The Guardian World News

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• Welfare bill 'will penalise cancer patients'
• UN paves way for no-fly zone
• Special needs shake-up unveiled
• Four dead in Ivory Coast march
• Taliban out of Sangin, claims US
• Prince William to visit disaster zones
• Yemeni army wounds 98 students
• 'Bullied' police to stage cuts protests
• RBS executives given £28m in shares
• Andrew in new link to Turkmenistan
• Tanya Gold enters the world of chalet girls
• Ex-Star reporter 'gets hate messages'
• Ugandan scientists grow GM banana
• Caro disowns 'mutilated' sculpture
• Play that funky cardboard
• Recycled cereal boxes 'no health risk'
• Guatemala's children learn on street
• Tomb Raider reboot announced
• Bupa profits fall 70% as cuts bite
• Migrant workers: A gap in perception
• Where did miners' compensation go?
• A Dish of Tea With Dr Johnson
• Cutsblog: At last! Some good news!

Welfare bill 'will penalise cancer patients' Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:02 PM PST Group of 30 charities has written to Iain Duncan Smith to warn reforms will plunge thousands of sick people into poverty The coalition's radical plans to reform the benefits system has come under attack from an unprecedented alliance of 30 cancer charities, who warn that the welfare reform bill will leave tens of thousands of people with cancer worse off and risks "pushing some into poverty". The charities have written to Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, urging him to rethink plans in the bill that will mean a "significant number of people with cancer will be left without vital financial support at a time when they need it the most". The bill is due to receive its second reading in the Commons on Wednesday. The warning came as Labour backbenchers put pressure on Ed Miliband to vote against the entire bill, a move the leadership fears would send a signal that the party is opposed to welfare reform. There are signs that support for the bill's principles is beginning to fray due to opposition to specific elements of it. The shadow work and welfare secretary, Liam Byrne, endured a difficult meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on Monday night, with some MPs demanding outright opposition. The shadow cabinet agreed that the party should table a highly critical amendment, and then abstain on second reading, a tactic that could lead to rank-and-file Labour MPs voting against it in one of the first rebellions of Miliband's leadership. Byrne claimed that David Cameron was losing his grip on the bill's details. The bill, said Byrne, "offers some good ideas, but with a frightening leap in the dark for millions of parents, savers and self-employed who may lose thousands of pounds a year for childcare and wage top-ups, and a game of Russian roulette for some of the most vulnerable". The letter from the 30 cancer charities, seen by the Guardian, warns that patients and the parents of children with cancer are deeply worried by the reforms. It condemns plans in the bill to withdraw employment support allowance (ESA) from many cancer patients after a year. The letter says: "The majority of people with cancer who are out of work want to return to work. We believe that this proposal, rather than creating an incentive to work, will lead to many cancer patients losing their ESA simply because they have not recovered quickly enough." It adds: "For many cancer patients it takes longer than a year to return to work. This is evident from your department's own statistics, which show that 75% of cancer patients who could be affected by this policy still need ESA after one year." It also warns people with cancer will have to wait six months to claim the new personal independence payment, which will replace disability living allowance, saying: "We know that even the existing three-month wait for DLA is extremely problematic for people with cancer." The charities say that while patients receiving conventional chemotherapy will be eligible for the new support group benefit, which excludes them from having to seek work, those having oral chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatment will have to undergo medical assessment, and may be required to participate in work-related activities, such as practice job interviews, as a condition of receiving their benefit. The letter points out: "Medical advances mean that oral chemotherapies are used increasingly to treat more aggressive forms of cancer. Sometimes cancer patients can choose to take the same chemotherapy drug either orally or non-orally. Currently, their choice will affect the way they are treated in the benefit system." The ESA replaces a range of incapacity benefits. All fresh claimants now undergo a work capability assessment, and 1.5 million existing recipients will be reassessed using the new system from this month. The welfare reform bill introduces a one-year time limit on those people claiming ESA in the "work-related activity group", who are expected to move into work. Byrne has identified five key problems with the bill that he claims the government is failing to address: • A lack of clarity on the system that will replace childcare support, and if it will be incorporated into universal credit. Under some models, families will lose out. • The penalising of families with £16,000 or more in savings, who will be barred from the universal credit. Around 400,000 families with children currently receiving tax credits will lose their entire eligibility for financial support under the universal credit, Byrne claims. • Disincentives for those who wish to start a business, with no clarity as to whether the self-employed will be eligible for universal credit. • Risking a split with Lib Dem MPs by hitting people who live in residential care homes by pressing ahead with the removal of the mobility component of DLA. • Continued uncertainty over who controls how council tax benefit will be incorporated in the universal credit. A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "We are changing the welfare system because in its current state it's not working. In all our changes we are protecting those who need the most help. On ESA we have accepted all the recommendations by Professor [Malcolm] Harrington [who reviewed the ESA system], including greater provision for people who are going through chemotherapy. Cancer sufferers who are terminally ill claiming DLA will be exempt from waiting six months before they can make a claim." Welfare Cancer Iain Duncan Smith Health Charities Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

UN paves way for no-fly zone Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:36 PM PST Nato introduces 24-hour air and sea monitoring as west prepares to act to protect Libyan citizens from Gaddafi's forces David Cameron and Barack Obama agreed to draw up "the full spectrum" of military responses to the crisis in Libya as Britain won important US support for a possible no-fly zone over the country. The prime minister, who has faced accusations that he was isolated over a no-fly zone, agreed in a telephone call with the president that a major international operation will swing into action if Muammar Gaddafi refuses to leave office. Cameron outlined his conversation with Obama when he appeared on The One Show on BBC1 at 7pm. "We have got to prepare for what we might have to do if he [Gaddafi] goes on brutalising his own people," he said. "I had a phone call with President Obama this afternoon to talk about the planning we have to do in case this continues and in case he does terrible things to his own people. I don't think we can stand aside and let that happen." A Downing Street spokesman said the president and the prime minister had had a detailed conversation about military and diplomatic options if Gaddafi ignores international calls to stand down. The spokesman said: "The prime minister and the president agreed to press forward with planning, including at NATO, on the full spectrum of possible responses, including surveillance, humanitarian assistance, enforcement of the arms embargo, and a no fly zone. They committed to close co-ordination on next steps." The strong support from the White House for detailed military planning will come as a relief to Cameron, who has faced criticism for a bumbling response to the Libyan crisis. Last week Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, criticised "loose talk" over a no-fly zone. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, last night cautioned that a no-fly zone would need clear approval by the UN security council and warned of the dangers if the west took charge of any military operation. Clinton told Sky News: "We think it's important that the United Nations make this decision, not the United States, and so far the United Nations has not done that. "I think it's very important that this not be a US-led effort, because this comes from the people of Libya themselves, this doesn't come from the outside, this doesn't come from, you know, some western power, or some Gulf country saying, 'this is what you should do, this is how you should live'." Nato has launched 24-hour air and sea surveillance of Libya as a possible precursor to a no-fly zone, amid signs of growing Arab support for western military intervention to stop the bombing of civilians. British and French diplomats at the UN headquarters in New York have completed a draft resolution authorising the creation of a no-fly zone which could be put before the security council within hours if aerial bombing by pro-Gaddafi forces causes mass civilian casualties. A western diplomat said: "It would require a clear trigger for a resolution to go forward." In such an event, there would be pressure on Russia and China not to use their vetoes. Western officials believe support for a no-fly zone from the Islamic world, as well as from the Libyan opposition and diplomats at the UN, would put Moscow and Beijing on the defensive. The Gulf Co-operation Council, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the secretary general of the Arab League have called for the protection of Libyan civilians while rejecting the intervention of western ground troops. Turkey, the most reluctant Nato member state, has relaxed its opposition and allowed contingency planning to go ahead. The decision to step up air and sea monitoring was taken on Monday by the North Atlantic Council, a meeting of ambassadors from Nato's 28 member states. Early-warning Awacs aircraft already patrolling the Mediterranean region as part of a longstanding Nato counter-terrorist operation, Active Endeavour, will maintain a 24-hour air presence instead of just 10, and focus on the Libyan coast. Nato naval vessels taking part in Active Endeavour, meant to stop the infiltration of terrorists into southern Europe, are being sent to the Libyan coast with the aims of increasing surveillance and enforcing the arms embargo. Two US marine assault ships, the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ponce, both with Harrier jump-jets aboard, are also approaching the Libyan coast. Officials said the intelligence gained from the air and sea monitoring would inform the debate within Nato. They said some members were far from convinced on the need for Nato involvement in an Arab civil conflict, and there was no appetite for action without a UN mandate. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, is a sceptic on the effectiveness of a no-fly zone and is expected to argue for a cautious approach at the Nato meeting on Thursday. His scepticism reflects reluctance on the part of the armed service chiefs. Gates has argued that any no-fly zone would involve preliminary bombing of Libyan air defences. Douglas Barrie, an aerospace analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, has denied this. "There's no hard-and-fast rule in the establishment of a no-fly zone that you have to go in and take out all of your opponents air defences," Barrie said. "You say 'this is a no-fly zone and we don't want you to fly, and if you adhere to that everything is going to be fine, but if you fire at us then we will take retaliatory action'." Libya Arab and Middle East protests Foreign policy Middle East Muammar Gaddafi Nato United Nations Julian Borger Richard Norton-Taylor Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Special needs shake-up unveiled Posted: 08 Mar 2011 01:14 PM PST Green paper proposes giving families of special needs children more power to direct health and care plans Parents will be given a personal budget to spend on the care of their children with special educational needs under government proposals that will also replace SEN statements with a new "health and care plan". A Department for Education green paper published on Wednesday will propose that the health and care plans could be contracted out to "the voluntary and community sector" rather than local authorities. The care plans will have a new section detailing children's ambitions for their education. The proposals are expected to give parents more scope to direct the care of their children. At present, SEN budgets are in the hands of schools and local authorities. The green paper is also expected to scrap the three existing tiers of special needs – school action, school action plus and statements – replacing them with two levels. Ministers believe too many children at schools in England are wrongly labelled as having special needs when they may simply have a family problem that makes them fall behind in class. Pilots of the new system will begin in September. It will be introduced nationally next year. Under the plans, schools will also be required to publish a broader range of information on their provision for children with special needs. There will be assessments to monitor how many pupils with special needs are excluded, a concern for families as these children are more likely to be suspended from school. Headteachers cannot be compelled to reinstate excluded children under the education bill currently going through the Commons. Ministers will also encourage parents to set up their own special needs "free schools". Under