. A similar engine failed on a Boeing 747 in Shanghai in September.
The Dreamliner's run of electrical mishaps began on 4 December 2012 when a United Airlines flight from Houston to Newark, New Jersey, made an emergency landing after it appeared that one of its power generators failed. United later said an electrical panel was at fault. On 13 December Qatar Airways said it had grounded one of its three 787 jets because of the same problem. On 17 December, United said a second 787 in its fleet had developed electrical issues.
Also in December, the FAA ordered inspections of 787s after fuel leaks were found on two aircraft operated by foreign airlines. The leaks stemmed from incorrectly assembled fuel line couplings, which could result in loss of power or engine fire, the FAA said. In late December, the Boeing chief executive, Jim McNerney, said the 787 had not experienced an unusual number of problems for a new aircraft, calling the problems "normal squawks". The jet was plagued by production problems that delayed its initial delivery by three and a half years. Boeing has nearly 800 unfilled orders for the plane and is ramping up production from five a month to 10 a month this year. JAL has ordered a total of 45 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, including seven it is already operating. Morito Takeda, a JAL spokesman, said six of those seven aircraft were flying as usual. The seventh remained at Boston Logan airport. All Nippon Airways, which has placed orders for 66 Dreamliner aircraft including 17 that are already operating, also had no plans to change its orders, said spokesman Etsuya Uchiyama. Japan's transport ministry has ordered inspections of batteries made by Yuasa for the auxiliary power unit. JAL inspected six of the units and found no problems. Shares of the batteries' maker, Japan's GS Yuasa Corp, fell sharply for a second day on Wednesday after the fire.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Seven-time Tour de France winner who was stripped of his titles for doping will talk about his downfall, says TV network Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France winner who was stripped of his cycling championships for doping, is to break his silence in a television interview with Oprah Winfrey. The Oprah Winfrey Network announced on Tuesday that it will broadcast the interview on Thursday 17 January. It will be Armstrong's first formal interview since he was banned from cycle racing for life. "Armstrong will address the alleged doping scandal, years of accusations of cheating and charges of lying about the use of performance-enhancing drugs throughout his storied cycling career," Winfrey's network said in a statement. On Saturday reports emerged that Armstrong, 41, had told associates and anti-doping officials he was considering an admission of using banned drugs. It said Armstrong hoped to persuade anti-doping officials to allow him to resume competition in athletic events that adhere to the World Anti-Doping Code, under which the Texan is currently subject to a lifetime ban. However, Armstrong's lawyer Tim Herman later denied there had been talks with anti-doping bodies about any admission. Armstrong has always vehemently denied charges of doping and has never been proven to have tested positive. A 10 October 2012 report from the US anti-doping body Usada cited Armstrong's involvement in what it characterised as the "most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping program that sport has ever seen" involving anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, blood transfusions and other doping. Less than two weeks later Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories were nullified and he was banned from competitive cycling for life after the International Cycling Union ratified Usada's sanctions against him. In November Armstrong, a survivor of testicular cancer, stepped down as a board member of Livestrong, the cancer-support charity he founded in 1997.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | With handlers in tow, US delegation visits Pyongyang computer lab for a demonstration in state-sponsored Googling Information flow is toxic sewage for authoritarian states. It's why Iran blocks Facebook and China hobbles Google. Some lefties would toss the American effort to muzzle WikiLeaks in the mix. Information can undermine power. It's not clear whether that will be the effect of a visit to North Korea by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, who is among a delegation led by the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Pictures of Schmidt were released on Tuesday, showing him on a visit to an "e-library" where students were using Google. Here's an extract of the AP report of the encounter, which, if the pictures are to be believed, had a distinctly staged feel about it: One student showed Schmidt how he accesses reading materials from Cornell University online on a computer with a red tag denoting it as a gift from Kim Jong Il. "He's actually going to a Cornell site," Schmidt told Richardson after peering at the URL. Cohen asked a student how he searches for information online. The student clicked on Google "That's where I work!" Cohen said and then asked to be able to type in his own search: "New York City." Cohen clicked on a Wikipedia page for the city, pointing at a photo and telling the student: "That's where I live." Kim Su Hyang, a librarian, said students at Kim Il Sung University have had internet access since the laboratory opened in April 2010. School officials said the library is open from 8am to midnight, even when school is not in session, like Tuesday.
The AP noted that while university students at Kim Chaek University of Science and Technology and the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology have carefully monitored internet access, they are "under strict instructions to access only educational materials". Most people in North Korea are not allowed to use the internet, but that does not rate as a hardship in a nation that once again faces severe famine after a terrible drought and a disastrous grain harvest. In the 1990s an estimated 1 million North Koreans died of hunger while Kim Jong Il devised ever gaudier tributes to himself. Considering that last month North Korea sent a rocket into space, a pattern emerges: big spending on photo-worthy exploits while the people starve. What's Schmidt up to? Neither he nor Google has said why he is accompanying Richardson, who plans to speak to North Korean officials about an American, Kenneth Bae, arrested for committing "hostile" acts against the state. It's possible to speculate on why the invitation was extended. In a New Year's Day speech the new leader, Kim Jong Un, said the state planned to use science and technology to build the economy. Critics might say Schmidt, a billionaire and a walking symbol of the riches technology can afford, is being used as a set piece to establish North Korean tech cred. Or perhaps Google is considering a deal with North Korea similar to the deal it had with China, in which it agreed to censorship in exchange for market access. Whatever the cause and effect of Schmidt's visit, there's an ineffable strangeness to photos of the Google chairman watching a rigged demonstration of the freedom to use Google – a strangeness that only a state that is a terminal prisoner to its own insularity could devise.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Adviser says Obama is willing to consider all options on troop levels as he meets with Afghan president in Washington US officials have raised the possibility of a complete military withdrawal from Afghanistan for the first time, as President Hamid Karzai arrived in Washington for three days of discussions over military and economic ties. In a briefing for journalists in advance of Karzai's visit, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, said the White House is prepared to consider all options for US troop levels after 2014, including a so-called "zero option" if conditions allowed. On Friday Karzai holds his first face-to-face talks with President Barack Obama since last year's Nato summit in Chicago, shortly after the pair had signed a long-term strategic framework agreement. The Obama administration is committed to withdrawing the majority of its 68,000-strong military stationed there by the end of next year –
with the size of the remaining force still to be decided, as well as the key question of legal immunity for US military operating in the country post-2014. The talks between the two governments were "not aiming to keep a certain number of US troops in Afghanistan", said Doug Lute, deputy assistant to Obama and White House coordinator for South Asia. The final number would be "significantly lower" than the 68,000 troops currently on the ground, Lute said. "They are going to be talking about missions and authorities, not numbers," Rhodes said. Asked if the troop level options included zero, Rhodes replied: "That would be an option we would consider." Later he added: "We wouldn't rule out any option … we're not guided by keeping any [specific] number of troops in the country." The White House warned that no agreements or decisions are expected to result from this week's visit by Karzai, describing it as "a good time for the two presidents to sit down and consult" ahead of the US military draw-down and the Afghan elections scheduled for April 2014. Under the strategic framework agreement signed last year, some US troops may remain to train Afghan forces and continue to fight al-Qaida cells. General John Allen, the Nato commander and top US general in Afghanistan, has recommended keeping between 6,000 and 15,000 troops in the country after 2014. An unnamed US official told Reuters the White House has asked for scenarios for between 3,000 and 9,000 troops to remain. But the Afghan leader is said to want an end to US military operations in villages, as well as protection from militants based across the border with Pakistan. The final number of any US forces in Afghanistan after 2014 would depend on the perceived strength of al-Qaida and its affiliates in the country, the progression of Afghan security forces, and the legal protection granted to US forces by the Afghan government – the last a sticking point in the bilateral security agreement being negotiated between the two governments with a deadline of November this year. "I think they will have very candid discussions about the sorts of immunities that the bilateral security agreement might have," Lute said. Karzai also wants the US to provide helicopters, heavy weapons and other advanced military equipment for Afghanistan's army as well as warplanes for the Afghan air force, and for humanitarian and reconstruction aid to be channelled through Afghan government ministries rather than via western aid agencies. Kabul has accused the US of fostering corruption by giving funding directly to warlords. Officials are also to broach the on-again, off-again peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The prospects for talks has been helped by Pakistan's recent release of groups of imprisoned Taliban commanders, including eight people on New Year's Eve, following an improvement in the Afghan-Pakistan relations that are crucial to any hopes of a peaceful settlement. Hopes have been further raised by a meeting in France between the Taliban and the Afghan high peace council last month, which US officials have described as "promising". Direct talks with the Karzai government have been ruled out by the Taliban, which wants to negotiate with the American government, while the US says that the Taliban should speak directly to the Afghan government. "We have a clearer path toward Afghan-led peace talks than we have had in the past, and I think that is what will be discussed," Lute said. The Afghan leader will also meet secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Thursday – who is back at work after hospitalisation from a blood clot and concussion – as well as outgoing defense secretary Leon Panetta. Karzai also plans to give a high-profile speech at Washington's Georgetown University. Karzai is to visit his ally Asadullah Khalid, the head of Afghanistan's homeland security agency, who is in the US receiving medical treatment after being injured in a Taliban assassination attempt in Kabul last month.