|
|
|
Noticias del Reino Unido
|
The Guardian World News Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:17:52 GMT |
|
ICC charges Pakistan trio at centre of betting scam
Captain and two bowlers protest their innocence as players are to be interviewed by police under caution The three Pakistan cricketers at the centre of an alleged betting scam that has thrown world cricket into crisis were last night charged under the anti-corruption code of the game's governing body and provisionally suspended. After a day that began with the Pakistan Cricket Board agreeing to omit the players from the team for the rest of the tour, and the Pakistan high commissioner claiming they were "set-up" by the News of the World, the ICC suspended the three pending a tribunal. Outside the west London hotel in which Test captain Salman Butt, fast bowler Mohammad Asif and brilliant teenage prospect Mohammad Amir are also staying, ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat provided the swift action many in the game had demanded. "We will not tolerate corruption in cricket – simple as that. We must be decisive with such matters and, if proven, these offences carry serious penalties up to a life ban," he said. "The ICC will do everything possible to keep such conduct out of the game and we will stop at nothing to protect the sport's integrity. While we believe the problem is not widespread, we must always be vigilant. It is important, however, that we do not pre-judge the guilt of these three players. That is for the independent tribunal alone to decide." Under tougher new rules brought in last year by the ICC, the players can be suspended provisionally ahead of any hearing if it is in the interests of the game. The row was triggered by allegations in the News of the World that the three had agreed to bowl no-balls in specific overs of last week's fourth Test at Lord's in return for money. The charges were announced after officials from the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) spent the afternoon at Scotland Yard viewing evidence and seeking police go-ahead. The police are conducting a parallel criminal inquiry. The three players will today be interviewed under police caution for the first time. Earlier they had agreed to withdraw from the rest of the tour citing the "mental torture" they had been placed under by the allegations. They protested their innocence and the Pakistani high commissioner suggested they might have been "set up" by the News of the World. While their team-mates were turning out against Somerset 160 miles away in Taunton, the accused three were being whisked into their country's high commission in London amid a flurry of claims and top level political negotiations. ICC investigators, who had been examining spot-fixing allegations against Pakistan for some time, have been in London since Monday. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the former Northern Ireland police chief who was appointed chairman of the ACSU three months ago, arrived from Abu Dhabi to join them, while its chief investigator, Ravi Sawani, met police. But despite withdrawing the players from the tour, following pressure behind the scenes from the England and Wales Cricket Board and the sport's global governing body, the Pakistan camp remained bullish. The high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, claimed the players had been "set up" by the News of the World. Asked if they had been framed, he answered "yes" and suggested the newspaper's video evidence could have been filmed after the contentious no-balls had been bowled. The News of the World said it "refuses to respond to such ludicrous allegations". The newspaper is understood to be preparing further revelations for Sunday. Hasan said of the three players: "They are extremely disturbed about what has happened in the past week, particularly in regards to their alleged involvement in the crime. They mentioned they are entirely innocent and shall defend their innocence as such. "They further maintain that on account of the mental torture that has affected them they are not in right frame of mind to play the remaining matches." Pakistani journalists repeatedly asked whether the team was a victim of a conspiracy and Pakistan's sports minister, Ijaz Jakhrani, also suggested there could be another explanation for the apparently damning News of the World evidence. "Let's wait until the report comes. After that we will be in a position to see if it is spot fixing, if it is match fixing or if it is a conspiracy against these players or against the country," he told the Indian news channel CNN-IBN. After the three wary-looking players arrived to a media posse and a small knot of 20 or so protesters, officials from the Pakistan high commission handed out copies of an article by the journalist and academic Roy Greenslade. The piece was highly critical of the methods used in previous stings by Mazher Mahmood – the so-called "Fake Sheikh" behind the sensational News of the World claim that a middleman accepted £150,000 to correctly predict the exact time when no-balls would be bowled. Although Hasan insisted the three players were "not running away" – they will remain in England and their passports are being held by the team manager – they were whisked out of a side door and departed in a people carrier while the car in which they arrived acted as a decoy. Mazhar Majeed, the 35-year-old middleman the News of the World alleges was at the heart of the betting sting, was arrested on Sunday and released on bail. Separately, he was also arrested as part of an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs into money laundering through Croydon Athletic, the non-league football club he owns. Both the ECB and the ICC felt the intense focus on and public clamour for action had made it impossible for the three players to play any further part in the tour. The ICC was under pressure to act before Sunday's Twenty20 match between England and Pakistan in Cardiff. Sources had indicated all week that a negotiated withdrawal was the most likely solution, but a last minute intervention from PCB chairman, Ijaz Butt, threw a spanner in the works. His insistence that the players might still play was seen as an attempt to reassure the Pakistani public that it was not capitulating.