the last government the number of special schools in England dropped by 7% between 1997 and 2005 as Labour sought to include children with special needs in mainstream schools. David Cameron, whose son Ivan was severely disabled, personally drafted a Conservative manifesto pledge to end the "bias towards the inclusion" of children with special needs in mainstream schools. The government has also encouraged special schools to become academies and the first of these are expected to open next September; 10 have applied so far. The green paper will also look at how to support young people with special needs and disabilities after the age of 16, and at improving diagnosis to identify children with special needs earlier. But teaching unions are concerned that vulnerable children may suffer as councils will have less money to spend on services for schools under government plans to increase the number of academies, which get their funding directly from Whitehall. Dr Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, warned that government cuts had already led to specialists being made redundant. "Savage cuts are already being made to many of the specialist services teachers rely on to help them support children with special educational needs. Educational psychologists and speech and language therapists are being made redundant as local authorities cut their funding following budget cuts from government." Bousted said the green paper should "strengthen the role of local authorities and external services so they can better support schools". More than one in five children in England are identified as having SEN – 21% of the school population in January 2010. Only 2.7% have statements. More than half of the pupils, 11.4%, are in the school action category. In recent years the proportion of children with SEN but without statements has nearly doubled, from 10% of all pupils in 1995 to 18.2%, or 1.5 million children, in 2010. In the green paper, the government will call for the roll-out across the country of a pilot project that has cut the proportion of children on the SEN register by 10%. The Achievement for All scheme currently operating in 10 local authorities identifies why children are falling behind and gives them personalised support. In one case at a school in Coventry, a girl whose family life was chaotic was given lifts to school by a teacher. The government is concerned that at present children are wrongly labelled as having SEN, and that teachers' expectations of these children are too low. In one primary school visited by Ofsted, children were identified as having special needs because their fathers were serving in Afghanistan. Special educational needs Carers Schools Children School funding Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Four dead in Ivory Coast march Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:23 PM PST Army kills three men and one woman as thousands of women protest against Laurent Gbagbo holding onto power Marches by thousands of women in protest at Ivory Coast's president Laurent Gbagbo have ended in bloodshed after his army killed four people. The women made their stand on International Women's Day, less than a week after Gbagbo's soldiers killed seven women at a peaceful demonstration, earning worldwide condemnation. After a small women's march in the Treichville neighbourhood, one of several in Abidjan on Tuesday, security forces burst into the area and began shooting. The bodies of three men and one woman were seen by an Associated Press photographer inside a clinic where they were taken for treatment. The overwhelmed clinic had nowhere to put them except on the floor where the blood of the dead pooled together. Thousands of women continued to gather in the besieged suburb of Abobo, where the seven women had been killed, some shouting "Gbagbo, assassin! Gbagbo, power thief! Leave!" Some were in traditional dress, others wore T-shirts printed with the face of Gbagbo's rival Alassane Ouattara. The women were surrounded by pro-Ouattara youths with AK-47 rifles to prevent a repeat of last week's violence. Among the marchers was Gervais Bredou, who said: "The women were reluctant after what happened last week. A pickup arrived with some pro-Gbagbo forces who fired warning shots into the air. Most of the women were afraid and started to run." One female protester, Mariam Bamba, 32, picked up a tree branch next to one of the blood stains on the pavement where the women had been shot. "This leaf is all that they were carrying when they were killed," she said. Kadhi M'daw, who led around 1,000 women through the pro-Ouattara stronghold of Koumassi, told Reuters: "We started with a Muslim prayer for peace, then a Christian one. We didn't see any security forces. There was no violence. We are very happy to be able to demonstrate." But in Port Bouet, near Abidjan's airport, witnesses said around 50 pro-Gbagbo youths armed with AK-47s and machetes arrived to disperse the 200 women who tried to march there. Gbagbo has refused to cede power even though the country's election commission declared opposition leader Ouattara the winner of last November's vote. Nearly 400 people have already been killed, most of them civilians who voted for Ouattara. Aid agencies said an estimated 450,000 people have been uprooted by the growing conflict, including tens of thousands who fled to Liberia. In Abidjan some 300,000 people are displaced, mainly because of fighting between rival forces in the Abobo district, according to the UN. Jemini Pandya, spokeswoman of the International Organisation for Migration, said: "Displacement from the Cote d'Ivoire crisis has reached alarming proportions." Abobo is now largely controlled by insurgents calling themselves the "invisible commandos" and professing loyalty to Ouattara, after a week of gun battles in which they pushed out police and military loyal to Gbagbo. Fighting has also raged in the country's west with rebels taking three towns from Gbago's army. Both Ouattara and Gbagbo have been invited to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday to hear the verdict of the African Union's peace and security council, which was attempting to find a solution that will avert civil war. Ouattara is expected to attend but sources suggested that Gbagbo will send one of his ministers. Ouattara has called on the international community to launch an armed intervention against Gbagbo, who appeared on state television last week to say that he is "hanging in there." Meanwhile, as economic pressure intensifies, Gbagbo has issued a decree under which the state becomes the sole purchaser of cocoa and handles its export to world markets. Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer and the move has been widely criticised. US state department spokesman, PJ Crowley, said: "His plan to nationalise the cocoa industry of Côte d'Ivoire, which is the world's largest suppler of cocoa beans, amounts to theft. It is another desperate act in his campaign to cling to power." Cocoa prices have broken 30-year highs since the disputed election. Kwame Banson, west African co-ordinator of Fairtrade Africa, said: "The uncertainty following Gbagbo's move is concerning. At this stage, we don't know what nationalising cocoa production means for Côte d'Ivoire farmers who are in danger of being treated like a political football. "One thing we do know is that the current unrest is hitting farmers, their families and communities very hard. We urge the international political and business communities to facilitate a peaceful resolution so stability can swiftly return for the farmers and people of Côte d'Ivoire." Ivory Coast David Smith guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Taliban out of Sangin, claims US Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:01 AM PST US defence secretary Robert Gates praises marines for 'dramatic turnaround' after British forces pulled out The US claims its marines have managed to subdue the notoriously violent Sangin district in Afghanistan within five months of their arrival, a goal that eluded British forces for four years. The Helmand hotspot, which turned into a death trap for British forces, was described on Tuesday by US defence secretary Robert Gates as perhaps the most dangerous place in the world. He praised the marines for bringing about "a dramatic turnaround" in such a short period. The marines, who took over from the British in October, say they adopted a different strategy from their predecessors, taking the fight to the Taliban, and have killed, captured or driven them out. Gates was visiting Sangin for the first time as part of a two-day trip to Afghanistan to assess the security situation before the Obama administration decides how many of the 100,000 US troops it can begin bringing home from July. British forces, deployed in 2006 to Sangin – home to a dangerous mix of Taliban fighters and drug traffickers – lost 106 dead there, a third of all their fatalities in Afghanistan. The mission was controversial, with accusations that the force was too small, that they pursued the wrong strategy and were under-equipped, particularly lacking helicopters. British commanders, at the time of their departure, rebuffed suggestions they had failed in their mission, and there has been intense interest since as to whether the US marines would be any more successful. Gates was unequivocal in expressing his belief that they had been, telling a gathering of marines at the heavily fortified Sangin base: "Before you arrived here, the Taliban was dug in deep and, as the British before can attest, this district was the most dangerous not only in Afghanistan but maybe the whole world. In your five months here, you have killed, captured or driven out the Taliban that called this place home." The marines had also achieved a "strategic breakthrough" by allowing three key areas to be linked up, he added, part of wider strategy of expanding the security "bubble". Gates was speaking at the marines' Sangin base, Sabit Qadam, originally called Jackson by British forces, its extraordinary level of fortifications a testimony to the action it has seen since 2006. The marines were gathered to hear Gates in a small dusty square, in the middle of which lies a memorial to the British dead. The marines opted to go on the offensive from the start, confronting the Taliban in the areas they held, in contrast with the British strategy of trying to protect the main road. The American approach was costly and Gates revealed the marines lost 29 killed and 179 wounded, the highest casualty rate of any US battalion in Afghanistan. But while costly in terms of casualties in the short-term – Gates said 90% were suffered in the first 90 days – the Americans suggest it is paying off in the longer term. "It has been very different since then," Gates said. The Americans claim around 400 confirmed Taliban dead, 150-200 wounded and 50-75 captured, though many analysts accuse the US of inflating figures. Colonel Jason Morris, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment in Sangin, avoided any overt criticism of the British force and made a point of referring to "our British brothers". He added: "The British did well here for an economy of force operation. They were just trying to keep the business centre open and keep themselves resupplied. The marines have taken the fight to the enemy." The marines and British forces are roughly equivalent in terms of numbers - 1,600 British to 1,500 marines – but Morris said that the marines have more support, including from the Afghan army. The British attribute some of the US success in Sangin to a peace agreement with one of the main tribes in the area and much of the groundwork for that had been done by the British. But a US officer at the base said that while the tribal peace agreement was important in the upper Sangin valley, it was less so in the main urban area of Sangin. In spite of the apparent gain in Sangin, the problems facing the Americans in Afghanistan overall remain formidable, from corruption in the Kabul government through to the large tracts of the country in Taliban hands and the porous border with Pakistan. The success in Sangin will be tested by the Taliban's spring offensive. "We are expecting violence to pick up in the next few weeks. The indications are the insurgents are moving forces and equipment to restrict our movement ... They are going to have a real hard time doing that," Morris said. Gates said the Taliban spring offensive would test the ability of the Americans and their coalition partners to hold gains made in places such as Sangin. "The gains are fragile and reversible. This spring and summer the Taliban will try to take back what they have lost," he said. Britain's role Nato commanders have long acknowledged that Britain's role in Sangin, the most dangerous place in Afghanistan, was ill-conceived from the start. British troops were deployed there in 2006 as part of a misguided policy of creating "inkspots", the idea being that they would establish themselves in a district and gradually expand outwards. The policy was pushed by an Afghan government anxious to get British soldiers to fight the insurgency in key areas, and overconfident British officers eagerly pursued it. Troops were too thinly spread over too many areas and though defence chiefs eventually understood this, it is unclear how hard they made the point with Labour ministers. General Richard Mills of the US Marines said when he took over from UK troops in Sangin last year that their performance had been "nothing short of magnificent". He said they had "made progress against very significant opposition". Richard Norton-Taylor Afghanistan US military Military United States Taliban Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Prince William to visit disaster zones Posted: 08 Mar 2011 06:35 PM PST The unexpected visit to areas hit by recent natural disasters in New Zealand and Australia will see the Prince represent the Queen abroad for only the second time Prince William is to visit New Zealand and Australia to tour areas devastated by recent natural disasters, St James's Palace has said. William