The Guardian World News |
- Osborne's message: forget the cuts, fill up your tank
- First Jerusalem bombing in six years
- Libya air strikes secure Misrata
- Portugal in crisis after PM resigns
- Crackdown leaves 15 dead in Syria
- Yemen passes emergency laws
- US soldier admits killing for sport
- Tokyo water unsafe for infants
- Police 'very close' to finding woman
- Artist must destroy copyright works
- Now, what was I shaying?
- Poly Styrene's Spex factor
- Paul Harris
- Midsomer Murders – review
- Sperm grown in laboratory
- Standing campaign to tour grounds
- Madeleine Bunting
- TV Hall of Shame #5: Treme
- The 10 best bad fairies
| Osborne's message: forget the cuts, fill up your tank Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:41 PM PDT George Osborne bowed to growing concern with instant 1p fuel duty cut for 'Ford Focus' voters and tax raids on banks George Osborne has bowed to growing concern over the biggest squeeze in living standards since the second world war with an instant cut in fuel duty, but had his claim to be delivering a budget for growth undermined by the ominous prospect of lower growth, rising unemployment and higher borrowing. While insisting the government was sticking to its austerity plan despite a gloomier outlook for the economy, the chancellor levied a surprise £2bn windfall tax on North Sea oil companies to finance a populist 1p a litre reduction in the price at the pumps as the unexpected finale of a reform package focused on reversing Britain's economic decline. The chancellor said he was "putting fuel in the tank of the British economy" by liberalising Britain's planning laws, scrapping red tape, simplifying the tax system and creating a Green Investment Bank to fund the expansion of environmental companies. But he was forced to admit that growth this year would be just 1.7% – lower than the 2.1% expected – while 200,000 fewer jobs would be created during this parliament. Figures from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility showed slower growth would result in £45bn extra borrowing between now and 2015. The downgrades were denounced by Labour as the first solid proof that the government's medicine of an unprecedented deficit reduction programme was hurting, but not working. Ed Miliband, the opposition leader, accused Osborne of "Del Boy economics", pointing out that he had put 3p on the price of fuel through the January increase in VAT. Osborne said the government's determination to stick to its deficit reduction plan meant there was no room for an overall budget giveaway but announced an increase in the bank levy, a crackdown on tax avoidance and a tougher regime for North Sea oil and gas producers. They would fund a bigger than planned 2p cut in corporation tax, an increase in the number of apprentices and help for first-time buyers as well as scrapping the inflation-busting increase in fuel prices that Labour had pencilled in for next week. The Treasury claimed the package meant fuel would be 6p a litre cheaper from April – a saving of £3 on filling up a Ford Focus. If January's VAT increase were taken into account, the reduced cost of filling the same car would be £1.50, officials said. Ending the fuel duty escalator, agreed late in the budget process along with the extra 1p cut in corporation tax, caused friction among members of the cabinet worried by its impact on the government's climate change targets. The measures also attracted criticism from environmental groups. Signalling his keenness to scrap the 50% top rate of income tax, Osborne also pleased his Liberal Democrat coalition allies by saying the tax-free personal allowance would be raised by £630 to £8,105 from next April – a cut in tax bills of £48 a year on average in real terms. However, the chancellor also announced that from April 2012 direct tax allowances would be raised in line with the CPI, a move that would raise an extra £1bn for the exchequer by the end of this parliament. The chancellor said he was trying to create a "Britain carried aloft by the march of the maker". He added: "This is how we will create jobs and support families. "Last year's emergency budget was about rescuing the nation's finances, and paying for the mistakes of the past," he went on. "Today's budget is about reforming the nation's economy, so that we have enduring growth and jobs in the future. And it's about doing what we can to help families with the cost of living and the high oil price." Miliband countered: "One fact says it all and he couldn't bring himself to say it: growth down last year, this year and next year. It's the same old Tories. It's hurting, but it isn't working. Every time he comes to this house his growth forecast is downgraded." He added: "It didn't happen by chance, it happened by choice. His choice – and it's the wrong choice – to go too far and too fast." This was not "by chance" but because of "wrong" policies, Miliband said. Osborne admitted that higher inflation, leading to higher welfare payments and debt interest payments, did mean higher borrowing, but said the OBR regarded this as cyclical. It would melt away as growth picked up in future years, he said. The OBR said it still expected the government to meet its fiscal target a year earlier than the goal of 2015-16. This would leave the coalition government free to cut taxes or raise benefits in the runup to a 2015 general election. The chancellor unveiled a series of measures aimed at boosting enterprise – including a further cut to corporation tax, which will go down by two percentage points rather than one in April. He also promised to reduce capital gains tax for entrepreneurs selling shares. With spending cuts likely to hit hardest in the poorest regions of Britain, the chancellor more than doubled the number of planned enterprise zones – from 10 to 21. These areas will benefit from looser planning laws. Changes to the planning system will make it more difficult for local people to block "sustainable development" and easier for builders to convert commercial property into housing. His measures on tax avoidance and non-domiciles – they will have to pay a £50,000 charge if they have lived in the UK for 12 years – were met with disappointment, however. The former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said the measures against non-domiciles were a flea bite and would leave them "laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands". Businesses were pleased by the larger than expected cut in corporation tax. However, the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber said it had been "a no-change budget". "The chancellor has been forced to reveal the evidence that his policies aren't working but has not had the courage to change them," he said. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| First Jerusalem bombing in six years Posted: 23 Mar 2011 01:42 PM PDT Tension high after first bomb explosion in six years in the holy city leaves one dead and dozens injured Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has vowed to react "aggressively" after a suitcase bomb exploded in Jerusalem, killing a 60-year-old woman and injuring dozens of others. The bombing, the first in the city for almost seven years, follows several days of rising tension along the Gaza border. The violence poses a serious threat to the prospects of reactivating peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Three people were seriously hurt and about three dozen suffered minor to moderate injuries in the attack. "Israel will act aggressively, responsibly and wisely to preserve the quiet and security that prevailed here over the past two years," Netanyahu said. A few hours later Israeli warplanes attacked Hamas facilities and smuggling tunnels in Gaza, Hamas said. No one was injured. Earlier Netanyahu told MPs: "It could be that this matter will entail exchanges of blows, and it may take a certain period of time, but we are very determined to strike at the terrorist elements and deny them the means of attacking our citizens." The bombing was swiftly condemned by the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who said the "terrorist operation" damaged the Palestinian cause and contradicted "our people's legitimate endeavour to gain its freedom by peaceful means". Barack Obama criticised the bombing but also expressed condolences to the families of Palestinians killed in recent Israeli air strikes in Gaza. "There is never any possible justification for terrorism," he said. "The United States calls on the groups responsible to end these attacks at once and we underscore that Israel, like all nations, has a right to self-defence." But he added: "We also express our deepest condolences for the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza yesterday. We stress the importance of calm and urge all parties to do everything in their power to prevent further violence and civilian casualties."The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said he did not believe the bombing would cause the situation in Israel deteriorate. "It's obviously a horrific terrorist attack. I extend sympathy to the families of those who have been injured. But I think, I don't think I would characterize the situation there as deteriorating," Gates said. There has been relative calm in Israel and the Palestinian territories in the past few years, partly as a result of efforts by Palestinian Authority security forces to rein in militant operations. But in the past week a barrage of missiles has been fired into Israel from Gaza, followed by retaliatory air strikes and tank shelling by the Israeli military. Schools in at least two major Israeli cities were closed for the rest of the week as a series of missiles were fired from Gaza and more were expected. At least 10 Palestinians have been killed. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Libya air strikes secure Misrata Posted: 23 Mar 2011 06:44 PM PDT Siege ends in key town as bombs destroy Gaddafi's tanks and artillery but regime continue to hold Ajdabiya despite air raids Nearly 12 hours of allied air strikes have broken the Libyan regime's five-day bloody assault on the key rebel-held town of Misrata. Residents said the aerial bombardment destroyed tanks and artillery and sent many of Muammar Gaddafi's forces fleeing from Misrata, ending a siege and attack by the regime that cost nearly 100 lives from random shelling, snipers and bitter street fighting. Mohammed Ali, an IT engineer at Misrata's main hospital, said that waves of air strikes began shortly after midnight on Wednesday. "They bombed a lot of sites of the Gaddafi army. There is a former hospital where his tanks were based. All the tanks and the hospital were destroyed. A column of tanks was destroyed on the edge of the city," he said. "After that there was no shelling. We are very relieved. We are very grateful. We want to thank the world. The Gaddafi forces are scattered around. All that is left is the snipers and our fighters can take care of them." Ali said people in Misrata wanted the coalition to keep up the air strikes until all Gaddafi's forces were driven away from the town to ensure that those who were able to escape with armoured vehicles and guns did not return. A doctor in the town, who did not want to be named, said snipers were continuing to sow fear by targeting not only rebels but civilians. "The sniper problem is a big one. A lot of people are still afraid to leave their homes," he said. The apparent breaking of the siege will be a blow to the Libyan ruler's attempts to reassert control over the entire west of the country. It may also serve as a further deterrent, along with the destruction of Gaddafi's tanks, artillery and soldiers that were attacking Benghazi, to those still fighting for the dictator. But it did not stop the regime's forces from continuing to put up stiff resistance around the strategic town of Ajdabiya in the east, despite repeated coalition bombing raids. Ali described the past five days of attack on Misrata as "hell". "It was crazy in the last five days. The hospital was overwhelmed. Ninety four people were killed. Sixty of them were civilians. Whole families were wiped out driving in their cars," he said. "The injured were more than 1,300. About 115 serious cases were kept in hospital. Everyone without life threatening injures was sent home. I've seen people who've just had a leg amputated sent home." Ali said that the town has had no water or electricity for nine days. The medical centre is running on a generator. The air strikes in and around Misrata suggest that what appears to be a tactic of Gaddafi's forces to shelter in residential areas, in response to the destruction of tanks and guns on the open desert road near Benghazi, has not provided protection. Residents of the town said that the coalition aircraft managed to destroy the regime's armour without any known civilian casualties. The revolutionary leadership has said that even if there are civilian casualties, they will be a necessary price to prevent even greater loss of life if Gaddafi's forces had continued their assault on Misrata and exacted revenge against the residents for their support of the uprising. The US military said that its intelligence showed Gaddafi's forces remained a threat to Misrata as well as remaining entrenched around Ajdabiya, where the regime's fighters have put up sustained resistance for three days despite several air attacks by coalition planes. Rear Admiral Gerard Hueber, chief of staff of operation Odyssey Dawn, said the coalition would continue its attacks on Gaddafi's ground forces in both places as well as other cities under assault by the regime. Hueber said the air attacks were aimed at preventing the regime's army from entering rebel-held cities as well as cutting supply and communication lines. But he admitted that Gaddafi's forces were making incursions into some cities and targeting civilians. People fleeing Ajdabiya said that civilians continued to be killed in the town even though most of the residents have left. Hamad Abdul Rahim drove along a desert track with his mother, wife and children, including two young daughters, crammed into a car to escape the town on Wednesday. "There was a lot of shelling last night. There are hundreds of Gaddafi men there. Many of them are not from Libya. They are African people. We saw them," he said. "Many people have died. Some were shot on the street by Gaddafi's men." The regime's army continued to keep the rebels at bay just outside the town with periodic shelling of the revolutionaries' front line, some of it intense. An ambulance driver described carrying away two dead rebels who were on the back of a pick-up truck with a mounted machine gun when they took a direct hit from a shell. The rebels say they are waiting for allied air strikes to destroy the tanks and artillery Gaddafi has around Ajdabiya before they attempt to take the town. Gaddafi's forces also kept up their bombardment of Zintan in the west. "The town is completely surrounded. The situation is very bad," the resident, Abdulrahman, told Reuters by telephone from the town. "They are getting reinforcements. Troops backed with tanks and vehicles are coming. We appeal to the allied forces to come and protect civilians." Hueber found himself in difficulty when questioned about whether the US was co-ordinating its attacks with rebel forces, which might be in breach of the UN mandate. Initially, he confirmed that US forces were consulting the rebels about their movements but later in the press conference he backtracked, saying: "I mis-stated that". He said that the US had communication lines to the Gaddafi regime warning them to pull back their forces. British aircraft flew over Libya yesterday, but for the second day running took no part in attacks, according to defence officials. The commander of British aircraft operating over Libya has said that Colonel Gaddafi's air force "no longer exists as a fighting force". Air Vice-Marshal Greg Bagwell said the allies could now operate "with near impunity" over the skies of Libya. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Portugal in crisis after PM resigns Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:56 PM PDT • EU bailout closer after José Sócrates loses crucial vote Portuguese prime minister José Sócrates has said he has submitted his resignation to the president after parliament rejected his minority Socialist government's latest austerity measures. The loss of the vote "has taken away from the government all conditions to govern," Sócrates said. It brings the country closer to needing a bailout. Sócrates is said he tendered his resignation to President Aníbal Cavaco Silva tonight, leaving the country in a political limbo that would place further pressure on Portugal's record-level bond yields. Sócrates had said before the vote that he would resign if the measures to cut spending and increase taxes – designed to see off a bailout similar to those taken by Greece and Ireland – were rejected. The measures had aroused the fury of trade unions, and railway engineers walked off the job in the morning, causing widespread travel disruption. Political turmoil in Lisbon set nerves jangling in the eurozone just as it was revealed that EU leaders would postpone making a decision on a new €440bn bailout fund. A draft version of the deal to be agreed after two days of talks on Thursday and Friday delays a final decision until June, according to reports. An election in Portugal will take at least 55 days to organise. That raised additional fears that Sócrates – who would head a caretaker administration with limited powers until then – will be unable to head off a full collapse in market confidence. "My worry is the period of inaction before a new government takes over," said Silvio Peruzzo, an economist at RBS in London. The main opposition centre-right Social Democratic Party, led by Pedro Passos Coelho, has been ahead in recent opinion polls. The Social Democrats also favour debt control. Portugal's benchmark 10-year bond yield had risen to 7.77% before the debate on Wednesday, while five-year bonds hit a euro lifetime high of 8.2%. Economists see borrowing costs above 7% as unsustainable and say Portugal will have to resort to the rescue mechanism. Analysts suggested the failure to agree on measures would push Portugal closer to a bailout. "It seems more and more likely that Portugal will need some kind of support," Charles Diebel, head of market strategy at Lloyds bank, said before the debate. News of the delay in putting together the €440bn eurozone rescue fund, coupled with concern about Portugal, could lead to another spell of instability on bond markets. "I fear that Monday could be Black Monday for markets," one EU financial source told Reuters, emphasising that EU policymakers still had a long way to go to draft all the necessary documents. Portugal's national debt stands at 83% of GDP. The budget deficit hit 9.3% of GDP in 2009, but was lowered to 7.3% in 2010 and Sócrates had wanted it to remain at 4.6% by the end of this year. Even before Wednesday's events, Portugal's economy had been expected to shrink by 1.3% this year. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Crackdown leaves 15 dead in Syria Posted: 23 Mar 2011 05:00 PM PDT Some were killed when security forces opened fire on protesters surrounding the Omari mosque; others were shot at a funeral Violence escalated in the southern Syrian city of Deraa as protests entered a sixth day. At least 15 protesters are known to have been shot dead on Wednesday and scores more injured. In a sign that the Syrian regime is using a brutal crackdown rather than concessions to quell protests, security forces opened fire on people in three separate incidents, according to human rights activists. At 1am on Wednesday morning, at least six people were killed when security forces opened fire on protesters surrounding the Omari mosque, after cutting electricity and communications to the site that has become the focus of demonstrations. During the day, several were reported shot as they attended funerals of victims of the mosque shooting. Syrian security forces later opened fire on scores of young people from surrounding towns as they marched towards Deraa, offering support to the protests, activists said. "The government promised it would consider its citizen's demands, and then it decided to attack them," said Mohammed al-Abdullah, a prominent activist in exile in the US who is in close contact with the Deraa protesters. "These were fully prepared and full-scale attacks." According to human rights organisations, the government has also rounded up scores of demonstrators, activists and journalists. Yesterday, Mazen Darwish, the head of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, which was officially closed down by the authorities in 2009, was arrested. Darwish, who has been commenting on the protests in the media, was briefly detained after a protest on Wednesday last week calling for the release of political prisoners. Amnesty International said it knows of 93 people who were arrested between 8 and 23 March who remain detained in unknown locations. It said the real number of arrests was likely to be "considerably higher". France, which has led efforts in the past four years to bring Damascus back into the international fold, became the latest in a string of governments and organisations to condemn the violence. It called for political reforms "without delay". But observers said the window for negotiations and reforms is quickly closing. Leaders in Deraa had issued a range of demands to the government, including the release of political prisoners from the area, the freedom to buy and sell property without permission of local security forces and the dismissal of the governor of Deraa. So far, only the last demand has been met. "By using such disproportionate violence against its own citizens, neither the government nor the people can be expected to negotiate," said Abdullah, adding that without talks there was no clear solution to the violence. "I am scared because I don't know how this will end. I fear escalating anger will lead to an evermore brutal crackdown." Syria's government has continued to blame the violence on outside perpetrators. it called the shootings at the Omari mosque the work of "armed gangs". Activists dispute the claims. Despite protesters not yet calling for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, the unrest is the biggest domestic challenge to the regime since the 1970s. There are calls for a mass protests tomorrow in solidarity with the Deraa activists. • Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist who lives in Damascus guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 12:24 PM PDT MPs back president's move to suspend constitution, ban street protests and give security agencies greater powers of arrest Yemen's parliament has approved a sweeping set of emergency laws giving broader powers of arrest and censorship to the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, despite growing calls from opponents demanding he quit to make way for a military-backed democratic transition. The emergency law, last evoked during Yemen's 1994 civil war, suspends the constitution, allows for greater media censorship, bans street protests and gives security agencies arbitrary powers to arrest and detain suspects without judicial process. The approval of the emergency laws came as talks between oil giant Saudi Arabia and Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a top Yemeni commander who abandoned the president on Monday, failed to yield a clear transition of power. Only 161 of the 301 members of parliament attended the vote, with those present approving the 30-day emergency law through a chaotic show of hands. Opposition MPs, along with dozens of members of Saleh's General People's Congress, boycotted the session, rejecting its "unconstitutional" measures. The imposition of emergency rule comes as a rift emerges between the regime and a cohort of military commanders, tribal chiefs, politicians and diplomats who have joined together to demand that Saleh, who has been running the country for 32 years, step down. Thousands of protesters camping in the streets adjoining Sana'a University dismissed the emergency law as irrelevant and continued chanting for Saleh's immediate resignation. "The idea of banning protests when tens of thousands are already camped out on the streets is ridiculous," said Adel Suwabi, a 23-year-old medical student who has been co-ordinating the protest movement on Facebook. "Our numbers grow every day regardless of what Saleh announces." The protesters are debating whether to march on the presidential palace on Friday, which they have dubbed "departure Friday". The palace is being guarded by tanks from the Republican guard, which moved into key positions across the capital on Monday after Ali Mohsen sent troops from his 1st armoured division to protect protesters. Muhammad Qahtan, spokesman for the Islamist-led opposition coalition Joint Meeting Parties, which also includes Socialist and Nasserite parties, said protesters were ready to lay down their lives on Friday. "We will march to the president's palace with open chests and you [Saleh] can kill whoever you like to kill," Qahtan told reporterslocal press on Wednesday. "We are not afraid of another massacre," he said, referring to a bloody crackdown by security forces against unarmed protesters last Friday in which gunmen, whom the opposition alleges were soldiers from units commanded by Saleh's son, opened fire into the crowd, killing dozens of people. Saleh said a special investigation would look into the killings and a number of arrests had been made. Saleh lashed out on Wednesday at the JMP, accusing them of threatening the country's stability. "They [the JMP] do not realise their national responsibilities and the potentially devastating repercussions of their practices against the country," said Saleh, addressing a group of loyal military officers from Yemen's central security at a brigade camp in Sana'a. The day before he accused a group of defected generals of trying to mastermind a coup against him and said that in doing so they risked dragging the country into "a bloody civil war". Yemen's opposition also turned down a tentative offer on Tuesday by the embattled president to step down by the end of the year. Analysts say Saleh's recent shows of defiance suggest he may be in it for the long haul. Saleh's calling of the parliament vote shows "he's still adhering to some gestures in the direction of democracy," said Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University. "This suggests he intends to hang around and survive the crisis." Since February, Saleh has repeated promises for a new constitution, called for the formation of a unity government and said he will not seek to extend his term when it expires in 2013. The opposition movement has dismissed those offers and insists he must step down. Late on Wednesday night the interior ministry shut down the al-Jazeera office in Sana'a and revoked the accreditation of its correspondents after putting out a statement warning foreign media to exercise maximum accuracy and professionalism while covering the situation in Yemen. "The ministry will regrettably withdraw the licence of any correspondent or foreign outlets found abusing his profession," Saba, the government news agency, quoted a source from the information ministry as saying. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| US soldier admits killing for sport Posted: 23 Mar 2011 04:17 PM PDT Jeremy Morlock, 23, tells US military court he was part of a 'kill team' that faked combat situations to murder Afghan civilians An American soldier has pleaded guilty to being part of a "kill team" who deliberately murdered Afghan civilians for sport last year. Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 23, told a military court he had helped to kill three unarmed Afghans. "The plan was to kill people, sir," he told an army judge in Fort Lea, near Seattle, after his plea. The case has caused outraged headlines around the world. In a series of videotaped confessions to investigators, some of which have been broadcast on American television, Morlock detailed how he and other members of his Stryker brigade set up and faked combat situations so that they could kill civilians who posed no threat to them. Four other soldiers are still to come to trial over the incidents. The case is a PR disaster for America's military and has been compared to the notorious incidents of torture that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This week the German magazine Der Spiegel published three pictures that showed American soldiers, including Morlock, posing with the corpse of a young Afghan boy as if it were a hunting trophy. Some soldiers apparently kept body parts of their victims, including a skull, as souvenirs. In a statement issued in response to the publication of the photos the US army apologised to the families of the dead. "[The photos are] repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States army," the statement said. Morlock has told investigators that the murders took place between January and May last year and were instigated by an officer in his unit, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs. He described how elaborate plans were made to pick out civilian targets, kill them and then make their deaths look like they were insurgents. In his confession Morlock described shooting a victim as Gibbs tossed a grenade at him. "We identify a guy. Gibbs makes a comment, like, you know, you guys wanna wax this guy or not," Morlock said in the confession. Morlock now stands to be sentenced to at least 24 years in jail but with eligibility for parole after seven years. That has come about because Morlock struck a plea bargain that will see a lighter sentence in return for testifying against his fellow soldiers. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Tokyo water unsafe for infants Posted: 23 Mar 2011 03:18 AM PDT Japanese capital's water supply contains twice the safe level of radioactive iodine for young children, say the authorities Authorities in Tokyo have warned that very young children in the Japanese capital should not drink tap water after it was found to contain twice the levels of radioactive iodine considered safe for infants. The warning came as the spread of radioactivity continued through the food supply in the region surrounding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Black smoke was seen rising yesterday afternoon from the plant's No 3 reactor, prompting the operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) to evacuate workers who have been battling to make the facility safe. The source of the smoke was not immediately known. Tests conducted by the Tokyo metropolitan government identified 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per 1kg of tap water in the city, more than twice the limit of 100 becquerels considered safe for infants. Tokyo's water bureau said babies and infants under the age of one should not be given tap water, but added that radiation levels did not pose an immediate risk to adults. "This is without doubt, an effect of the Fukushima Daiichi plant," a metropolitan government official said. The capital's governor, Shintaro Ishihara, said the levels were not hazardous to health, but advised parents of children aged under one not to use tap water with milk formula. Earlier this week, some residents living near the nuclear plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo, were told not to drink tap water owing to abnormal levels of radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer if ingested in large enough quantities. Until yesterday tests had shown negligible iodine-131 levels in Tokyo tap water. Jim Smith, reader in environmental physics at the Portsmouth University, said: "Following the finding of up to 210 becquerels of radioactive iodine in tap water in Tokyo, the recommendation that infants are not given tap water is a sensible precaution. But it should be emphasised that the limit is set at a low level to ensure that consumption at that level is safe over a fairly long period of time. This means that consumption of small amounts of tap water – a few litres, say – at twice the recommended limit would not present a significant health risk. I would expect that the recommendation not to drink tap water would also extend to women who are pregnant or breastfeeding." The Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, instructed authorities in Fukushima to issue a ban on the consumption of certain agricultural products grown in the prefecture after radioactivity exceeding legal limits was found in 11 types of vegetable. The list of contaminated produce includes spinach, komatsuna leaves, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli. The government has also suspended shipment of the vegetables. None of those products have reached the market since Monday, when the alarm was raised about contamination, according to Japan's agricultural co-operatives. The health ministry detected 82,000 becquerels of radioactive caesium – 164 times the limit permitted by law, in kukitachina leaves from Motomiya in Fukushima prefecture, as well as 15,000 becquerels of radioactive iodine – more than seven times the limit. Contamination has spread to neighbouring prefectures, with Ibaraki told to suspend shipments of milk and parsley. The US, meanwhile, has become the first country to ban milk and food imports from Fukushima and three neighbouring prefectures. The US food and drug administration said it would halt imports of dairy products, vegetables and fruit from the four prefectures, and would screen seafood and produce imported from other parts of Japan. South Korea is reportedly considering similar measures, while France has asked the European commission to examine a community-wide response to Japanese food imports found to have been contaminated. The Japanese government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, said abnormal levels of radioactivity in food posed no threat to human health and urged trading partners to act rationally. "We will explain to countries the facts and we hope they will take logical measures based on that," he told reporters. Tepco, meanwhile, has secured 2tn yen in loans to rebuild its power supply networks, which was badly damaged in the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. Sumitomo Mitsui bank is to provide 600bn yen (£4.5bn), Mizuho 500bn yen and Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ about 300bn. The banks are expected to make the cash available by the end of the month. Analysts said the loans suggested the government wants to secure Tepco's survival, despite its central role in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986. "Given the amount of cash on [Tepco's] balance sheet, I'm surprised at the urgency of the loan talks, but certainly the need to prevent a crisis of confidence could be seen as necessary to keep recovery efforts stable," said Penn Bowers of CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in Tokyo. "It's interesting, as one suspects that the government has implicitly guaranteed the survival of Tepco as a regulated entity if all these institutions are willing to accept the risk." The Japanese government estimates that the earthquake and tsunami caused damage totalling 16tn yen ($185bn) to 25tn yen, making it the world's costliest natural disaster. The sum dwarfs the $100bn (£600m) of damage cause by the Kobe earthquake in January 1995, and does not include the effect on economic activity from rolling blackouts, which could continue for several weeks, or the impact of the Fukushima nuclear emergency. "The impact from the planned power outages is likely to be significant," said Fumihira Nishizaki, a cabinet office official said. The Bank of Japan's governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, said the disaster would have severe consequences for the economy. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Police 'very close' to finding woman Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:56 AM PDT Officers narrow down search of Savernake Forest in Wiltshire and say further searches will take place in daylight Police searching for Sian O'Callaghan have said they are "very close" to identifying her whereabouts. Officers have narrowed down a search of Savernake Forest in Wiltshire after a day spent trawling through dense woodland and more analysis of mobile phone records. Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher, who is leading the inquiry, said further searches, involving specialist sniffer dogs, would take place in daylight and that the public's help was no longer needed. Fulcher said: "We have made good progress in narrowing the search using a number of technologies and techniques and I believe we are getting very close to identifying Sian's whereabouts. "Searches will be limited by available daylight but we will be further assisted by specialist dog teams who arrive tomorrow and resume the search as soon as daylight permits. While I still want anyone with information to contact police I am not asking for any more public assistance with searches at this time." A force spokeswoman refused to expand on the statement and declined to say whether the statement meant police believed O'Callaghan – or her body – was actually in the forest. O'Callaghan, 22, disappeared after leaving Suju nightclub at about 2.50am on Saturday to walk the half mile home to the flat she shared with her boyfriend, Kevin Reape. Analysis of O'Callaghan's mobile phone records suggests that around 30 minutes after she left the club her phone was somewhere in the 4,500-acre Savernake Forest, near Marlborough, 12 miles from Swindon. Hundreds of members of the public helped the police search the forest on Tuesday and as many as 1,000 had been preparing to join the search for office administrator O'Callaghan again. Coach parties had been organised and some taxi drivers were offering free lifts out to the site. However police requested that people stay away after narrowing the search area down. Chief Superintendent Steve Hedley, area commander for Swindon, said earlier in the day that further analysis of mobile phone records had produced several "hot spots" that specialist search teams were examining. Colleagues of O'Callaghan told how she was in good spirits and looking forward to the weekend before she disappeared. Liz Watson, operations director at industrial storage company Dexion, said: "We are all very worried about her at the moment and hope that further developments of her whereabouts will come to light soon." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Artist must destroy copyright works Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:28 AM PDT US federal judge rules against Gagosian gallery and Prince for unfair use of 'appropriated' Cariou rastafarian images The celebrated American artist Richard Prince has been ordered to destroy works worth tens of millions of dollars after a court ruled that the paintings, which reworked a series of photographs by the French photographer Patrick Cariou, had breached copyright. A New York federal court has ruled that Prince and his gallery infringed Cariou's copyright when he produced a series of works in a 2008 show using 35 pictures from the book Yes, Rasta, published by Cariou in 2000, "in their entirety, or nearly so". Prince adapted the Cariou works by adding, in one instance, an electric guitar and some splodges for eyes. The ruling, which may lead to an appeal, stands to cost Prince and the Gagosian, one of the world's leading contemporary galleries, with outlets in London and New York, potentially huge sums. Eight of the works from the exhibition, which was entitled Canal Zone, have together sold for more than $10m (£6m). Seven others have been exchanged for other works of art for between $6m and $8m. Prince has often made a virtue of his appropriation art. His images are sometimes taken from old advertisements in magazines. He told Art Forum magazine in 2003: "I had limited technical skills regarding the camera. Actually, I had no skills … I used a cheap commercial laboratory to blow up the pictures … I never went in a darkroom." Prince's lawyers had told Deborah Batts, a federal judge sitting in Manhattan, that Cariou's photographs of Rastafarians, taken over six years, were "mere compilations of facts … arranged with minimum creativity … [and were] therefore not protectable" by copyright law. Of the electric guitar he added to one of the photographs, Prince testified: "He plays the guitar now. It looks like he's always played the guitar, that's what my message was." The lawyers claimed "fair use" of the images. But the artist admitted that he used the photographs as raw materials and intended to sell the images. He and the gallery were found to have acted in bad faith by not asking permission to use Cariou's photographs or withdrawing them from sale when the