The Guardian World News

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• Libyan rebels advance on Gaddafi's home town
• Syrian clashes leave at least 12 dead
• Cable confirms ending 50p tax rate
• MPC member warns of inflation drop
• US and China use death penalty most
• Unions hail peaceful march a success
• Tuition fees rise may create £1bn gap
• Radiation error at Fukushima plant
• Libya tycoon 'gave Beatrice diamond'
• German Greens hail state victory
• MoD 'sorry' for murder of girl
• Taxi driver charged with Sian murder
• Sell masterpieces, Arts Council told
• Remaking the news
• Obituary: Diana Wynne Jones
• So long overnight TV
• Stallone is to launch a clothing line
• Lily Allen's TV show is satire
• When the Obamas go out for dinner
• The last yarn of Bradford mill
• Super Glue inventor dies aged 94

Libyan rebels advance on Gaddafi's home town Posted: 27 Mar 2011 10:13 AM PDT Revolutionary forces move more west along Libya's coastal road, seizing several towns without resistance, as they reach Sirte Libyan rebels are advancing on Muammar Gaddafi's home city, Sirte, after retaking all the ground lost in earlier fighting as government forces broke and fled under western air strikes. Revolutionary forces rapidly moved more than 150 miles west along Libya's coastal road, seizing several towns without resistance, as the first witness accounts emerged of the devastating effect on Gaddafi's army and militia of the aerial bombardment which broke their resistance at Ajdabiya on Saturday. A doctor treating wounded government soldiers described hundreds of deaths, terrible injuries and collapsing morale. Rebels retook the important oil towns of Brega, Ras Lanuf and Ben Jawad, and continued on the open desert road toward Sirte, about 95 miles away. A Libyan rebel spokesman said Sirte had been captured by the rebels on Monday morning, but there has been no independent verification of this. Two loud explosions were heard on Sunday night near Sirte, which marks the boundary between the east and west of Libya. It was not immediately clear what had been hit, but local people said a military installation in the city was bombed on Saturday night – one of many targeted across the country in a week of coalition strikes. Soldiers manning a mobile radar station on the outskirts of the city looked nervous as night fell and aircraft were heard overhead. Large numbers of armed men, militiamen as well as regular soldiers, were on the streets and there was less of the exuberant defiance and loyal pro-Gaddafi slogans of the sort heard constantly in Tripoli. Travelling eastwards from the capital, the war feels closer. In Bani Walid, south of Tripoli, tank transporters carrying dirty armoured fighting vehicles drew a small crowd, and an appreciative volley of machine gun fire. Other Libyan army vehicles moved west along the main road, including some heavy tanks – Soviet-made T-72s – but there were no signs of large-scale movement. Everywhere, there are long queues at petrol stations, sometimes with hundreds of vehicles stretching down the road as they wait. At one queue, drivers were relieved when a tanker finally delivered a load of fuel, but then reacted with frustration when there was no electricity to operate the pumps. As well as its political significance as Gaddafi's birthplace, Sirte is seen as important to his defence of Tripoli, the capital, which is now less than 300 miles from the rebels' frontline. Control of the oil terminals at Brega and Ras Lanuf is in itself a major gain because it could bring the rebel administration significant revenue from exports if production resumes. Rebels moved unchallenged along a road littered with evidence of the air campaign and the speed of their enemies' retreat. The blackened carcasses of tanks, armoured vehicles and military trucks were pushed to the side of the road. In their hurried retreat from Ras Lanuf, government forces abandoned piles of ammunition. They included grey wooden boxes containing rockets but stamped as holding "parts of bulldozer", manufactured in North Korea. In Bin Jawad, residents said a destroyed municipal building had been hit by an air strike. The rebels forced captured Gaddafi fighters on to buses and drove them to Benghazi. Witnesses described the bombing's devastating effects on his forces. A doctor at the hospital in Ras Lanuf, which treated most of the government soldiers wounded in the coalition air raids on Ajdabiya and the road from Benghazi, described hundreds of casualties, breaking morale and many soldiers faking injuries to escape the assault. The doctor – who wished to be identified only by his first name, Abdullah – had responded to a call from Gaddafi's government for medical personnel to go to the front two weeks ago. Today, he accidentally found himself on the rebel side of the line. "The first days, Gaddafi's forces had very high morale and they came in large numbers, thousands. There were the army soldiers and then the volunteers in the militia," he said. "They were fighting the rebels, no problem, and winning. But then came the bombing [by coalition air strikes]. The first day we had 56 seriously wounded. To the head, the brain, lost arms and legs. Soldiers with a lot of shrapnel in them. It was like that every day after." Abdullah said all the wounded were on the Gaddafi side, with about two-thirds being those injured in the bombing of Ajdabiya where there were days of fighting as government forces blocked the rebel advance. The doctor said he did not know how many soldiers were killed in the air strikes, because the bodies were taken from the battlefield for burial. "The soldiers who came to the hospital told me there were 150 dead just on the first day of the bombing. After that, there were fewer because they hid," he said. "It started to have a big effect on their morale. They said they could fight the rebels but not the planes. In recent days, many of the soldiers were trying to find excuses to leave the front. Ten to 20 a day came to the hospital pretending they were injured, asking for a medical certificate. They didn't have any physical injuries, but I gave it [a certificate] to them." Abdullah was sceptical about rebel accusations that many were foreign mercenaries. He said he had not see anyadded it was possible that some of the soldiers were not Libyan. But he did say that Gaddafi's forces had systematically maltreated the civilian population, particularly those suspected of coming from the de facto rebel capital of Benghazi and other towns in the east under the revolutionaries' control. "There was bad treatment of the civilians. One patient came here who had been trying to escape Ajdabiya with his family. The government army shot him in the leg," he added. "The idea I got from civilians who came to the hospital is that things were very bad for them. They were beaten. Some said their family members had disappeared. They didn't know if they were killed." Some of Gaddafi's forces were billeted in the el-Adeel hotel, in Ras Lanuf, which they looted as they fled, taking mattresses and televisions and levering open cash machines in the lobby. On walls across the town they sprayed in green paint three words: "God, Gaddafi, Libya." Beyond Sirte lies the large town of Misrata, most of which is in rebel hands after an attempt by Gaddafi to retake it was driven off by air strikes. Government forces kept up their shelling at the weekend, although residents said it was considerably less intense than a week ago, after 12 hours of aerial bombardment by western planes destroyed more than 20 tanks and drove Gaddafi's forces to the edge of the town.One rebel, Sami, told Reuters by telephone that pro-Gaddafi forces had fought with rebels in Misrata. "All day long we heard clashes between rebels and Gaddafi forces in the area of Tripoli Street, in the city centre," he said. "We heard tanks, mortars and light weapons being used." Misrata is the only big rebel stronghold left in the west of Libya and is cut off from the main rebel force fighting Gaddafi's troops in the east. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Chris McGreal Ian Black guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Syrian clashes leave at least 12 dead Posted: 27 Mar 2011 03:50 PM PDT • At least 12 people killed in Latakia as unrest spreads • State news agency blames violence on outside forces The Syrian army has been deployed in force in the port city of Latakia after two days of fierce anti-government protests in which at least 12 people were killed. A government source blamed the deaths on "attacks by armed elements on the families and districts of Latakia", according to the official Sana news agency. But activists accused the security forces of opening fire on protesters in the city, where they say the offices of the ruling Ba'ath party have been torched. Latakia is a majority Sunni town 220 miles north of the capital, Damascus, and is home to the minority Alawi sect of President Bashar al-Assad, making unrest there particularly sensitive. On Sunday night, there were reports of gangs of young men, some armed with swords and hunting rifles, roaming through the seaside city and roughly questioning passersby. In a move to placate protesters, authorities said they had decided to lift the emergency laws, but the absence of a timetable has been widely viewed as a delaying tactic by the government. The emergency laws restrict public gatherings and authorise arrests on the basis of threats to national security. Observers said significant changes were needed immediately to quell the spreading unrest. Until Friday, protesters had been concentrated in the southern Hauran region around the city of Deraa. "This is a meaningless pledge to remove the emergency law when people can be detained by other laws," said Rime Allaf, a Syrian analyst at London's Chatham House. "Everybody is waiting for the president to speak and take some steps to tell the people he is in control." Mohammed Habash, a Syrian MP, told Associated Press that politicians discussed the emergency and Assad would make an announcement on Tuesday. He offered no further details. Assad's silence has angered many Syrians, who feel he has not acknowledged the seriousness of the crisis facing the regime's 43-year rule. "During the whole turmoil in the Middle East, he has not come out and spoken to us," said one resident in Damascus. "Now many people have been killed here and he has still not personally said a word." In further moves to quell unrest, the government is this week expected to resign, announce an amendment to article eight of the constitution which defines the Ba'ath party as the "leading party in the society and the state", and introduce a law preventing the detention of reporters. On Friday, the Reuters bureau chief was deported, while scores of local journalists have reported being intimidated or detained. The lack of information is causing confusion in the country, with state media broadcasting the government line that has repeatedly blamed the past 10 days of unrest on outside forces. "They are waging a war of propaganda," said a 32-year-old Syrian. "I am scared that many will choose to believe it. Meanwhile, it makes those who realise just angrier and less willing to accept anything they say." Syria, which has a Sunni majority, is ruled by the minority Alawite sect. Fears of sectarian strife are one of the main stabilising factors for Christians, Druze and other minority groups. Despite the government's claims, largely nationalist slogans have been heard. Meanwhile, reports said about 100 lawyers had marched in the southern Druze town of Sweida, calling for an investigation into the deaths of Syrians and an end to the crackdown in Deraa. Local human rights activists say more than 100 people may have been killed since the start of protests on 18 March. Analysts say that time is running out for Assad to announce reforms to redeem a regime that is looking increasingly weak and confused. "People were not calling for revolution at first. They were calling for more freedom, something which the president can still deliver," said Allaf. But others say there may be no soft landing. "There are many who perhaps rightly believe that, if you give an inch, demands will grow and soon there will be nothing left," said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at Oklahoma University. Iran, troubled by protests in an ally country, has portrayed Syrian pro-democracy protesters as "agitators". Iran has spoken out in support of demonstrators in Bahrain and Yemen, and praised Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans for their democracy-seeking movements, but has found itself in a peculiar situation with the unrest in Syria. Iran's Irna state news agency reported from Damascus that a group of "agitators" had confessed on Syrian state television they had been hired by Israel to create disturbance and insecurity in Syria. Irna quoted Syria's Sana state news agency as saying: "This group of people travelled a while ago to Israel and have been paid to send photos and videos taken from the unrest in Syria to foreigners." Iran's opposition says the reaction of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to the protests in Syria showed the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime, which has praised the pro-democracy movements abroad, except Syria, while refusing to allow a peaceful demonstration at home. Israel said on Sunday it was worried that Iran might be participating in the suppression of protesters in Syria. Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist living in Damascus Syria Protest Iran Middle East Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Cable confirms ending 50p tax rate Posted: 27 Mar 2011 12:16 PM PDT Business secretary in agreement with the chancellor over tax rate, but says the wealthy have to 'pay their share' The business secretary, Vince Cable, has confirmed the 50p rate on tax will be abolished – and revealed the government would consider bringing in a 'mansions tax' to ensure the wealthiest pay their way. The chancellor, George Osborne, ordered a review of tax on top earners in the budget last week, restating that the 50p rate on those who earn above £150,000 was only temporary, and triggering speculation that the rate could be wound down as soon as 2013. Cable in two interviews raised the issue of the rate and alternatives to it. The move would leave the government exposed to accusations that it is softening taxes for the rich, amid intense public anxiety about the fairness of the cuts. The business secretary's intervention comes just a day after up to 500,000 people took to the streets to demonstrate against the government's economic plans. Labour pointed out that the coalition would be reducing the tax for the richest while forcing the poorest to lose the largest proportion of their pay packets through the VAT hike. Cable, who argued in opposition for a 0.5% levy on properties worth more than £1m, told the BBC's Politics Show: "I and George Osborne agree that we have to move away from extremely high marginal rates of tax on income, including that [the 50p rate of tax]." He told BBC Radio 5 Live: "It moved up to 50p in an emergency because we had to have a sense of solidarity that everybody was bearing some of the pain, and the chancellor said in the budget that we're going to have to move away from that. I agree with him. The Liberal Democrats agree with him. "But it needs to be a change which is fair overall and does take account of the fact that the wealthy have got to pay their share. The emphasis may well have to shift from high marginal rates of tax on income which are undesirable, to taxation of wealth, including property, and the chancellor said that, as much as that, in his budget." Asked if he was advocating a mansion tax, he said: "Well, there is a very strong argument ... that you need to have a proper base for taxing property and I'm sure that's one of the things we're going to have to look at as we change away from these very high marginal rates." Labour originally introduced the tax rate last year, and the Tories promised to keep it temporarily. Osborne said at the budget: "I am clear that the 50p tax rate would do lasting damage to our economy if it were to become permanent. That is why I regard it as a temporary measure." The Treasury expressed concern about how much revenue the higher rate was bringing in. The Office for Budget Responsibility later revealed that it expected £2bn of the revenue to go uncollected amid evidence that companies had paid large bonuses prior to its introduction to avoid paying part of the costs. A Treasury spokesman said last week's budget set out all existing tax plans. Treasury sources also distanced it from Cable's proposals, saying there was "no detailed planning" on taxes for top earners currently being developed by officials. Cable has raised the possibility of a new mansion tax amid increasing nervousness in the coalition over the AV referendum in May. The issue will prove the biggest test for the coalition, as a totemic policy for the Lib Dems and a test of David Cameron's leadership to his backbenchers, all of whom oppose AV. If the Lib Dems lose, the leadership will need to prove to the rank and file that it is making serious gains elsewhere. A mansions tax would appeal to the disillusioned left of the party. Asked about the effect the referendum could have on the coalition, Cable said he was "pretty sure" the government would survive it, even if the Lib Dems fail to secure AV: "I am pretty sure it would [survive]. But there is a lot at stake and that is why we are fighting hard for it." He added: "We are a grown-up party, we have not thrown our toys out of the pram because things happen we disagree with. I think you will find the approach to this whole thing is a very mature one." The competing campaigns for the referendum step up a gear on Monday when the No to AV group launch a national advertising campaign appealing to people to keep the one person one vote system. Matthew Elliott, director of the No campaign, said: "One person, one vote is the cornerstone of our democracy. It represents our most profound political belief. It is a statement that when it comes to electing those who lead us, we each have an equal say and an equal voice. That is why we are clear in our aim: Keep One Person, One Vote and stop supporters of extremist, fringe parties getting more than one vote." The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign Monday publishes the names of all its funders, demanding that the No campaign does the same. It has received £951,000 from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, £909,517 from the Electoral Reform Society and £114,000 from the Electoral Commission. Vince Cable George Osborne Tax and spending Economic policy Liberal Democrats AV Electoral reform Tax Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

MPC member warns of inflation drop Posted: 27 Mar 2011 01:00 PM PDT Adam Posen calls for another round of quantitative easing and insists the Bank should not raise interest rates The Bank of England's leading dove has predicted that inflation will tumble to 1.5% by the middle of next year as George Osborne's austerity drive and the underlying weakness of the economy stifle consumer spending. In an interview with the Guardian, Adam Posen admitted he had sleepless nights over his call for more money to be pumped into the economy and said he would not seek re-election to Threadneedle Street's monetary policy committee if his view turned out to be wrong. Posen said: "If I have made the wrong call, not only will I switch my vote, I would not pursue a second term. They should have somebody who gets it right and not me. I am accountable for my performance. I'm holding my nerve because it is the right thing to do." The American academic said he would be profoundly affected if it was proved that he had erred in voting repeatedly for bank rate to be pegged at 0.5% and for more money to be pumped into the economy through quantitative easing. "It would not just be terrible that I had messed up for other people but it is also my fundamental world view that I have been testing. "I would take it deeply and personally, which is why I have laid awake at night thinking about it." But Posen said recent trends in the economy had left him convinced that inflation would fall back below the government's 2% target in the second half of next year, as the temporary factors pushing up prices washed out of the system and the economy slowed down. This analysis, he said, chimed with the views expressed in recent speeches by the Bank's governor, Mervyn King, and Charlie Bean, one of the two deputy governors. Three members of the MPC - Andrew Sentance, Martin Weale and Spencer Dale - voted for higher interest rates this month, but Posen challenged their view on four separate counts. He said so-called "core inflation", which strips out the effects of fuel, food costs and taxes such as VAT, did not suggest that the economy was overheating; the recent strength in manufacturing only affected 13% of the UK's total output and was not replicated in other parts of the economy; it was too simplistic to say that the economy was overheating if inflation was high; and it would only be costly to take a wait-and-see approach to raising interest rates if there was a risk of an inflationary spiral. "We could get inflation back to target really fast if we put the economy through the wringer," he said. Posen added that the real debate inside the MPC was whether the increase in inflation to 4.4% would lead to consumers and businesses believing that there had been a permanent upward shift, and thus have knock-on effects on wages and prices. "I don't see that as a material risk given all else that is going on, which is why I have been leaning the way I have." He echoed King in calling a small increase in bank rate futile, as any rise would have to be reversed, damaging the Bank's credibility. Posen said that whatever the merits of the government's austerity plans, higher taxes and reductions in public spending would have a "meaningful" dampening effect on consumer spending and overall demand in the economy. "Household consumption is going to be pretty darn weak. It may even contract a little". Consumers, he said, were unlikely to run down their savings in an attempt to maintain spending patterns, while the weakness of trade unions meant it would be hard for wage bargainers to push up pay settlements in response to higher inflation. "Wages will be the dog that doesn't bark," he said. Posen said he disliked the idea that interest rates had to be brought back to a more normal level after being cut to 0.5% in early 2009, the lowest level since the Bank was founded in 1694. "If I am a firefighter fighting a fire I don't say I have pumped more water than I have ever pumped in my life so I must have pumped too much. You stop pumping when the fire is out." Posen was also sceptical about some economists' suggestion that the government's deficit reduction plan could help growth by boosting confidence in financial markets, leading to a fall in long-term interest rates and higher investment. Inflation Bank of England Consumer spending Interest rates Economics Economic policy George Osborne Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