will travel next week, without fiancee Kate Middleton, to Christchurch, New Zealand, which suffered an earthquake last month which has killed more than 150 people. He will also visit the New Zealand town of Greymouth which saw 29 people die in a mining explosion. The Prince will then travel to Australia where he will visit Queensland and Victoria which have both been hit by flooding. A St James's Palace spokesman said: "The Prince's visit comes after an invitation from the Prime Ministers of New Zealand and Australia. William will be travelling on behalf of the Queen and the wider royal family. "The royal family have been watching the natural disasters with the same shock and sadness as everyone else. They wanted to show their solidarity with the people of New Zealand and Australia, and the decision was taken with the Prime Ministers' offices and the royal household that Prince William should attend and visit the countries." Prince William will spend two days from Thursday March 17 in Christchurch, where he will undertake engagements in the area and attend a National Memorial Service on the second day. The Prince will also visit Greymouth, near the site of the recent disaster at the Pike River Mine. He will arrive in Australia on Saturday March 19, where he will, over two days, visit a number of areas and towns affected by the recent cyclone and flooding in Queensland. On March 21, the Prince will visit north-west Victoria to view the area recently affected by flooding. Precise details of Prince William's itinerary will be made known in due course by the Prime Minister's Office of New Zealand, and the Prime Minister's Office of Australia. Prince William last visited New Zealand in January 2010, when he paid a visit on behalf of the Queen to Auckland and Wellington. He visited Australia for the first time in January 2010, when he paid a private visit to Sydney, New South Wales and Melbourne, Victoria. The Royal Family have already paid their respects to the victims of the most recent disaster - the New Zealand earthquake. Senior members of the monarchy and William and Miss Middleton have all signed a book of condolence at the country's High Commission in London. The unexpected visit will see the Prince represent the Queen abroad for only the second time. During the royal's trip to New Zealand in January 2010 he travelled on behalf of the monarch to officially open the country's Supreme Court building in the capital Wellington. He received a warm welcome from the nation's people especially the young women and his tour also took him to Australia where he toured parts of the state of Victoria devastated by bushfires in 2009. At least seven Britons are currently feared dead after the 6.3 magnitude earthquake shook the South Island of New Zealand on February 22. Authorities in Christchurch have so far formally identified three UK nationals killed in the disaster but another four may also have died. The death toll from the quake currently stands at more than 160. On November 19, last year, 29 miners became trapped by a gas explosion at the Pike River Coal Mine in Atarau, also on the South Island. The workers, including two Britons, died after a second blast ripped through the pit. In neighbouring Australia torrential rains drenched the state of Queensland from November last year, forcing rivers to burst their banks. The waters inundated an area larger than France and Germany combined and the State capital of Brisbane, Australia's third-largest city with a population of two million, was badly affected. Prince William New Zealand Australia Natural disasters and extreme weather guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Yemeni army wounds 98 students Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:28 PM PST Yemen's President moves against protesters seeking to unseat him as students and prisoners call for him to quit The Yemeni government escalated its efforts to stop mass protests yesterday calling for the president's removal, with soldiers firing rubber bullets and tear gas at students camped at a university in the capital during a raid that left at least 98 people wounded, officials said. The army stormed the Sana'a University campus hours after thousands of inmates rioted at the central prison in the capital, taking a dozen guards hostage and calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down. At least one prisoner was killed and 80 people were wounded as the guards fought to control the situation, police said. There have been weeks of protests against against Saleh, inspired by recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia that drove out those nations' leaders. Saleh, a key ally of the US in the campaign against al-Qaida, has been in power 32 years. In a sign that the protests are gaining traction, graffiti calling for Saleh to step down surfaced yesterday in his birthplace, the village of Sanhan, for the first time since the protests began. Students at Sana'a University have been sleeping on campus since mid-February, shortly after the start of the protests against the president. Health workers, who did not want to be named, said many of the 98 people wounded were in serious condition. Armored vehicles and personnel carriers were seen heading to the area of the university. "It's a massacre," said the opposition spokesman, Muhammad Qahtan. "It is a crime by security troops against students engaged in a peaceful sit-in." In the southern port city of Aden, a crowd of women joined a demonstration after a young protester was shot in the head and critically wounded during a rally there the previous day. Tens of thousands took to the streets in the Ibb province, calling on the government to bring to justice those responsible for a deadly attack there on Sunday. Opposition activists blamed "government thugs" who descended on protesters camped out in a central square: one person was killed in that violence and 53 people were hurt. Even before Yemen was engulfed by protests, the country was growing increasingly chaotic with a resurgent al-Qaida, a separatist movement in the south and a Shia rebellion occasionally flaring in the north. Seeking to head off the protests, Saleh called for national dialogue after meetings on Monday with the country's senior political and security chiefs. The state-run news agency said the conference would be held tomorrow and would include thousands of representatives from across Yemen's political spectrum. But opposition leader Yassin Said Numan said there would be no dialogue unless Saleh agreed to step down by the end of the year. Saleh's recent pledge not to run for re-election in 2013 has failed to quell the protests. Yemen Arab and Middle East protests Middle East guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

'Bullied' police to stage cuts protests Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PST Government-commissioned Winsor review backs pay freeze and takes axe to police allowances Members of the Police Federation's ruling council have said they want to consider having the right to strike and accused the government of bullying demoralised officers through a series of swingeing pay cuts. The furious reaction followed a government-commissioned review by Tom Winsor which calls for a raft of allowances and overtime payments to be cut or abolished, and for pay to be frozen. Winsor admitted that four-in-10 officers would lose out by as much as £4,000 a year, but said the rest would gain by up to £2,000 a year. The move further adds to momentum driving police and the government towards a clash, just as ministers rely on police officers to maintain order at protests expected from public sector workers also hit by the cuts. The federation is expected to take to the streets in protest, claiming that members' anger is at record levels as the government cuts police funding by 20% over the next four years. The report from Winsor, a former rail regulator, says that economies of £1.1bn can be found over three years: nearly £500m will be saved and £635m reinvested to "frontline" policing. He calls for measures including scrapping of bonuses and a £60m cut in the police overtime bill, saying that the police are "comparatively well paid – 10% to 15% higher than some other emergency workers and the armed forces". Paul McKeever, the Police Federation chairman, said his members were being bullied because they could not strike. He said the measures meant officers faced "cataclysmic" cuts in take home pay of up to 25%. This follows the Winsor review, a two-year pay freeze and an increase in police pension contributions, due to be announced on Thursday. Figures in the Winsor report reveal this would amount to at least 2% extra from salary. McKeever said officers felt denigrated, upset and demoralised at their "unfair treatment". "This is a major, major turning point for policing in this country," McKeever said. Asked about the right to strike, he said: "Officers are very angry. All options are on the table." In private, other federation officials go further. By law police are banned from taking industrial action. One member of the ruling council said he and others believed the issue of having a right to strike needed to be formally debated: "No officer joined the service to strike. We have already been talking [in private] about the right to strike. If all else fails it would have to be looked at." Echoing a sentiment from Winsor, he added: "Times are changing." The Winsor review maintained a bar on compulsorily redundancies, which makes officers unique within the public sector, but proposes a voluntary redundancy scheme for officers. Two allowances worth a total of £6,000 to some officers will be scrapped, with the aim of money being moved to officers in frontline roles. Officers working antisocial hours will get an extra 10% on their hourly pay for every hour worked from 8pm to 6am, with an allowance worth £1,200 to reward expertise and professionalism paid to most detectives, firearms, public order and neighbourhood officers. Those losing out will be in the "back offices" – working in training, human resources or administration. Winsor said efficiencies could help limit job losses which the Guardian revealed could number 28,000, according to figures from the Association of Chief Police Officers. The Winsor plans are broadly in keeping with government thinking about where the police service needs to go. In April, the plans are expected to be put to the Police Negotiating Board (PNB) and the home secretary, Theresa May, has the power to impose them if she believes arbitration has dragged on too long. May said: "This isn't just about money, it's about reform of our police service. To fight crime, we need a modern and flexible workforce that helps chief constables manage their resources, maximise officer time and improve the service to the public." The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: "The government is cutting too far too fast and hitting the police budget hard. Ultimately it is local communities that will pay the price." Dr Tim Brain, professor of policing at Gloucester University and a former chief constable and expert in police financing, said: "Winsor is treading on broken glass, it is going to be very complex to push all this through the PNB." David Cameron knows all too well the scars a government can suffer by trying to reform police pay and conditions. He was a special adviser in the last Conservative government which tried and failed. The Sheehy report was beaten back by police opposition in 1993. Almost two decades on, Cameron is known to be a keen supporter of Winsor's plans. Police Crime Public sector cuts Public services policy Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

RBS executives given £28m in shares Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:02 PM PST Union brands share awards by loss-making bank a 'disgrace' Bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland has handed shares worth £28m to nine of its top executives in the latest round of multimillion pound bonus awards by the high street banks. The precise scale of the payouts at the loss-making bank, 83% owned by the state through £45bn of taxpayer funds, will become clearer next week when the annual report is published. But stock exchange announcements showed that the nine key staff – including chief executive Stephen Hester – had been handed bonuses for 2010 of £10m in shares with a further £18m in long-term incentive plans that run until 2014 when their exact value will be known. Len McCluskey, Unite's general secretary, branded the payments by the bank – which lost £1.1bn in 2010 – a "disgrace". The RBS disclosures came just 24 hours after Barclays lifted the lid on the pay deals it makes to its highest earners – handing five of them £110m. Hester – whose £2m bonus for 2010 was announced last month and will be paid in shares – is receiving an extra £4.5m in stock through the long-term incentive plan on top of his annual bonus and £1.2m salary. This puts him on track for a pay deal of around £7.7m. For 2009 he did not take a bonus but received just over £4m through the long-term share plan. Finance director Bruce van Saun is receiving £1.3m in shares for his 2010 bonus and a further £2.8m through the long-term incentive plan. The largest bonus awarded in shares is the £2.5m handed to John Hourican, head of the investment bank. Next week it is likely to emerge that Hourican has received more than that because he is also being paid in the bank's debt – although he is not expected to top the £7.7m that Hester could be handed if he meets all his performance criteria. American-based Ellen Alemany also emerges as a top earner with a £1.1m bonus in shares and £2.5m of stock awarded through the long-term plan. Nathan Bostock, who runs the parts of the bank being shut down or sold off, gets £637,000 in shares for his 2010 bonus and £2m through the long-term plan. Brian Hartzer, who runs the retail bank, had £600,000 awarded in shares for 2010 and £1.9m in the long-term plan. The 2010 awards are coming from the £950m payout pool agreed with UK Financial Investments, which controls the taxpayer's 83% stake in the