NoW in fresh phone hacking charge
• Calls for judicial inquiry after reporter is suspended
• Latest phone hacking allegation dates from earlier this year
• Four targets poised to sue police over failure to warn them The government tonight came under pressure to set up a judicial inquiry into the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World after the paper confirmed that it has suspended a journalist while it investigates new allegations of the unlawful interception of voicemail. The prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, has denied a report in the New York Times which claimed he freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques when he was editing the paper and "actively encouraged" a named reporter to engage in illegal interception of voicemail messages. Coulson has always denied knowing of any illegal activity by his journalists. Scotland Yard, too, found itself in the firing line after the New York Times quoted unnamed detectives alleging they had cut short their investigation because of their close relationship with the News of the World. A group of four public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, is poised to sue police over a failure to warn them they had been targeted by the private investigator at the centre of the scandal, Glenn Mulcaire. The Guardian has learned that the Metropolitan police commissioner at the time of the original investigation, Sir Ian Blair, was among those whose names were found in material seized from Mulcaire, raising questions about whether officers who were directly involved in the investigation had discovered that they, too, had been targets of the newspaper. It is understood Blair was assured at the time that his phone had not been hacked. The former Labour minister Tom Watson today called on the government to set up an inquiry into the relationship between Scotland Yard and Rupert Murdoch's News Group, which publishes the News of the World. In a letter which was addressed to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, in the absence of the prime minister, who is on paternity leave, Watson wrote: "The testimony given to the New York Times is that the police did not share all the relevant information with the Crown Prosecution Service, and that, if they had done, the CPS would have reached a different conclusion. These are clear grounds for a judicial inquiry. "I think that information should be made available to the people concerned." Amid signs of unease among the Tories' coalition partners at the new allegations about Coulson, a Lib Dem member of the Commons culture select committee has also called for an inquiry. Adrian Sanders, MP for Torbay, said: "For the sake of justice a judicial inquiry would, along the lines of the Hutton inquiry, put this to bed once and for all." At the end of the original police inquiry, in January 2007, Mulcaire and the News of the World's royal reporter, Clive Goodman, were jailed for illegally intercepting the voicemail messages of eight people. The Guardian last year revealed that the scandal involved other journalists at the paper and numerous other victims. The News of the World today confirmed one of its reporters is currently suspended after his phone number was allegedly identified as the source of an unauthorised attempt earlier this year to access the voicemail of a public figure. The Guardian understands the suspended reporter has worked at the News of the World since January 2005, specialising in celebrity scoops. His name has not appeared in the paper since April. The reporter today did not return phone calls. The paper's managing editor, Bill Akass, said it was still investigating the allegation. The Press Complaints Commission said it had been aware of the allegation since June but had chosen not to investigate because it was the subject of legal action by the alleged victim. In May the PCC's chair, Lady Buscombe, told Radio 4's Today programme: "If there was a whiff of any continuing activity in this regard, we would be on it like a ton of bricks. I can absolutely assure you of that." Scotland Yard is facing legal action from four people whose names were found in material seized from Mulcaire in 2006 and who were not warned by police that they were potential victims. The former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has written to them asking for an explanation for the failure. His solicitor, Dominic Crossley, said: "Absent a sufficient response, he will be beginning proceedings." Prescott said tonight: "It's vital that the Met comes clean and reveals who and how many people were targeted by this rogue newspaper. We need to know the full truth." The former Europe minister Chris Bryant, whose name and phone number were found in Mulcaire's possession and who was targeted by tabloid journalists, separately is preparing for a similar judicial review of the police conduct of the case. Bryant is involved in a joint action with an investigative journalist, Brendan Montague, and one of Scotland Yard's former deputy assistant commissioners, Brian Paddick, whose name was found in Mulcaire's records but who was never warned by his own former colleagues. Their solicitor, Tamsin Allen of Bindman, plans to ask the court to order Scotland Yard to hand over a list of all those who have been identified as potential victims. She said: "According to the rules, the claim and the pre-action letter should be served on anyone with a legitimate interest in the outcome. We say that that includes all of the people who are effected in the same way as our clients." According to paperwork in the possession of the CPS and seen by the Guardian, Scotland Yard made repeated requests to prosecutors to "ring-fence" the evidence in order to conceal the names of "sensitive" victims. The paperwork also shows that, after studying phone records, the police found that "a vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high profile individuals (politicians, celebrities) have been identified as being accessed without authority" but the officer in charge, Andy Hayman, subsequently claimed that they had found "only a handful" of victims, a claim which has been repeated by senior Yard officials in recent press briefings. The lead Labour member on the Metropolitan Police Authority, Joanne McCart ney, tonight wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, asking for details of senior officers whose voicemail may have been intercepted by Mulcaire. "It is vital that the public can be confident the Met is investigating crime without fear or favour," she wrote. Today it emerged another senior Scotland Yard officer at the time, Michael Fuller, was also on the list of names found in the private investigator's possession. Scotland Yard has previously admitted that police officers as well as government, military and royal figures were among those who were warned they were potential victims, but they have refused to identify the individuals or even to say how many they warned. Scotland Yard today dismissed the claims about them. "The Met does not consider the issues raised by the New York Times accurately reflect how the investigation was conducted," a spokesman said. Other legal actions are also being launched. Sky TV football commentator Andy Gray, the former MP George Galloway, and Max Clifford's former assistant, Nicola Phillips, have all separately issued proceedings for invasion of privacy. And Mark Lewis, a solicitor who handled an earlier legal action, is suing Scotland Yard and the Press Complaints Commission in relation to remarks made in a speech made by Lady Buscombe last year. The PCC has formally apologised, but the case continues. Others who are known to have had their voicemail accessed – but who were not identified in the original court case – include Prince William, Prince Harry, the then culturesecretary Tessa Jowell, Boris Johnson, the then-editor of the Sun Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson himself as editor of the News of the World, and the former England football manager Steve McClaren.