US and China use death penalty most Posted: 27 Mar 2011 04:05 PM PDT Many countries still executing people for crimes and hundreds remain on death row, Amnesty International report reveals China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen and the US carried out the most executions last year, bucking a global trends towards abolition of the death penalty, a report has said . China again was by far the world's most prolific executioner in putting to death thousands, said Amnesty International in its report on the death penalty worldwide. Amnesty does not provide a precise figure of executions in China as Beijing keeps such figures secret. Instead, it has challenged the Chinese authorities to publish figures for the number of people sentenced to death and executed each year to confirm claims of a reduction in the use of the death penalty. China, however, last year did move to cut down the number of offences that carry the death penalty, which applies to no less than 68 crimes. If the changes go through, the death penalty would be removed for such crimes as tax fraud, and for smuggling valuables and cultural relics. Amendments to the criminal code may also remove it as a punishment for those over 75. In all, the changes would affect 13 death penalty offences. Setting China aside, Amnesty said at least 527 executions were carried out last year. Almost half of those took place in Iran (252). North Korea executed 60, Yemen 53 and the US 46. The minimum number of executions was down from at least 714 in 2009. Methods of execution included beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection and various kinds of shooting (by firing squad, and at close range to the heart or the head). No stonings were recorded in 2010, but stoning sentences were reported in Nigeria, Pakistan and Iran, where at least 10 women and four men remain under stoning sentences. At least 2,024 new death sentences were imposed during 2010 in 67 countries, including 365 in Pakistan alone, meaning it has some 8,000 people currently on death row. Amnesty expressed particular alarm that a significant proportion of executions or death sentences recorded in 2010 were for drug-related offences. They accounted for more than half of 114 sentences in Malaysia. Meanwhile, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates ignored international prohibitions and imposed death sentences on child offenders -people aged 17 or less when alleged crimes were committed, with Iran executing one such offender named as Mohammad A. The underlying trend on the death penalty, however, is strongly toward abolition, Amnesty said, with 31 countries removing the punishment in law or in practice in the last 10 years. Last year, Gabon became the 139th country to either abolish the penalty outright or to cease to use it in practice. "In spite of some setbacks, developments in 2010 brought us closer to global abolition," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary general. "The President of Mongolia announced a moratorium on the death penalty, an important first step as capital punishment is still classified as state secret. For the third time and with more support than ever before, the UN general assembly called for a global moratorium on executions. Any country that continues to execute is flying in the face of the fact that both human rights law and UN human rights bodies consistently hold that abolition should be the objective." Capital punishment Amnesty International Human rights United States China Yemen North Korea Iran Mark Tran guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Unions hail peaceful march a success Posted: 27 Mar 2011 11:40 AM PDT Union leaders condemn actions of several hundred not associated with main rally who caused damage and clashed with police in parts of central London More than 200 protesters are in police custody and a clean-up operation is under way after anti-cuts activists smashed shop windows in London's West End and clashed with riot police following Saturday's peaceful TUC Hyde Park rally. Union leaders condemned the actions of several hundred people not associated with the main rally who wreaked havoc along Oxford Street, Regent Street and Piccadilly, targeting shops and banks, cracking windows, throwing paint and hurling missiles including, said police, lightbulbs filled with ammonia. At least 84 people were injured, including 31 officers, 12 of whom required hospital treatment for "relatively minor injuries". The day ended with late-night confrontations between police and around 300 demonstrators, who converged on Trafalgar Square where they were contained until the early hours. The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, said he "bitterly regretted" the violence that occurred away from the main march and rally, which had been attended by "between 250,000 and 500,000" and was hailed a "fantastic success". Organisers hoped the actions of a small number of activists would not detract from the massive anti-cuts protest and the powerful message "middle Britain" had sent to the government. Senior Labour figures have mounted a co-ordinated defence of the demonstration, condemning the violence but demanding that the government answer the charge made by thousands of peaceful marchers. Shadow ministers were also forced to defend Miliband's decision to attend the event, after Tory accusations that he had aligned himself with unions against all deficit reduction. Michael Fallon, the deputy chairman of the Conservative party, accused Labour of "breathtaking levels of deceit over the economy" and Miliband personally of "insulting" the suffragettes and anti-Apartheid movement by comparing their struggle to opposition to government cuts in his address to the rally. Vince Cable, the business secretary, insisted that the government was listening to citizens who were lawfully demonstrating against its programme of cuts, but said it would not alter its course. "Certainly we're listening, and I talk regularly to the trade union movement. I think [it's] important we have a dialogue with them, but we're not going to change the basic economic strategy," he said. Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, condemned a "tiny minority of violent, parasitic, unrepresentative hooligans who are trying to destroy" the right to peaceful protest. "He [Miliband] said he acknowledged there was a need for tough choices and some cuts, and it seems that on the one hand you've got the government who are saying that all of these cuts are necessary and on the other you have a minority of demonstrators who say none of the cuts are necessary," he told the BBC's Politics Show. Miliband told the crowds on Saturday: "We come in the traditions that have marched in peaceful but powerful protest for justice, fairness and political change. "The suffragettes who fought for votes for women and won. The civil rights movement in America that fought against racism and won. The anti-Apartheid movement that fought the horror of that system and won." Murphy said his comments reflected the scale of public feeling against the cuts, but Harriett Baldwin, MP for West Worcestershire, said: "For Ed Miliband to compare himself to the anti-Apartheid campaigners fighting for equal rights for blacks, or to the suffragettes' struggle for votes for women, just beggars belief. His self-important comments are an insult to those who risked and gave their lives in the fight for equality." Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said "violent thugs and criminals" who took part in the clashes should face the full force of the law. "I do hope that the government listens to that strength of feeling, there were people from all walks of life there... and there was this very strong message that people do think that the government has got this wrong." The Metropolitan police confirmed 201 people had been arrested and were being held in 21 police stations across the capital. Detectives have begun examining CCTV footage from the stores and buildings in the streets affected. Commander Bob Broadhurst, in charge of the Met operation, claimed officers had had to deal with "mindless yobs" around Trafalgar Square. "We've had a number of – I hestitate to call them protesters – a bunch of people that ended up in Trafalgar Square." A group of between 100 and 150 people ran off, ripping open litter bins and throwing bricks and flares, he said. "This is just mindless vandalism, hooliganism, it's nothing to do with protest", said Broadhurst, adding the force would never have enough officers to protect every building in central London. There was criticism of the police operation, with accusations that officers should have been better prepared. Former Met deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick said there were not enough officers "in the right place at the right time". He added: "There was a lot more I think they could have done". But London's deputy mayor, Kit Malthouse, said criticisms of alleged intelligence failings by the Met were "unfair" and that officers had carried out "a huge amount of work" in preparation for the march. Malthouse, who chairs the Metropolitan police authority, condemned perpetrators of the violence as "fascist agitators" and a "nasty bunch of black-shirted thugs". In Trafalgar Square, where demonstrators had scrawled graffiti on Nelson's Column and on one of its four bronze lions, street cleaners were busy jet-hosing the paving stones as part of a clean-up operation likely to cost tens of thousands of pounds. Red paint still remained on the 2012 Olympic clock, and a placard reading "Kill the Cuts" hung from the bronze statue of Saint Vincent. Cleaning teams were also in force outside Topshop's flagship store in Oxford Circus, targeted by protesters who threw paint, fireworks and smoke grenades in protest over allegations of tax avoidance by big businesses. The store was open for business by 11am on Sunday. At luxury grocery store Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly, which the campaign group UK Uncut claimed was occupied by around 200 of its supporters, paint was being scrubbed from brickwork. Meanwhile, workmen boarded up nine windows which had been smashed on the front facade of the Ritz hotel nearby. Guests had been moved to a private dining area at the rear of the hotel during the disturbances. Emergency glaziers were replacing smashed windows with boards at Santander and Lloyds TSB branches in Piccadilly. Unions are planning fresh campaigns in the coming days against cuts in the NHS, as well as considering co-ordinated industrial action. Public sector cuts Liberal-Conservative coalition TUC Trade unions Economic policy Labour Ed Miliband Yvette Cooper London Police Caroline Davies Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tuition fees rise may create £1bn gap Posted: 27 Mar 2011 11:26 AM PDT • Plans based on average of £7,500, not top-rate fees • Cost to government may hit education spending The government could be forced to spend almost £1bn more than expected over the next four years to cover the cost of tuition fees, as a growing number of universities set out plans to charge the maximum of £9,000 a year. From autumn next year, universities will be allowed to almost treble the amount they now charge, as part of a reform of the funding of higher education. The initial charge is borne by the government, which pays the fee for each student in the form of a loan before recovering its money once the student has graduated and finds a job that pays more than £21,000. Critics fear that the government will claw back the initial outlay from other higher education spending, potentially leading to fewer university places or cuts in research budgets. David Willetts, the universities minister, had anticipated that a market would develop, with institutions charging a wide range of fees, but a picture is emerging of the majority of institutions charging the top rate. Of the 16 universities that have so far stated how much they intend to charge, 13 want the maximum – University College London, Birmingham and Lancaster being the latest to do so. Willetts predicted that the average across the whole of higher education would be £7,500. It now looks much higher, but the Treasury has used the £7,500 average to determine how much universities should receive for research, teaching and building grants, among other things. Figures from the House of Commons library show that if the average is £8,600, the government will have to spend £960m more in the next four years. If it is only slightly higher, at £7,900, it is £340m extra. But if the average is £8,900, the government will have to pay out an extra £1.23bn. The funds could be deducted from universities' budgets and could mean fewer places on degree courses or a cut to the research or teaching grant. A total of £940m has already been cut from English universities' budgets for teaching, research and site renovation for the next academic year, a 12.6% reduction. However, last week's budget awarded an extra £100m to research. Gareth Thomas, the shadow universities minister, said either universities would have their funds cut or the government would have to reconsider altogether. He said: "The government repeatedly promised that fees over £6,000 would be the exception, but it is increasingly clear that they are powerless to stop most universities charging closer to £9,000. This will push up average fees beyond the £7,500 estimate on which the government's spending plans are based, requiring deeper cuts elsewhere in the higher education budget." Other universities seeking the £9,000 maximum are Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, Exeter, Essex, Aston, Manchester, Warwick and Durham. St Mary's University College, Twickenham has said it plans to charge £8,000. Universities that charge more than £6,000 must set out a plan, or access agreement, to widen their pool of students beyond white, middle-class teenagers, and this must be approved as adequate by the government's access watchdog, the Office for Fair Access. Institutions have until 19 April to submit their access agreements to Offa, which will give its verdicts in July. Tuition fees Higher education Students Liberal-Conservative coalition Education policy Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Radiation