bank, at the time of the Project Merlin deal. The Merlin deal requires the pay of the five highest earners reporting to the chief executive to be announced and RBS is expected to make those disclosures next week. The nine included in Tuesday's announcement are expected to be among them. The prime minister has said he expects RBS to be the back-marker on pay, and while the 2010 payouts appear to have risen from 2009 – when RBS handed shares worth £16m to nine key managers through the long-term incentive plan and some £10m in bonuses – the bank stressed that numbers were not comparable. The latest payments included bonuses to Hester and van Saun for the first time. "These awards follow exhaustive consultation with our shareholders and we believe they appropriately balance demonstrating restraint while remaining fully supportive of our leadership through the RBS turnaround plan," the bank said. Liberal Democrat Lord Oakeshott said: "There is precious little sign of restraint. Out of every £1 going to RBS top earners, 83p comes out of taxpayers' pockets." Royal Bank of Scotland Executive pay and bonuses Banking Jill Treanor guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Andrew in new link to Turkmenistan Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:33 PM PST Duke's talks with 'corrupt' countries criticised as Andrew is asked for details on sex offender Epstein Prince Andrew met the president of Turkmenistan, allegedly one of the most corrupt countries in the world, last year and lobbied the nation's oil and gas minister on behalf of British business as part of his role as a UK trade envoy. Anti-corruption campaigners have voiced anger that the Duke of York called on Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, the president of Turkmenistan, as part of a British trade lobbying effort aimed at the gas-rich central Asian autocracy. Turkmenistan is ranked the world's sixth most corrupt of 178 countries surveyed by Transparency International, the anti-corruption group. The prince's visit in his role as Britain's special representative for international trade and investment emerged when he reportedly told Goga Ashkenazi, a friend, he was "very worried" about his ability to continue in the post amid continuing scrutiny of his friendship with the billionaire convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and of his decision to invite Sakher el-Materi, son-in-law of the deposed Tunisian dictator, to Buckingham Palace. Jack Scarola, a lawyer involved in legal action taken in Florida by women suing Epstein over claims they were sexually abused, has called for the prince to give information he had following visits to see the financier over the last decade. This week controversy reignited over the prince's links to Kazakhstan, connections which have previously been in the spotlight after the sale of the duke's home at Sunninghill Park to Timur Kulibayev, the Kazakh president's son-in-law. Claims have emerged that the Kazakh authorities hoped the prince would persuade City investors that the country was a sound place to do business. A spokesman for the prince said he remained "fully committed" to his role and had denied discussing with Ashkenazi his future as special representative. Prince Andrew faced calls to resign from Mike Gapes, a former chair of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, and Chris Bryant, the Labour frontbencher, but David Cameron and George Osborne each issued votes of confidence. The prince visited Turkmenistan in April following Lord Hunt – then the UK energy minister – who met Berdimuhamedov in what the British embassy said was "another push for the development of further co-operation in energy and the fuel sector". Tom Mayne, of Global Witness, the anti-corruption campaign, said: "Turkmenistan is one of the most fiscally opaque countries in the world, with a stagnating private sector and a business system apparently built on bribery. Is Prince Andrew raising any of these issues when he has lunch with these leaders?" A spokesman for the prince said: "The duke visited Turkmenistan at the request of government to discuss energy security, and oil and gas opportunities for British companies." Meanwhile, the prince's links with Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan – another former Soviet republic in the region where the authorities have been accused of human rights violations – are also coming under the spotlight. The prince visited Azerbaijan in November last year, weeks after rights groups complained of violence and intimidation which they said was aimed at preventing free and fair parliamentary elections. There has been wider concern at the prince's role in promoting defence and arms sales. Engagements relating to defence made up a sizeable minority of his appointments over the last year. Last year he met the defence minister of Saudi Arabia, a Jordanian defence official, and the Malaysian and Indian defence ministers. He held three trade meetings with Bahrain's prime minister, head of the Gulf state's defence forces, in the months running up to the violent crackdown on protests, although Buckingham Palace said defence sales were not discussed. At the Farnborough air show last July he held a meeting with Shephard Hill, president of Boeing International, and Paul Davison, vice-president of the defence contractor Northrop Grumman. In September, he was briefed by executives at Detica, BAE Systems' cyber security arm which sells into the defence and national security markets, and last June, was briefed by Richard Paniguian, chief executive of UK Trade and Investment's Defence and Security Organisation, which promotes UK arms exports. The defence organisation hosted a UK stand at the Middle East's largest arms fair, in Abu Dhabi last month, where the Guardian witnessed a British army officer describing the merits of a 6kg fragmentation bomb to a major general in the Algerian military. "The duke does not negotiate trade contracts for arms companies," said a spokesman for him. "Only when advised by government he will support government-to-government defence opportunities for British companies. The defence market amounts to 8% of the UK's advanced manufacturing exports." But peace campaigners said the duke and the government should be "ashamed" of lobbying for private defence contractors. "Recent events in Bahrain show the deadly impact of promoting weapons sales to repressive regimes," said Sarah Waldron, campaign co-ordinator of the Campaign Against Arms Trade. "It's time for a rethink on how the UK has been approaching arms sales – and dismissing Prince Andrew would be a small but important first step." Prince Andrew Turkmenistan Robert Booth Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tanya Gold enters the world of chalet girls Posted: 08 Mar 2011 12:30 PM PST She's posh, rich and randy. At least, that's how the cruel jibe goes. But is that fair? Tanya Gold goes in search of the modern chalet girl I am in Méribel, a tiny resort in the French Alps. It is two streets filled with wooden houses, a one- Porsche town. I am looking for chalet girls and this is their natural home. I have never met a chalet girl and so, to me, they are semi- mythical creatures. Some people think they are literally a porn film, named Chalet Girls. Others think they are posh morons who go and work in the French Alps every year from December to April, where they burn toast and get chlamydia. Or are chalet girls, who earn about €120 a week (plus tips, board, food and ski pass) exploited by their employers, even if there are five applicants for every job? This is the Marxist interpretation of the phenomenon. Somewhere between these stereotypes – Barbarella and Cinderella – lies the real chalet girl, graduate of the coldest boarding school in Europe, and butt of jokes. Who is she? I begin at the pub, where I ask the barmaid. "Slags!" she screams instantly, wiping the bar down. "Posh! Gap year! Daddy's money!" Her colleague tells me about awards given at the end of the season for "loosest girl", and an annual ski day when they run around half naked and pose for photos, shouting. Then she explains she has a hangover, points to her eye, which is full of blood, and concedes: "We see them at their worst. They're OK. They're just young and easily led." Perhaps I should find some. It's simple, apparently. You follow the Ugg footprints. Chalet girls were born in the 1960s when aristocrats, the only British people to ski before cheap air travel, could no longer afford a crocodile of travelling slaves. But they still needed someone to boil their eggs in the Alps, and it was usually a posh girl who was handy on skis. No other nationality uses chalet girls regularly, probably because no Frenchwoman would let an Englishwoman cook her food. It really is an English thing. Chalet girls can be boys too, but usually are not. If they are, they are always on the mountain, like God in the Old Testament, but on skis. (Sample quote from chalet boy: "I love snowboarding.") I meet Nicky Gutsell, a chalet manager from Ski Out of the Blue, at the Tavern, a bar at the centre of Méribel. It is full of people in woolly hats staring at Apple Macs and checking each other out. Nicky is carrying a child's stairgate and she questions me closely before she will let me meet her girls. The chalet girls are fearful of hacks. They see their presentation in the media as a libel, like the blood libel, but with thongs. They are also nervous about a forthcoming film called Chalet Girl, starring Bill Nighy, which tells the story of a working-class girl who falls in love with a posh guest and improbably wins an international snowboarding competition to seal their love. It's a terrible film, but the chalet girls are not represented as drunken and sluttish. They are bovine and manipulative instead. Eventually Nicky leads me into a vast chalet. It is brown and it smells of duck fat and alcohol. The living room has an enormous window, overlooking the Olympic run. The Winter Olympics were here in 1992, so you can watch, if you wish, dots fall down a very sheer cliff, wearing skis. In front of the window are guests. I promised I wouldn't discuss the guests so I will merely say they are a blur with 26 legs that gets steadily very drunk on brandy. Alex Walters, 24, and Jordan Gardiner, 19, are the chalet girls here. They are dressed in black shirts and shorts. Alex is from Wales and has just finished a degree in fashion photography. Jordan is from Cirencester and is off to university in September, to study accountancy and finance. They moan that they have got fat. "It is called CBB," says Jordan. "It means [chalet big bum]." But she says she loves it here and when I go up the mountain the next day I understand why. It's so devoid of multiplexes. "So many people judge you [in London]," she says. "It's completely different round here. Everyone's so friendly." The work is arduous and non-stop. Every day, they are at the chalet at seven, to serve breakfast. Then they wave the guests off to the slopes and tidy up. They then ski, sleep, snowboard, or stare at Facebook, but they are back by four. Their nightmare is Sunday, changeover day, when they have to get up at 4am to say goodbye to the guests. Then it all starts again. The girls serve dinner with the passive eyes of refugees. "If the guests are nice," says Alex, "it's fine." If not? She shrugs, but, off the record, other girls tell tales of being asked to serve dinner topless and – once – spank a client's naked bottom with, of all things, a cucumber. And she did it. Tips can be as high as €300 a week, three times their basic wage. We head for Jack's Pub. It is full of screaming bodies. Toss the Boss involves ordering a round and hurling a dice. If the barman gets a higher roll than the customers they pay for the drinks. If it is lower, they don't. All the bars have drinks-for-pennies nights and the girls follow the deals – from Jack's to Scott's to Dick's Tea Bar to the Ronny. They love Jäger Bombs, a mixture of Red Bull and cough syrup, and Ten Eighties, which comprise wine, soda and fruit cordial. "It's cheap and easy to drink," says Alex. We win twice and lose once, so we drink three rounds in four minutes. Alex brushes men off like scurf. She has a boyfriend. "The ski instructors are the worst," she says. "They always ask – do you ski or snowboard?" "Or the older guests," says Jordan. "It's just embarrassing. Sometimes guests leave a roll of euros on a bed in the morning. If the chalet girl takes it, she must return that night – for sex!" Has that ever happened to her? "No," she says. "They wouldn't dare with Simon around." Simon is the chef in her chalet – the girls only have to waitress and scrub in the more expensive accommodation. He isn't frightening but he is a reasonable deterrent and they need it in a town where the male/female (under-30) ratio is 70/30. The next morning I watch them serve breakfast at seven. They are half dead. They don't speak, except to say they had two hours' sleep in a room they share with two other girls. "It's full of pants," says Jordan, wiping the sleep from her eyes. They shuffle around in their slippers, looking as close to unconscious as anyone vertical can. I walk around Méribel, and watch the tribes. The guests are mainly lads, who like to ski dressed as bears, or Santas, or frogs, especially on stag weekends. Sometimes they ski in bright green mankinis and they shout a lot, mostly about women. There are also families, couples, Ras (poshos), sporty men bearing avalanche-survival kits, plus the French. They are, as ever, at polite war with the English. Jane Kinnear, 22, is a tiny blonde in her fifth season. She is serving dinner to another blur, in a slightly smaller chalet, run by Crystal Ski. This blur has only 18 legs and it is sporty and silent. I sense it is slightly in awe of Jane, and even embarrassed. It is not used to having slaves. Jane is kind, and very grave. She is from Northumberland, the daughter of a painter-decorator and she plans to make her life here, possibly forming a chalet business with her boyfriend, who also works here. "This is the most satisfying job I've ever done," she says. "I'm not