Middle East peace 'in a year'
Israeli and Palestinian leaders begin framework talks on a peace deal which could encompass borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security The Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, met for the first day of direct talks in Washington yesterday and agreed that a peace deal could be achieved within a year. George Mitchell, the White House envoy who joined the negotiations, said the two leaders decided to begin putting together a framework agreement on all major issues – such as borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security – that will "establish the fundamental compromises necessary" to flesh out a comprehensive peace deal. Mitchell said Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to meet again in a fortnight in the Middle East and every two weeks after that. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Mitchell will attend the first of those meetings on 14 September. The negotiations are likely to face their first real test with the next round of talks coming just days before Israel's partial freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank comes to an end. Netanyahu has so far resisted US calls to renew the freeze, which the Palestinians see as a litmus test of the Israeli prime minister's intent. Mitchell declined to disclose the detail of the discussions, although he said some of the major issues were touched on. Netanyahu and Abbas met US officials and then met privately. Mitchell described the two men's relationship at the talks as "cordial". Before the talks opened, Netanyahu said two key demands – recognition of his country as a Jewish state and arrangements to ensure it does not come under attack from within a Palestinian state – were a prerequisite to a wider agreement. Netanyahu again called Abbas his "partner in peace" and said he was prepared to make "painful concessions" to reach a deal. But the Israeli prime minister said that what he called the "two pillars to peace" must be resolved. Clinton launched the negotiations by calling for the leaders to show themselves as bold and courageous statesmen and reach a comprehensive peace agreement within the one-year deadline set by Barack Obama. "We understand the suspicion and scepticism that so many feel born out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes," she said. "But by being here today you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change." Netanyahu said Israel was prepared to make sacrifices to reach an agreement. "Together we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict. This will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides … from my side and from your side," he said. Hamas responded to the talks by announcing that it has joined forces with other armed groups such as Islamic Jihad to launch a wave of attacks against Israel. Earlier this week, Hamas claimed responsibility for the killing of four Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including a pregnant woman. The Israeli prime minister said there were two issues that he regarded as central to any agreement: legitimacy and security. "Just as you expect us to be ready to recognise a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognise Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people," he said. "I said too, a real peace must take into account the genuine security needs of Israel … new forces have risen in our region, Iran and its proxies and the rise of missile warfare [with Hamas attacks from Gaza]. A peace agreement must take into account security arrangements against these real threats." Abbas said he believed a deal was possible. "We're not starting from scratch, because we had many rounds of negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli government."
Brittle bone drug 'raises cancer risk'
Regulatory agency says findings should not stop medicinal use of oral bisphosphonates Longterm use of drugs that are commonly prescribed for osteoporosis may be doubling the users' risk of developing cancer of the oesophagus, a study warns. The drugs are routinely used to either treat or prevent osteoporosis and other bone conditions and are taken by many hundreds of thousands of patients. Research in today's British Medical Journal links the use of oral bisphosphonates to an increased risk of getting one of the more severe forms of cancer, although no links were found to stomach or bowel cancer. Experts from the University of Oxford's cancer epidemiology unit and the government's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) analysed data from a UK GP practice database on around 6 million people. Among those aged 40 and over, 2,954 had oesophageal cancer, 2,018 had gastric cancer and 10,641 had bowel cancer, all diagnosed between 1995 and 2005. Examination of their health records showed that the chance of oesophageal cancer was 30% higher in people who had had one or more previous prescriptions for oral bisphosphonates, compared with people who had never taken the drugs. The risk was almost double for those who had 10 or more prescriptions, compared with those who had had less than 10. And for those taking the drugs for at least three years – five years on average – the risk was more than double compared with those who had never had a prescription for the drugs. Typically, oesophageal cancer develops in one per 1,000 people aged 60 to 79 over five years. Use of oral bisphosphonates over five years would push this up to two cases per 1,000 people, the authors said. The main author, Dr Jane Green, said: "Oesophageal cancer is uncommon. The increased risks we found were in people who used oral bisphosphonates for about five years, and even if our results are confirmed, few people taking bisphosphonates are likely to develop oesophageal cancer as a result of taking these drugs. "Our findings are part of a wider picture. Bisphosphonates are being increasingly prescribed to prevent fractures, and what is lacking is reliable information on the benefits and risks of their use in the long-term." Each year, around 8,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with the disease and around 7,500 people die from it. An MHRA spokesman said the findings should not stop patients from taking their bisphosphonate medicine. He said the UK Commission on Human Medicines had advised that the evidence from the study was not strong enough to suggest a definite causal association between oral bisphosphonates and oesophageal cancer. However in order to reduce risk of oesophageal irritation it is important to carefully follow the instructions. The spokesman added: "Patients should also report any signs of oesophageal irritation such as difficulties or pain on swallowing, chest pain, or heartburn to their doctor." Recent studies have suggested no link between the drugs and oesophageal cancer, but it is thought the drugs do protect against breast cancer in post-menopausal women.