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to remain in Cuba for further treatment following cancer surgery and lung infection Hugo Chávez will miss his scheduled inauguration on Thursday due to poor health but the door should be left open for him to be sworn in at a later date, the Venezuelan government has announced. The statement ends weeks of will-he won't-he speculation but is likely to be only the start of a constitutional debate about the status of a president-elect who has not been seen in public since he flew to Cuba for emergency cancer surgery last month. Diosdado Cabello, the speaker of the national assembly, made the announcement at an extraordinary session of the legislature on behalf of vice-president Nicolás Maduro. He said that according to medical advice, the president cannot attend the inauguration and will have to remain in Havana to allow more time for recovery, invoking article 231 of the constitution that allows for a president to be sworn in at a later date. He noted that Chávez left for Cuba with the unanimous permission of assembly to undergo surgery. With a strong majority in the assembly, the ruling party is likely to hold sway. Instead of the inauguration ceremony, the ruling party have called for a mass rally to demonstrate public support for the president, who has led the oil-rich nation since 1999. Regional leaders are also expected to fly to Caracas to show solidarity with the figurehead of the Latin American left. Earlier in the day, the government called on citizens to ignore the "psychological warfare coming from abroad" and stated that Chávez was still suffering from a lung infection. The statement gave little reassurance that the president was recovering, saying: "The president is in a stationary condition with respect to the most recent statement, which informed about the respiratory deficiency he faced caused by a pulmonary infection. Treatment is permanently and rigorously administered and the patient is assimilating it." Opposition politicians earlier called for more clarity about the health of the country's leader to determine whether he will be temporarily or permanently absent from office – a constitutional consideration that affects who will replace him and whether a new presidential election will have to be called. It now seems that the government are stating that the absence will be short-term. The lack of detailed information has sparked rumours. Some foreign media and microblogs have speculated that Chávez is in a coma or on life support. These suggestions have been denounced by the government. The latest statement describes health rumours as "psychological warfare", echoing recent comments by several ruling party officials who have ascribed them to enemies, rightwingers and the opposition. Fears of an indefinite delay have been raised by the opposition and the Catholic church. Opponents of Chávez have called for strikes if this appears likely. To demonstrate the popular support for Chávez, who has been elected three times with large majorities, the ruling camp has called for people to take to the streets of Caracas on Thursday. "All of Venezuela will come here in front of the Miraflores presidential palace, the people supporting our president, the people supporting Comandante Chávez – in an overwhelming manner, the people in the street," Cabello said . Uruguay's president, José Mujica, is also expected to attend, possibly with Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and other regional heads of state. Brazil has shown its support by declaring that the constitution of Venezuela allows for a gap of up to 180 days should Chávez not be sworn in at the scheduled date.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Judge rules that Manning had suffered excessively harsh treatment but reduction falls far short of defence team's hopes The US soldier accused of being behind the massive WikiLeaks publication of state secrets has been awarded a 112-day reduction in any eventual sentence on the grounds that he was subjected to excessively harsh treatment in military detention. Colonel Denise Lind, the judge presiding over Bradley Manning's court martial, granted him the dispensation as a form of recompense for the unduly long period in which he was held on suicide watch and prevention of injury status while at the brig at Quantico marine base in Virginia where he was detained from 29 July 2010 to 20 April 2011. During that time he was held under constant surveillance, had his possessions removed from his cell and at times even his clothes, often in contravention to the professional medical of psychiatrists. Lind's ruling was made under Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that protects prisoners awaiting trial from punishment on grounds that they are innocent until proven guilty. The recognition that some degree of pre-trial punishment did occur during the nine months that the soldier was held in Quantico marks a legal victory for the defence in that it supports Manning's long-held complaint that he was singled out by the US government for excessively harsh treatment. However, the ruling falls far short of the hopes of Manning's defence team. At best, the soldier's lawyers had pressed for a dismissal of all 22 counts that he is currently facing relating to the transfer of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables and war logs to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Dismissal of all charges is listed as a possible remedy for an Article 13 violation. But Lind said it should be used only under the most egregious circumstances where the US government has engaged in outrageous conduct. "The charges are serious in this case and there was no intent to punish. There is no argument to dismiss the charges," the judge said. Beyond dismissal, the defence had called for a diminution of Manning's sentence according to a ratio of 10 days reduction for every day of excessive treatment, to run for the entire duration of the nine months of the soldier's confinement at Quantico. That would have resulted in more than seven years being taken off his sentence. But in the end, the judge agreed only to a straight day-for-day ratio, and further limited the duration of the reduction to narrowly defined periods where she found excessive treatment had taken place. Specifically, she granted Manning seven days off any sentence for the seven days when he was kept on the most restrictive regime, known as Suicide Risk, against the advice of psychiatrists – the only Article 13 violation accepted by the prosecution; 75 days off sentence for when he was kept on the only slightly less onerous status of "prevention of injury", also against professional opinion; 20 days for having his underwear removed unduly after he made a joke that he could use that to harm himself; and 10 days for being granted just 20 minutes of recreation outside his cell every day when he should have been given a full hour. In her ruling, Lind rejected several of the key arguments that had been put forward by the defence as evidence of pre-trial punishment. Manning's legal team tried to show that the military hierarchy had taken an inappropriate interest in the terms of Manning's confinement right up to the level of Lt Gen George Flynn in the Pentagon. But Lind ruled that Flynn had acted appropriately to ensure that the brig staff followed procedures correctly and that they took the "high ground". She found that there had been no intention to punish the inmate on the part of the brig staff or the chain of command, who were motivated purely by a desire to ensure that the soldier did not harm himself and that he would be available to stand trial. She also dismissed complaints concerning Juan Mendez, the UN rapporteur on torture, and the former US congressman Dennis Kucinich, who were both refused permission to visit Manning in Quantico. Lind said there was no requirement under military regulations to grant them access, and they were not on the prisoner's visitation list. The battle for the defence now turns to the charges that Manning is facing. The most potentially devastating is the accusation that by passing information to WikiLeaks, he effectively made it available to al-Qaida and its affiliate terrorist organisations. That charge, that he "aided the enemy" carries a possible maximum sentence in this case of life in military custody without any chance of parole. Manning is certain to plead not guilty to that charge, and has offered to plead guilty to a range of lesser charges in the hope that the prosecution will drop the "aiding the enemy" count.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Figures show 2012 was a full degree Fahrenheit hotter than 1998 record – and scientists say they expect more of the same Temperatures in the United States reached have reached record levels, making 2012 by far the hottest year in the history books. A year of negligible winter, punishing heat waves, drought, and monster storms, such as Sandy, contributed to the record year in the continguous United States, according to a report released on Tuesday by the National Climatic Data Center. Temperature differences are ordinarily measured by fractions of degrees, but 2012 was a full degree Fahrenheit hotter than the previous record. The average annual temperature in the contiguous United States was 55.3F (13C) last year. That was a full degree Fahrenheit higher than the 1998 record, and 3.2 degrees above the 20th century average, the NCDC said NCDC scientists described that difference as a "big deal" – one that over time would begin to redefine what was seen as normal weather conditions for America. The NCDC is due to release its report on global temperatures next week. "We are well above the pack in terms of all the years we have data for in the US," Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NCDC in Asheville, North Carolina, told a reporters' conference call. "Last year was an outlier looking at past temperature records for the US, but as we move forward we can expect to see more of the same." Campaign groups said the new report made it even more urgent for Barack Obama to cut the emissions that causing warming. "This won't be the last time we break records like this," said Angela Anderson, the director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The longer we delay reducing emissions, the more climate change we're going to lock in. The president has promised to make climate change a priority in his second term, but he needs to turn those words into action." Scientists have consistently said the big rise in temperatures since the tailend of the 20th century would not have been possible without the warming owing to climate change. With 2012, the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred within the past 15 years. No month has fallen below the global temperature average since February 1985. Crouch said natural weather variability was also a factor in the 2012 record. However, the trend line was clear. In total, 356 new all-time heat records were set last year, compared to just four new all-time lows. "We have results already that show these kind of results would not happen without climate change. It's a fairly evident trend," said Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at Climate Central. "The individual year and the individual anomalies are more difficult to attribute, but when it comes to the long-term trend we have good confidence that this couldn't happen without climate change." It was, on several other counts, a year of extremes. Last year brought $11bn weather events from Sandy, believed to have inflicted more than $60bn damages on New Jersey and New York, to Hurricane Isaac, tornadoes to a brutal drought. By the time summer was over, more than 99m Americans – or about a third of the entire population – had sweltered through 10 or more days hotter than 100F (37.8C), the NCDC said. Nineteen states broke existing temperature records. Sixty-one percent of the lower 48 states was enduring drought. The extreme hot and dry conditions – the worst since the 1950s – burned through the corn fields of the midwest and high plains, delivering a shock to food prices. While drought has faded from public conversation, it has not relaxed its grip over the winter. Shipping on the Mississippi has slowed because of low river levels. The Great Lakes are nearing historic lows. Farmers in Kansas report winter wheat crop is at risk. The closing months of the year also remained stubbornly warm, with the third smallest snowfall on record. "We are still seeing impacts from the drought," Crouch said. "It is not over, and I perceive that is going to be a big story moving forward in 2013."