lying." When her colleague forgets to deliver the apples for her tarte tatin, she has a very controlled panic attack. "A dishwasher is a chalet girl's best friend," she says, manically wiping the side with a sponge. There are traumas, she concedes, such as "dropping the shepherd's pie, and you have to make a whole new meal." When the meal is served, she relaxes a bit. The dropout rate for chalet girls can be as high as one in three, she says, usually the younger ones on gap years. They OD on booze and boys, and have to be shipped home, because you can only survive without sleep at this altitude for so long. Some companies, such as Meriski, only employ over-21s for this reason. Or the girls break their legs, because they ski five times a week. Later, at the bus stop, I see a girl in a neck brace, a man with his arm in a sling and a woman on crutches, in a perfect montage of broken bones. But they were smiling! I meet some girls from Fish and Pips, who specialise in foodie holidays. "I have eight Spanish men this week," says Naomi Turnbull, 24, who is from Leeds, and came here because she was made redundant. "They call me Mum. It's the best job [you can have] at this age. I am getting to know strangers better than I ever have before." Sometimes, she explains, you really bond with the guests, party with them, and miss them when they leave. Other times, not so much. After three days in Méribel, I am sure the chalet girl myth – on a bender, under a stranger – is a terrible exaggeration, born of envy and lust. They are fairly normal, even a bit dull and – although the odd bray from a Barbour jacket is sometimes detectable in Jack's – bang in the middle of the class system. The skiing was an early clue. Most of the girls I meet are – of all things – athletic. They have nice skin, and they function, which is more than I did when I was 19. Jez Saunders, the manager of Jack's Bar, thinks the social division between guests and chalet girls is over. The democratisation of ski has gone the way of all else. He quotes a line from Chalet Girl, a clip of which he saw on YouTube, to prove his point. It's the bit where the poor chalet girl, who is in love with the posh guest, tells him: "You'll go back to your world and I'll go back to mine." "What are they talking about?" he asks me, looking completely amazed. "They are both from Putney." He's right. They really are. Skiing Alps France Tanya Gold guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ex-Star reporter 'gets hate messages' Posted: 08 Mar 2011 01:29 PM PST Richard Peppiatt, who resigned over alleged anti-Muslim 'hatemongering', claims to have received abusive texts and calls Police are investigating a claim that a journalist who resigned from the Daily Star has become the victim of harassment. Richard Peppiatt resigned in protest at what he alleged was the newspaper's anti-Muslim "hatemongering". His resignation letter, in which he confessed to making up stories during his two years at the tabloid, received widespread attention after it was disseminated via Twitter. Peppiatt contacted police on Monday after he claimed to have received more than 30 abusive texts, emails and silent calls. He alleges they included warnings such as: "I am going to meet u now, pepps" and "you're nowe a marked man till the day you die – Oh dear". Another said: "we are planning a kiss n' tell on you". Detectives are reviewing the messages and seeking to establish their origin. Peppiatt told them there is circumstantial evidence that a "likely source" may be connected to the Daily Star newsroom, although he concedes there is no firm evidence. He also expressed concern to them that his phone may have been hacked. A spokesperson from the management of Northern & Shell, which owns the Daily Star, said he had asked several staff who had been in a position of authority over Peppiatt whether they were aware of the messages having been sent. "Every single one of them not only categorically denied it but evinced great surprise that the allegation had been made," the spokesperson said. "The same applies to any allegation of phone-hacking. We don't do that. It simply isn't done at the Daily Star." News of the resignation of Peppiatt – who insists he has no knowledge of the source of the emails and texts – was published in the Guardian at 8pm on Friday. Hours earlier, Peppiatt says, he began to receive texts and emails from a tormenter using aliases such as "Micheala". The author knew he intended to go public with his grievances against the newspaper. "Rich. It will tank. Maybe the best slot for you? Lots of love," said the first email, sent at 9.44am on Friday. Shortly after, another said: "Stop the bullshit, Pepps. We all know everything about you." Later in the day Peppiatt says he began receiving texts demanding a meeting and referring to the London suburb where he lives. Texts and emails named the Guardian reporter that Peppiatt had contacted. "Paul Lewis seems to know a lot about you, Pepps. You're far too trusting," said one. Peppiatt told police that Daily Star colleagues sometimes called him "Pepps". The messages made references to a sitcom script Peppiatt was working on with friends in his spare time. Peppiatt had used his Daily Star email address to discuss the script about life in a tabloid newsroom and talked about the possibility of pitching the script, which is still incomplete, to a TV channel. Managers at the Daily Star have been aware of his scriptwriting for some time, but found those emails after he resigned. Peppiatt's tormenter sent messages such as "U will NEVER see ur stuff on TV" and – in reference to one of the characters – "Please rewrite the Jack role. It's shit." Peppiatt has told police he was concerned about the possibility his voicemail messages were listened to by the author of the anonymous messages. "Change ur VM message U sound like ur still at school," one email said, hinting this was the case. Peppiatt said two voicemail messages temporarily went missing and were then referred to in the anonymous messages. One was left by a Guardian reporter, but Peppiatt did not receive the message for more than 12 hours. During that time he received an email stating: "Paul Lewis has a message 4u." The final message sent to Peppiatt, on Monday, also appears to refer to a lost voicemail. The message, which was left by a friend apologising because he could not join him for a football match, appears to have gone missing, Peppiatt said. He has still not heard it. But the final voicemail made what Peppiatt believes may have been a reference to the contents of lost voicemail. "Sorry but cannot watch the football tomorrow night. I'll get back to you. PS This was my own decision, nut job. Adieu." A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: "We can confirm that detectives are investigating an allegation of harassment received from a 26 year old man on 7 March 2011. Daily Star Newspapers & magazines Northern & Shell National newspapers Newspapers Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ugandan scientists grow GM banana Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:01 PM PST Ban on GM crops waived after bacterial disease causes annual banana crop losses of $500m Most countries would resent being called a banana republic. Uganda prides itself on it. A typical adult here eats at least three times his or her body weight in bananas each year, more than anywhere else on Earth. Different varieties are steamed, boiled, roasted, turned into gin and beer, or simply peeled and eaten raw, such as the tiny sukali ndizi, considered by some experts to be finest banana in the world. "Breakfast, lunch and dinner, 365 days a year," said Arthur Kamenya, whose taste for the fruit is so strong he quit his job as a graphic designer to grow it commercially. "And people still crave more." But it is a craving under threat. In recent years a devastating bacterial disease has swept across Uganda and, to a lesser extent, neighbouring countries, causing annual banana crop losses to the region of more than $500m (£310m). The rapid spread of banana Xanthomonas wilt, or BXW, which destroys the entire plant and contaminates the soil, "has endangered the livelihoods of millions of farmers who rely on banana for staple food and income", according to an article in the journal Molecular Plant Pathology last year. With no resistant varieties or chemical cures available, growers such as Kamenya have been forced to destroy large sections of their plantations. For smaller farmers the damage has been so severe many have given up on the fruit. But local scientists have not. On a sprawling campus outside Kampala, Wilberforce Tushemereirwe and his colleagues at the National Banana Research Programme have been on a quest to defeat the disease by building a better banana. This has involved adding to the fruit a sweet pepper gene that has already improved disease resistance in several vegetables. Laboratory tests on the genetically modified bananas have been highly promising, with six out of eight strains proving 100% resistant to BXW. Field tests have now started in a fenced-off, guarded plot on the edge of the campus. Results from the trials, expected later this year, could have a strong bearing on the country's future food security – and indeed its entire policy on agriculture. GM crops are still banned in Uganda, and the scientists had to get special permission just to conduct their tests. While acknowledging that it is a highly controversial topic, Tushemereirwe says the risk of doing nothing is too great. "If we just leave this, bananas will slowly disappear from Uganda," he said. BXW was first reported in Ethiopia in the 1960s, but was only identified further south in 2001, initially in Uganda and then Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Burundi and Tanzania. Uganda was particularly vulnerable because of the scale of its banana production, second only to India which has a population 35 times larger. With a single plant lasting for many years and providing a large bunch of fruit every few months, bananas are a key crop for small farmers. They are also a crucial source of sustenance, accounting for more than 30% of Ugandans' daily calorie intake. According to Tushemereirwe, the average adult eats 200-250kg (440lb-550lb) of bananas a year – and twice that in some areas. Most of that is matooke, a long green banana, which is usually steamed and mashed and eaten with beans, peanut sauce or meat. That's what Kamenya planted six years ago on his farm in Galamba, about an hour's drive from the Ugandan capital. But soon he realised some of the plants were sick, with yellowing leaves and the fruit ripening prematurely. Kamenya, a powerfully built 37-year-old, was forced to dig up 1,500 of his 4,500 plants, destroy them, and allow the soil to lie fallow for at least six months. He also had to sterilise his farm tools. This eventually helped control the disease, though he still has problems. "Look how this plant has rotted," he said, slicing through the trunk of a banana plant with a knife to reveal yellow ooze. Few areas of Uganda have escaped the disease, which is transported by insects such as bees and wasps. But traditional farming practices also ensured its rapid spread. Infected "suckers" – young shoots of banana plants – are shared with neighbours, while the use of banana leaves to cover bunches of fruit headed to market quickly transferred the disease to new areas. In central Uganda, one of the main banana-growing regions, BXW hit up to 80% of farms, sometimes wiping out entire fields. Small-scale farmers, who could not afford to let their gardens lie empty for months before replanting, switched to other crops. Tushemereirwe, with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), decided a GM solution was the best way forward. Academia Sinica, the Taiwanese research institute that pioneered the sweet pepper gene technology, agreed to issue them with a royalty-free licence. The sweet pepper gene – successfully transplanted into the other vegetables, but never before a banana – produces a protein that kills cells infected by disease-spreading bacteria. Leena Tripathi, a plant biotechnologist at IITA who helped steer the project, said introducing the gene did not affect the quality of the banana and presented no health risks. "The beauty of the genetic engineering is that you can be very precise," she said. Other GM banana experiments are under way in Uganda, including one to fortify the fruit with iron and vitamin A. But concern about GM foods in Uganda means they could face a long battle before any of the transgenic bananas find their way on to the market. A study by Enoch Kikulwe, assistant professor of international food economics at the University of Göttingen, Germany, revealed more opposition to GM crops among the elite than those in poorer villages. Most studies show that better education led to more acceptance of GM foods, he said. But for Kamenya the farmer, – who falls into the elite category – the anti-GM stance was hypocritical. "Most of the people against this have choices," he said, a pot of matooke steaming nearby. "Somebody who is hungry does not have a choice. GM, organic or whatever – you have to feed the people." How to eat them, Uganda style The super-sweet dessert bananas are the easy option. The home-brewed banana gin is a choice for only the highly adventurous. For authenticity, however, matooke, the national staple that looks like buttery mashed potato on the plate, is the only way to go. Also known as east African highland bananas, the green matooke fruits are for cooking only – ideally steamed on an open fire. To start, water is poured into a large pot and covered with banana stalks. The peeled bananas are wrapped in the plant leaves, with the bundle lowered into the pot, resting on the stalks, above the water. The fruit is then steamed for a few hours, going from hard to soft, white to yellow. Still wrapped in the leaves, the bananas are then mashed. The dish can then be served on a new leaf, together with beans, other vegetables or peanut sauce. It is an acquired taste, and to the uninitiated it can seem heavy and bland. But once you've