Asil Nadir faces Old Bailey hearing
• Fugitive tycoon returns to UK after 17 years
• Q&A: Asil Nadir trial
• Profile: Asil Nadir Fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir will appear in court today for the first time since fleeing Britain 17 years ago, during which a provisional trial date may be fixed and his bail renewed during a brief hearing at the Old Bailey. Nadir was given bail in his absence on 30 July on condition he returns to the UK and attends court today. Old Bailey judge Mr Justice Bean said he hoped it would end the "legal limbo" which existed since Nadir fled Britain for Northern Cyprus. He also quashed an arrest warrant for him and imposed 10 conditions on bail, including Nadir, 69, being electronically tagged. Nadir was facing 66 counts of theft involving £34m fraud allegations in May 1993 when he flew from Britain to the Mediterranean island, which has no extradition treaty with the UK. The Conservative Party donor was secretly flown out in a private plane after his Polly Peck business empire collapsed. He had appeared in court the previous year but had not technically surrendered to his bail. So, the judge said, a subsequent arrest warrant issued on the basis that he had breached his bail, was not valid. Nadir's legal team told the court he was willing to return to face trial if he was granted bail. The Serious Fraud Office had agreed not to oppose bail if the stringent conditions were imposed. The conditions include depositing £250,000 with the court as a security and surrendering travel documents. Defence barrister William Clegg, QC, said Nadir had a "determined intention" to stand trial. Nadir, who now has new business interests in Northern Cyprus, arrived at Luton airport a week ago with his 26-year-old wife, Nur. The couple are renting a £20,000-a-month town house in Mayfair, central London, as Nadir's legal team prepare his defence.
Questions over special adviser roles
Senior Whitehall figures concerned that Tory party employees have been given civil service roles The coalition has quietly appointed a string of party employees to civil service roles – including one aide to the foreign secretary, William Hague – in a move that has raised concerns among senior Whitehall figures, the Guardian has learned. Hague today said he felt forced to give yesterday's unprecedented personal statement about his marriage to "put the record straight" after intense speculation about his relationship with a special adviser in a row that has cast light on the propriety of political appointments. Separately, several Conservative party and MP employees have been given civil service roles in the Cabinet Office, Department for Education, Foreign Office and Downing Street, stretching the rules regarding appointments. While special advisers are political appointees who can be hired at the will of ministers, civil servants are supposed to be politically impartial and in the majority of cases go through competitive processes to get a job. Chloe Dalton, an adviser to Hague in opposition, has been drafted into the Foreign Office as a civil servant. Two speechwriters to David Cameron before the election, Ameetpal Gill and Clare Foges, have paid civil service jobs in Downing Street. Sam Freedman, who helped devise the Tories' free schools policy in opposition, has been made an adviser on the civil service pay roll in the DfE. Rishi Saha, an internet expert who is close to Cameron's inner circle and was head of digital strategy for the Conservatives, has been appointed the deputy director of digital communications at the Cabinet Office. The Guardian understands that in at least two, unnamed cases the Cabinet Office conduct and ethics department was asked to vet the appointments and passed them. A Cabinet Office spokesman said that all civil service appointees must abide by a code dictating that they perform all functions impartially. He added: "Departmental recruitment policies allow individuals to be appointed without open competition on a fixed-term contract where positions need to be filled at short notice. It would be misleading to suggest that there is one particular reason for such appointments. There are a range of specialist skills that may be needed urgently, particularly when a new government is bringing forward a whole new set of policies." Jonathan Baume, head of the FDA union of senior civil servants, said: "Where we start to have concerns is where you get people with political backgrounds being appointed to civil servant roles. That's when I start to get nervous." A Downing Street source insisted that Labour made similar appointments when it came to power and said the coalition government was more transparent than its predecessors. It emerged today that Downing Street failed to include the aide at the centre of the row over Hague's private life in an official list of special advisers published in June. It raises questions about whether Christopher Myers's appointment was official and whether the list, designed to demonstrate how the coalition was cutting back on political appointments, was complete. Hague's office confirmed the appointment of Myers, who quit yesterday citing the pressure of speculation surrounding his relationship with the foreign secretary, was approved on 24 May. The official list naming all so-called "Spads" and their wage brackets did not include Myers when it was revealed on 10 June. The Cabinet Office said Myers was not included because he had not taken up the post by 10 June 10 despite the appointment being confirmed. Liam Fox became the second secretary of state to appoint a third spad in August. Hague spoke out as Cameron's office confirmed the prime minister has "100% confidence" in his foreign secretary. Hague said he had made the "very personal statement", in which he denied allegations that he was gay, that his marriage was in trouble and that he had an improper relationship with Myers, to end speculation. The statement revealed that he and his wife Ffion had suffered a series of miscarriages. His admission that he and Myers had shared twin bedrooms during the election campaign drew criticisms from Tory colleagues who questioned his judgment. Hague told a Foreign Office press conference today: "Yesterday, I made a very personal statement, which was not an easy thing to do. I am not going to expand on that today. My wife and I really felt we had had enough of the circulation of untrue allegations, particularly on the internet, and at some point you have to speak out about that and put the record straight." Asked about his colleague John Redwood's suggestion that Hague himself now acknowledged he had exercised "poor judgment" in sharing a room with his assistant, Hague said his work "has not missed a beat, and will not miss a beat, at any stage. I have not spent many minutes away from all duties of the foreign secretary." The Tory peer Lord Tebbit said Hague had been "naive at best, foolish at worst". Redwood wrote on his blog: "Let us hope this is now an end to the matter. Mr Hague himself now seems to believe that it was poor judgment to share a hotel room with an assistant." Hague was forced to issue the extraordinarily personal and detailed statement under mounting pressure from reports in political blogs and investigations by newspapers over the past few weeks speculating about the appointment of the 25-year old Durham university graduate. Downing Street denied reports Hague was prepared to quit over the furore.