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Governor uses state-of-the-state speech to thank residents for going above and beyond – and lay groundwork for political future Proclaiming New Jerseyans "among the toughest, grittiest and most generous citizens in America," governor Chris Christie on Tuesday called on the nation to reciprocate with additional hurricane Sandy aid. "We've waited 72 days, seven times longer than the victims of Katrina waited" for an aid package, Christie said in his state-of-the-state address at the capitol in Trenton. "One thing I think everyone understands is that New Jersey, Republicans and Democrats, will never stand silent when our citizens are being shortchanged." On Friday the House of Representatives passed a $9.7bn relief package to cover insurance claims by homeowners affected by Sandy, signed into law by President Barack Obama on Monday. The House is scheduled to take up a larger, $51bn aid package for New York and New Jersey when the legislature reconvenes on 15 January. Christie, who has seen his approval rating jump 20 points to 73% in the months since the 29 October storm, opened his annual address by singling out citizens sitting in the gallery whose heroic acts saved lives after Sandy hit. A nurse swam out of her flooded home, hitchhiked to the hospital where she worked and put in a 12-hour shift to help storm victims, Christie said. A couple put on wetsuits and jumped in a rowboat to rescue a parent. Then they went back to the area and saved more than 50 neighbors with their pets, he said. "I want to thank them for saving lives and making a difference," Christie said to loud applause. Hurricane Sandy ravaged the New Jersey coastline, killing at least 24 people in the state, washing away entire towns and leaving 41,000 residents without a home. Damage in the state has been estimated in the tens of billions. As he did in a pugnacious news conference last week after the House postponed voting on Sandy aid, Christie repeatedly called for a "quick and clean" aid bill "now, next week". "Some things are above politics," Christie said. "Sandy was and is one of those things." The governor faces re-election next year, and the whisper campaign behind a Christie presidential run in 2016 started well before the recent national election. At times, Christie sounded unmistakably like a candidate. "I stood at the spot where the Atlantic Ocean flowed into the bay, where route 35 once carried thousands of cars," he said of the Sandy aftermath. "Now, merely 10 weeks after our state's worst storm, you see a permanent route 35 already being rebuilt. That's what an effective government can do, that's what a determined people can do, and that's how we will lead New Jersey in the months and years ahead." Christie said "the indomitable spirit of this great state" would see New Jersey through. "There's plenty of evidence that New Jersey will not let [the storm] stop our turnaround," he said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Civil liberties group hails decision calling New York police department's controversial searches unconstitutional A federal judge has dealt a significant blow to the New York police department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy, declaring that officers had "systematically" engaged in unconstitutional activity by searching residents outside thousands of private apartments in the city. Manhattan federal court judge Shira Scheindlin said the NYPD must immediately halt the practice of conducting trespass stops at certain buildings in the Bronx neighbourhood. Campaigners said the policy unfairly targeted black and Latino householders who were placed "under siege" in their homes. "While it may be difficult to say when precisely to draw the line between constitutional and unconstitutional police encounters such a line exists, and the NYPD has systematically crossed it when making trespass stops outside buildings," Scheindlin wrote in a 157-page ruling. Scheindlin said that a lack of training within the NYPD may have contributed to the practice of unlawful stops outside buildings that formed part of the clean halls program, under which landlords can give police officers the right to patrol in and around private residential buildings. "The evidence of numerous unlawful stops at the hearing strengthens the conclusion that the NYPD's inaccurate training has taught officers the following lesson: stop and question first, develop suspicions later," she wrote in her decision. Operation Clean Halls, introduced in the Bronx in the 1990s, has the aim of combating illegal activity in thousands of apartment buildings in high-crime areas. But the New York Civil Liberties Union reported that in a subset of Clean Halls buildings, police officers conduct regular floor-by-floor sweeps, called vertical patrols, and engage in particularly aggressive stop-question-frisk-and-arrest practices. The ruling comes after a long-running campaign by New York activist groups including the NYCLU. Opponents argued that the NYPD's clean halls program led to officers stopping and arresting residents outside their own buildings. "Today's decision is a major step toward dismantling the NYPD's stop-and-frisk regime," said NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman. "Operation Clean Halls has placed New Yorkers, mostly black and Latino, under siege in their own homes in thousands of apartment buildings. This aggressive assault on people's constitutional rights must be stopped." Scheindlin's ruling came in the case of Ligon v City of New York, filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Bronx Defenders, LatinoJustice PRLDEF and the Shearman & Sterling law firm. Jaenean Ligon had complained that she and her sons were stopped by police on multiple occasions outside their apartment building in the Bronx without cause. The ruling is the one of a number of stop-and-frisk cases that have been brought against the NYPD.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | David Coombs tells military hearing that Manning had 'no evil intent' to help enemy and selected harmless material to publish Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of instigating the largest leak of state secrets in US history, consciously selected the information he passed to WikiLeaks to ensure that it would be of no harm to the US and would not aid any foreign enemy, his lawyer argued on Tuesday. David Coombs, Manning's civilian lawyer, revealed at a hearing at Fort Meade military base in Maryland what is likely to be a central pillar of the defence case at the soldier's court martial. A full trial is scheduled to start on 6 March. Coombs said that the defence would be calling as a witness Adrian Lamo, the hacker who alerted military authorities to Manning's WikiLeaks activities, to give evidence about the web chat he had with Manning shortly before the soldier's arrest in Iraq in March 2010. The content of the web chat, Coombs suggested, would be used by the defence to show that Manning selected information to leak that "could not be used to harm the US or advantage any foreign nation". The issue of Manning's motive in allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables and war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq to WikiLeaks goes to the heart of the case against the soldier, Coombs argued. The most serious charge against him, "aiding the enemy", that carries a maximum sentence – in this case of life in military custody with no chance of parole – rests on the US government proving that Manning knew, or reasonably should have known, that the leak would be exploited by anti-US forces. The prosecution has previously stated its case that by placing confidential documents on the internet, Manning in effect handed the intelligence to al-Qaida as the information was then freely available to anyone with a computer. But Coombs insisted that the content of the Lamo web chats, backed up by evidence of other unnamed witnesses who would be called at trial, would show that Manning had no "evil intent" to help the enemy. Quite the contrary: he actively selected the material he passed on for its harmless impact on the US. He also believed that "information that is out in public can't do any harm", and thus having it "out there" would negate any of its potential for damaging national interests, Coombs said. The disclosure of such an important line of defence – that goes to the core of Manning's thinking as he embarked on the massive WikiLeaks trove of state secrets – came amid legal argument relating to a prosecution motion relating to the issue of motivation. The military prosecutors are seeking to preclude any discussion of Manning's motives from the trial itself, arguing that they are irrelevant to determining whether or not he committed the offences for which he is charged. The prosecution lawyer, Captain Angel Overgaard, told the court that in the US government's opinion, Manning's motives for leaking had no bearing on his state of mind or intentions when he carried out the acts and thus was irrelevant to the determining of the facts of the case at trial. "If somebody stole a loaf of bread to feed her family, she still stole the loaf, even though her motives were good," Overgaard said. The presiding judge, Colonel Denise Lind, who will hear the trial without a jury at the request of the defence, quizzed the prosecution over aspects of its motion. Lind put herself into the character of Manning, and wondered whether the intensity of his motive could have blotted out his awareness of the consequences of his actions: "I'm thinking so much about what I want to do with this information that the enemy never crossed my mind," Lind speculated. The hearing will continue with a prosecution motion to preclude any discussion at trial of the over-classification of state information. Part of Manning's motivation, the defence has argued, was that he believed the US government to be overbearingly secretive, but again the prosecutors contend that is irrelevant to the question of his guilt or innocence.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Officials also to broach on-again, off-again peace talks between Taliban and Afghan government over three-day visit With the US poised to draw down its military forces from Afghanistan and peace talks with the Taliban seemingly back on the agenda, President Hamid Karzai arrives in Washington on Tuesday for three days of discussions with far-reaching implications for both countries. On Friday Karzai holds his first face-to-face talks with President Obama since last year's Nato summit in Chicago, shortly after the pair had signed a long-term strategic partnership. Karzai has said that the main topic of discussion will be the continued US military involvement in Afghanistan. The Obama administration is committed to withdrawing the majority of its 60,000-strong military stationed there by the end of next year – with the size of the remaining force still to be decided, as well as the key question of legal immunity for US military operating in the country. Under the agreement signed last year, some US troops may remain to train Afghan forces and continue to fight al-Qaida cells. General John Allen, the Nato commander and top US general in Afghanistan, has recommended keeping between 6,000 and 15,000 troops in the country after 2014. An unnamed US official told Reuters the White House has asked for scenarios for between 3,000 and 9,000 troops to remain. But the Afghan leader is said to want an end to US military operations in villages, as well as protection from militants based across the border with Pakistan. Karzai also wants the US to provide helicopters, heavy weapons and other advanced military equipment for Afghanistan's army as well as warplanes for the Afghan air force, and for humanitarian and reconstruction aid to be channelled through Afghan government ministries rather than via western aid agencies. Kabul has accused the US of fostering corruption by giving funding directly to warlords. Officials are also to broach the on-again, off-again peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The prospects for talks has been helped by Pakistan's recent release of groups of imprisoned Taliban commanders, including eight people on New Year's Eve, following an improvement in the Afghan-Pakistan relations that are crucial to any hopes of a peaceful settlement. Hopes have been further raised by a meeting in France between the Taliban and the Afghan High Peace Council last month, which US officials have described as "promising". Direct talks with the Karzai government have been ruled out by the Taliban, which wants to negotiate with the American government, while the US says that the Taliban should speak directly to the Afghan government. To foster negotiations President Obama is likely to urge that Kabul support the Taliban's establishment of a political consulate in Qatar. Other topics to be discussed during the Washington meetings include the fate of Afghanistan's Parwan Detention Centre, which was to have been handed over to Afghan control last year but now seems likely to stay under US control until 2014. The Afghan leader will also meet secretary of state Hillary Clinton – who is back at work after hospitalisation from a blood clot and concussion – and plans to give a high-profile speech at Washington's Georgetown University. Karzai is also expected to visit his ally Asadullah Khalid, the head of Afghanistan's homeland security agency, who is in the US receiving medical treatment after being injured in a Taliban assassination attempt in Kabul last month.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jobless rate jumps to 11.8% as data lays bare continued discrepancies between nations in single currency region Unemployment in the eurozone hit a fresh high in November after the jobless rate jumped to 11.8%, illustrating the difficulties faced by officials in Brussels seeking to show the bloc is on the mend. The news came as Ireland's deputy prime minister warned that Britain's possible exit from the European Union is now the "big challenge" facing Europe. Official figures from Eurostat showed that the number of unemployed in the struggling 17 member currency union jumped to 18.8 million. Across the wider European Union, the unemployment total hit 26 million for the first time out of a working population of almost 230 million. The unemployment rate for the 27 member EU remained at 10.7%, the same as in October, but up from 10% a year ago. The European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, argued in an upbeat speech on Monday that the currency union had put the worst behind it and no longer faced an existential crisis – but Tuesday's unemployment data laid bare the continued discrepancies between different nations. The unemployment situation is particularly dire in southern European countries where the situation has become entrenched, especially among the under 25s. Youth unemployment in Italy rose to an all-time high above 37% in November, while Greece and Spain registered rates above 50%. Economists have forecast unemployment will keep rising. Tom Rogers, senior economic adviser at Ernst & Young, said he expected the rate to hit 12.5% by early 2014 "as eurozone businesses and households remain wary and governments continue to cut back". Laszlo Andor, the EU's employment commissioner, warned that record unemployment and fraying welfare systems in southern Europe risk creating a new divide in the continent. "A new divide is emerging between countries that seem trapped in a downward spiral of falling output, fast rising unemployment and eroding disposable incomes and those that have so far shown good or at least some resilience," he said. Last year had been "another very bad year for Europe in terms of unemployment and the deteriorating social situation," said Andor. The biggest rise in unemployment over the past year took place in Greece, where joblessness soared to 26% in September, up 7.1 percentage points over September 2011's 18.9%. But the highest overall rate in the EU was in Spain, where 26.6% of the workforce was jobless in November. Austria, however, posted the lowest unemployment rate in the EU, at 4.5%. The rate in Germany was 5.4%, with 7.8% in Britain and 10.5% in France. Meanwhile, Ireland's deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, criticised David Cameron's idea of renegotiating the UK's relationship with Brussels. Speaking at an event to mark the start of Ireland's presidency of the European Union, Gilmore said: "This is not going to work if we have 27 different categories of membership." He added that Britain leaving the EU, a scenario dubbed "brexit", had replaced Greece leaving the euro as the continent's biggest potential challenge.