got it, Ugandans say, there's no going back to rice and potatoes. Uganda GM Food security Farming Food Xan Rice guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Caro disowns 'mutilated' sculpture Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:14 AM PST Artist accuses Bonhams auction house of misrepresentation after £100,000 Lagoon sculpture has metal legs welded on to it A sculpture described as a "monumental work by Sir Anthony Caro" and expected to fetch up to £150,000 at auction has been disowned by the artist, who described it as "mutilated" and not his real work. Caro, one of Britain's most celebrated artists, has accused Bonhams auctioneers of "misrepresentation" by describing the work as his in their catalogue. He claims the piece, which has traces of graffiti and has had metal legs added since he sold it in 1984, has been badly cared for and altered without his permission and to auction it as a Caro infringes his "moral right as an artist". The artist also hit out at those selling the piece, Peterborough sculpture council, as he said it was sold to them on the understanding it would be kept as a public work for future generations. The five-metre, rusted and varnished steel sculpture entitled Lagoon is part of the 20th Century British Art sale on Wednesday, has had a catalogue estimate of between £100,000-£150,000. Caro, who was awarded a lifetime achievement award in 1997, said: "It's been mutilated. It had legs welded on to it and it is nothing like the original. It stands several feel higher than the original. It is going on show on public exhibition as a sculpture of mine and it's not. "I sold it to Peterborough Sculpture Trust, who I understood to be trustees for sculpture to keep for future generations. I didn't know they would use it as something to speculate with. That doesn't make me very happy." A spokesman for Bonhams said: "The sculpture was commissioned from Sir Anthony by the Peterborough Sculpture Trust, which is now selling the work through Bonhams in order to raise funds for its other activities. The work was commissioned to stand on outside has legs for support. During its long period of exposure to the elements the sculpture has become weathered and at some time was unfortunately spray painted in some areas by vandals. The spray paint has been removed with only minor traces remaining. "Sir Anthony contends that the legs on which the sculpture stands are not his work although that is not the recollection of the trust's staff who dealt with the installation of the piece on site many years ago. Whether Sir Anthony was responsible for the legs or not they have no impact on the artistic integrity of the piece. They are invisible when the piece is placed in the ground outside as originally intended." Caro has offered to purchase the piece from the trust but terms have not been agreed. Bonhams said it expected the sculpture to attract considerable interest from collectors when it goes on sale. The artist said he became aware of the alterations to Lagoon only after seeing the catalogue and denies that changes to the piece were carried out in consultation with him. Anthony Caro Sculpture Art Karen McVeigh guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Play that funky cardboard Posted: 08 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PST He plays records made of cardboard and creates machines that turn water into mist. Jonathan Jones enters the world of Haroon Mirza, winner of the Northern Art prize When Haroon Mirza won the Northern Art prize earlier this year, the regional news programme Look North followed its report on his victory with some studio banter. "The weatherman threw some clothes on the floor," remembers Mirza, "and said he could win a modern art prize. It escalated into a controversy – but I just thought it was a bit funny." The joke is now on Look North as the award has led to an exhibition of Mirza's work at the prestigious Lisson Gallery in London. But the truth is there's something nostalgic, rather than offensive, about Look North's response. In the 1990s, when British contemporary art leapt into the limelight, tabloids were constantly making jokes in the same vein. The Sun took a bag of chips to the Saatchi Gallery: "We bring the chips to Damien Hirst's fish." That kind of mockery has long lost its edge in London: the art world rules down south. But in the north, apparently, artists still have to endure taunts. And this is not bad for art at all, if Mirza is anything to go by. Mirza is something new: an exciting young artist – he's 33 – who chooses to work in northern England, despite being born in London. Before 1,000 people write in to point out that the north has many fine artists, can I just say this: pull the other one. The north has for years been the dog that did not bark in British art. Liverpool, Manchester and other cities have staged high-profile art events and commissioned public art, not least Gateshead's Angel of the North; a visiting Martian might even have concluded that the region was the epicentre of British art. But it's not. No matter how much effort has gone into fabricating an art scene, there is a world of difference between being a place that promotes art, and being a place where artists choose to live and work. Northern English cities never became real centres of artistic creativity in the way Glasgow and London are. But if Mirza is anything to go by, that is changing. "It's an incredible place to work," he says of Sheffield, where he has his studio. "I don't know why other artists don't work in places like Sheffield and Leeds. Everything's so easy, materials are so cheap." By materials, he does not mean canvases and paints, as Look North so astutely pointed out. No, Mirza, who studied painting at Winchester school of art and design at Goldsmiths in London, is something of an amateur scientist. As technicians toil to install his show at the Lisson, he shows me some of his gadgets. Inside a mirrored cube, a pool of water is agitated by a tiny electronic device that vibrates at the exact speed required to discombobulate water and turn it into vapour, making the cube fill with mist. He likes this effect as it expresses "the chaotic nature of water. Rivers never run how you expect them to run." Later, he shows me a circuitboard he cooked up. So, to put it simply, Mirza makes art that involves moving parts, electrical wizardry and video, all of it held together by sound. Music, the human voice and odd noises (including the sound of cardboard records being played at 33rpm) feature in his show, which he conceives as a single musical entity in different movements (or galleries). "It's like a composed piece of music," he says. So would he call himself a "sound artist", a term seized on by journalists last year after Glaswegian Susan Philipsz won the Turner prize for installations that used recordings of her singing a Scots lament? "No, probably not. I prefer to say that I'm a composer than a sound artist." In fact, the way Mirza builds with blocks of sound in unexpected synchronisations puts me in mind of the composer Steve Reich. To some people, though, it might sound like what Frank Zappa called "noodling", by which he meant pointless experimental jazz drivel. I tell Mirza that my first reaction to his art was to find it funny: there's an absurdity to it, with its record players playing cardboard disks, that is liberating and fun. He seems happy with this response. It is also political. At one point, Mirza starts pondering "the responsibility of the artist"; meanwhile, off in one room, a video of drummers at a ceremony in Kenya is juxtaposed with a man in Lahore making a speech about terrorism. It's a piece reminiscent of an early work by Reich, featuring a passionate civil-rights speech. Mirza recorded his drummers at "a stick-fighting ceremony where the groom has to fight for his bride. My attention shifted to the drummers, who provided the driving force to the ceremony." They drum on plastic bottles, anything that comes to hand. "A subtext," he says, "is the place of music in Islamic culture. In some Islamic cultures, music is forbidden. An underlying theme to my work is a criticism of religious faith, and the dogmas involved in religious faith." It strikes me that Look North couldn't have been more wrong-headed. Without a confident grasp of electronics and avant-garde classical music, Mirza's work isn't easy to make at all. "Art is about posing questions rather than giving answers," he says. "You can get as much or as little meaning out of it as you wish. Art is the stuff you can't say." Art Awards and prizes Jonathan Jones guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Recycled cereal boxes 'no health risk' Posted: 08 Mar 2011 11:51 AM PST FSA downplays Swiss study linking mineral oils in boxes made from recycled cardboard and their printing ink to cancer risk The food safety watchdog has insisted there is no safety risk from the recycled cardboard boxes used for foods such as breakfast cereals, even though manufacturers admit they are altering or reviewing their packaging following the health concerns. Cardboard packaging made from recycled newspapers can carry the mineral oils used in the papers' ink, Swiss researchers have found. These oils, their study says, can seep into foods such as cereal, pasta and rice and even pass through the packaging's protective inner plastic bags, bringing possible health risks. Koni Grob of the Food Safety Laboratory in Zurich said toxicologists had linked the oils to inflammation of internal organs and cancer, though he stressed meals would contain only a minute dose. Switching to non-recycled packaging was too costly in terms of the environment, he said, so other solutions needed to be considered, such as inner-food linings that acted as barriers to the oils. Grob said: "Our bodies already contain, on average, around one gram of mineral oil – that is by far the largest contaminant we have in our body. For some people it is 10 grams, which is a high value. We are obviously accumulating mineral oil over a lifetime. What the baby gets through human milk is probably staying over a lifetime. "One month or less has no real effect, so there is no emergency – consumers should not make any rapid changes. We have to think about it." The UK's Food Standards Agency said: "The FSA is not aware of any firm evidence to suggest that there are food safety risks related to mineral oils in recycled food packaging. The research [which examined products bought from German supermarkets] … is interesting, but due to incomplete data the results have not demonstrated that mineral oils in food packaging represent a food safety risk." Further research was being carried out, the FSA said. The cereal-maker Jordans, whose brands include Country Crisp and Crunchy Oats, has stopped using certain kinds of recycled cardboard. Other manufacturers say they are taking action to reduce levels of mineral oils in packaging. Jordans said: "We will be discussing improved supply of recycled board, that avoids content from newspapers, with the industry and our suppliers." Kellogg's said it was working with suppliers on devising new packaging "which allows us to meet our environmental commitments but will also contain significantly lower levels of mineral oil". Its statement said: "We are also looking at alternative inner liners for our packets. Whilst there are strict regulations when it comes to the packaging of food, there is currently no direction from the UK government about mineral oils. We will immediately follow any such guidance once it has been given." Weetabix said it was Food safety Food & drink industry Food science Health Rebecca Smithers guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Guatemala's children learn on street Posted: 07 Mar 2011 11:59 PM PST In Guatemala, up to 1.5 million children are missing school to try to scrape a living on the streets. What can be done to get them back into classrooms? Bearing more than a kilo of mangos, oranges and apples on his shoulders, 13-year-old José slips through the queue and jumps on the bus. Here, he walks along the aisle offering his goods for sale. But in an instant, he's back down on the road and on his way to the next bus, squinting from the mixture of midday Guatemalan sun and diesel clouds. José knows how to spot a potential customer and when it's not worth sticking around. Instead of being in school, he has spent nearly every day earning money this way since the age of six. The proportion of seven- to 12-year-olds enrolled in Guatemala's schools is rising, according to the United Nations, and has increased from 85% to 89% in the last 20 years. The Guatemalan government puts the figure at 95% – a jump, it says, from 89% eight years ago. But, despite the improvement, a growing underclass of children is emerging, of which José is a part. Very little – if any – of their "education" will be spent in classrooms. Most of what they learn will have been picked up on their country's increasingly dangerous streets. At La Terminal, the bus station in Guatemala City where José plies his trade, shootings, thefts and gang violence are commonplace. Even the fried chicken joint now employs an armed security guard. José has had his daily earnings of about 75 Quetzales – £6 – stolen more than once. In Guatemala, there are 52 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to one murder per 100,000 in the UK and five per 100,000 in the US. Many predict this to increase this year, as tensions rise with the election of a new Guatemalan president in the autumn. Guatemalans say more people are dying now than during the country's bitter 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. As José walks to the next bus, half a dozen vehicles sound their horns. He takes a side-step to avoid a man who is unstable on his feet, and holds out gold-coloured bracelets in his palm to passers-by. It's nearly impossible to judge how many children in Guatemala are missing out on a formal education to work the streets as José does. Viva, an umbrella organisation for charities that help street children, says up to 1.5 million are consistently out of school – about a fifth of what the country's pupil population should be. Unesco's Education for All Global Monitoring Report, published this month, reckons one in 28 Guatemalan children are missing out on school. José says he wants to be a teacher, but the closest he has come to entering a school is the informal one set up by Guatemalan charity Pennat. The school takes a few hundred children for a couple of hours of lessons each day above a shop in the capital's main marketplace. Classes start at 7.30am and end by 11am so the children can catch the mid-morning swell of customers. A UK-based charity, Toybox, is providing the funds for another informal school to be set up. It will be run by El Castillo, Toybox's partner in Guatemala. El Castillo's 40 workers visit parents whose children work on the streets and try to convince them of the long-term value of sending the children to school. They encourage street children to start – or re-start – their studies, and buy them uniform and equipment. Children found living on the streets without adults are offered shelter in El Castillo's residential home, if there is space. Jomara Pineda, head of El Castillo's rescue and prevention team, doesn't hold out much hope of José or his 11-year-old sister, Rosalita, going to a proper school any time soon. In fact, she thinks they are likely to stop going to the informal school before long. "It's a lot to do with the parents," she says. "They have the opportunity to change the fate of their children, but they often don't seem to want to let the children stop earning. The children get used to earning, too." José's mother, Laura, and grandmother, Rosa, sold fruit on the streets at José's age and see this as normal, although they admit that today the streets are more dangerous. Guatemala already has one of the worst poverty gaps in the world. Here there are more private helicopters per capita than anywhere else in central America, according to the US Department of Commerce. Meanwhile, Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world. And according to a study conducted last year by The Fund for Peace, a US-based research institute, the inequality is becoming worse. José's family is among the 58% of Guatemalans who, according to the United Nations World Food Programme and the World Bank, live in extreme poverty, without even the means to afford to buy a basket of basic food. Five of them sleep on two beds in a damp shack that is much more like a cellar than a home. It has a corrugated iron roof, no windows and no running water. Plastic buckets are stacked on the stone floor and the only possessions visible are some clothes hanging over string and a couple of blankets folded in the corner. Not far away, chickens nod their way into a space roughly three metres by five occupied by a family of seven – including two children. Dirty nappies lie in yellow puddles outside the door. Amid this acute poverty and overcrowding, family breakdown is common, as are violence and sexual abuse. Miguel Angel Franco, a deputy minister in the Guatemalan government's education department, says he is well aware that some children can't continue their studies because of a lack of funds. But he points at the considerable success of a scheme started in 2008 called Mi Familia Progresa (my family progresses). It gives poor families cash if they regularly send their children to school. The government has spent 2.04bn Quetzales (£162m) on the initiative and claims it has helped an extra 800,000 parents – 6% of the population – send their children to school. Franco also highlights the rising aspirations of many poor families – something Flora Suarez, a headteacher, has also noticed. In Suarez's primary school, in a deprived neighbourhood in the north of Guatemala City, working-class parents are now daring to hope that their children will have middle-class jobs when they are in their twenties. The bricklayers are encouraging their children to become architects and engineers, she says. "They think their children will be able to get these jobs if they have an education and they support everything the school tries to do – they have understood the value of going to school." The parents who have stalls in the market haven't reached this stage yet, she says. In 2000, world leaders vowed to ensure that, by 2015, every child would stay in school long enough to complete their primary education. There are 40 million more children who have been given this opportunity than when the promise was made, but 60 million are still missing out. José is one of them. He can barely write his own name. A future as a teacher is out of his grasp until he comes off the streets and goes to school. 'The sheer poverty was a shock to our system': two UK teenagers' journey Two teenagers from the UK are planning to tell thousands of their peers about the plight of street children over the next few months following a fact-finding trip to Guatemala. Navdeep Bual, 15, and Yasir Yeahia, 14, spent a week meeting street children, politicians, teachers and charity workers in Guatemala City. The pair, from Seven Kings high school in Ilford, Essex, visited a primary school in a deprived part of the city and met the British ambassador to Guatemala. They travelled to the shanty towns where some of the street children live and were invited into their homes. The teenagers were introduced to young people their age who gave them an idea of some of the country's education problems. Navdeep and Yasir were winners of the Steve Sinnott award for Young Global Education Campaigners. The competition was launched by a group of overseas aid agencies that believe education is the key to escaping poverty. Sinnott, who died in 2008, was general secretary of the National Union of Teachers and a passionate advocate of the Global Campaign for Education, an umbrella group of charities and teaching unions. The two students were accompanied on their trip by the charity Toybox and Education Guardian. Yasir says he was shocked at Jose's life and living conditions. "He had to go to the bus station, which was filled with drug addicts. He worked tirelessly and went from bus to bus trying to sell. We then visited his home ... The flies, the smell and the black bags filled with rubbish, the chaos ... You had to go through narrow alleyways to even get there." He says he has been struck by the responsibility young children have to earn money for their families. "It seems so much pressure to put on someone that young," he says. "I want to make people in the UK know that we've a lot to be grateful for. People our age may think they can't make a difference, when in fact they can." Navdeep says she was upset at the response Jose's sister, Rosalita, gave her when she asked what she wanted to do when she was older. "She told me she wanted to work on the street and sell fruit, like her mum. It was heartbreaking to hear her because she had no real ambition, purely because she didn't know there was a world outside the one her family was trapped in." Guatemalan teenagers told Navdeep and Yasir that being raped on the way to school is a major worry for girls their age. "It seems so inhumane that while that is happening, in other parts of the world, people live in mansions," Navdeep says. "The sheer poverty was a shock to our system and definitely opened our eyes to the problems other children face purely because of where they were born. In the short term, education can't completely solve the problems that street children face. What it can do is afford girls like Rosalita an opportunity to see a life free of danger, poverty and injustice. Without education, countries like Guatemala can not develop and move forward." Now the pupils plan to hold a peaceful protest in central London to remind the British government that international aid must be a high priority. They also hope to spark a viral online campaign to raise awareness of the poverty of children in Guatemala and the barriers they face to receiving an education. For free school resources and details on the Global Campaign for Education visit www.sendmyfriend.org Primary schools Schools Children Poverty Guatemala Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tomb Raider reboot announced Posted: 08 Mar 2011 07:48 AM PST Lara Croft set to return to the big screen as Hollywood plans to revive video game franchise Tomb Raider, the video game spin-off about an adventurous heiress with a penchant for small vests and mummy-ridden ruins, could be heading back to the big screen, reports Deadline. Hollywood plans to reboot the film series, which currently consists of two movies from the early 2000s, both starring Angelina Jolie. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, from 2001, made $274m worldwide but the follow-up, 2003's Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, managed just $156m, signalling the death knell for the saga. Both films received short shrift from critics. "We are very excited to be rebooting what is already a hugely successful film franchise and continuing the Tomb Raider phenomenon," said producer Graham King, who helped bring Martin Scorsese's The Departed and Ben Affleck's The Town to cinemas through his company, GK Films. There have so far been 10 editions of the Tomb Raider game, which started in 1996, and the franchise is one of the two best-recognised brands in the video game industry, alongside Super Mario Brothers. More than 35m copies have been sold worldwide. So far there has been no announcement from GK Films regarding cast or director for the proposed reboot, and a start date appears to be some way off. This is the second time Hollywood has tried to reboot the series – a 2009 attempt by Sherlock Holmes producer Dan Lin failed when the rights reverted to the copyright owner before production began. Action and adventure Games Film industry Ben Child guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Bupa profits fall 70% as cuts bite Posted: 08 Mar 2011 10:58 AM PST Bupa suffers as companies slash employee health benefits, demand for 'at-home' services falls and local authorities squeeze payments to private care homes Britain's biggest private medical group Bupa was hit hard last year by a weak economy and government cutbacks with profits falling by more than 70% to £118m. Bupa had 20,000 fewer UK customers than in 2009 as companies slashed health benefits available to senior employees, and individual membership headed south. The company said there were signs a tough financial environment was hitting the middle classes and that managers could no longer take health perks for granted. Its figures were knocked by a £250m charge after it made writedowns linked to the value of Bupa Health and Wellbeing, which provides carers to people in their own homes. An increasing number of potential customers have found they are no longer able to afford at-home services at a time when savings rates are at rock bottom. The firm wrote down the value of one of its few remaining hospitals, the Cromwell in London, after selling its hospital arm in 2007 for £1.4bn. It also slashed the value of a US business because of uncertainty over health reforms introduced by president Barack Obama. Elsewhere, spending cuts affected its British care homes division because local authorities froze payments to private providers for looking after patients they could not find places for. Chief executive Ray King said: "About 70% of the residents in our UK homes are funded by local councils or the NHS. Average spending per occupant in England rose only 0.5% last year, and all predictions for 2011 are flat at best, but we've still got rising staff costs. The squeeze remains severe." King raised the spectre of a care home crisis if private providers cut their services to maintain profitability, warning that "if this funding pressure is not relieved in a reasonable period of time, there's going to be a significant bleeding of beds from care homes. "We estimate over the next decade, over 80,000 beds will come out of the sector, when it needs to grow by about 20,000 to keep up with demand. That will leave a shortfall of 100,000." King said profits would have been lower still if not for cost-cutting and efficiencies that the group has introduced since the start of the financial crisis. Around 500 jobs have been lost at its UK private insurance arm. There was better news from its international business with soaring demand in the Middle East and Australia. Group revenue jumped 9% to £7.6bn, while worldwide customer numbers rose from 10.8m to 11.2m. Before writedowns, underlying profits rose 10% to £465m. Bupa and other international private healthcare groups expect to be beneficiaries of government moves to open up the NHS to the private sector, but fatter profits could take several years to come through. The centrepiece of health secretary Andrew Lansley's plan to reform the NHS is to transfer power to GP-led consortiums that will commission hospital and community care. GPs will manage the £70bn budget overseen by primary care trusts and will make choices on where money goes. But many GP groups are expected to outsource budget management to private medical companies such as Bupa and rivals such as Humana of the US. King said: "We are well positioned to achieve continuing growth as world economic conditions improve, due to our geographic breadth, excellent market positions and strong balance sheet." Employing nearly 52,000, most of Bupa's business is generated from the UK, US, Australia and Spain, but the company has also made inroads in China, Latin America, Saudi Arabia and India. Bupa was established in 1947 when 17 British provident associations joined together to provide healthcare for the general public. Healthcare industry Public sector cuts Richard Wachman guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Migrant workers: A gap in perception Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:09 AM PST The Guardian's report on harsh conditions for agricultural workers has been criticised by Andalucía's horticulture industry, but can their audits give a full picture? The Guardian film about the harsh conditions experienced by many migrants in southern Spain who