Gulf oil rig fire sparks pollution fears
Thirteen workers flee drilling platform but oil company denies spill Fresh fears about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were raised today when fire forced workers to abandon an oil and gas platform, just six months after the BP explosion that created an environmental disaster in the region. The company, Mariner Energy, said none of the 13 workers, who fled the platform and took to the sea in immersion suits, were injured. The coastguard said they were taken by ship to a nearby platform and from there to hospital in Houma, Louisiana, to be checked. Ships, helicopters and a plane were sent by the coastguard from Houston, New Orleans and Mobile. Photographs of smoke billowing from the rig alarmed politicians, environmentalists, fishermen and others on the Gulf coast, still coping with pollution from the BP oil spill. Peter Troedsson, a spokesman for the coastguard, said the fire had been put out and, in spite of initial reports of an oil slick, ships and helicopters at the scene could see no pollution round the platform. He said the initial report had come from a Mariner ship at the scene, but the coastguards could see no oil sheen at the site. The fire is a setback for the oil industry, which has been arguing that drilling in the Gulf is safe and that the BP explosion was a rare event. It came only 24 hours after companies including Mariner had staged a rally in Houston against a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. About 5,000 employees had been bussed in for the rally. Barbara Dianne Hagood, a spokesman for Mariner Energy, told the Financial Times on Wednesday: "I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this [the Obama] administration is trying to break us. The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the Gulf coast, Gulf coast employees and Gulf coast residents." Another spokesman for Mariner, Patrick Cassidy, said he did not anticipate any pollution, as the platform had not been drilling and there had been no blowout. "There is no hydrocarbon spill," he said. The fire had broken out on a facility above the water, at some distance from the wells, he added. Dave Reed, an oil worker on a platform about 14 miles away, told CNN he could see the smoke and that a call had gone out for ships, helicopters and planes in the region to divert to the area. "It took an hour for the helicopters to get here and all 13 were taken from the water," Reed said. The alarm was raised by a commercial helicopter flying over the platform. A coastguard spokesman, chief petty officer John Edwards, said: "We were able to confirm that all people were accounted for." The fire broke out on the platform Vermilion Oil Rig 380, about 90 miles south of the Louisiana Coast and west of the earlier BP explosion that had killed 11 workers. Both the White House and the coastguard said they did not anticipate any pollution, but that ships equipped with facilities to help clean up spills had been sent to the area as a precaution. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said: "We obviously have response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water." The White House stressed that, unlike the BP rig, the platform was not a deepwater facility and was only working to a depth of 340ft. BP's attempts to cap its well, which saw hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spill into the Gulf, were bedevilled by the depth at which they had been drilling. They finally capped the well in July. Mariner is a small company in the process of being taken over by the Apache oil company in a deal worth an estimated $3.9bn (£2.5bn). The deal has not yet been completed. Shares in both companies fell after news of the fire.