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Jones's emphatic gun-rights tirade against Piers Morgan is just one trademark of the New World Order-fearing radio host Those familiar with radio host Alex Jones were not surprised by his fiery performance Monday night on Piers Morgan, where Jones called the CNN host a "hatchet man of the New World Order" during an impassioned tirade in support of the second amendment. Fiery language, vehement diatribes and conspiratorial claims are Jones's trademarks, and have branded him as one of the most prolific voices of conspiracy in the US, where he hosts a radio show, has two websites and works as a film-maker. The information he distributes through these mediums coalesce under a theme of fear of the New World Order – an imagined group of powerful elites who are colluding to create a one-world, totalitarian government that will, in Jones's mind, inevitably take control if things like stricter gun laws happen. That's why Jones, and a number of his followers, believe that the government orchestrated 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Tucson and Aurora mass shootings. At the Bilderberg conference of international leaders in June, protester John Kopel said: "Alex has been, more than anyone by far, instrumental in waking people up to what's going on in the world today; the Bilderbergs, the destruction of our constitution and our rights, mass poisoning, mass vaccinations. He's done it all." Jones's consistently emphatic tirades against the New World Order transcend political divisions, though his opinions often align him with the far right, and he styles himself as a libertarian. His opinions are united by fear, which can be seen on his website, where advertisements for doomsday gear dot the sidebars. Alongside the water purification system and food reserve advertisements are campaigns for Jones's film, Strategic Relocation, which explains how people can relocate to safety in case of the New World Order takeover. Strategic Relocation is one of the most recent additions to Jones's filmography, which also includes Police State II: the Takeover and Fall of the Republic: Vol 1, the Presidency of Barack H Obama. The mainstream media is another of Jones's enemies, but when CNN offered Jones the opportunity to speak about why he wants Piers Morgan deported from the US, he welcomed the opportunity to launch a red-faced tirade warning that "1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!" Morgan, struggling to get a word in, attempted to reason with Jones by saying that countries with stricter gun laws, specifically the UK, have have lower rates of gun murders. Jones agreed that the UK has a lower gun rate because it "took away" guns, but said the country has "hordes of people burning down cities and beating old women's brains out out every day." He then said Morgan was one of many British people fleeing its "total police state". He railed: "Why did you get fired from the Daily Mirror for putting out fake stories? You're a hatchet man of the New World Order. You're a hatchet man! And I'm going to say this here: you think you're a tough guy? Have me back with a boxing ring and I'll wear red, white, and blue, and you'll wear your Jolly Roger." Morgan responded to his interview with Jones on Tuesday and told Politico: "He was the best advertisement for gun control you could wish for. "That kind of vitriol, hatred, and zealotry is really quite scary. I didn't feel threatened by him, but I'm concerned that someone like him has that level of influence," Morgan said. "There's got to be a level of discourse that can rise above what happened last night. It was undignified, unedifying." Jones responded to the viral success of the interview by posting a YouTube video where he says that New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has a mafia out to get Jones. "If something happens to us, or we're killed by crackheads, it was the NYPD or mafia they hired," Jones said. Jones went on CNN to defend an online White House petition that asked to "Deport British Citizen Piers Morgan for Attacking 2nd Amendment." The petition has received more than 100,000 signatures, far surpassing the 25,000 necessary to receive a response from the White House. White House spokesperson Jay Carney addressed the petition and said: "The White House responds to all petitions that cross the threshold and we will respond to this one. In the meantime, it is worth remembering that the freedom of expression is a bedrock principle in our democracy."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Justice minister adds voice to condemnation of ruling party founder Zsolt Bayer over 'Roma are animals' remarks Outrage has been growing in Hungary over an anti-Roma article written by a founding member of the ruling Fidesz party. Describing a New Year's Eve bar brawl in which several people were seriously injured and some of the attackers were reportedly Roma, Zsolt Bayer said "a significant part of the Roma are unfit for co-existence. They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals and they behave like animals." His commentary in Saturday's Magyar Hirlap newspaper criticised the "politically correct western world" for advocating tolerance and understanding of Roma, who comprise 7% of Hungary's 10 million people and are often among its poorest and least educated citizens. Roma are also known as Gypsies. The justice minister, Tibor Navracsics, condemned the article, but a Fidesz spokeswoman said it would not take a position on an opinion piece. Opposition parties said authorities must decide whether Bayer should be prosecuted for incitement against a minority, and urged Fidesz to expel him. If that does not happen, opposition groups say, they will stage a protest on Sunday outside Fidesz headquarters. Bayer, who also has written columns that have been criticised as anti-Semitic or racist, served as the Fidesz press chief in the early 1990s. He is one of the main organisers of the Peace March, events in support of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government that have drawn huge crowds over the past year. On Tuesday, Bayer said in another column in Magyar Hirlap that his words had been willfully distorted and his only intention was to "make something happen" with the Roma issue. "I want order," he wrote. "I want every honourable Gypsy to get on in life in this country, and for every Gypsy unable and unfit to live in society to be cast out of society."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | UN's World Food Programme says heavy fighting has left it unable to deliver food to hardest-hit places in war-torn Syria The United Nations warned on Tuesday it was unable to deliver food to up to 1 million hungry and desperate Syrians because of spiralling violence across the country and a lack of fuel. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said nearly 2.5 million people – most of them internally displaced by the fighting – needed emergency food aid. But WFP is only able to reach 1.5 million as the situation on the ground worsens, it said. "Food needs are growing in Syria," said Elisabeth Brys, a WFP spokeswoman. It was increasingly difficult "to reach the hardest-hit places" after almost two years of continuous fighting, upheaval and civil war, she said. WFP has used the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and a few local non-governmental organisations to distribute food inside the country. But these efforts were being hampered by a "lack of capacity", as well as by the escalating violence between the government and rebels, Brys said. WFP has temporarily pulled its staff out of its offices in the Syrian cities of Homs, Aleppo, Tartous and Kurdish-run Qamishli – all scenes of major armed conflict. The lack of security has prevented WFP from delivering aid to Syria via the port of Tartous, a key conduit in the past. Long queues for bread were now "the norm" across Syria, WFP said, exacerbated by the shortage of fuel needed for bakeries, increasing demand from new internally displaced people fleeing fresh fighting and the reluctance of drivers to enter dangerous areas. Since October, WFP said there had been a sharp rise in the number of attacks on its aid lorries and about 10 had been stolen or confiscated. "In many of these incidents, WFP was able to recover the food after negotiations through third parties, but truck drivers have become more reluctant to drive on some roads or deliver food assistance to risky areas," WFP said. In recent months, much of the country has run out of wheat. Many bakeries in the Aleppo area have been forced to close or reduce production. Rebels allege that the regime's forces have repeatedly targeted bakeries in an attempt to starve opposition areas into submission. The WFP's blunt warning came amid further fighting, with fierce clashes taking place in a Palestinian refugee camp near the capital, Damascus. The camp has been the scene of recent deadly exchanges between rival Palestinian factions. Some support Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad; others have sided with the rebels. Meanwhile, at the Zaatari refugee camp camp in Jordan, frustrated Syrian refugees attacked aid workers on Tuesday with sticks and stones after cold, howling winds swept away their tents and torrential rains flooded muddy streets. Police said seven Jordanian aid workers were injured while distributing bread for breakfast, AP reported. Inside the camp, tents have been submerged in water, stranding refugees including pregnant women and infants. Two refugee camps in Lebanon were also inundated when the Litani river flooded. The refugees may be about to face even deeper misery with warnings of a major snowstorm on Wednesday. Efforts to accelerate planning for political transition in Syria are to be discussed on Wednesdayby opposition figures and Arab and international officials at an event at Wilton Park, West Sussex, hosted by the British Foreign Office. The newly formed opposition Syrian National Coalition will be represented by its vice-president, George Sabra. Riyad Hijab, a former prime minister who defected last summer, has been invited but it is unclear whether he will attend. Officials say the focus will be on practical action to secure "post-conflict stabilisation", with lessons learned from Iraq, Libya, Kosovo and elsewhere. "We need to ensure that the state keeps running," said one diplomat. The conference is not expected to produce a detailed blueprint – like the one drawn up for Libya before the fall of Muammar Gaddafi – but rather to prioritise areas for action. Britain and the other countries that are anticipating Assad's overthrow have been highly critical of Sunday's speech in which the president appeared to focus on fighting enemies he described as "terrorists" and "western puppets" while offering future reforms but rejecting any kind of political agreement. Elsewhere in Syria on Tuesday, activists reported heavy fighting in the suburbs of Damascus, including the Sayda Zeinab district, as well as shelling in the towns of Beit Saham and Aqraba, both near Damascus international airport. In Lebanon, the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt accused world powers of abandoning Syria. Jumblatt, who was once an ally of Assad but now supports those seeking to overthrow him, condemned the west for inaction. "It is obvious that because of a conflict of interests between big powers, Syria is being left to be systematically destroyed," Jumblatt told Reuters in an interview, adding: "The more time passes, the more the civil war will be increasingly violent and the Syrian people will suffer more casualties and more suffering."