work on the salad vegetable harvest through the autumn and winter months has provoked a furore in the Andalucian horticulture industry. The industry says that farms are audited both by the co-operatives to which farmers belong and by international retailers, and argues that only a small minority of workers are involved. Those working with migrants on the ground, such as the tiny union SOC, say the problem is endemic, with undocumented migrants routinely being paid less than the legal minimum. Why such a gap in perception? A similar diversion of views existed in the UK when extreme exploitation of migrants in agriculture and food processing was first being documented here. Repeated stories by journalists, such as those in the Guardian about illegal employment, underpayment, illegal housing and often a climate of fear that prevented migrants from complaining, were met with a response that these conditions were the responsibility of the occasional rogue employer. Yet by the time the Gangmaster Licensing Authority was established in 2005, it was clear that the problems were systemic. Inspections and raids on mainstream factories, packhouses and large farms found extreme conditions even though many had passed their supermarket audits. I asked the Ethical Trading Initiative, the alliance of businesses, trades unions and voluntary organisations that works to improve conditions in global supply chains, what it made of this gap. Its new director, Peter McAllister, explained the limits of audits in general. They have a value in that they represent a snapshot of conditions at a particular time, but they can never give a full picture. Even when theoretically unannounced, auditors have to seek permission to enter premises, and without giving an exact day often say they will come within a window of time – effectively giving producers notice of visits. It is hard for an audit to reveal things that are deliberately hidden or off site, such as housing conditions. "We hear many, many stories of how it is possible to present your best appearance to pass an audit, by keeping double books, by moving labour around, by producers choosing which sites among several they might own are audited," McAllister said. "Thoughtful auditors are aware of this." In a country like Spain that has strong labour laws, the ETI says the prime responsibility for ending exploitation rests with the state, which needs to enforce the law, but industry also needs to understand "how its practices – very short term jobs at very low wages – create these conditions". The best way for workers' problems to come to light is not through audits, but through organised labour, that is unions which can give them a voice. Spain Food & drink industry Slavery Food Felicity Lawrence guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Where did miners' compensation go? Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:06 AM PST Despite delivering £4bn for sick miners and their families, exploitation by some solicitors cast a shadow over the profession The government compensation scheme for sick miners have been the biggest of its kind in the world. Some 760,000 claims have been dealt with from both the living and the families of dead miners, delivering £4.1bn in compensation. The work is nearly at an end, but has not garnered the positive headlines one might have expected, mainly because of civil servants' administrative shortcomings and exploitation by a few solicitors. It has been arguably the profession's darkest hour. The story began in 1998, when the high court found the British Coal Corporation negligent in respect of lung disease caused by coal dust (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – COPD – with symptoms ranging from chronic bronchitis to life-threatening emphysema) and hand injuries caused by using vibrating equipment (VWF – vibration white finger). The government took over responsibility for the liabilities and set up compensation schemes. A National Audit Office report in 2007 found the Department of Trade and Industry, as it was called, faced a formidable challenge but there were significant weaknesses in the planning and early implementation of the schemes – for one thing it massively underestimated the level of claims. These led to delays in paying compensation to some claimants and additional costs. Fortunately the department's approach became more robust as it went on. Solicitors were paid on a fixed-fee scale that reached £2,023 per claim, figures the high court ruled in 2007 were considerably higher than would have been allowed in a normal court assessment of costs. The government could not have known this at the start, but it failed to put a review clause in the agreement. So it is perhaps no wonder that hundreds of law firms tried to get a piece of the miners' pie, although only a relatively small number handled any real volume of claims. The median compensation payout was £1,500 for COPD claims, which reflected discounts for smoking and impairment caused by normal levels of dust in the air, and £8,300 for VWF. The problems really started when it emerged that a minority of solicitors were deducting extra amounts from those damages. The culprits fell into three camps – those who took the money as so-called success fees, those who gave the money to third-party claims handlers and those who deducted the money for the miners' trade union. Though the Law Society was initially slow to get tough, and faced resistance from those who thought it should not flag up its members' shortcomings, it took a public interest stance and a good number of solicitors have either been disciplined and/or reached agreements to repay the money. Side by side with this was a programme instituted by the society's Legal Complaints Service (LCS), which dealt with complaints about deductions and also worked with 22 law firms to write to 91,000 clients to tell them what had happened. The service, which is in run-off after being replaced by the independent Legal Ombudsman last October, has just closed its last complaint and reports that solicitors have repaid nearly £10m as a result of this work. The firms' error was not making it sufficiently clear to clients the deduction was voluntary and that they could go to other firms which would not make a deduction, although lawyers involved argue that by going to a less specialist solicitor, miners would have secured lower compensation. This in turn raises the troubling question of why there was a disparity in the levels of compensation awarded in similar cases and whether – at a time when the government is moving inexorably towards greater use of fixed fees in litigation – fixed fees encourage solicitors to churn cases too quickly. Arguably less culpable are those solicitors who passed deductions to the trade union; LCS chief executive Deborah Evans says some clients chose not to reclaim the money in such circumstances. This has perhaps helped fund the next major case, the ongoing miners' knee group litigation. Campaigner John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, does not make this distinction. He says several complaints from his constituents are still outstanding. Although he gives the Law Society credit for taking action, he warns that "swaths of the country have no trust in solicitors as a result". Mann is also uncompromising about the actions of the previous government, which he accuses of lacking the "political will to take control of the situation". Nobody knows exactly how much money was deducted, but this is a very sorry tale. It may be fitting that the final chapter could play out with law firms being sued for both undersettlements and deductions. If nothing else, the legal profession is never slow to eat itself. Neil Rose is the editor of legalfutures.co.uk Mining Legal ombudsmen Health Neil Rose guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

A Dish of Tea With Dr Johnson Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:20 PM PST Dr Johnson's House, London Rarely do a play and its setting match as well as this. Seated in the garret of Dr Johnson's house in Gough Square, off Fleet Street, we meet the great man himself, as well as Boswell, Mrs Thrale and some of the many figures who populate the biography and the Hebridean journal. The result of such intimacy is an unusual sense of the contradictions of a man whose rough manner concealed great kindness, and whose conviviality masked a profound morbidity. You feel oddly at home the moment Ian Redford, with his broad features and Staffordshire accent, ascends the stairs and introduces himself as "Dictionary Johnson". And when he is joined by Russell Barr as a Boswell who is a mixture of close companion, whipping-boy and assiduous note-taker, you feel you are eavesdropping on one of the great double-acts in literary history. What the two actors precisely convey is the constantly shifting nature of the relationship. Johnson moves from paternal benignity to volcanic anger when Boswell dares to speak up on behalf of David Garrick. And Boswell, for his part, abandons ingratiation to protest at being insulted in front of common enemies. What bound them together, I suspect, was a reverence for the minute details of daily life and a shared depressive tendency. Johnson is at his most moving when he talks of his mismatched parents living together in a state of mutual solitude and when he defines melancholy as "a lazy frost, a numbness of the mind". Behind Boswell's determined celebrity-hunting you sense the instinctive gloom of the Scottish lawyer who obsessively visited prisoners on the eve of their executions. But this is much more than a two-character show. Barr pops up as a variety of other people, from Dr Johnson's peevish Welsh housekeeper to a prattling Oliver Goldsmith, whose conversational misfortune is that "he goes on without knowing how he is to get off". Last night we had the unexpected bonus of Trudie Styler popping in to play Mrs Thrale, who charmed the normally unsusceptible hero. Few of the later performances will have the benefit of being played in Dr Johnson's own house. But, even without that advantage, this is a rare treat in which the performers seem to own the material – not surprisingly, since Redford and Barr have adapted it along with their expert director, Max Stafford-Clark. What the 80-minute evening does is remind you of the fractured sensibility underlying Dr Johnson's dogmatic roughness and of the anecdotal richness of Boswell's great biography. It makes you want to drop everything and rush back to the book. Until March 11. Then on tour. Box office: 020 7353 3745. Rating: 4/5 Theatre Samuel Johnson Michael Billington guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Cutsblog: At last! Some good news! Posted: 08 Mar 2011 03:52 AM PST After months of rejection letters guest blogger Redundant Public Servant was beginning to believe he would never work again. And then he got a phone call... Over the past eight months Redundant Public Servant has brilliantly, and movingly, described the experience of losing his job and searching for work, both on his own blog and as a guest contributor to cuts blog. Things were starting to look bleak... So: for the first time in twenty years I found myself being interviewed for a job. I had made it through long-listing and short-listing and the other strange processes of alchemy that surround modern job-getting. Finally I could speak direct with a prospective employer. Scared? You bet. Terrified actually. Here I was, shorn of the comfort blanket of familiarity in which long employment had wrapped me. Unable to rely on the people interviewing knowing me inside and out. Instead I had this short span of time to convince them that I was exactly what they were looking for. That this odd stew of experience, personality and talents would meet their needs. The interview process was slickly organised. Case studies and role play. Comings and goings all over the building. Yet the big clock on the wall remorselessly ticking and tocking the time away. My wrist beginning to ache, unused to the physical challenge of writing long hand. Finally, smiles and handshakes and an escort back to reception. All over, with just the wait to come. The journey home is when the self-analysis starts. Why did you say that? What did that question mean? What did I miss in the case study? Why did I wear this tie? Would my "lucky shirt" do me any good this time? Arriving home to find another "thanks but no thanks" response to another application. What makes me think I could get a job in this market with so many brilliant people out there looking for work? Wake up, loser! Days of brooding and fretting then before reconciling myself to the inevitable, "You were very close but did not meet the required standard this time around." Getting ready to be gracious. To remember to ask for feedback and to thank them for the chance to be interviewed. The words rehearsed until I could deliver them without thinking. Suddenly there's a voice at the end of the 'phone saying: "I'm calling to offer you the job." There's a point you reach in redundancy when you begin to believe that you will not find another job. That no one will find your CV of interest. That your skills and talents are somehow not relevant to the problems organisations face. You see the whole slow convoy of the world of work sliding out of sight moving inexorably over the horizon, leaving you clutching your self-esteem and treading water for all that you are worth. Then suddenly there are strong hands on your shoulders pulling you up and into a lifeboat you had lost faith in ever seeing. Suddenly I'm a re-employed public servant. And feeling reprieved and thankful. But guilty too, looking over my shoulder at the point at which I and my friends were tipped into the sea of redundancy. How many will get as lucky as me? Here I am on the threshold of a new life. Excited. Scared. Ready to get stuck in again. But no longer - for now - a redundant public servant. Public sector cuts Public sector careers Patrick Butler Redundant Public Servant guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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