RBS cuts 3,500 British jobs
Total positions lost at bailed-out British banks RBS and Lloyds rises to almost 45,000 The total number of British jobs axed by RBS and Lloyds TSB, both of which were bailed out by the taxpayer and are still part owned by the government, reached almost 45,000 today. RBS announced that it was axing 3,500 back-office jobs as a result of the sale of 318 of its branches to Santander, a move demanded by EU regulators in return for the bank's £54bn government bailout almost two years ago. That takes the total number of posts lost since Stephen Hester took over as chief executive two years ago to almost 27,000. The decision was met with dismay by union leaders, who described the latest in a string of job losses from the financial services sector as "a horror story", not least because it comes after the bank, in which the taxpayer has an 84% stake, announced profits of £1.1bn last month. Earlier this summer, Lloyds TSB axed another 1,850 posts, largely from the Halifax business it rescued amid controversy at the height of the banking crisis, taking the toll since it was bailed out to almost 18,000. The full impact could actually be even higher as a further 1,000 positions are on the line because of Lloyds's decision to close the 265 agencies used by Halifax to allow customers to pay money into their accounts. Often based in estate agents, the people affected by this decision are not employed by Lloyds. RBS, meanwhile, said today that the axe would fall across its back office, technology and property operations and no front-line – or "customer-facing" – staff would be lost. Over the next two years, RBS intends to close 12 of its business operations centres: the axe will fall in Leeds, Ashton House in Bolton, Enfield, Harrogate, Bristol, Borehamwood, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Plymouth, Telford, Bradford and Norwich. It will retain its centres in Birmingham, Chatham, Edinburgh, Greenock, London, Manchester, Rotherham, Southend, Menai and at a second site in Bolton. RBS, however, actually expects staffing levels in Scotland to rise, especially in Edinburgh and Greenock, as it consolidates its mortgage, IT and support services on two key sites in the area; the 318 branches sold to Santander are all south of the border. RBS also shifting 150 technology posts from the Netherlands to Edinburgh. RBS employs 24,000 people in its back-office functions, out of a total workforce of just under 100,000. "It will be a specially bitter pill for staff to swallow as RBS has decided to move some of the jobs abroad to the far east, India and America," said Rob MacGregor, national officer at the union Unite. "Just three weeks ago, staff were boosted to hear of the £1.1bn half-year profit, yet today thousands of them are told that they have no future at the bank. "The scale of the cuts announced today beggars belief and staff across the country today will be left reeling from this news. We continue to see a financial services sector which thinks the skills and expertise of its staff are a disposable asset with scant regard for the high level of service these very same staff provide to their customers." But a spokesperson for RBS said: "Having to cut jobs is the most difficult part of our work to rebuild RBS and repay taxpayers for their support. "We continue to make efficiencies across our business and adjust our plans in line with the divestments we have been required to make by the EU. We will do all we can to support our staff, offer redeployment opportunities wherever possible and keep compulsory redundancies to an absolute minimum."
Hurricane warning for US east coast
Warning extended to include Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts Hurricane Earl blew towards North Carolina today with winds of up to 125mph (200kph), putting the east coast on alert. Federal emergency management agency (Fema) administrator Craig Fugate said there was no longer time to wait on the next forecast to see how close the eye of the storm might get to shore. A hurricane warning for the tip of Massachusetts, including Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, joined earlier warnings and watches for hurricanes or tropical storms that stretch from North Carolina up to near the Canadian border. "They really need to focus today on what they're going to do before the storm gets there," Fugate said. "Implement your plans and be ready to heed evacuation orders." Earl was a dangerous category 3 storm and the hurricane force winds were beginning to spread farther from the eye as the centre of the storm underwent a change, the National Hurricane Centre in Miami said. The centre's director, Bill Read, said hurricane winds were spread 90 miles from the eye and widening. The eye of the storm was predicted to remain about 30 to 75 miles east of the Outer Banks, meaning that, at the closest point of approach, the western edge of the eyewall could impact Cape Hatteras, with huge waves, beach erosion and maybe some property damage from the waves. "They're going to have a full impact of a major hurricane," Read said. There will be a similar close approach for the eastern tip of Long Island, Rhode Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. "They'll be facing a similar scenario that North Carolina is facing today," Read said. "And it will be bigger. The storm won't be as strong but they spread out as they go north and the rain will be spreading from New England." That will mean strong, gusty winds much like a nor'easter, and because leaves are still on the trees, there could be fallen trees or limbs and downed power lines. "This is the strongest hurricane to threaten the northeast and New England since Hurricane Bob in 1991," said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Hurricane Centre. "They don't get storms this powerful very often." The North Carolina National Guard is deploying 80 troops to help, and president Barack Obama declared an emergency in the state. The declaration authorises the Department of Homeland Security and Fema to coordinate all disaster relief efforts.
How the Last Poets ended up on an FBI watch list