error at Fukushima plant Posted: 27 Mar 2011 05:10 PM PDT Tokyo Electric Power says initial reports of levels 10m times higher than normal in parts of No 2 reactor were inaccurate Fresh doubt has been cast on the handling of the Fukushima nuclear crisis after officials admitted wildly overstating levels of radiation, prompting an evacuation of the nuclear site damaged by the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said initial reports of a level 10m times higher than normal in parts of the No 2 reactor were inaccurate, although it could not say by how much. Tepco said at first that the worker who took the measurement, of a pool of water in the reactor's basement turbine building, had fled before taking a second reading. The discovery prompted another evacuation at the site, halting work to pump and store radioactive water that has built up in the turbine buildings of three of the six reactors. Tepco later said the pool of water had been contaminated but the extremely high reading was a mistake. "The number is not credible," spokesman Takashi Kurita said. "We are very sorry." However, later reports on Sunday showed contamination 100,000 times normal in water at reactor No 2, and 1,850 times normal in the nearby sea, the most alarming levels since the crisis began. Evidence of dangerous contamination in reactor No 2 emerged days after three workers were exposed to high levels while repairing the cooling system at the No 3 reactor. Two of the men received suspected beta ray burns after stepping into water. Reports said the workers were due to be discharged from hospital on Monday. One pump is being used to extract radioactive water, and two more will be taken to the site. The US military is sending barges loaded with 500,000 gallons of fresh water to nearby Onahama Bay. Early this morning a magnitude 6.5 earthquake rocked north Japan, the latest aftershock, and officials warned it would trigger a 50 cm (two ft) tsunami. Two of Fukushima's six reactors are safe, having achieved "cool shutdown", but the other four have yet to be brought under control. Japan's nuclear safety agency, Nisa, said the temperature and pressure inside all six reactors had stabilised. Yukio Edano, the chief government spokesman, said the myriad problems at the plant were no closer to being resolved. "We have restored power and pumped in fresh water, and we are making basic steps towards improvement. But there is still no room for complacency." Modest progress was made on removing contaminated water and stepping up work to cool the reactors with fresh water, rather than corrosive sea water, over the weekend. But Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the emergency could continue for weeks, or possibly months. Concern over food safety spread to fishing over the weekend when officials said seawater samples taken 20 miles off the coast of Fukushima contained 1,850 times the normal level of radioactivity. Nisa said the tainted seawater posed no risk: "Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it is consumed by fish and seaweed, and even more by the time they are consumed by humans. There is no need to worry about health risks." US authorities said on Sunday night that low concentrations of radiation in samples of Massachusetts rainwater were probably caused by Fukushima. Nevada, California, Hawaii, Colorado and Washington state have also reported tiny amounts of radiation from the accident but officials said they presented no health risks. Japan disaster Japan Natural disasters and extreme weather Nuclear power Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Libya tycoon 'gave Beatrice diamond' Posted: 27 Mar 2011 08:43 AM PDT Allegation of birthday gift for Beatrice piles further pressure on Prince Andrew over his work as special trade representative Prince Andrew is under further pressure over his work as Britain's special trade representative after it was alleged that a Libyan businessman gave his daughter Princess Beatrice a diamond necklace for her 21st birthday two years ago. The businessman, Tarek Kaituni, who is now a US citizen, has convictions for possession of drugs – for which he served a prison sentence in 1998 – and attempting to smuggle a sub-machine gun into France. He was a guest at Beatrice's birthday party at a private villa near Marbella, during which he was photographed with the prince sitting at the same table. Kaituni's former girlfriend Manel Hamrouni, who was pictured sitting next to the prince, claimed to the Sunday Times that the prince had lobbied for the businessman to be given a consultancy with the British water treatment company Biwater and paid commission for helping to secure business in Libya. The prince's spokesman denied that he had ever acted on Kaituni's behalf, received personal gifts or solicited payments for him. He described Andrew and Kaituni as "certainly associates". Asked whether the princess had been given a diamond necklace, he replied: "We never comment on any gifts given to members of the royal family." The prince's association with Kaituni is the latest to discomfort the royal family and ministers concerned about how he has used his role as a trade envoy over the last 10 years. Earlier this month revelations about his friendship with the US billionaire and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein caused Andrew to admit he had been unwise and government sources to suggest he might have to consider his position if more negative stories emerged. When the Labour MP Chris Bryant attempted to raise the prince's connection with Kaituni in the Commons three weeks ago he was censured by the Speaker, John Bercow, who told him that references to the royal family under parliamentary privilege should be "sparing and respectful". The value of the diamond necklace is the subject of differing estimates, with Hamrouni claiming it was worth nearly £20,000. A British jeweller related to the person who sold it said Kaituni had bought it for £4,000 and Kaituni himself told the paper he had chipped in with others to help buy it. Biwater acknowledged that Kaituni had approached them in 2009 but said it had made no agreement with him, had not paid him anything and had severed connections in 2010. Prince Andrew Monarchy Stephen Bates guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

German Greens hail state victory Posted: 27 Mar 2011 12:11 PM PDT • 'Historic' first ever victory in regional Landtag vote • Chancellor suffers after U-turn on nuclear power The Green party has taken power from Angela Merkel's conservatives in one of Germany's richest states, preliminary results from the Baden-Württemberg elections show. The chancellor's Christian Democratic Union party, or CDU, had ruled the region's state legislature for almost 58 years, but found itself on the wrong side of the nuclear debate following Fukushima. Even before the Japanese earthquake, the party was unpopular locally for sanctioning a multibillion euro project to build a railway station in Stuttgart. Support for the CDU slumped from 44.2% in the 2006 state election to 39%, according to official results. The state parliament's new leader would be Winfried Kretschmann, 62, a spiky-haired former science teacher. He is likely to become the Green party's first regional "minister president" after his party gained 25% of the vote; enough, when combined with the 23.1% for the centre-left Social Democratic party, to form a coalition. Minister presidents are powerful on a national as well as a regional level, because they have a vote in Germany's upper house, the Bundesrat, and can veto legislation. It would mark a historic win for the minority party, which polled 11.7% in Baden-Württemberg in 2006. Even when the Greens were in government in a coalition with Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats between 1998 and 2005, and had Joschka Fischer as foreign minister, the party never managed to win a regional "Landtag" election. "We have written history," said Claudia Roth, joint leader of the Green party, speaking in Berlin after polls closed. Dressed head-to-toe in green, including glittery emerald ballet pumps, she said the result would have repercussions far beyond the borders of Baden-Württemberg. It was, she said, "a resounding slap in the face" for Merkel's coalition. Commentators have suggested that a dramatic CDU defeat makes Merkel's position untenable. It would be "the beginning of the end" for her, wrote one on Spiegel Online on Friday. Others suggest the leader known as Iron Angie will plough on until the general election in 2013. Also voting on Sunday was Rhineland-Palatinate state, where an ARD exit poll saw the Social Democrats retain power but only by agreeing to a coalition government with the Greens. The SPD fell 10 percentage points to 35.5%, while the Greens appeared to have more than trebled their vote, with 17%, according to the exit poll, and will send representatives to that regional parliament for the first time. The Christian Democrats are seen gaining 1.2% to 34%. But this did little to numb the pain in Baden-Württemberg; though the CDU did win more votes than any other single party, its preferred coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic party, performed abysmally. The FDP were at 5.3%, down from 10.7% in 2006. In Rheinland-Pfalz, the FDP failed to get the 5% minimum necessary to gain any seats in the state parliament. This poor showing poses difficult questions for the FDP's leader, the unpopular foreign minister Guido Westerwelle. It could also call into question the national CDU-FDP coalition in power since autumn 2009. Within half an hour of the first exit poll, Daniel Bahr, an FDP politician from Nordrhein-Westfalen, told ARD his party needed to consider a "change of personnel". The Green vote was helped by the argument in Germany over its 17 nuclear power plants, heightened by the Fukushima disaster. In the aftermath, Merkel performed an 180-degree policy change by announcing the closure of seven stations built before 1980. She also said she was committed to speeding up total withdrawal from nuclear power. This was six months after she had ignored public opinion by extending the life of the 17 plants by an average 12 years; in this, one of her most vociferous supporters was Baden-Württemberg's minister president, Stefan Mappus; he paid the price for his loyalty. Germany Europe Nuclear power Energy Angela Merkel Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

MoD 'sorry' for murder of girl Posted: 27 Mar 2011 04:05 PM PDT • Schoolgirl shot dead by paratrooper in 1976 • Letter to mother formally apologises for killing Majella O'Hare was 12 years old. It was a bright summer's day in 1976 and the schoolgirl had just walked past an army checkpoint on the way to church. Moments later, she lay dying on a country road in County Armagh, shot in the back by a paratrooper. Now, almost 35 years after the infamous killing, an unprecedented apology from the Ministry of Defence will be handed over to her elderly mother at a ceremony in Belfast. The letter, signed by the defence secretary, Liam Fox, belatedly corrects the army's account of the incident and acknowledges that the soldier's subsequent courtroom explanation was "unlikely". British Irish Rights Watch, a civil liberties group that has campaigned for decades for a formal apology, welcomed the statement and hoped that it would open the way for a more conciliatory approach by military officials. The only other occasion an apology has been offered for the army's behaviour during Northern Ireland's Troubles – albeit in more general terms – was after publication of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry last summer. Then, David Cameron described the Parachute Regiment's actions in Derry as "unjustified and unjustifiable". The death of Majella O'Hare followed a spate of sectarian murders in south Armagh. It was 14 August 1976 and she had set off for confession with some school friends. "They came upon an army patrol," her brother Michael, now 62, told the Guardian. "She had walked on about 20 or 30 yards when [shots] rang out from a general purpose machine gun. Three shells were found on the ground. Two bullets hit her in the back. "The soldier [Private Michael Williams] was carrying the weapon cocked and ready but he would have had to exert between 10 and 12lb of pressure to fire it. "My father was the school caretaker and he had been outside cutting the grass and tidying up. He heard shots. There was panic; he know something terrible