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Giffords and husband Mark Kelly launch group with editorial that argues lawmakers are 'not even trying' to address gun violence Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who survived being shot in the head during a mass shooting in 2011, has launched an organisation promote new restrictions on gun ownership and to take on the powerful National Rifle Association. The move by Giffords, who has become a leading voice of the gun control movement in America, comes at a time of increased pressure on the gun lobby in the wake of the horrific Newtown school shooting at the end of last year. Giffords, together with her ex-astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, are now promoting their new group, which is called Americans for Responsible Solutions, and asking for donations to fund its efforts. In an editorial published in the USA Today newspaper on Tuesday morning the pair pointed out that since the attack on Giffords in Arizona exactly two years ago there have been 11 further mass shooting in the US and yet no legislative action has been taken. "When it comes to protecting our communities from gun violence, we're not even trying," they said in the column. Giffords also launched an attack on the gun lobby which is spearheaded by the powerful NRA. Giffords described the organisation's response to the Newtown massacre – which consisted of a suggestion that school shootings could be prevented by having armed staff – as "defiant and unsympathetic". Her new group is aiming to provide a counter-balance to the immense lobbying power of the NRA by raising funds that it can then use to back politicians who advocate greater gun control. "Until now, the gun lobby's political contributions, advertising and lobbying have dwarfed spending from anti-gun violence groups. No longer. With Americans for Responsible Solutions engaging millions of people about ways to reduce gun violence and funding political activity nationwide, legislators will no longer have reason to fear the gun lobby," the column stated. Giffords is likely to be a powerful force for gun control. The story of her recovery from grievous injuries has made her a well-known and inspiring figure for many Americans. She has already visited Newtown to speak with the families of some of the 20 children and six adults who died in the massacre by a lone gunman at the town's Sandy Hook elementary school. However, few details of exactly what sort of gun controls ARS will push for have yet emerged. Both Giffords and Kelly have been at pains to stress that they support the right to bear arms in the US and indeed are both gun-owners themselves. Instead they are calling for people to get in touch with ARS to "join a national conversation about gun violence prevention". Nor is Giffords alone in seeking to shape that debate from a position of pushing for new gun controls. The group Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a new TV advert on Tuesday featuring Roxanna Green, whose nine-year-old daughter, Christina-Taylor Green was killed in the same Tucson shooting that Giffords survived. The advert includes a statement from New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, who has also emerged as a leading voice for gun control. "How many more children must die before Washington does something to end our gun violence problem?" Bloomberg says in the advert. The push by gun control advocates comes as President Barack Obama has given strong hints that he intends to back a push to introduce some form of new law on the issue in the wake of the Newtown tragedy. The White House has said that a task force headed by vice-president Joe Biden will make a report by the end of January on how to proceed with potential new policy proposals. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence estimates that on average some 100,000 Americans are shot and injured or killed with a gun each year. It also says that homicide by firearm rate in the US is almost 20 times higher than most other developed industrial countries despite similar non-lethal crime and violence rates. No one from the NRA responded to a request for comment by The Guardian.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Europe's jobless crisis deepened in November - the unemployment rate is now 11.8%, or 24.4% among young people
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | India says two soldiers killed in gunfight; Pakistan denies allegations of unprovoked firing across the line of control India accused Pakistan of sending troops across the line dividing the disputed region of Kashmir on Tuesday, and said two of its soldiers were killed and one wounded in a half-hour gunfight. Military experts in Delhi said that if the reports were reliable – particularly the charge by one Indian military official that the mutilated body of a dead soldier was found in a forested area of the Himalayan territory – then escalation was possible unless the Indian government made a deliberate decision to "calm things down". Policymakers in Washington will be concerned at any sign of possible conflict between New Delhi and Islamabad, which would hugely complicate the already delicate task of withdrawing tens of thousands of troops from Afghanistan without destabilising the region. A Pakistani army spokesman denied what it said were Indian allegations of "unprovoked firing" across the heavily militarised line of control between the two states. Unconfirmed reports by Indian media that one of the soldiers was decapitated will inflame public opinion in India and increase the pressure on politicians to order a significant response. "Regrettably there is almost certain to be a major retaliation from the Indian side. I can't say what form it will take but this won't just be passed over," Arun Singh, a retired Indian army brigadier, told the Guardian. However, Ajai Shukla, a military analyst and retired officer who served in Kashmir, said that although "in normal circumstances the Indians would now retaliate", he did not think Delhi would allow the situation to escalate. Relations between the two countries, which have fought three wars, have improved in recent years as tensions caused by a terrorist attack by Pakistan-based extremists on the Indian commercial capital of Mumbai in 2008 have gradually eased. "The peace process is going the way India wants it too. Pakistan is engaged on its western frontier, trade is increasing, agreements are being signed, there are no talks on Kashmir … Delhi will want things to calm down and go back to business as usual," Shukla said. The incident came two days after a clash in which Pakistan said one of its soldiers was killed after an Indian incursion. India denied that its troops crossed the line. Rajesh Kalia, spokesman for the Indian army's northern command, said Tuesday's "intrusion" was "a significant escalation … of ceasefire violations and infiltration attempts supported by Pakistan army". "Pakistan army troops, having taken advantage of thick fog and mist in the forested area, were moving towards [their] own posts when a … patrol spotted and engaged the intruders," he said. "The firefight between Pakistan and our troops continued for approximately half an hour, after which the intruders retreated back towards their side of line of control." In 1999 Pakistan-backed Islamist infiltrators occupied the Kargil heights in northern Indian Kashmir in a surprise operation. India lost hundreds of troops before re-occupying the mountains after bitter fighting that almost triggered a fourth war. Indian military officials said the frequency of cross-border clashes has increased in recent weeks, with at least half a dozen ceasefire violations in the past week alone. Officials in Delhi claim that Pakistan provokes such incidents to distract their troops to allow militants to cross the heavily defended de facto frontier. Intelligence services in India have said they are puzzled by what appears to have been a large number of such infiltrations in recent months and the lack of resulting violence. The insurgency that led to tens of thousands of casualties and widespread human rights abuses in the 1990s and early part of the last decade has faded and the bombings, shootings and suicide attacks once common in Indian Kashmir are now extremely rare. The Pakistani army recently said that it had reorientated its key strategic and tactical doctrines away from conflict with India – as had been the case for decades – and towards internal threats to the country's security. However, despite the slowly improving ties and relative calm, firing and small skirmishes between the two countries along the line of control are frequently reported. The Indian army says eight of its soldiers were killed in 2012. While deaths are now relatively rare, a number of Pakistani civilians were wounded by Indian shelling in November. In October the Indian army said Pakistani troops killed three civilians when they fired across the frontier. Singh said three factors might have led to the latest flare-up: local tensions between individual commanders, infiltration of militants along routes that are snow-free at this time of year, and the Pakistani army's desire to stir up trouble on the country's eastern frontier to shore up its position domestically and internationally. Another possibility is a desire among Pakistani senior officers to send a strong signal to India that the recent doctrinal shift does not signify a new weakness in the 65-year face-off across the frontier. The earlier incident created no signs of escalating tensions and received relatively little media attention in either country.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Both countries claim drones will be used for surveillance, but experts warn of future skirmishes in region's airspace Drones have taken centre stage in an escalating arms race between China and Japan as they struggle to assert their dominance over disputed islands in the East China Sea. China is rapidly expanding its nascent drone programme, while Japan has begun preparations to purchase an advanced model from the US. Both sides claim the drones will be used for surveillance, but experts warn the possibility of future drone skirmishes in the region's airspace is "very high". Tensions over the islands – called the Diaoyu by China and the Senkaku by Japan – have ratcheted up in past weeks. Chinese surveillance planes flew near the islands four times in the second half of December, according to Chinese state media, but were chased away each time by Japanese F-15 fighter jets. Neither side has shown any signs of backing down. Japan's new conservative administration of Shinzo Abe has placed a priority on countering the perceived Chinese threat to the Senkakus since it won a landslide victory in last month's general election. Soon after becoming prime minister, Abe ordered a review of Japan's 2011-16 mid-term defence programme, apparently to speed up the acquisition of between one and three US drones. Under Abe, a nationalist who wants a bigger international role for the armed forces, Japan is expected to increase defence spending for the first time in 11 years in 2013. The extra cash will be used to increase the number of military personnel and upgrade equipment. The country's deputy foreign minister, Akitaka Saiki, summoned the Chinese ambassador to Japan on Tuesday to discuss recent "incursions" of Chinese ships into the disputed territory. China appears unbowed. "Japan has continued to ignore our warnings that their vessels and aircraft have infringed our sovereignty," top-level marine surveillance official Sun Shuxian said in an interview posted to the State Oceanic Administration's website, according to Reuters. "This behaviour may result in the further escalation of the situation at sea and has prompted China to pay great attention and vigilance." China announced late last month that the People's Liberation Army was preparing to test-fly a domestically developed drone, which analysts say is likely a clone of the US's carrier-based X-47B. "Key attack technologies will be tested," reported the state-owned China Daily, without disclosing further details. Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canadian-based Kanwa Defence Review, said China might be attempting to develop drones that can perform reconnaissance missions as far away as Guam, where the US is building a military presence as part of its "Asia Pivot" strategy. China unveiled eight new models in November at an annual air show on the southern coastal city Zhuhai, photographs of which appeared prominently in the state-owned press. Yet the images may better indicate China's ambitions than its abilities, according to Chang: "We've seen these planes on the ground only — if they work or not, that's difficult to explain." Japanese media reports said the defence ministry hopes to introduce Global Hawk unmanned aircraft near the disputed islands by 2015 at the earliest in an attempt to counter Beijing's increasingly assertive naval activity in the area. Chinese surveillance vessels have made repeated intrusions into Japanese waters since the government in Tokyo in effect nationalised the Senkakus in the summer, sparking riots in Chinese cities and damaging trade ties between Asia's two biggest economies. The need for Japan to improve its surveillance capability was underlined late last year when Japanese radar failed to pick up a low-flying Chinese aircraft as it flew over the islands. The Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed defence ministry official as saying the drones would be used "to counter China's growing assertiveness at sea, especially when it comes to the Senkaku islands". China's defence budget has exploded over the past decade, from about £12.4bn in 2002 to almost £75bn in 2011, and its military spending could surpass the US's by 2035. The country's first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Soviet model called the Liaoning, completed its first sea trials in August. A 2012 report by the Pentagon acknowledged long-standing rumours that China was developing a new generation of stealth drones, called Anjian, or Dark Sword, whose capabilities could surpass those of the US's fleet. China's state media reported in October that the country would build 11 drone bases along the coastline by 2015. "Over disputed islands, such as the Diaoyu Islands, we do not lag behind in terms of the number of patrol vessels or the frequency of patrolling," said Senior Colonel Du Wenlong, according to China Radio International. "The problem lies in our surveillance capabilities." China's military is notoriously opaque, and analysts' understanding of its drone programme is limited. "They certainly get a lot of mileage out of the fact that nobody knows what the hell they're up to, and they'd take great care to protect that image," said Ron Huisken, an expert on east Asian security at Australian National University. He said the likelihood of a skirmish between Chinese and Japanese drones in coming years was "very high". US drones have also attracted the interest of the South Korean government as it seeks to beef up its ability to monitor North Korea, after last month's successful launch of a rocket that many believe was a cover for a ballistic-missile test. The US's Global Hawk is piloted remotely by a crew of three and can fly continuously for up to 30 hours at a maximum height of about 60,000 ft. It has no attack capability. The US deployed the advanced reconnaissance drone to monitor damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami on Japan's north-east coast.