photographer sent them notice. The judge ruled that rather than simply adding elements to an original work, a new piece should create something "plainly different from the original purposes for which it was created". He cited a landmark case in which the American artist Jeff Koons created an exaggerated sculpture based on a postcard of a couple with their arms full of puppies. Koons lost that case. The judgment stated: "In a number of his paintings, Prince appropriated entire photos, and in the majority of his paintings Prince appropriated the central figures depicted in portraits taken by Cariou." Another New York gallery owner, Christiane Celle, cancelled a Cariou show, saying she did not want to exhibit work already shown at another gallery. Ahead of a ruling on damages on 6 May, Prince and the Gagosian have been ordered to destroy all the paintings and exhibition catalogues that they hold and to tell buyers that the paintings were not lawfully made and cannot lawfully be displayed. The ruling stated: "It is clear that the market for Cariou's photos was usurped by [Prince and Gagosian] … the court finds that Prince has unfairly damaged both the actual and potential markets for Cariou's original work and the potential market for derivative-use licences for Cariou's original work." guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:31 PM PDT Britain's stages are about to be invaded by drunks. What's the secret to playing a tipsy character? And who is drama's biggest boozer? Drama frequently holds up a mirror to our drinking habits: think of the booze that casually gets put away in plays as diverse as Pinter's Betrayal, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, or anything by Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepard. Actors are routinely required to express joy, cry real tears or shed fake blood; yet there is no technical challenge more tricky than the business of drinking on stage. This spring they are getting plenty of practice at mastering the art, as a host of drunk characters are staggering the boards across the country. Michael Caine once pointed out that a drunk person is actually trying very hard to be sober: therefore acting drunk requires a degree of reverse psychology. Sian Thomas, who is playing Martha in a revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Crucible in Sheffield, suggests that drunk acting is actually more complex: "It is a bit of an old actors' cliche that you are supposed to play drunk by pretending not to be drunk," she says. "The real issue is that you have to do whatever you can to avoid falling into a slurring caricature." Thomas now faces quite a challenge. The part of Martha was made famous by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1966 film version – and her death yesterday will make comparisons with her incandescent performance inevitable. Albee's text makes clear that the characters have been drinking heavily before the play begins: the action becomes a vicious slugging match in which the principal couple's marriage is laid to waste. It was generally assumed that, in the film, Taylor and Richard Burton were simply re-enacting an ordinary evening at home. But for Thomas, whose character freshens her glass on average every three pages, the key is to pace yourself. "Martha is a hardened drunk," Thomas says. "She knows how to hold her liquor. The genius of this play is that Albee charts every stage of intoxication. It's almost symphonic drunkenness: it develops in individual movements. In the first act, Martha is a witty, entertaining drunk. In act two, she becomes more argumentative. Then in the third act, you reach the contemplative stage where being drunk produces a strange form of insight. She's left alone to deliver a sad, beautiful speech in which she describes how she and her husband freeze their tears in the icebox and put them back into their drinks." Inebriated characters make good drama because drunks are invariably telling the truth. "In vino veritas," says Sinead Matthews, who is appearing in Mike Leigh's revival of his 1979 play Ecstasy at Hampstead theatre. The drama, in which four working-class friends meet up in a bedsit and drink themselves into incoherence, observes the stages of outrageousness, sentimentality and nihilism with such fine detail that it stands as possibly the closest British equivalent to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? "It has that edge," Matthews says. "My character, Dawn, and her husband share a vicious, private banter that sounds malicious, but really comes from their deep dependence on one another." Matthews has to spend the entire second half in an alcoholic daze; she has found that the effort of concentration comes at a price. "Since I started on this play I've been waking up with the most appalling headache. I go into work every day and say, 'Mike – you've given me a hangover,' which just makes him smile and look really pleased." So what actually is in the concoctions actors have to drink? "We've been using Kaliber, which tastes like real lager and does make you a bit sick," Matthews says. Real alcohol is prohibited by most theatre contracts, however, so alternatives have to be found. Gin and vodka are simple to simulate, as most actors welcome regular sips of water. Fruit juice is less popular, as it can lead to a thickening of the vocal cords. And, contrary to popular belief, cold tea is almost never used – the typical substitute for Scotch and brandy are sugar solutions. Anything carbonated presents the greatest problem, as demonstrated in Laura Wade's play Posh at London's Royal Court last year. One of the most outrageous binge dramas of recent times, it satirised the behaviour of an exclusive Oxford drinking society reminiscent of the notorious Bullingdon Club to which members of the Conservative party, including David Cameron, George Osborne and Boris Johnson, belonged. The play climaxed in a trashing of the set, and featured a tricky enactment of the custom of sabrage, in which the neck of a champagne bottle is sliced off with a sabre. "We had to use a real Bollinger bottle for that as sugar glass would have shattered," says Tom Mison, who played the society's president. "At one point I had to drink an entire bottle at one go. We started off with grape juice, but then I discovered I was getting too much of a sugar rush so we switched to coloured water instead." How does one go about researching such extremes of inebriation? Mison says the cast was inspired by a newspaper report of a group of German actors at the Frankfurt Schauspielhaus who decided to experiment by using real vodka in a Russian play, which resulted in one of the cast falling off stage and being taken to hospital to have his stomach pumped. "We decided we ought to have a go at that – in private, of course – so during rehearsals we booked a room in a Soho pub and attempted a 'wet run', in which we tried to consume as much alcohol as the characters do in the play. We couldn't keep up." The play brought one further issue into painful relief: "Part of the rules of these drinking societies is that no one is allowed to leave the room," Mison explains. "The minute the curtain came down, there was a stampede for the backstage loos – we developed some seriously impressive bladder control during the run." There are instances in which legendary drunks have inspired equally legendary performances. Keith Waterhouse's portrayal of his colleague, the Spectator columnist Jeffrey Bernard, provided a fermented peach of a role for Peter O'Toole and, later, Tom Conti. Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell has now been revived for a national tour featuring Robert Powell, whose familiarity with the play's bar-room milieu has armed him with useful insight into the potentially messy "egg trick", a favoured party piece involving a pint glass, a matchbox and a raw egg. Four hours asleep on a table "I was fortunate enough to know Keith Waterhouse and to see him demonstrate the egg trick on several occasions," Powell says. "I've got it right every time in rehearsal so far." Yet hilarious though the play is, there are aspects of Bernard's character that are no laughing matter: "There's a big distinction between playing someone who is drunk and someone who was never sober," Powell says. "If there's one thing that tends to unite alcoholics it is a deep self-loathing that causes them to gravitate towards other alcoholics for company." That is the premise of what may be the booziest play of all time: Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, set among the habitués of Harry's Bar, described by O'Neill as: "a cheap gin-mill of the five-cent whiskey, last-resort variety situated on the downtown West Side of New York". The rambling, practically plotless play received an acclaimed production at the Almeida in 1998 with Kevin Spacey playing Hickey, a travelling salesman recently converted to teetotalism. Yet the most heroic feat of drunkenness in the production was that of Nigel Cooke, whose character, an incoherent east European anarchist, spent most of the four-hour drama passed out with his head on the table. "I suppose it is quite a distinction to have played the drunkest character in the drunkest play in history," Cooke says, "though in those circumstances the real challenge is to avoid falling asleep. It did happen once, at a Monday performance after I'd spent the weekend visiting my father, and had a strange dream that he was appearing in the play alongside me. Fortunately, I realised where I was before having to utter one of my half-a-dozen lines. But it was one of those occasions when playing drunk becomes a real wake-up call." Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is at Crucible, Sheffield, until 7 April and at Northern Stage, Newcastle, 12-30 April. Ecstasy is at Hampstead theatre, London NW3, until 9 April. Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell is at Theatre Royal, Bath, until 26 April, then touring. In clips: the best (and worst) drunk acting guardian.co.uk/stage guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:46 PM PDT Poly Styrene, the punk upstart from X-Ray Spex, is promoting a new album – and fighting cancer Poly Styrene had just finished working with celebrated producer Youth on her first album of commercial pop since leaving X-Ray Spex in 1979, when she began to feel a slight pain in her back. Styrene, a feminist punk hero acknowledged by everyone from Beth Ditto to Karen O as one of music's most extraordinary women, went to her GP in the south coastal town of St Leonards-on-Sea, and was told to take painkillers. Eventually, after months of growing agony and being bounced between GP and A&E, she demanded an MRI scan. The diagnosis sent her reeling: breast cancer had spread to her spine and lungs. Then "a little fall" fractured her spine in two places. Three months on, the singer is promoting the ironically upbeat album, Generation Indigo, from a St Leonards hospice bed, barely able to move, in a room containing a TV and a wheelchair. But despite only recently being given cancer "wonder drug" Herceptin (her liver is too weak for chemo), she bears no grudges. "My GP said it was a tricky one to find," she says. Unbowed, even cheery, she finds this interview, and the thought that the world is listening, therapeutic. "It keeps me going," explains the still-childlike 53-year-old, who was admitted under her real name, Marianne Elliott-Said. Convinced she can win the latest in a lifetime of battles, she speaks in a voice that, although weakened, is as full of defiance as it was when she laid down her mission statement with X-Ray Spex's 1977 debut single, Oh Bondage, Up Yours! "Some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard," it began. "Well I think, Oh bondage, up yours!" Of mixed race (British-Somali) and wearing dental braces, Styrene challenged the convention that female performers should be submissive and conventionally beautiful. Styrene doesn't miss the braces, though: "They made it difficult to clean your teeth." The hospice is close to where it all began, on her 18th birthday, when she saw the Sex Pistols play an empty hall on Hastings pier. "They had drainpipes, shortish hair, and played covers. But they must have had something because I thought, 'I can do that!'" Punk brought liberation and a platform for her pioneering lyrics about the environment and the consumer society – but, for all her brashness, she was still vulnerable. The music industry tried to sexualise her, and Sid Vicious once threatened her with a scythe: "He said, 'Don't you like our company?'" At the height of her stardom, a "traumatic experience" prompted her to shave her head. "I'd read that girls in concentration camps did that after being raped by the Nazis," she says, refusing to expand. "You do it to be cleansed." After a gig in Doncaster, she saw a pink light in the sky: "Everything I touched felt like static electricity." She was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and sectioned for several months. Then, in the 1980s, after giving birth to a daughter, she found peace in a Hare Krishna temple, although eventually fled over reports of paedophilia within the sect, and attempts to marry her off. "I did get engaged once," she says, "but couldn't go through with it. Some of them were misogynistic, too crazy." She did keep the faith though. There was another reason for her withdrawal from music. In 1991, Styrene was diagnosed as bipolar, and suspects she had it all along. "It's great for creativity, but not really for a career," she says, explaining that her songs arrive in spurts, "like little gifts". In 1995, when she briefly reformed X-Ray Spex after a nurse said, "Get back out there! Don't let Kylie Minogue take over!", she was hit by a fire engine. This spring, she should have been touring. Instead, she's devouring the news, and thinks Gaddafi should be allowed to depart Libya "so there will be least bloodshed". In a whisper quieter than the rustle of her blankets, she says: "You remember that old song 'Que Sera Sera, Whatever will be, will be, the future's not ours to see'? I've always felt that. It's been a rollercoaster ride, but I wouldn't change a thing." Generation Indigo is out on 28 March. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:31 PM PDT A reality TV collaboration between the action star and Arizona sheriff would be hilarious – if real law and order was not involved There are some news events that are simply beyond parody – when a current trend loses the plot so badly that you can do nothing but gasp in stunned amazement. But the invasion of ever more extreme reality television shows into modern American culture should be immune to this phenomenon. After all, this is a medium defined by demented Z-list wannabes trapped in an arms race of outrageousness designed to grab their 15 minutes of fame. In a post-Jersey Shore world surely nothing could emerge from reality TV that could actually shock? Well, not until now. This week, a bizarre incident unfolded in Phoenix, Arizona, involving 115 roosters, an out-of-control sheriff, several tanks, a Swat team, a suspected cockfighter, a bomb robot and – like a muscular, suntanned cherry on top of the whole pile – faded action star Steven Seagal. The setup was simple enough. Police suspected local man Jesus Sanchez Llovera, 43, of running an illegal cockfighting ring (the huge flock of roosters on his property no doubt being the clinching clue). So they decided to arrest him. While he was at home. Alone. Unarmed. With no police record of owning any weapons. Still, that should have been simple enough. A lone squad car, maybe two, could have done it. But things are rarely that simple with the sheriff of Maricopa County: the notoriously headline hungry figure of Joe Arpaio. For Arpaio's department is working with Seagal, who is shooting a reality TV show and has signed up as a police volunteer. The show is called Lawman. So, instead of pulling up outside Llovera's house and knocking on his door, Arpaio assembled a mini-army of police deputies, two armoured vehicles, a fully-armed Swat team and the bomb robot. They descended on Llovera's house and smashed his windows, knocked down his gate with one of the tanks and arrested him. Seagal, dressed in combat fatigues and sunglasses and sporting a gun on his hip, was riding in one of the police tanks. Seagal's film crew taped the whole thing. No doubt, after heavy editing, it will make for a few dramatic moments of television. The reasons to be stunned and shocked at this barely need describing and should appall anyone of any political background (which would be a rare thing in as polarised a state as Arizona). First off is the cost: across America, cities are slashing policing to the bone to cope with severe budget cuts. Yet, in Arizona, the needs of an ageing action star's reality show resulted in a raid that some lawyers estimate would have cost thousands of dollars. Second, it has emerged that Seagal has a contract with the sheriff's department that allows him free reign to go along on any arrests the sheriff makes. In a country notoriously – and often admirably – obsessed with individual freedoms and constitutional rights, why has so much privilege in the realm of law and order been granted to a reality TV star? Finally, there is the horrific blending of policing and entertainment that this incident represents. The two should be kept utterly apart. Here, they are not only mixed, but it appears that reality TV has the upper hand, calling the shots. Arpaio, for his part, denies staging the whole thing for Seagal and his show. What about Seagal's thoughts? In his low, grumbling monotone, he explained to one local TV reporter the reasoning for his presence on the raid. "Animal cruelty is one of my pet peeves," he said. That's nice. But keeping idiotic reality TV shows away from the operation of a police force and the administration of justice is one of mine. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 06:18 PM PDT After Brian True-May's comments on the all-white casting the programme now feels soiled, says Mark Lawson Viewers have always watched Midsomer Murders in a suspicious frame of mind, wondering which of the half dozen or so familiar British character actors contracted to look shifty in this episode will prove to be the latest English rural mass murderer sent to the presumably overcrowded Midsomer nick. But, following the suspension of producer Brian True-May for seemingly suggesting that the show benefits from an all-white casting policy, Wednesday night's opening episode of the 14th series will have been watched with a different kind of suspicion – seeking evidence of acting apartheid. The background to this story, Death in the Slow Lane, was motor racing, a sport in which Britain has had a recent black world champion and so a promising opportunity to extend the facial palette. Characteristically though, the plot line involved events at a Silverstone Grand Prix in the 1960s and so the chance was missed. True-May will leave the show in the summer and this episode, completed before the furore, did suggest that the franchise could use a fresh overview. Although a sharp-eyed advance freeze-framer had spotted one black extra at the edge of a crowd scene, the programme's traditional racial monotony soon prevailed and began at times to look wilful. For example, one suspect was a young urban DJ called Dave "Doggy" Day, speaking street patois ("Oh, my days, you still in school, innit?"), who had been hired to judge a vintage car contest at a local private school. Yet, although the departing producer has cited social realism as a reason for the series' whiteness, even this representative of a notably multiracial profession was cast caucasian. Admittedly, there is a difficulty here. A black DJ could be viewed as a racial stereotype, an objection that might also have been raised if the "rough boy from the estate", a crucial minor character, had been cast non-white. But, if this was the rationale behind these casting decisions, then Midsomer has moved to racial sensitivity without an intervening period of racial inclusivity. And it was striking that even though this episode required large school groups, another area of British life known for its range of races, these juvenile performers could have been recruited from a 1940s British stage school. Now that the row has opened eyes to this issue, it's difficult to watch Midsomer innocently. The show feels soiled – a bit too like a South African Broadcasting Corporation programme circa 1980 – and True-May's successor is surely going to have to change the colour scheme . Although how many future series there will be already depended, even before this fuss, on close inspection of the ratings for this run, as the focus of the episode was supposed to have been on a different casting decision. Following John Nettles' retirement after 14 years, his DCI Tom Barnaby has been replaced by cousin DCI John Barnaby, played by Neil Dudgeon. The new top cop in Causton CID was introduced through a teasing camera angle, twice showing him in his kitchen speaking intimately to an unseen companion. In a useful rebuke to Midsomer's current detractors, would the hidden listener turn out to be a black woman or a gay man? It proved to be his pet dog. Dudgeon, though, got through more facial expressions and vocal inflections in this one storyline than Nettles had managed in 81 – a positive note in an episode that will otherwise have done little to smooth the furrowed brows at ITV1 in relation to its crisis-stricken hit. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 11:11 AM PDT Mouse sperm were grown using a technique that could also help preserve the fertility of boys undergoing cancer treatment Scientists have grown sperm in the laboratory in a landmark study that could help preserve the fertility of cancer patients and shed fresh light on male reproductive problems. Fertility experts called the work a "crucial experimental advance" towards the use of lab-grown sperm in the clinic and a stepping stone to the routine creation of human sperm for men who cannot make the cells normally. Though the procedure would be illegal in Britain under current legislation, sperm grown in the laboratory, if proven safe, could be used to help infertile men have children through standard IVF treatments. The procedure could also benefit boys with cancer who are too young to produce sperm but are at risk of being made infertile by radio- or chemotherapy. While men can have their sperm frozen before cancer treatment, the latest research suggests boys could have testicular tissue removed and kept in cold storage for use in later life. Japanese researchers cultivated small pieces of tissue from the testes of baby mice on a gel bathed in nutrients. After several weeks they collected viable sperm from the tissue. The sperm appeared to be completely healthy and were used in IVF treatments to produce 12 live mouse pups that went on to have young of their own. Seven of the mice were born after sperm heads were transferred into 23 eggs using a technique called round spermatid injection, and another five were born after 35 eggs were fertilised using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (Icsi), a common IVF procedure. Importantly, the scientists retrieved healthy sperm from tissue that was cultivated after being frozen for up to 25 days, suggesting that cold storage did not harm the cells. The work, reported in the journal, Nature, is the most successful attempt yet to grow mammalian sperm from testicular tissue in the laboratory. "One of the problems I face, as a urologist, is that we do not have any effective ways to treat patients suffering from male infertility due to defective or insufficient sperm production," said Takehiko Ogawa, who led the study at Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine. "Most of these problems are for unknown reasons." Using the technique, he said, scientists will be able to study the process of sperm production in detail and help elucidate the glitches that cause infertility. In an accompanying article, Marco Seandel and Shahin Rafii at the Weil Cornell Medical College in New York said the work was "a crucial experimental advance along the thorny path to the clinical use of sperm" grown in the lab. They warn, however, that the fertility of mouse pups born from the lab-grown sperm was a "crude indicator" of their health, and that subtle genetic changes in the sperm "could be pivotal for the wellbeing of subsequent generations". Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at Sheffield University, said: "It is not totally clear how sperm are formed and why in some men it doesn't work properly. This could help discover new drugs or treatments to stimulate infertile men to produce more or better sperm. It also may help preserve the fertility of some males." The study, he said, was "a small but important step in understanding how sperm are formed which may, in time, lead to us being able to routinely grow human sperm in the laboratory." "It is clearly important to make sure that any sperm produced are safe and give rise to healthy offspring when used, and that they in turn have healthy offspring. We need to be cautious with this kind of work," he added. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Standing campaign to tour grounds Posted: 23 Mar 2011 03:00 PM PDT • Fans to get chance to try new-style seating used in Germany The Football Supporters' Federation plans to tour the country with an example of the "rail seating" widely used in German grounds in a bid to gain support for its campaign to reintroduce standing at top-level English matches. The Guardian revealed that the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, has agreed to consider reintroducing standing areas, which have been banned in the top two divisions since 1994, if the football authorities and police form a consensus in support. The FSF is determined to demonstrate the difference between modern standing accommodation and the old-style English football terraces in grounds at the time of the Hillsborough disaster. John Darch, an FSF member, is working with the UK manufacturer Ferco Seating Systems, a partner to Germany company Eheim-Möbel, which has built rail seating in Hoffenheim's new stadium and the refurbished Stuttgart stadium. "We have to help people understand we are not talking about bringing back old-style terraces," Darch said. "I will be inviting supporters at all clubs around the country to contact me asking me to visit with the mock-up. Then fans themselves, the chairmen and chief executives of clubs, safety officers and politicians can see we are talking about modern supporter accommodation, which fans and clubs enjoy, and which is passed as safe by the Bundesliga." Most clubs in the Bundesliga, which has the highest crowds and is the world's most profitable league, incorporate standing areas, including at newly-built or refurbished grounds. The German Football Federation decided in 1993 against introducing all-seat stadiums, as has been required here by law since the 1990 Taylor report following Hillsborough. The federation explained its reasoning by saying it is a "social function" of football to keep ticket prices affordable, thereby not excluding the "socially disadvantaged" from attending matches. Prices in Germany for standing areas, at around €12-14 (£10.50-£12.20), are around a quarter of standard prices for seats at top Premier League clubs. The German stadiums' standing areas, some of them very large, some smaller, are made up of rail seating, called "vario" seats in Germany. Rails are spaced closely together, allowing just one or two rows of supporters in between. The Bundesliga and safety authorities which approve standing areas take the view that the closeness of the barriers makes a crush almost impossible. Fans' tickets allocate a row and position, which the FSF argues should meet one of the police's main concerns, that in standing areas, it is more difficult to identify people causing trouble. The rails have flip-up seats which are locked upright for Bundesliga matches at which fans stand, then brought down for Champions League matches at which fans sit. Uefa and Fifa both require stadiums used for their competitions to be all-seater, so the rail seating enables Bundesliga grounds to meet that requirement. Ferco Seating Systems' managing director, Michael Burnett, said his company built and supplied the 60,000 seats for Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, and is making the seats for the London 2012 Olympics aquatic centre. "We would not be proposing the introduction of the vario seat for standing areas if we did not believe it is very safe indeed," he said. "Germany has very stringent safety legislation and specifications, and the vario seat fulfils all of those. I would go further, and say it would be much safer here to have this accommodation designed specifically for modern safe standing, than to have supporters standing, as they currently do, in seated areas, where there is only a low seat in front of them to break a fall." Research recently carried out for the Premier League by consultants Crowd Dynamics found that persistent standing in seating areas, which is becoming more common at top clubs, presents a significant safety risk. According to the Football Licensing Authority, fans standing up in seated areas could result in "progressive crowd collapse" – a crush. However, repeated efforts by clubs to ask fans to keep to their seats are failing, and fans are continuing to stand. Andy Holt, a spokesman on football policing for the Association of Chief Police Officers, acknowledged to the Guardian that standing areas can be safe. He said the police reluctance to see standing areas return to the top two divisions is more a question of crowd control, and policing disorder, than safety in terms of Hillsborough-style crushes. Holt said, however, that it would be "rewarding football supporters for breaking the rules" if safe standing areas were to be reintroduced at English grounds in response to fans standing now in seated areas. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 08:04 AM PDT Will the web and the growth of China, Brazil and India change aid forever? Or will climate change, conflict and corruption bring development fatigue and more celebrity campaigners? Does aid go on forever? Does global inequality carry on deepening? Crystal ball-gazing is never easy, but recently various development experts have been having a go. Next Tuesday, the Overseas Development Institute is hosting a debate on the future of development. I've come up with a couple of scenarios. What makes sense? What have I missed out? Post your version of the future of development below. What follows is a hypothetical vision of aid in 20 years time.