had happened and ran to the scene. "The soldiers were giving him abuse, shouting: 'What do you think you are doing? You're only the fucking grass-cutter.' Even after he found her on the road and cradled her in his arms, they were abusive." Majella was airlifted to Daisy Hill hospital but died in the military helicopter. Williams, of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment, claimed he had fired in response to an IRA sniper attack. The RUC investigated and the paratrooper was charged with murder. By the time of the trial, the charge had been reduced to manslaughter. Lord Justice Maurice Gibson, sitting alone without a jury, accepted there probably had been a gunman who fired simultaneously even though there was no independent evidence of anyone hearing other shots. Gibson, who was killed with his wife by an IRA roadside bomb in 1987, acquitted Williams. At the end of the trial Mary O'Hare, Majella's mother, approached Williams. "She asked him 'why did you do it?' He looked at her and shrugged his shoulders," Michael O'Hare recalled. "Majella was a lovely child, going about her life in childlike ways and not feeling threatened at all. My father was so affected afterwards; he never really recovered from the shock and died in 1992." An inquiry by the Police Service of Northern Ireland's Historical Enquiries Team (HET), which re-investigated the case, found there was no evidence to suggest there had ever been an IRA gunman. The HET's director, Dave Cox, last summer called on the army to apologise for killing Majella. The letter says: "I apologise for Majella's death and offer you my heartfelt sympathy. Although many years have passed, I have no doubt that your grief and that of your family has not diminished … both the initial investigation by the RUC and the more recent review have concluded that it was unlikely that there was a gunman in the area when the soldier involved opened fire and struck Majella, as he claimed. "The soldier's actions resulted in the loss of a young and innocent life, causing sorrow and anguish for those who knew and loved Majella. "On behalf of the army and the government, I am profoundly sorry that this tragic incident should have happened." Mary O'Hare is now 88. She will be handed the letter by the Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Paterson, in Belfast. "It's good to get this apology," Michael O'Hare said. "It's not going to bring Majella back but at least it will set the record straight for history. When you send trained killers out to use firearms in a warzone, you can never feel safe. "I would like to meet Michael Williams and see if there's genuine regret about what happened. Closure will never be there but [there is] compassion and a sense of comfort that we have been denied for 35 years." Jane Winter, director of British Irish Rights Watch who has followed the case for many years, said: "This is a full-blown apology from the MoD and on behalf of the nation. "It's incredible that it's taken so long. HET investigators tried to talk to Private Williams but got no further than his lawyers. They said he was contrite about what happened but would never [be able to give evidence] in the state he was now in. "I have never seen a letter like this. We have tried to get apologies before. I hope this sets a precedent for other families." The Historical Enquiries Team, whose re-investigation led to the apology, has so far examined 1,400 deaths that occurred during the Troubles. It has provided fresh insights for many of the families of the bereaved, including those of soldiers who were killed on tours of duty in Northern Ireland Military Defence policy Northern Ireland Liam Fox Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Taxi driver charged with Sian murder Posted: 27 Mar 2011 09:19 AM PDT Chris Halliwell to appear before Swindon magistrates as police continue to search field where second body was found Tight security will be in place when the taxi driver accused of murdering Sian O'Callaghan makes his first public court appearance on Monday. Chris Halliwell, 47, will appear before Swindon magistrates charged with killing 22-year-old O'Callaghan after she vanished from a nightclub in the town. O'Callaghan's disappearance initially caused huge concern and many people volunteered to help police search for her. Concern turned to sorrow and deep anger when her body was found near the side of a country road last week. Police will be out in force for Halliwell's appearance amid concern members of the public could gather at court to demonstrate their hostility. Officers are continuing to search a field in Gloucestshire where a second body has been found. Police are working to identify the remains and have so far said only that they believe the bones to be those of a woman aged 23-30 who may have been taken from the Swindon area between 2003 and 2005. Halliwell, who is from Swindon, was charged on Saturday evening, almost 60 hours after he was arrested in a supermarket car park in the town. The Wiltshire district prosecutor, Simon Brenchley, said: "I have been working closely with Wiltshire police, and now have authorised them to charge Christopher Halliwell with Sian O'Callaghan's murder. I will keep liaising closely with the police as their investigation continues." Halliwell is being held at Gablecross police station on the outskirts of Swindon and has twice been taken to Swindon magistrates court when police sought extensions on the time limit for holding him. O'Callaghan's body was found near Uffington, in Oxfordshire, 12 miles east of Swindon, on Thursday and was formally identified by a member of her family the following day. Police say there is no evidence at this stage that she was sexually assaulted. As part of the investigation, police began digging at a farmer's field at Eastleach, in Gloucestershire, 15 miles north of Swindon, and found human remains on Saturday. Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher, who is leading the investigation, said: "Bones recovered from the site at Eastleach are believed to be [those] of a young woman with an estimated age of between 23 and 30 years. "It has been indicated to me that this young woman was taken from the Swindon area between 2003 and 2005. The remains will now be subject of further forensic laboratory tests and a postmortem examination. The police search at the site is expected to continue for the time being." Fulcher added: "Whilst we will make every effort to identify the second person as soon as possible, if you are concerned about someone who is missing, the charity Missing People offers a specialist support service for families and relatives of missing people and for the 250,000 people who go missing each year in the UK." Wiltshire detectives will liaise with the National Policing Improvement Agency's (Nipa) serious crime analysis section, which helps detectives investigating motiveless or sexually motivated murders and other serious sex crimes. It uses a database called ViCLAS (Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System), which was developed in Canada by the Royal Canadian mounted police. In addition Wiltshire detectives will be using the national DNA database, also overseen by Nipa, to try to establish the identity of the remains. Police refused to comment on speculation that the remains could be those of a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman who was reported missing from Swindon in June 2003. Police are still keen to hear from anyone who had been out "lamping" – using high-powered lights to hunt animals – or poaching in the Ramsbury area, near the Savernake forest in Wiltshire, which was the scene of searches for O'Callaghan last week. Fulcher said: "I would stress again that I only want information from you that is relevant to the Sian O'Callaghan inquiry. We are not interested in prosecuting anyone for lamping or poaching." The depth of feeling over O'Callaghan's death was shown on Saturday night when as many as 10,000 people attended a vigil at the Polo Ground in Swindon. Chinese lanterns and balloons with messages of condolence were sent soaring into the night sky. It is not known whether members of O'Callaghan's family or her boyfriend, Kevin Reape, will attend the court hearing. Crime Steven Morris guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Sell masterpieces, Arts Council told Posted: 27 Mar 2011 04:05 PM PDT • Funding body 'spending far too much on itself' • Report comes at start of crucial week for the arts The Arts Council in England has been told to sell works from its art collection – which includes masterpieces by Anish Kapoor, Sarah Lucas, Mark Wallinger and Damien Hirst – in a highly critical report. In what is to be a crucial week for the arts – English cultural organisations will be told on Wednesday how much public money they will receive from the Arts Council – the report from the parliamentary select committee on culture criticises the funding body for "spending far too much on itself". The MPs on the committee, chaired by Tory John Whittingdale, condemn a "gross waste of public money" and "failure of leadership" over the body's conduct in relation to the Public, the West Bromwich gallery that cost £52m to build but went into administration before it opened. The report also deeply criticises ministers' "disturbing modus operandi" in abruptly abolishing a number of cultural bodies, notably the UK Film Council. That episode was "handled very badly by the government", says the report. "It is extremely regrettable that a film-maker of the stature of Tim Bevan has, as a result, decided to take no further part in government-sponsored initiatives." Bevan, the co-founder of Working Title and co-producer of films such as Fargo and Four Weddings and a Funeral, chaired the UK Film Council at the time of its abolition. The Arts Council hit back at the report, with a spokesman calling its findings out of date and criticising the choice of witnesses called to give evidence, saying the committee would have "benefited from a wider range of viewpoints". She defended the organisation's record, saying, "The Public is old news and is not representative of the Arts Council's investments in capital projects." And she poured cold water on the recommendation that the council gets rid of artworks: "Selling off works of art from the Arts Council collection is also not a sensible solution to the current budget cuts." The collection, now containing 7,500 works, was founded in 1946 to buy modern and contemporary art to lend to public galleries and museums nationwide. It also organises touring exhibitions, such as that devoted to Anish Kapoor now on in Manchester. Works from the collection have never been sold before. Leading figures in the arts defended the council's record. Sir Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, said the body "has our confidence" and Anthony Sargent, general director of the Sage arts venue in Gateshead, called it a "transformed institution". On top of recommending the council sell, or "strategically deaccession", artworks to make it more financially sustainable, the report suggests amalgamating the art collections of the organisation with those of the government and the British Council. The committee also said it was not convinced there was a need for so many symphony orchestras to receive funding from the council and the BBC; claimed heritage had been underfunded compared with the arts; and expressed concern at the deep level of cuts to funding for culture proposed by some local councils. The arts world is waiting anxiously for the results of public funding applications, which are due to drop into email inboxes up and down England between 7.30am and 9.30am on Wednesday. Grant applications have been made by 1,300 organisations; almost half will be unsuccessful. The Arts Council received a 29.6% cut in its grant-in-aid from central government at the last comprehensive spending review, making heavy cuts inevitable, although the council has promised not to "salami-slice" and to protect excellent organisations from the deepest cuts. The Arts Council, which cut its running costs by 15% in a restructuring completed in April 2010, has been told by the government to cut its running costs again, this time by 50%, with only 15% of the cuts being passed to the "front line". Senior figures in the arts defended the council's recent record. "The process has been as good as it could have been," said Hytner. He said many unsuccessful applicants would be "hugely aggrieved", but added: "I don't see how it