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green's mother urges Obama and others to 'stand up to the gun lobby' in wake of mass shooting The mother of the youngest victim of the shooting rampage two years ago in Tucson, Arizona, has joined a growing effort to erect new protections against gun violence. Roxanna Green, whose nine-year-old daughter, Christina-Taylor Green, died in the attack, appears in a new web video produced by the Demand a Plan campaign, led by a coalition of 800 US mayors. In the video Green links the Tucson shooting to last month's school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed 20 schoolchildren. "Twenty heartbroken families lost a child in the Sandy Hook school shooting," Green says in the video. "I know how much it hurts." "I have one question for our political leaders," Green continues. "When will you find the courage to stand up to the gun lobby?" The Tucson attack took place two years ago on Tuesday at a public event hosted by congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. On Tuesday, Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelley, announced the formation of a new group, Americans for Responsible Solutions, to combat gun violence. Gun-control initiatives have taken on added urgency since the Newtown shooting. President Barack Obama has promised to pursue new gun laws and put vice-president Joe Biden in charge of a task force that is to recommend later this month what new legislation to pursue. Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on 9/11, had developed an interest in politics and went to the event to meet Giffords. Christina-Taylor had just been elected to the student council at her elementary school. A memorial foundation has been established in her name. Demand a Plan is an initiative of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization of mayors and grassroots activists co-chaired by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino. The group has produced dozens of video statements by people who have lost loved ones to gun violence. The message of each video, Bloomberg has said, is the same: "I demand a plan. The time for talk is over. Congress and the White House has to come up with something to stop this carnage … Enough."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Officers at the scene tell of 'trail of blood that led to the theater' and recount how accused James Holmes surrendered at once The trial of a graduate student accused of killing 12 people during a shooting spree a Colorado movie theater has heard harrowing accounts of the aftermath of the attack. Outside the crowded theater, police confronted the accused gunman, James Holmes, who was wearing a helmet, gas mask and head-to-toe body armor, the officers testified. He surrendered without a struggle, they said, and apart from smirking when asked whether he had acted alone, Holmes seemed "detached" from the mayhem around him. Testimony from the first officers to reach the scene opened a hearing in which prosecutors set out to convince a judge that they have enough evidence to put Holmes on trial for one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history. The former University of Colorado neuroscience doctoral student is charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder, stemming from the shootings that left 12 dead and 58 wounded at a midnight screening of the Batman film the Dark Knight Rises. The preliminary hearing is expected to last a week and offer the public its first detailed look into the investigation of the July 20 carnage in Aurora, a Denver suburb. It also will give Holmes's lawyers an opportunity to call witnesses to testify about his mental state. They are expected to mount an insanity defense if the case goes to trial. In one piece of evidence suggesting considerable advance planning for the attack, police detective Matthew Ingui displayed security-camera footage of Holmes in the theater lobby before the shooting, as he scanned a movie ticket the investigator said Holmes had purchased 12 days earlier. Shackled and wearing a crimson jumpsuit, a bearded Holmes sat expressionless at the defense table. Dark brown hair has replaced the dyed bright red hair Holmes, a California native, was sporting when he was arrested. Aurora police officer Jason Oviatt opened the testimony by recounting that he saw "a trail of blood that led to the theater" as he approached Holmes in the rear parking lot, initially mistaking the suspect for a fellow policeman. Holmes "immediately put his hands up" when ordered to freeze, and he was handcuffed and taken into custody without resistance, Oviatt said. Officer Justin Grizzle testified that Holmes kept silent after his arrest, even when asked if he had accomplices. "He didn't respond verbally. He looked at me and smiled," Grizzle recalled. "It was a smirk." Authorities have concluded that Holmes acted alone. As terrified moviegoers fled the theater, Oviatt said that Holmes appeared to be "very detached from it all". Officers who rushed into the theater from the parking lot said they found dozens of people sprawled around the auditorium, some trying to crawl to exits over a floor slick with blood. The air was heavy with tear gas the assailant had released inside the theater. Police described the macabre scene they encountered as the film projection continued while people moaned and cried for help, cell phones rang, and strobe lights from the auditorium's fire alarm system flashed. Officer Grizzle choked back tears as he testified about how he tried to tend to the wounded before paramedics arrived, saying: "I didn't want anyone else to die." In desperation, he and other police started transporting some of the wounded to hospitals in their patrol cars. Grizzle said he "could hear blood sloshing in the back of my car" after making four such trips. The Aurora shooting ranked as the bloodiest instance of US gun violence in 2012 until last month's massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Few details about the crime and its immediate aftermath had been divulged by authorities before Monday. Most of the evidence against Holmes has been sealed, and Arapahoe County district judge William Sylvester has issued a gag order preventing all parties, including law enforcement, from discussing the case outside court. Once the preliminary hearing ends, Sylvester will decide if there is sufficient cause for the case to proceed. If a trial is ordered, prosecutors would have 60 days from the time Holmes enters a plea to decide whether to seek the death penalty in the event he is convicted. Legal analysts assume that Holmes will ultimately plead not guilty by reason of insanity, based on statements from his defense attorneys and court filings.
Public defender Daniel King has said that his client suffers from an unspecified mental illness. King has subpoenaed two witnesses for this week's hearing to testify about Holmes' state of mind before the massacre, according to court documents. Authorities have said that Holmes bought a ticket to the Batman film, and that he left the theater minutes into the movie and propped open a rear exit door to allow himself a way back inside. He then donned protective gear, armed himself with a shotgun, semi-automatic rifle and handgun, then returned to the auditorium moments later to spray moviegoers with gunfire, authorities said. Officer Aaron Blue testified that just after Holmes surrendered, he blurted out that he had booby-trapped the house in which he lived with what Holmes called "improvised explosive devices". Bomb squad technicians disarmed homemade bombs without detonating any of them.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Thousands of Afghanistan's Kuchi farmers have had to abandon their wandering lifestyle despite a lack of other work Former nomad Gul Mohammad has not taken to a settled life. "I live in a jail now," the 45-year-old said, gazing out despondently at a livestock market from a breeze-block shed that doubles as a rough tea house. With 11 children his tiny house feels crammed, and the large herd of sheep that once allowed him to eat meat regularly are a fading memory. Mohammad is a Kuchi, one of about 4 million Afghans whose tribes over centuries pursued a migratory, but often highly lucrative, life, herding caravans of sheep, goats and camels around the country, from warmer lowlands in winter to mountain pastures in summer. Their black tents, colourful clothes and flocks sometimes hundreds of animals strong have become a classic symbol of Afghanistan. They also make a critical contribution to the country's economy and lifestyle, producing most of the raw materials for its much loved kebabs and famous carpets. Yet the nomadic way of life has been rudely interrupted by war. Three decades of conflict have spared few in Afghanistan from upheaval, but Kuchis have been particularly vulnerable. They cannot claim protection from local commanders when the country fragments, because they move between areas. "Each area fell under the control of one commander, who was king there," said Talib, who like many Afghans uses only one name and works at a major Kabul livestock market. "Commanders in each area did not care about night or day; they sent soldiers to seize our sheep or cows," he said, adding that he gave up his tent 10 years ago. Hundreds of thousands have now settled down, or are petitioning the government for land so they can join a more mainstream way of life. A handful of people, such as Ashraf Ghani, a former presidential candidate, have become powerful businessmen and politicians. Nearly 1 million others have partly settled, moving for the main change of the seasons, but fixed enough to have some access to schools and medical attention. Many in the government would like to see the remaining million or so who are still entirely nomadic shift to a settled life, because of concerns about widespread exclusion and poverty. "The life of Kuchis and other Afghans is as different as sky and earth," said Ezatullah Ahmadzai, former head of the government's Kuchi independent general directorate. Yet the Kuchi tradition is appropriate for Afghanistan's fragile and difficult terrain. Harsh deserts and soaring mountains are threaded with narrow green valleys of cultivated land. Outside the river valleys, thin soil and limited water mean most areas cannot support a large number of grazing animals for more than a few days or weeks. "With the type of semi-arid and very arid environment you find in Afghanistan, it is nearly impossible to raise livestock in one location because you will damage the vegetation. After a few years it can't support them any more," said Mike Jacobs, a rangeland ecologist at Texas A&M university who has been working with Afghanistan's nomads since 2006. The Kuchi lifestyle, developed over hundreds of years, is an ideal adaptation to these conditions, allowing the country to raise tens of thousands of sheep a year, but limiting grazing in any single area. A year-long survey of six of the country's main livestock markets by Jacobs' Pastoral Engagement, Adaptation and Capacity Enhancement (Peace) programme showed that more than two-thirds of animals sold in Afghanistan are raised by nomads. But few Afghans, in government or outside it, appreciate that role. "Meat from Kuchis is a very low proportion of what you see in the shops, especially in the winter," said Sher Ali, 51, who started in the trade aged 10 and owns a shop on Kabul's butcher street. His attitude is part of a larger problem of disregard for the Kuchis; although the livestock trade can be highly lucrative, their lack of education and the enforced simplicity of a nomadic life means they are often looked down on as stupid, dirty or backward. The Kuchis are guaranteed 10 seats in parliament, but official positions are dominated by settled members of the group. Those who still live a nomadic life are marginalised even for a country where millions of people have minimal interaction with the government or any services it provides. Few have birth certificates or other identity papers, needed