Musicians don't often end up on FBI watch lists, but the Last Poets did, thanks to their links with the Black Panthers. Dorian Lynskey looks back at a time when pop and politics collided as never before One day last December, Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets attended a gathering in Chicago to commemorate local Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, who was shot dead by the police 40 years earlier. There were about 30 people, including the widows of Hampton and fellow Panther Eldridge Cleaver, and former members of radical groups such as Weatherman. "We laughed and drank wine and talked about what we all had been through," Hassan says. "I'm glad I made it. It was good to see a lot of those people still living, you know?" They were survivors of a turbulent period. In 1968, just two years after Oakland residents Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panthers, FBI director J Edgar Hoover called the party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" and set about spending millions of dollars to infiltrate, sabotage and divide it. By the mid 70s, it was in terminal decline, and Hampton was far from the only fatality. The Panthers' legacy has been fiercely debated ever since. Some people claim the leadership, especially Newton, were their own worst enemies: paranoid hotheads prone to violence and cronyism. Others regard them as heroes who gave young African-Americans power and pride in the face of endemic racism, only to be brought down by Hoover's machinations. A new project, Tongues on Fire, aims to accentuate the positive, bringing together the party's official artist and minister of culture, Emory Douglas, with musicians such as the Last Poets, the Roots and jazz saxophonist David Murray. Valerie Malot, a Frenchwoman who is Murray's wife and producer, conceived Tongues on Fire after attending an activist convention in Oakland and seeing Bobby Seale selling a Panther-themed hot sauce named after the famous 60s war cry Burn Baby Burn. "I was really shocked when you've tried all your life to change people's conditions and you end up selling hot sauce at a convention," she says. Malot's focus on Douglas makes sense. He came to work on the Black Panther newspaper when the party had barely a dozen members, and the vivid, revolutionary designs he produced during the subsequent decade are part of the era's visual vocabulary. But the Panthers' relationship with music was much more complex. When Newton and Seale were preparing the first edition of the newspaper in 1966, they listened obsessively to "brother Bobby" Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, especially Ballad of a Thin Man, which Newton read, rather fancifully, as a parable of racist oppression. At this point, black artists were still using code words such as "respect" and "pushing" when dealing with the subject of race. Even after blackness entered pop's lexicon via James Brown's Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud, Newton and Seale's rhetoric, and Douglas's artwork, only found their musical analogue with the arrival of the Last Poets. Formed in Harlem in 1968, the Last Poets lost most of their founding members before they even recorded their debut album. The classic lineup on the Poets' eponymous 1970 release consisted of Abiodun Oyewole, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan. In his hometown of Akron, Ohio, Hassan had been an angry young man looking for direction when he saw the Panthers' first televised action: their armed entrance into the California legislature in May 1967. "Woah," he remembers. "I was so excited to see some young black men do that. The Panthers were my first introduction to black militancy. About two months later I saw Huey Newton on the news, standing on the fenders of two cars and throwing down his fists at these white cops. I thought the revolution was going to begin and end in California. I ain't never been in a gang, but if I was going to be in a gang I wanted to be in a gang that stood up and defended the black community from racist cops." Nobody had ever heard anything like the Last Poets. They combined the militant spirit of avant-garde jazz musicians such as Archie Shepp with the furious poetry of Amiri Baraka, who called for "poems that kill: assassin poems". Their rage was aimed at both white America ("the Statue of Liberty is a prostitute") and apathetic, unrevolutionary black people. Controversially, they called these people "niggers". "The Last Poets out-niggered everybody," Hassan says with a throaty chuckle. "We had Wake Up Niggers, Niggers Are Scared of Revolution … Our thing was not to use that word as casually as the kids today. You got young kids who think it's OK to be a nigger. Nah, it ain't OK. We were trying to get rid of the nigger in our community and in ourselves. The difference between us and hip-hop is we had direction, we had a movement, we had people who kept our eyes on the prize. We weren't just bullshitting and jiving." Despite zero airplay, the response to the album from those who heard it was "overwhelming" and the Panthers saw a fantastic recruitment opportunity in the Poets. "Everybody knew how much the people liked us and everybody wanted us to become a part of their thing," says Hassan. "But we kept ourselves independent." They did not need to be card-carrying members in order to be useful. "Music to [the Panthers] was something to get people's attention so they could speak," says David Murray, who was a teenager at the time. "Like a trumpet sounds and then there's a speech." Very soon the party had a soundtrack, with such radical poets as the Watts Prophets, Nikki Giovanni and Gil Scott-Heron emerging almost simultaneously (although Scott-Heron was sceptical about "would-be revolutionaries" with "afros, handshakes and dashikis" in his song Brother). Sympathetic rock stars such as Santana and the Grateful Dead played fundraisers. The party even attempted to launch its own musical stars. Elaine Brown, a new recruit who later became the party's minister of information and, eventually, chairman, recorded a vocal jazz album called Seize the Time and a follow-up for Motown, Until We're Free. At Emory Douglas's suggestion, four San Francisco Panthers formed a Temptations-style soul group with the Marx-inspired name of the Lumpen, though songs such as Revolution Is the Only Solution and Old Pig Nixon were a long way from the Temptations in terms of chart appeal. Unlike the Last Poets' output, this was pure propaganda music. As the Lumpen's Michael Torrance explains on the Black Panther history site It's About Time: "The music was simply another facet of service to the Party and the Revolution. Furthermore, since we were an educational cadre, rigorous study was necessary to be able to translate the ideology of the BPP into song." The musicians employed the same strategy as Douglas did with his artwork. "Huey and Bobby always said that the African-American community wasn't a reading community but they learned through observation and participation," Douglas says. "[African revolutionary] Samora Machel said you have to be able to speak in a way that a child could understand." Indeed, the Panthers' most famous song, written after Newton's arrest for murdering a police officer in 1967, was a two-line chant that even children could sing: "Black is beautiful/ Free Huey!" In 1970, the year the Last Poets began their album with the ominous phrase "time is running out", it seemed to many US radicals, black and white alike, that revolution was imminent. But within a couple of years, the Black Panther Party was in disarray, largely thanks to the dirty tricks of the FBI. "Those who have the power always have the time and resources to get together," Hassan says. "They took their blows for a minute but then they realised, 'We gotta come back at this.'" The agency fomented civil war between