can be avoided." Director Sir Richard Eyre said Arts Council chief executive Alan Davey was "a good thing" and said the body had been put in a "hellish position" because of overall cuts from central government. Sargent said" "Three years ago, the council was a disappointing laughing stock. I am not saying it's perfect, but as far as they can, Davey and [the body's chair] Liz Forgan have played a difficult hand with real skill." A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said a formal government response would be published in due course. Main points • Arts Council England has been "spending far too much on itself" • ACE "played a major role in the gross waste of public money" on the Public, West Bromwich • "Strategic deaccessioning" – ie, selling of artworks – from the Arts Council Collection is advised • The committee was "disturbed" by the number of local authorities proposing substantial cuts to arts • Small arts organisations are at greater risk from funding cuts than large ones, a matter of "great concern" • Committee "not convinced" there is a need for so many subsidised orchestras • Abolition of the UK Film Council was "handled very badly by the government". Similar "disturbing modus operandi" followed for other abruptly axed cultural bodies • Heritage "suffered disproportionately" in funding cuts compared with arts Arts funding Art Charlotte Higgins guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Remaking the news Posted: 27 Mar 2011 01:00 PM PDT Tina Brown's return to print media with Newsweek surprised many. Here, she explains her plans for the loss-making title The last time Tina Brown launched a magazine – Talk in 1999 – she held a celebrity-stuffed party on an island off Manhattan where the fireworks were bigger, louder and longer than those at Rupert Murdoch's wedding just a few weeks later. To celebrate her first issue as editor-in-chief of Newsweek, earlier this month, Brown ditched the party idea altogether, instead inviting some of the world's richest, poorest and most-oppressed women to talk about their rights in a midtown Manhattan hotel for the Women In The World summit. The Murdochs were there too to discuss China, their marriage having outlived Talk by a whole decade. The magazine cost its backers a rumoured $100m (£62m) over two seemingly spendthrift years. After its closure in early 2002, Brown hosted a chat show and wrote a biography of Princess Diana before setting up the webzine, the Daily Beast, in 2008. The past decade has seen an explosion of online social networking that now makes celebrity parties seem, well, old school, and the print media decimated by websites from Google to Gawker and the Huffington Post. But what hasn't changed since 1999 is Brown's ability to attract headlines, both good and bad. Brown is catnip to print journalists and the more vicious bloggers. When the Beast team merged with the even more loss-making Newsweek last November, Gawker ran a much-read piece comparing Brown with a hagfish, "a blind, slimy, deepwater eel-like creature that darts into the orifices of its prey and devours them, alive, from the inside". Brown is, inevitably, dismissive of these attacks."Snark is the medium of the day," she says when we meet over a hotel breakfast (egg white omelette with bacon and butterless toast). In her transatlantic, staccato voice, she says she hasn't read the stories anyway. "I don't have Google alert because it just distracts the brain. At the end of the day, we have bigger things to worry about than that, quite frankly. We have a magazine to remake." The task she faces in remaking Newsweek is one of the biggest of a 35-year career that has included taking on a failing Tatler when she was just 25, as well as editing Vanity Fair (1984 to 1992) and the New Yorker (1992 to 1998). In a world where advertising and circulation revenues have plummeted and the future of news magazines looks dire, Newsweek's losses are estimated at more than $20m a year. Sidney Harman, a 92-year-old technology mogul paid $1 for the 78-year-old magazine last summer. He contacted Brown soon after. So, the question is, after extolling the virtues of the 24/7 nature of the internet for the past two years, why would Brown and her billionaire backer Barry Diller return to print? Manhattan gossip suggests Diller simply wants to distance himself from the loss-making Beast, but he has a funny way of showing it, if so. As well as continuing to fund the merged firm, he will provide office space in his new Frank Gehry-designed offices in the next month. Brown says of her two new co-owners: "I've got two guys who've expressed their commitment and no one expects it to be quick. I think I'm much safer with them than I am with some big amorphous company that could just pull the plug any time." She has compared taking on Newsweek with rolling a boulder up a hill. Does she still think that? "Yes, I am that ant rolling the boulder up the hill," she laughs. "Not that the Beast was easy but it was unencumbered. There's a legacy at Newsweek but . . . I have an appetite for it. I really do love journalism." Her first issue, including a glowing cover interview with Hillary Clinton, showed lots of Brown magazine hallmarks: mixing Newsweek's traditional political fare with glossy photojournalism, health, fashion, food and travel. "News and pleasure are a good combination," she says. More than 50 Newsweek jobs were cut before Brown joined and she has set about hiring veteran, and hardly cheap, writers such as Howard Kurtz, Peter Boyer and Andrew Sullivan. At Talk, writers were paid $5 per word and, although Brown says, "that payday has gone", the Beast typically pays $350 for each article it runs – far more than its rivals. "As a writer myself, I cannot look other writers in the face and ask them to do things for nothing," says Brown. "In the same way, I wouldn't ask my dentist to give me a free filling. Writing is a profession and you should have respect for that and should pay for it." Which brings us neatly to the Huffington Post, whose eponymous founder Arianna has been much criticised for failing to pay writers after selling the site to AOL for $315m. The two women are often written about together. "Nobody writes about the editors of Slate and Politico like that," sighs Brown. "I guess it's like girl-on-girl action. Everybody likes girl-on-girl action." So how does she get on with the former conservative commentator turned web queen? "Arianna is a really old girlfriend and I've known her for 30 years. I've always been fond of her and I think her success is marvellous. I really do. I'm very admiring of what she's done." After the Post sale, the 57-year-old Brown hosted a lunch for Huffington, who also agreed to appear at her Women In The World summit. Would she like to emulate Huffington's success, I ask? "Sounds like a very nice happy ending. She'll be paying for the next lunch." This best friends scenario doesn't quite ring true for one long-time friend of both women, who laughs and describes them as "total rivals . . . whatever else, Arianna helps you realise you've got to be at the top table too". Brown, a darling of the media world with husband Harry Evans when Huffington was still better known for her politics, is twice accosted by other people during our 50 minute interview. She engenders loyalty among the people she works with. "I try to do the best job I can to bring a spotlight to the people who work for me. I've always tried to make the writers who work for me more successful than they were before." Asked why she never followed the trend for eponymous sites on the web, she says: "I did not want my name to be the name on the website and you know why? I think that websites called after the person running it somehow minimises the staff working for them. I wanted to attract the very best writers and it wasn't about me. It wasn't an extension of myself." There is a moment's silence after this, until Brown goes on to talk about the "inside joke" of naming her website after the paper featured in her favourite novel about journalism, Scoop. In one scene the hero writes of how what a "pleasurable thing it is to spend other people's money". "I certainly subscribe to that," laughs Brown. Don't all journalists? "Absolutely right." Famously tough, the only time she bridles is at the suggestion made by Slate writer, Jack Shafer, that the summit to celebrate women is "blatantly exploitative". "What does he mean? How can he possibly say that? Exploitative of who?" she splutters. "The notion that this is PR is sort of obscene . . . it's a truly belittling thing to the women who care. "Let them get on and do what they want to do for the world. Ultimately, the Women in the World summit is about anything but . . . that. Every one of those faces, nearly all of them you've never heard of before. I'm really proud of that." The two-day event is indeed impressive, with Brown's team bringing together a diverse array of people. Seeing her at the event, whether gushing over Bill Clinton, chatting with Diller and his wife Diane von Furstenberg, or introducing sponsors to the doctor from Somalia who provides refuge for 100,000 people, Brown is the consummate networker. What does she think of the charge that in the world of Facebook and Twitter, such behaviour is no longer necessary. "You have to do both in this world. Listen, at the Beast, we have this incredible community of interests who want to write and that I've never met. They're not my Rolodex. They just want to be part of it and that's incredibly exciting." By the end, some $150,000 had been donated. Her interest in women's issues is typically news-driven. "It's an exciting moment for women. The Arab revolution happened because women are insisting that they are going to be part of this movement for democracy . . . We are right on the zeitgeist . . . But it's not enough to just write about them. We have to really introduce them to people who have influence and money and are opinion formers to help augment their efforts." Magazines Newspapers & magazines Jane Martinson guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Obituary: Diana Wynne Jones Posted: 27 Mar 2011 09:19 AM PDT Renowned children's fantasy and science-fiction author with a dedicated following Like many good writers, Diana Wynne Jones, who has died aged 76 of cancer, worked for long years in relative obscurity, in her case sustained as a children's fantasy author by a modestly sized but devoted young readership. That obscurity provided the freedom to develop her own voice without the distractions of having to build on perceived success. By the time real success found her, in Jones's case almost by chance, she was a mature writer with a solid and varied body of work that was ready to be appreciated by a much bigger new audience. Her intelligent and beautifully written fantasies are of seminal importance for their bridging of the gap between "traditional" children's fantasy, as written by CS Lewis or E Nesbit, and the more politically and socially aware children's literature of the modern period, where authors such as Jacqueline Wilson or Melvyn Burgess explicitly confront problems of divorce, drugs and delinquency. Jones's fiction is relevant, subversive, witty and highly enjoyable, while also having a distinctly dark streak and a constant awareness of how unreliable the real world can seem. Disguises and deceptions abound. Though avoiding criminally dysfunctional families or unwanted pregnancies, her cleverly plotted and amusing adventures deal frankly with emotional clumsiness, parental neglect, jealousy between siblings and a general sense of being an outcast. Rather than a deliberately cruel stepmother, a Jones protagonist might have a real mother far more wrapped up in her own career than in the discoveries and feelings of her child. The child protagonist would realise this, but get on with the adventure anyway. Jones wrote from experience: her parents were neglectful of her needs, and those of her two younger sisters. The sisters often went hungry, and for years were banished to sleep in an unheated lean-to shed, to make room in case of visitors. Both parents were intellectuals and progressive educators, but were stingy not only with money but also with warmth and attention. The skinflint father bought the children a complete set of Arthur Ransome books as Christmas presents, but doled them out at a rate of one a year. In self-defence Jones began to write stories for her sisters and herself. When the second world war broke out Jones and her family were