for everything from land requests to school registration or medical care. Only four out of 100 Kuchis are able to read at present; many are keen for their children to be better equipped for modern life. "We worry about our kids, we are like blocks of wood, with nothing in our minds," said Gul Agha, a 50-year-old elder from a camp of Kuchis petitioning the government in Kabul for land to settle permanently, in part so they can be nearer clinics and schools. His group of about 75 families have been waiting more than two years in the capital, scraping a living by sorting rubbish for recyclable scraps. About 18 months ago, they were promised land in nearby Laghman province only to be chased off the site by armed police; five Kuchis were killed in the clash. They returned to Kabul to ask once more for help, camp residents say. That said, not everyone is keen to leave their tents. The livestock business can be very profitable, and some enjoy the freedom of a wandering life. "If you offered to make me a king, or give me back some sheep, I'd rather have my sheep and my old life with them," said Malik Durani, 46, who lives in the camp of Kabul petitioners. Many educated, settled Kuchis dismiss the longing for the traditional way of life as nostalgic sentiment peddled to foreigners, or worse. "These are businessmen who have part of the market cornered and don't want competition from other Kuchi," said Haji Sher Ali Ahmadzai, a member of parliament elected to one of the seats reserved for Kuchi. "Of course it is better to settle down," he said, waving at his warm, well carpeted office. "In the tents they don't have a bathroom, a stove, nothing." There are serious political and economic concerns about trying to accelerate an enormous lifestyle shift in a country short of land and jobs for its urban population. Jacobs supports finding permanent homes for those who want to settle down, but warns that a rush to end the nomadic lifestyle of all Kuchis would create problems in a country that has to import a significant amount of food. "Trying to settle your nomadic populations, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot, you're going to have to start importing meat from other places," Jacobs said. "Around 70% of the sheep and goats you see in the major livestock markets of Afghanistan comes from the Kuchi, and they only make up about 5% or 6% of the Afghan population. So it doesn't take a maths whiz to work out that maybe we should find a way to let the people who really want to raise their livestock this way, do that." Additional reporting by Mokhtar Amiri
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Chicago police launch murder inquiry after postmortem reveals Urooj Khan did not die of natural causes days after big win An American man who won $1m (£620,000) on a lottery scratchcard was murdered with a lethal dose of cyanide, according to police in Chicago. Urooj Khan, who owned a dry cleaning chain, purchased the winning scratchcard in June from a 7-Eleven convenience store. He was found dead a day after the winning cheque was posted to him. With no signs of trauma and nothing to raise suspicions, Khan's sudden death – despite him being about to bank the first instalment of his prize – was initially ruled a result of natural causes. At the request of relatives, an expanded postmortem was performed that determined Khan, 46, died shortly after ingesting a lethal dose of cyanide. A murder investigation was launched. Ashur Oshana, the store clerk, told AP that Khan had sworn off gambling after returning from the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage, in Saudi Arabia. Khan said he wanted to lead a better life, Oshana said, but he bought the state lottery tickets that day and scratched off the winner in the store. "Right away he grabbed my hand," Oshana said. "He kissed my hand and kissed my head and gave me $100. He was really happy." Khan, from West Rogers Park, recalled days later at an Illinois Lottery ceremony in which he was presented with a cheque that he jumped up and down in the store, repeatedly shouting "I hit a million!" "Winning the lottery means everything to me," he said at the ceremony on 26 June, which was also attended by his wife, Shabana Ansari, their daughter, Jasmeen, and several friends. He said he would put some of his winnings into his businesses and donate some to a children's hospital. The cheque was issued on 19 July, the day before Khan died, but was cashed on 15 August. If a lottery winner dies, the money typically goes to his or her estate, the lottery office said. "It's pretty unusual," said Cook County medical examiner Stephen Cina of cyanide poisoning. "I've had one, maybe two cases out of 4,500 autopsies I've done." No signs of trauma were found on Khan's body during an external exam and no autopsy was done because, at the time, the Cook County medical examiner's office did not routinely perform them on people aged 45 and older unless the death was suspicious, Cina said. The cut-off age has since been raised to 50. At the time a basic toxicology screening for opiates, cocaine and carbon monoxide came back negative, and Khan's death was ruled a result of the narrowing and hardening of coronary arteries. A relative came forward days after the initial cause of death was released and asked authorities to look into the case further, Cina said, but he refused to identify the relative. He added that investigators will likely exhume the body. Deborah Blum, an expert on poisons who has written about the detectives who pioneered forensic toxicology, said the use of cyanide in killings has become rare in part because it is difficult to obtain and normally easy to detect, often leaving blue splotches on a victim's skin. "The thing about it is that it's not one of those poisons that's tasteless," Blum said. "It has a really strong, bitter taste, so you would know you had swallowed something bad if you had swallowed cyanide. But if you had a high enough dose it wouldn't matter, because … a good lethal does will take you out in less than five minutes." Only a small amount of fine, white cyanide powder can be deadly, she said, as it disrupts the ability of cells to transport oxygen around the body, causing a convulsive, violent death. "It essentially kills you in this explosion of cell death," she said. "You feel like you're suffocating." Chicago police department spokeswoman Melissa Stratton confirmed the department was now investigating the death and said detectives were working closely with the medical examiner's office.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Instead of attending hearing in Paris, French actor was in Montenegro preparing to play Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a film French film star Gérard Depardieu failed to appear in court to face drink-driving charges because he was preparing to play disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a film, his lawyer said. The no-show on Tuesday means the case will turn into a full trial – guaranteeing yet another day in the spotlight for the actor caught up in a scandal over his tax status. It could also lead to the 64-year-old star of Cyrano de Bergerac and Asterix and Obelix getting a tougher sentence if convicted – in theory up to two years in prison. "Despite wanting to be there and meet the judges and in no way to escape justice, Gérard Depardieu absolutely could not be present," his lawyer, Eric de Caumont, told reporters outside the Paris courtroom. He said his client was in Montenegro preparing to play Strauss-Kahn, who was widely regarded as the next Socialist president of France before a US sex scandal brought down his career last year. Depardieu is accused of crashing his scooter in Paris with more than three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood. No one else was injured in the accident. The actor did not have to attend the court hearing. But he could have faced a much lighter sentence, perhaps even a small fine, if he had attended Tuesday's preparatory hearing and admitted his guilt. As part of a wider crackdown on drink-driving, French magistrates have imposed increasingly tough sentences in cases that go to full trial. Depardieu hit the headlines last month after he bought a house over the border in Belgium, spurring accusations he was trying to dodge a proposed new tax on millionaires. On Sunday he accepted a Russian passport, provoking even fiercer charges that he had abandoned his homeland. Depardieu on Monday denied he was leaving France for tax reasons, insisting he remained French. A few months before the scooter incident, a car driver accused Depardieu of assault and battery during an altercation in Paris. Last year, the actor outraged passengers on an Air France flight by urinating into a bottle in the aisle.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Europe's jobless crisis deepened in November - the unemployment rate is now 11.8%, or 24.4% among young people
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In an era of gossip websites and Twitter rumours, we should celebrate that one of the world's biggest pop stars can still surprise … by doing nothing more than making an album A couple of months ago, BBC4 repeated David Bowie's Top of the Pops performance of Heroes from October 1977. It's an appearance understandably eclipsed in history by his performance of Starman five years before, where he camply slung his arm around Mick Ronson's shoulder and pointed directly down the camera lens as he sang "I had to phone someone, so I picked on you", as if issuing a personal invitation to every gay kid and teenage misfit who was watching. This time around, he just stood there and sang, but the appearance is still remarkable, simply for the fact that he turned up at all. It was the dawn of the video era, which meant that the really big stars – Elton John or Rod Stewart – no longer needed to schlep along to the BBC to mime when they had a new single out. But there he was, the defining artist of the era, mucking in alongside Smokie and Tina Charles. Perhaps he thought that Heroes needed an extra push: with its edge-of-hysteria vocal, lyrics in German and screaming guitar by Robert Fripp, it didn't sound much like anything else in the charts. From the moment he told Melody Maker's Michael Watts he was gay – one of the great audacious moves in rock history from a man whose previous two albums had failed to even make the charts – Bowie has always shown a brilliant understanding of how to promote records. Judging by its page on iTunes, the cover of his 24th album The Next Day is the same as that of Heroes, with a large grey square covering most of the iconic photo of Bowie in a pose inspired by the paintings of Erich Heckel. The lyrics of his first single in a decade, Where Are We Now?, similarly hark back to the era and the city in which Heroes was made, depicting him "walking the dead", wandering around a variety of Berlin streets, musing on the passing of time and the way inspiration strikes without warning: "as long as there's fire … the moment you know, you know." The video seems to be filmed in his old Berlin apartment, which has apparently been turned into an artist's studio. Even with his head stuck on top of the body of a soft toy, he looks in remarkably good nick for someone who was so widely rumoured to be terminally ill a few years back that the Flaming Lips wrote a song about it, called Is David Bowie Dying?: indeed, he looks in remarkably good nick for a man in his late 60 who spent most his life smoking three packs of Marlboro a day. On the evidence of Where Are We Now?, the music on The Next Day has almost nothing in common with the stuff he and its producer Tony Visconti recorded 36 years ago. It's a beautiful, elegiac ballad, Bowie's voice sounds gorgeously fragile – not the fragility of someone nearing 70 who's lost their vocal power to the ravages of age, but the fragility of someone who wants to communicate an aching wistfulness. No one who hears it is going to be baffled or horrified or struck by the thrilling sense that pop music has been pushed into new, uncharted regions. Perhaps Bowie's finished with that kind of thing, having done more of it between 1970 and 1980 than almost any other artist, save the Beatles. Where Are We Now? wouldn't have sounded out of place on 2002's Heathen or 2003's Reality. Indeed, if it had been the lead single off Bowie's new album in 2004, it would have passed virtually without comment. The reason it's created such a fuss is partly because most people thought Bowie's retirement looked pretty final. He never said as much, but it felt right: while his peers pragmatically chose to work the public's thirst for nostalgia, playing the big hits on high-grossing tours and tacitly acknowledging that their best work was behind them, Bowie – an artist who'd never evinced much interest in looking back – slipped into a dignified silence. Like the guy singing Heroes on Top of the Pops, it seems remarkable that he turned up at all. Of course, the main reason it's created such a fuss is simply because no one knew. It's incredible that, in an era of gossip websites and messageboard rumours, one of the biggest stars in the world, presumed retired, can spend two years making a new album without the merest whisper of it reaching the public. But somehow he did it. The first speculation that something was afoot came literally hours before the single appeared: no blurry cameraphone shots of him leaving a recording studio, no MP3s of demos leaked on to filesharing sites, no slip-up by someone involved in its making on Twitter. It's the opposite of how you're expected to do things: at the very least, a major artist releasing a new album is supposed to drop hints, create an online buzz of expectation, stoke the rumour mill, ensure the biggest audience possible is primed and waiting. Bowie has done none of that: whatever The Next Day sounds like, he's turned it into the biggest release of 2013 by the simple expedient of doing absolutely nothing other than make an album. Furthermore, he's managed to maintain the myth and mystique that was always central to his stardom and his art in a world where rock and pop music has almost no myth or mystique left, an age of 360-degree connectivity, where pop stars are supposed to be perpetually available to their fans via social networking. But as we've already established, David Bowie has always shown a brilliant understanding of how to promote records.