How plausible is that rosy scenario? How about another more pessimistic version of what development could look like in 2030? African countries are crippled by the challenge of adapting to climate change; huge resources are channelled through the Green Fund from industrialised nations, but the money has repeatedly gone astray, and on several occasions, corruption has ended up bringing down governments. Tell us what you think. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 07:32 AM PDT Treme is dull, lecturing and annoyingly elitist. A huge shame for fans of David Simon's other work I don't know if you saw the ratings for Treme? 66,000 people watched episode one as it premiered on Sky Atlantic. As a fan of all David Simon's previous work – from Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets through to The Wire and Generation Kill – my reaction was one of shock. You would have thought more than 66,000 (a 0.5% audience share) would have watched it by accident. Where were all those smug gits who'd spent the last year or two holding dinner parties so that they could boast about their box sets of The Wire? It was as if David Simon's superb statement of intent – "you know what? Fuck the casual viewer" – had come home to haunt him. Episode one of Treme had almost no viewers, casual or otherwise. I've stuck with Treme for five episodes now, and I'm sorry to report that, as the jazz cats in N'Awlins would say: it's not happening. When it was shown on FX, the word about The Wire spread like rumours of copacetic dope around Hamsterdam. But you'll wait a long time until you bump into someone raving about this great new series he or she's been watching called Treme. For a start, they probably won't know how to pronounce it. This is the first thing wrong with Simon's latest opus: that title. Sure, it's a superficial issue and the correct pronunciation is mentioned a couple of times in the show. But it doesn't exactly draw people in. It's just annoying and – characteristically of Simon – elitist. (Anyone who knows what's what is meant to know how to say it.) Even Sky Atlantic's continuity announcers get it wrong. What else is wrong with Treme? Well, not that much ostensibly. It is well written, nicely shot and directed. All of that. The acting is strong – with characteristically natural performances by David Morse and Melissa Leo, Simon regulars Clarke Peters, Wendell Pierce, and the glorious Khandi Alexander. But all this indicates part of the problem with Treme. It is … OK. And that's all. You never get the sense that you are watching something that is changing the genre (The Wire), subverting the culture (Generation Kill) or that someone is giving the performance of their lives (Alexander in The Corner or Andre Royo as Bubs). The two biggest performances in Treme epitomise the frustrations it inspires. Although, like The Wire, Treme is an ensemble piece, the two characters who have gradually taken it over are Davis (played by Steve Zahn) and Creighton Bernette (John Goodman). Only someone as principled (pig-headed) as David Simon would base his new 10-part series around two characters as irritating as Davis and Bernette. It's impossible to say whether Zahn in particular is either a really good actor or just Really Irritating. The breadth of drama The Wire had is just lacking in Treme. What Simon has given us is a selection of characters all moaning about the same thing: the after effects of the storm. The sub plots relating to the effects of the storm are just not that gripping. Bernette and Davis give voice to the least appealing aspect of The Wire – David Simon's didactic political rhetoric. What George Bush and the successive government has done – or not done – for New Orleans sucks: we get it. The most likeable characters in the show are, once again, played by Clarke and Pierce. But casting them was a mistake. Every time they appear, it's unavoidable: you think: it's Freamon or Bunk. Finally, there's the music. Now I love New Orleans. I support the New Orleans Saints and think Mardi Gras is a sight every one should witness – if their livers can stand it. But the music in Treme is like Chinese water torture. It's death by jazz. Some of it is great, admittedly. Inspirational. But you can have too much of a good thing. We get the message David. You like jazz. Now can't we just have a few more storylines? To some viewers, to even think of criticising David Simon is sacrilege. And to a point, they're right. If it were by someone else, Treme would be a godsend. But, coming from him, it pains me to say it, Treme is dull. As Chris Rock would say: "yeah I said it." • Jim Shelley is the TV critic of the Mirror guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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| Posted: 23 Mar 2011 06:52 AM PDT Forget all those tales of wishes granted and teeth collected - the best fairies are deceitful, malicious and bad Michelle Harrison won the Waterstone's children's books prize in 2009 with her debut novel, The Thirteen Treasures, a Grimm-style story of a girl who can see fairies. She followed it with The Thirteen Curses and The Thirteen Secrets, the third instalment of the trilogy. "The first fairy story to have an impact on me was one invented by my older sister, Theresa. It was of a fairy who had been killed by a wicked witch and buried in our garden. The lack of a happy ending led me to wonder if it was true and, morbid child that I was, I dug in the flowerbeds in search of that fairy. After that I quickly became familiar with the usual tales of good fairies granting wishes and collecting teeth, and gradually lost interest, preferring stories of adventure, mystery, and ghosts. "My interest in fairies was revived unexpectedly during a college illustration course. I discovered the art work of Arthur Rackham, Alan Lee, and Brian Froud. It completely changed the way I viewed fairies and prompted me to research deeper into British folklore. There I found stories of fairies that were deceitful, malicious – even deadly. I knew I had to write about them, and I've been hooked on the darker side of fairy tales ever since. " 1. Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan LeeCrammed with fairy folklore and hundreds of beautiful illustrations, this book will challenge your perception of fairies. From sinister stories of changelings to tales of water hags such as Jenny Greenteeth, this rich and fascinating book can be pored over or simply dipped into. This was my first introduction to 'real' fairies, and it remains a firm favourite and constant source of inspiration. 2. The Merrybegot by Julie HearnOne my my all-time favourite books, fairy or otherwise. Set in a West Country village, it's the story of Nell, the cunning woman's granddaughter, and what follows when she and her beloved granny are suspected of witchcraft. Though it focuses on superstition and healing, there are some quirky, and very amusing, piskie and fairy scenes. I absolutely love this book, and I'm forever recommending it to people. Every sentence is beautifully crafted and it's a pleasure to read and re-read. 3. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William ShakespeareShakespeare's witty and charming play tells of four young lovers who blunder into the crossfire of the warring fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania. With the mischievous Puck administering love potions galore, the humans' lives and emotions are manipulated beyond their control. Though the play ends well for all, for me there's a sense of unease surrounding one of the couples, whose love is manufactured by the fairies rather than genuine. The version with Arthur Rackham's gorgeous illustrations is my favourite. 4. Poison by Chris Wooding"Once upon a time there was a young lady who lived in a marsh, and her name was Poison..." So begins a fairy tale in the tradition of all great fairy tales. Poison, a wilful, sullen girl journeys to the phaerie realm in search of her younger sister, stolen from her bed. Though not necessarily a new premise, Wooding's tale stands apart from others of its kind as a darker tale unfolds. A haunting book with vivid and sometimes gruesome characters, and my number one ingredient in any book - a fantastic ending. 5. Cold Tom by Sally PrueSally Prue wastes no words in this odd and unsettling story which is loosely linked to The Ballad of Tam Lin. Tom knows he's different from the rest of the Tribe, a beautiful but cruel race who see emotion as weakness, and love as being enslaved. Prue's fairies are amongst the wildest I've come across. They tear raw flesh from animal bones with their teeth; they think of humans as hot, stinking, foul 'demons'; and their only concern is survival. Chilling and unique. 6. Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Terry Jones, illustrated by Brian FroudLady Angelica Cottington's diary is one with a difference. Frustrated that no one believes in the fairies that only she can she, a quick snap of the book (intended for pressing flowers) manages to catch one of the little beasts between its pages. Humorously illustrated throughout by Brian Froud this is a visual treat, with the images of the squashed fairies (sometimes just the feet or a wing) becoming increasingly hilarious (and rude) as the story continues. For those concerned about the fairies' well being, a disclaimer at the start explains that the images are merely 'psychic impressions' and that no fairies were harmed in the making. 7. The Crowfield Curse by Pat WalshWhen Will rescues a hob from a trap in the woods, the creature shares a secret. Hidden in the forest is a grave. Some want to find it, while others want it kept hidden at all cost. The reader is propelled into the world of sinister fairies, or 'fays', and the Seelie and Unseelie courts. This book made me laugh and cry, and there is a strong message of bravery in going against the grain of what we are told is acceptable and right. The hob has swiftly become one of my favourite fairy characters. I wish I could smuggle him to Elvesden Manor – I think he'd be right at home with my own fairies. 8. Heretic by Sarah SingletonWhen Elizabeth finds a strange, green-skinned creature in the woods, she doesn't immediately realise that it is in fact, a girl of her own age. Isabella has hidden for three centuries in the fairy realm in order to escape religious persecution – something Elizabeth is no stranger to. Her own family is harbouring a Catholic priest in Protestant England, risking the lives of them all. I'm a big fan of Sarah Singleton's work. Gothic, well-researched, and evocative, Heretic weaves history and fantasy into an intelligent and bewitching story. 9. Goblin Market by Christina RossettiDespite warnings from her sister, a young girl, Laura, falls victim to malicious goblin men peddling irresistible, enchanted fruit. In exchange for a lock of her hair and a tear drop, Laura eats the fruit and falls ill, nursed back only by Lizzie's sisterly love. Rossetti's cautionary poem can be read on several levels though there is ambiguity, even from the author, over whether it is intended for children. Many argue that the themes of temptation and forbidden fruit, and the nature of the descriptions would suggest not. 10. The Stolen Child by WB Yeats"Come away, O human child ... With a fairy hand in hand..." This classic poem tells of a child being coaxed away by the fairies. On the surface its stunning imagery of the natural world comforts the reader into thinking the child is going to a better place, for as the fairies put it, the world is "full of weeping". But the last verse of the poem, describing how the child will no longer hear everyday things such as the kettle boiling on the hob or the cows on the hillside, chokes me up every time. Loreena McKennitt puts the words to music in a song of the same title, which I'm very fond of. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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