evacuated to the Lake District, eventually living in the house once inhabited by the Altounyan children, on whom Ransome had based his Swallows and Amazons series. The great children's author was still around, one day complaining angrily that the children were making too much noise. On another occasion, Diana's younger sister and a friend had their faces slapped by a second Lakeland author who hated children but who was rich and famous because of them: Beatrix Potter. Jones's distinctive scepticism about conventional children's fiction must have started to set in early. Later, when she went to St Anne's college, Oxford, two of her lecturers were JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. Both were then engaged on their famous works of fantasy, but at that time fantasy was distinctly de trop at Oxford. The two professors were tolerated because they were also excellent scholars. Lewis boomed excitingly to crowded halls, while Tolkien muttered inaudibly to Jones and three other students. Years later, just as she was starting to write and publish professionally, and was taking bed-rest because of pregnancy, Jones read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for the first time. This made her realise that a fantasy novel could be not only long, but seriously intended too. As she became more certain of her own writing, she also grew more sceptical of the conventional tropes of fantasy, including those of Tolkien. This questioning became overt with the publication of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996). Presenting her book as a tourist guide to a foreign land, Jones, with affectionate but deadly effect, spoofed or parodied the numerous cliches that riddle those hordes of three-volume sagas about elves and quests. Jones, of course, knew that her novels too were not immune from lampoon, but this book declared her self-awareness, the likeable distance so relished by her audience. Her growing band of readers also knew that Jones's own novels easily transcended the routine stuff of rings and magic and ancient runes. The first of the Harry Potter books by JK Rowling appeared in 1997, and by the turn of the century had become a sensational success. Other publishers were looking around for books they could market to the same vast audience, and were quick to realise that Jones had been fruitfully engaged in fantasy for nearly 30 years. Superficial similarities may be a double-edged sword; one of her series of books features a wizards' university. Among her most popular creations is the Chrestomanci series (novels and short stories – the first appeared in 1977), in which a nine-lived enchanter operates across multiple realities as a civil servant in charge of preventing the abuse of magic; the series includes an idiosyncratic school story, Witch Week (1982). Of the apparent coincidences, Jones said generously to this newspaper in 2003: "I think that she [Rowling] read my books as a young person and remembered lots of stuff; there are so many striking similarities." Her career began as a playwright, with three plays produced in London between 1967 and 1970; her first novel, Change- over (1970), was adult humour; since then her work has been written for younger readers. Besides the two series already mentioned, she wrote the Howl books, beginning with Howl's Moving Castle (1986; filmed in 2004 by Hayao Miyazaki), and two sequels, and the Dalemark sequence (1975-2003), dark-tinged fantasies set in that eponymous country. Some of her best and most enjoyable books are stand-alones, in particular The Ogre Downstairs (1974), The Time of the Ghost (1981) and Fire and Hemlock (1985), each a remarkable blend of pathos and genuinely funny writing. Archer's Goon (1984), extravagantly mixing fantasy with science fiction, was serialised for television by the BBC in 1992. Her most recent novel, the light-hearted Enchanted Glass, appeared last year. Jones won innumerable awards for her writing, including three Carnegie commendations, the Guardian award and a lifetime achievement World Fantasy award. In 2006 she was made an Honorary DLitt by the University of Bristol. She was amused by the considerable academic attention her work attracted; reading in one paper that her work was "rooted in fluidity", she remarked: "Obviously hydroponic, probably a lettuce, possibly a cabbage." Jones was born in London of Welsh parents; she met her husband-to-be, the Chaucerian scholar John A Burrow, just before she went up to Oxford; they married in 1956 and had three sons, Richard, Michael and Colin, all of whom survive her, as do five grandchildren. • Diana Wynne Jones, writer, born 16 August 1934; died 26 March 2011 Diana Wynne Jones Children and teenagers Fantasy Fiction Science fiction CS Lewis JRR Tolkien JK Rowling Harry Potter guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

So long overnight TV Posted: 27 Mar 2011 02:15 PM PDT Apparently, broadcasting programmes through the night costs the BBC £150m a year. So, in order to meet its target of 20% cuts, director general Mark Thompson has warned that the corporation could be forced to take a major channel off air overnight. And this is supposed to put the wind up us? Whenever anyone mentions cuts, either to the arts or public services, well-meaning folks feel obliged to groan and wail and gnash. But this sounds like a brilliant idea to me, quite apart from the money-saving aspect. I mean, why not turn telly off overnight? Closedown is, or was, one of those old-fashioned, late-night rituals that wormed its way into our culture, like listening to the shipping forecast. The test card was another, with its sinister grinning clown and that nice girl stuck in a geometric no-place, condemned to play – or not play – noughts and crosses for ever. Such things, when they go, are rightly missed. One of the important things about telly was that sometimes it stopped. We can feel nostalgia for the sour-sweet satisfactions of the cathode ray tube whining down to a faint white dot, then a spectral after-image, before vanishing altogether. But, in the plasma age, we can't really hope to get that back. Those hours of dead air afterwards, on the other hand – that's something we can all still aspire to. There used to be a mysterious and melancholy atmosphere to late-night TV: a sense that you had stumbled into a world that ordinary people weren't really meant to see. All those Open University professors, for instance, with wide brown ties and spectacles made of Bakelite. But the key thing was you didn't expect it to be on. It felt – well, not transgressive exactly, but different in character than, say, the 6pm-10pm slots. Now that everything is on 24 hours a day (and by "everything" I mean CSI: Miami and Late Night Poker), the magic has gone. Who's watching that telly anyway? Twentysomethings rattling with drugs, thirtysomethings slumped in alcoholic stupors, fortysomething insomniacs with eyes like stab wounds, and elderly people who are, well, just sort of afraid to fall asleep. Not the most attentive of audiences. For most people, watching telly at 4am is what you might call "passive television watching". It is the TV-watching you do when you have tipped over the point at which going to bed is, in defiance of all the laws of common sense, actually more of an effort than watching another half-hour of telly. Again, most people would only be watching TV at that time of night if sticking something on Sky+ or iPlayer was too much of a pain. By that stage you are, effectively, one of the living dead. By that stage, the telly is watching you. The point has been made to me that, were closedown to be reinstated, the major losers would be the deaf, since much of the wee small hours are dedicated to the Sign Zone, where programmes are rescreened with signing accompaniment. Fair point. But I don't think it's an insuperable objection. Among other things, why should the deaf have to lose sleep? The march of digital technology must make it possible for signing to be turn-on-able at time of transmission. Failing that, would anyone miss The One Show if it were abolished to make way for some Sign Zone? Did you know that the last time BBC1 had a closedown was in 1997, when Britannia was cool and the economy booming? Just think of the feelgood factor that reinstating it could bring. Here is something that, more than the Olympics or any Royal Wedding, could bring us together in celebration: one nation in front of a blank television. The death of late-night BBC1 could be the classiest thing the BBC, let alone George Osborne, ever did. Television Open University Sam Leith guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Stallone is to launch a clothing line Posted: 27 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PDT Here's what we're hoping for from the Rocky and Rambo star's menswear label This autumn, Academy Award winner Sly Stallone faces his greatest challenge yet: the film legend is launching his very own clothing line. Stallone's menswear will be based on his two most iconic characters, Rambo and Rocky, and will feature – in the words of the designer – "looks for the rebel and the gentleman". Here are the key pieces we're desperately hoping for. • A deluxe headband. Sly reckons that the line will be "premium", so we're holding out for something in six-ply cashmere that says "soldier-chic". • An olive-green vest. Scoop-necked and a bit military. A menswear cliché perhaps, but the Stallone interpretation could be styled with a gold pendant. One for Cristiano Ronaldo this. • Silk boxing shorts. As underwear for the more conservative consumer and as outerwear for the more open-minded fashionisto. • A "cocktail" belt. Gold and heavy on the hardware, this would nod to Balboa's title belt. Men get a bum deal when it comes to statement accessories. Stallone could change this. • A grey marl tracksuit. Forget American Apparel, Stallone's could be that bit more directional by featuring a high waistband. To be styled with the top tucked in to channel that memorable top-of-the-steps moment. Sylvester Stallone Men's fashion Fashion Fashion designers Imogen Fox guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Lily Allen's TV show is satire Posted: 27 Mar 2011 01:00 PM PDT Lily is parodying the assumption that because a celebrity likes clothes she's the reincarnation of Coco Chanel . . . or something I have found myself to be strangely gripped by that TV show, Lily Allen Opens a Shop, or whatever it's called. Is that all it takes to open a fashion store: a liking for dresses and a sort-of famous name? Agnes, by email Yes, I too have unexpectedly found myself watching that TV show of which you speak – Lily Allen Proves That She May Not Be as "Sharp and Real" as the Press Has Always Claimed, Unless "Sharp and Real" are redefined as "Cackles At Random Intervals and Chain Smokes". Whatever it's called, it has become a regular part of my televisual diet – presumably the ready-made, microwavable part. But you see, Agnes, where you and I differ is our interpretation of the show's message. Where you see confirmation that the fashion and celebrity worlds have become so simultaneously debased that they prop one another up like a house of cards, I perceive a glorious, nay, Swiftian satire. I mean, come on, Agnes! Lily announcing her retirement from public life via the discreet means of a TV series? If only JD Salinger had known that this was the way to achieve real anonymity! The idea that watching a pop star with too much money and too little sense try to open a shop-type-thing with her clubbed-out sister just for, like, the fun of it, provides some kind of dramatic arc? It is simply not possible any of this is intended seriously, and the fact that Mary Portas (a woman who takes shopping as seriously as some people take curing cancer) and Stephen Fry (a man who is now employing his much-vaunted intellect by tweeting all day) are involved, too, just confirms my theory that this is not a TV show but a satire on the modern age. And like all the best satires, this one has a goal beyond mere sneering. Lily is deftly parodying the assumption that just because a celebrity, like, really likes clothes, this is clearly a God-given sign that she is the reincarnation of Coco Chanel and should bless the world with her talent. And because of the parodic ploy of this female Chris Morris, the end is surely nigh for those celebrity fashion ranges, which have been polluting high street stores like flatulence tainting a party atmosphere. Moreover, it is almost hard to hear Lily's witterings over