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Second inquest into singer's death was held after original coroner was found not to have correct qualifications A second inquest into the death of singer Amy Winehouse has confirmed that she died of alcohol poisoning after binge drinking following a period of abstinence. The inquest into the 27-year-old Grammy award winner's death was held after an investigation found the original coroner, Suzanne Greenaway – who was hired by her husband, Dr Andrew Reid, the coroner for inner north London – did not have the correct qualifications for the role. Greenaway stepped down in November when it emerged she did not have the requisite five years' experience in the Law Society, and Reid resigned from his position in December. The singer was found dead in her flat in Camden, north London, on the afternoon of Saturday 23 July 2011. The new inquest repeated the findings that Winehouse had 416mg of alcohol per decilitre in her blood, enough to make her comatose and depress her respiratory system. She was found dead by paramedics, fully clothed, with a laptop on her bed and empty bottles of vodka on the floor. Recording a verdict of misadventure, the St Pancras coroner, Dr Shirley Radcliffe, said: "She voluntarily consumed alcohol, a deliberate act that took an unexpected turn in that it caused her death." The inquest heard a statement from Winehouse's GP, Dr Christina Romete, who described the singer as single-minded and intelligent. She said Winehouse had been battling her alcohol addiction but had repeatedly refused psychiatric help because she thought it would affect her creativity and had repeatedly lapsed into drinking binges following dry periods. Winehouse had a well-documented drug habit, regularly using heroin, crack cocaine and cannabis – but had stopped taking drugs before a trip to St Lucia, where her alcohol consumption became increasingly problematic. On returning to the UK, she fell into a pattern of abstaining from drink for a few weeks, then lapsing, according to Romete. She was taking medication, Librium, to cope with alcohol withdrawal and anxiety, and had been reviewed by a psychologist and a psychiatrist last year. The doctor saw Winehouse the night before she died, when she had been drinking and seemed "calm and somewhat guilty". Winehouse had told her she had not had a drink since 3 July, but had started again on 20 July. She told the doctor she had started drinking because "she was bored" and apologised several times for wasting her time. Romete said in her statement that when she asked Winehouse if she was going to stop drinking, "she said she didn't know". Though concerned that she was drinking, Romete was not worried about a risk of suicide: "She specifically said she did not want to die.". The inquest also heard a statement from Andrew Morris, Winehouse's bodyguard, who lived at her home, and described their relationship as that between a "brother and sister". He had returned from leave three days before her death, and knew she had been drinking, though not an extraordinary amount. Over the next two days, he said, she drank moderately. "I had seen her drunk enough times in the past to know when she had drank too much." On Friday night he could hear her "laughing, listening to music and watching TV" in her room, they had watched YouTube videos of her earlier performances and he last spoke to her at 2am on the Saturday. He checked on her at 10am, but when she didn't move when he entered the room he thought she was asleep. At 2.30-3pm "it was still quiet, which seemed strange" so he checked on her again. "She was in the same position as in the morning. I checked her pulse but I couldn't find one." After paramedics confirmed she was dead, he said he was "upset and shaken, she's like a sister to me". Pathologist Michael Sheaff, who did not perform the original autopsy in October 2011, gave evidence to confirm the findings of pathologist Suhail Baithun. He confirmed the amount of alcohol in Winehouse's blood, saying that levels of 350mg of alcohol in the blood were associated with fatalities. Recording her verdict, the coroner said Winehouse had died from "alcohol toxicity", adding that it was "a level of alcohol commonly associated with fatality". She said Winehouse "voluntarily consumed alcohol" and added that "two empty vodka bottles were on the floor" beside her bed when her body was discovered. She expressed her condolences to Winehouse's parents, Mitch and Janis, who did not attend the inquest, marking the loss of "a talented woman at such a young age".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow how the day unfolded after the UN said the number of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria has reached almost 600,000 - an increase of almost 100,000 within a month
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Finance minister Aso has said Japan will buy new bonds issued by the European Stability Mechanism, while new data is expected to show Europe's jobless crisis has deepened
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Finance minister Aso has said Japan will buy new bonds issued by the European Stability Mechanism, while new data is expected to show Europe's jobless crisis has deepened
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Zhu Chengzhi, who is charged with 'inciting subversion of state power' is believed to be first person to be held under law A Chinese man who agitated for an investigation into the suspicious death of an activist has been detained at an unknown location, his lawyer said on Monday, describing him as possibly the first to be held under a controversial new law that allows secret detention. Authorities in Shaoyang city in central Hunan province told family members of Zhu Chengzhi, 62, last Friday that he would be put under "residential surveillance" under "Article 73", Zhu's wife, Zeng Qiulian, told Reuters by telephone on Monday. Article 73 legalises detaining people in secret. The detention comes a day after China said it would reform its system of forced labour camps this year, marking a first step toward legal reform promised by the new Communist party chief, Xi Jinping. Article 73 legalises a practice that began in earnest in 2011. Fearing that anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world could inspire challenges to Communist rule, the government unlawfully held dozens of activists, including artist Ai Weiwei, for weeks or months in secret detention. The new law allows police to detain people they suspect of crimes related to state security, terrorism or serious corruption in a designated location. Families would be notified within 24 hours, but police are not required to disclose the whereabouts of the person detained and can deny access to a lawyer. Police had charged Zhu with "incitement to subvert state power" after he posted photos online following the death of his friend, Li Wangyang, who was found in a hospital ward in Shaoyang, his neck tied with a noose made from cotton bandages. Authorities said it was suicide – a verdict that angered thousands of scholars, lawyers and activists. "They told me they were moving him to a hotel," his wife, Zeng, said, adding that police declined to disclose his whereabouts. The Shaoyang public security bureau was not available for comment. Liu Xiaoyuan, Zhu's lawyer, said he believed Zhu was the first Chinese person to be held under the secret detention laws. The justice ministry was not available for comment.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as the UN says the number of refugees fleeing the violence in Syria has reached almost 600,000 - an increase of almost 100,000 within a month
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Sydney suffers power outages as temperature hits 41C, with 100 residents still missing in Tasmania and national parks evacuated Firefighters battled scores of wildfires raging across south-east Australia on Tuesday as authorities evacuated national parks and warned that blistering temperatures and high winds had led to "catastrophic" conditions in some areas. No deaths had been reported, although officials in Tasmania were still trying to find about 100 residents who have been missing since a fire tore through the small town of Dunalley, east of the state capital of Hobart, last week, destroying around 90 homes. On Tuesday, police said no bodies were found during preliminary checks of the ruined houses. "We are shaping up for one of the worst fire danger days on record," the New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, said. "You don't get conditions worse than this. We are at the catastrophic level and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option." Catastrophic threat level is the most severe rating applicable. Wildfires have razed 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of forests and farmland across southern Tasmania since Friday. In New South Wales, the country's most populous state, the fires had burned through more than 26,000 hectares (64,000 acres) of land. Fire officials declared five areas of southern NSW as catastrophic, meaning if fires ignited they could not be controlled, and advised people to evacuate. "We grabbed the photo albums, suitcases, clothes and jewellery and ended up getting out while we could," said Hallie Fernandez who runs a bed and breakfast motel at Brogo, where an out-of-control bushfire was burning. Strong winds were hampering efforts to bring the fires under control. Wind gusts more than 62 miles per hour were recorded in some parts of the state. In Australia's biggest city Sydney, where the temperature hit 41.8C (107F), thousands flocked to the city's beaches, while zookeepers hosed down animals to help them cope with temperatures that tested national records. The blistering heat also caused a blaze at a nuclear research facility in southern Sydney after cabling overheated in a nearby electricity substation, while thousands of homes in the city's north experienced power outages due to soaring demand. In the outback city of Broken Hill, the mercury hit 45.1C (113F), while the country's biggest highway between Sydney and Melbourne was cut off by fires in the township of Tarcutta. "The heat has been so intense that tar on the road has been melting and sticking to my shoes," retired Australian journalist Malcolm Brown said from central New South Wales. The record heatwave forced the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to extend its extreme temperature limit, adding new pink and purple colours to forecast maps to allow for temperatures of above 54C (129F).
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | New song Where Are We Now? goes on sale, with album The Next Day, his first for 10 years, due in March David Bowie has celebrated his 66th birthday by releasing a new single, Where Are We Now?, ahead of his first new album in 10 years. The track was put on sale in the iTunes store in 119 countries on Tuesday morning and a video preview posted on his website, which has been relaunched for the occasion. His 30th studio recording, The Next Day, would be released in March, said the Iso/Columbia record company. The glam-rock singer shot to fame in the late 60s with Space Oddity but has been largely silent in recent years, not performing live since 2006 and rarely appearing in public since then. Bowie turned down the opportunity to appear at the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony despite a personal plea by director Danny Boyle. "Throwing shadows and avoiding the industry treadmill is very David Bowie despite his extraordinary track record that includes album sales in excess of 130m, not to mention his massive contributions in the area of art, fashion, style, sexual exploration and social commentary," said a Columbia press release. The record, produced by long-term collaborator Tony Visconti and written by Bowie, was recorded in New York, Columbia said. The single is accompanied by a video directed by Tony Oursler that harks back to Bowie's time in Berlin. He is seen looking in on footage of the auto repair shop beneath the apartment he lived in along with stark images of the city at the time. A spokesman said: "Throwing shadows and avoiding the industry treadmill is very David Bowie despite his extraordinary track record that includes album sales in excess of 130m not to mention his massive contributions in the area of art, fashion, style, sexual exploration and social commentary. He added that Bowie was the sort of artist who "writes and performs what he wants when he wants".
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