the booming death-knell that this show sounds for any reality TV show that is predicated on the brief: "A celebrity, doing something." So in short, Agnes, do not look upon this show, which we shall hereon call "Lily Allen, Annoying, Still", as a guide to fashion or even as the nadir of television, fashion, celebrity and everything important. See it instead as a deeply moral satire on the pit of excess in which we live, an updated version of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, even. Lily Allen: this century's Mark Twain. Why are fashion editors referring to Kate Middleton as a "style icon" when it is patently obvious she can't dress for shiz? Marina, west London My dear Marina, take my hand and allow me to explain what we in the know call The Rebound Factor. This is when a famous person establishes themselves in a certain role, magazines and newspapers become accustomed to this role being filled and so construct copy around it accordingly. When this role is, for whatever reason, later vacated, the absence is felt by no one more than the press and they proceed to embark – desperately, indiscriminately – on patently stupid rebound relationships. Thus, Lady Gaga is the new Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow is the new Grace Kelly, Angelina Jolie is the new Elizabeth Taylor. On and on it goes, heartbreakingly. It's like seeing a newly single man attempt to find comfort in the arms of a blowup doll: there is no warmth in those plastic arms. Which brings me to Kate Middleton. She is, I am sure, a perfectly pleasant young woman, or as pleasant as any woman can be who thinks marrying into the Windsors is a good life plan. Now, I think we all know whose shoes Middleton is being forced by the press to attempt to fill and we know this because she appears to be wearing those exact shoes. It must take some effort for a girl in her 20s to dress like a Sloane from the 80s, so kudos, really, is due. Yet as if an attractive young woman in a skirt suit wasn't a tragic enough sight, more pitiable has been the British fashion press's desperate insistence that she will be a "style icon" in the manner of her late mother-in-law. I would bring up the blowup doll analogy again but I'm worried my UK passport might be revoked. Fashion Lily Allen Hadley Freeman guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

When the Obamas go out for dinner Posted: 27 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PDT They are accompanied by up to 30 burly Secret Service agents and the other diners are scanned for concealed weapons. But what about our PM? What happens when the president of the United States fancies going out for a meal? He brings a lot more burly men in black suits than our prime minister. According to the Washington Post, when the first family visit a restaurant, they eat quietly, say hello to the chef and leave a "nice, but not crazy, tip". It's the Secret Service who really go to town. Preparations begin several hours before; a small detail conducts a walk-through with the restaurant manager and choose tables for the first family. An hour before the arrival of the president, 20 to 30 agents take up positions all over the building. At the front door, they wield electronic wands, scanning the evening's other diners for hidden weapons. In the kitchen, a Secret Service agent, who is also a trained chef, watches over the restaurant staff's every move. The motorcade then arrives, replete with "police motorcycle and sedan escorts, armored limos, multiple black Suburbans and assorted vans, an ambulance and more police cars and motorcycles". The notice given to chosen restaurants by both presidents and prime ministers is usually very short. "We only found out about 48 hours before," says Lee Bennett, executive chef at London's Le Pont de la Tour, where in March last year, Gordon Brown ate one of his last meals out as prime minister. Visits to the restaurant bookend the Labour years; shortly after his election in 1997, Tony Blair and wife Cherie dined with Bill and Hillary Clinton there. Bennett was surprised by "how little security Brown had. None of them were armed that I could see. Someone came round before to see where the entrances and exits were, but there was no one in the kitchen watching me cook." Were the staff nervous? "The front-of-house didn't think too much of it, especially the staff from overseas. He's not their prime minister. I was a little put out because it was my 30th birthday and I had to cancel everything." Barack Obama Michelle Obama United States Restaurants Food & drink Gordon Brown Tony Blair Tom Meltzer guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The last yarn of Bradford mill Posted: 27 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PDT Workers once came from all over the world to work in Lumb Lane. Now the defunct Bradford mill is being used to stage their stories Lumb Lane was, for a long time, Bradford's most notorious address. Once the main kerb-crawling route through the city's red light district, the road was synonymous with race riots, sex workers and serial killers. It was here that Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, committed his first murders. But today Lumb Lane is a peaceful, if slightly down-at-heel strip of mosques, mini-cab firms and grocery stores run by eastern Europeans. Yet there are signs of life stirring in what was once the industrial heart of the area: the seven-acre James Drummond and Sons complex. Known locally as Lumb Lane mill, Drummonds opened in 1886 and soon became a yarn-producing powerhouse, providing employment for the entire region. The mill staggered on through the postwar period, mostly employing immigrants from Ireland, eastern Europe, Ukraine and Pakistan. But the gates finally closed in 2001, and they remained that way until a group of theatre-makers came along. The Mill: City of Dreams is the fruit of their labours, an ambitious promenade event that will lead audiences through Drummonds' dark, abandoned spaces, discovering intimate, dramatic reconstructions of the lives of former workers. The script, which has been boiled down from hundreds of hours of interviews with residents and ex-mill-workers, is the brainchild of writer and director Madani Younis, of Bradford's Freedom Studios company, with guidance from Jonathan Holmes, a specialist in whopping site-specific events. In 2007, Holmes staged his play Fallujah, about the siege of the Iraqi city, in an old London brewery; two years later, his play Katrina recreated the aftermath of the hurricane in a five-storey warehouse on the South Bank. The audience has an active part to play in The Mill: you enter via a smart sales suite, where a team of developers attempt to sell you a vision of the mill regenerated into luxury apartments. Yet instead of show flats, you find haunting vignettes of the mill's former life, played by a cast of professional actors augmented by a large chorus of local volunteers. Yet Drummonds is so vast that simply walking through the abandoned space is a drama in itself. Stripped of machinery, the weaving shed is a rust-stained expanse the size of a football pitch, its long corridors lined with offices and cubby holes. The architectural climax, though, is on the top floor: a barrel-shaped glasshouse lined with curving wooden struts. It's like standing in the ribcage of a giant whale. "This was the wool-sorting floor," says Younis. "It still stank of lanolin when we first came in." The workshop was freezing in winter and a furnace in summer, but sorting wool fibres had to be done in daylight. Younis became intrigued by the fate of Bradford's redundant mills when he first moved to the area and discovered that the majority were either abandoned or being used as social centres and snooker halls. "The genesis of the play came from the snooker halls," he says. "These are unpoliced, unlicensed premises where young Asian males meet up to smoke cannabis freely. It struck me how these people had colonised the semi-derelict spaces that had once represented their parents' and grandparents' dreams." We head across town to the Ukrainian social club, where a tea-dance for former mill-workers is in progress. The event has been arranged to reunite Drummonds employees, and thank those who were interviewed for the project. Latifa Bari recalls how she came to Bradford from Nairobi in the 1950s: "My father told me I was getting married and going to work in a place where the streets were covered in milk. He meant snow. When I arrived, I had nothing with me but a picture of the man I was to marry, and a bottle of aspirin, which I intended to take if I was unhappy. Fortunately, he was much more handsome than his photograph." Zene Mozil was evacuated to Bradford from Poland when her parents were taken by the Nazis. "I preferred it to Poland, though you couldn't get garlic," she says. "Now every shop on the street is a Polish delicatessen." While a student, Anne Selka used to work holiday shifts in the canteen without ever revealing to her co-workers that it was her grandfather, a Czech-born entrepreneur, who rescued Drummonds from bankruptcy in 1931. Though the mill never became particularly profitable under the Selkas, the family was respected by the workforce, as they resisted making redundancies until the business became impossible to sustain. Some workers have brought their redundancy notices. Selka tells them her father "wept blood over those letters. The day he realised he would have to start laying off the workforce was the darkest day of his life." By the time the Selkas sold off the mill, Manningham, the once-respectable area where it is located, was in decline. "There were prostitutes lined up outside the factory gates," recalls 84-year-old Nellie Jowett, who worked in the mill with her five sisters. Kerb-crawlers used to proposition them, too. For Holmes, the project felt close to home. "My family were originally shopkeepers from Manningham. A photograph of my great-uncle turned up in the archive. It made me realise that often the place you know least about is your own doorstep." He found entering the mill for the first time unsettling. "You're struck by the sheer size of this empty mausoleum to the industrial age. Yet when you look closer, there are signs of more recent abandonment. Notices pinned to the walls giving mobile numbers remind you that the place remained active into the 21st century." He mentions a handwritten sign found in the locker room after the last workers departed 10 years ago. "Due to unavoidable circumstances," it read, "the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off." Theatre Bradford Manufacturing sector Regeneration Communities Alfred Hickling guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Super Glue inventor dies aged 94 Posted: 27 Mar 2011 05:22 PM PDT Harry Wesley Coover Jr created the glue by accident while working for Tennessee Eastman Company Harry Wesley Coover Jr, known as the inventor of Super Glue, has died at his home in Kingsport, Tennessee, aged 94. Coover was working for Tennessee Eastman Company when an accident resulted in the creation of cyanoacrylate – better known as Super Glue – according to his grandson, Adam Paul of South Carolina. An assistant was distressed that some new refractometer prisms were ruined when they were glued together, marking the invention of the popular adhesive. The US president, Barack Obama, honoured Coover in 2010 with the National Medal of Science. Coover was born in Newark, Delaware. He received a degree in chemistry from Hobart College in New York before getting a master's degree and PhD from Cornell. He worked his way up to become vice president of the chemical division for development at Eastman Kodak. Coover and the team of chemists he worked with became prolific patent holders, achieving more than 460. The work included polymers, organophosphate chemistry, the gasification of coal and of course, cyanoacrylate. Coover also had a part in early US television history, appearing with Garry Moore on the game show I've Got a Secret. Moore, the show's host, and Coover were hung in the air on bars that were stuck to metal supports with a single drop of his glue during a live television broadcast. The Industrial Research Institute, for which he served as president in 1982, honoured Coover with a gold medal and the US Patent Office inducted him into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, in 2004. United States guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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