Newton and Cleaver, with bloody consequences. Douglas, who was regularly tailed by FBI agents, remembers seeing his artwork imitated on a forged pamphlet attacking another black organisation. "They tried to destroy and discredit the Black Panther Party by any means necessary," he says. "We knew what was going on but you couldn't put your finger on it." The Watts Writers Workshop, the base of the Watts Prophets, was burned to the ground by a trusted employee who, it transpired, was an FBI plant. The Last Poets were constantly monitored, as Hassan discovered years later when he saw his FBI files. "We were on President Nixon's list, the defence department list, the national security list. It kind of blew my mind." Not all the blame, however, can be laid at the government's door. The Huey Newton who emerged from jail to retake the party leadership in late 1970 was a troubled, paranoid character who acquired a taste for cocaine and groupies and soon fell out with Cleaver. "Bobby Seale was the brains," says David Murray. "Huey Newton was an action person. He would just go and do it. That might also be why he's not alive [Newton was shot by a crack dealer in 1989]." Despite positive achievements such as a free breakfast programme for poor children, the mood of mistrust caused Panther members to desert en masse. Elaine Brown resigned the chairmanship in 1977 after Newton approved the beating of a female party administrator. Eight years earlier she had recorded Seize the Time. Now the time was definitely past. "We all thought we were moving towards bringing about something new, something good, for America – not just for black people, but for all people," Hassan says. "But when you started seeing one brother go one way and another brother snitching, a lot of us went back on to the streets doing what we were doing before, selling drugs or hustling, because we were disappointed." Hassan himself left the Last Poets in 1974 and became a cocaine addict, giving poetry readings in crackhouses. "Yeah man, there was a lot of disappointment." Asked about the Panthers' balance sheet, Emory Douglas draws a long sigh. "I would say we did the best we could under the circumstances. You have to understand that never in the history of the country had any organisation stood up to the challenges in the way we did and at such a young age." David Murray thinks the party has to be seen in context. "This was a time when California was changing the world. I was a hippie, I was a Black Panther, I was in the Nation of Islam. That was how you grew up during that time – you had to dabble in each one." Tongues on Fire demonstrates that the era's revolutionary art, visual and musical, outlasted the party that inspired it. Chaka Khan and Chic's Nile Rodgers drew from their experience as members. Bands such as Public Enemy (whose Chuck D remembers singing "Free Huey!" as a child) pitched themselves as the Panthers' heirs: "This party started right in '66/ With a pro-black radical mix." Naturally, they were fans of the Last Poets. A few years ago, Hassan met former Panther chairman David Hilliard in Oakland. "He said, 'Do you know how important you guys were? People listened to y'all. Y'all made people want to be Panthers and join the Nation of Islam. Y'all were as important as anyone because you made people think.' It took me a long time to understand how much influence we had on that time." Tongues on Fire: A Tribute to the Black Panthers, featuring David Murray, the Last Poets and the Roots, is at the Barbican, London, on 11 September.
Miliband tells Labour to end feuding
Labour leadership contender says he wants to lead 'a government not a gang' Labour leadership hopeful David Miliband today sought to distance himself from the party feuding reignited by Tony Blair's new book, declaring that he wanted to lead "a government not a gang". As ballot papers went out to eligible voters, Miliband sent an email to all party members in which he said he was "sick and tired" of seeing the leadership race characterised in terms of a choice between rejecting or retaining New Labour. Instead, the shadow foreign secretary pledged to "change the way we do politics" and said he was "ready to lead". Miliband dispatched the email to members after the publication yesterday of Blair's autobiography, which charted the former PM's deteriorating relationship with Brown. Urging members to give him their vote, Miliband said: "I respect both Tony and Gordon deeply. But their time has passed. Their names do not appear on the leadership ballots. And now we need to stop their achievements being sidelined and their failings holding us back." He said those who presented the Labour leadership contest as a choice between rejecting or retaining New Labour were doing a disservice to all of the candidates and to the thousands of members who have participated over the last few months. The leadership election was about "pulling together all the talents of our party" rather than "tired old Westminster games", he said. In a nod to the warring Blair and Brown camps during Labour's first 10 years, Miliband said: "I want to change the way we do politics. Because I want to lead a government not a gang, a movement not a machine, where honest debate can be a source of strength, not a sign of weakness." In the book, Blair describes David Miliband as having "clear leadership qualities". Last night, Miliband sought to distance himself from his old political patron by insisting that if he became leader, he would stick to the "Labour way" of tackling the deficit, which was to halve it over four years. In his book, A Journey, the former prime minister issued a stark warning to the party not to drift to the left and said he believed Labour lost the general election in May because it "stopped being New Labour" under Brown's leadership. Blair also came close to endorsing the economic strategy of the Conservative-led coalition government. Miliband rejected the accusation that he was the "heir to Blair" when it was put to him during last night's leadership debate on Channel 4 News. "I am my own person. I look forward to the day when Tony says he is a Milibandite rather than people asking me whether I'm a Blairite," he said. But he added: "Whoever becomes the party leader will become the heir to Gordon Brown's leadership of the Labour party. Few people would say I was the continuity candidate with Gordon." In what will be seen as a thinly-veiled attack on his older brother, Ed Miliband said during the debate that Blair "along with others" was stuck in a "New Labour comfort zone". He said: "The truth is that unless we change our attitude on a whole range of things that New Labour took for granted, like flexible labour markets that mean low pay and bad working conditions for people, tuition fees and ID cards, unless we change we are not going to win again. So Tony was a great servant to us in the past, I don't think he's right about the future." The shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, claimed New Labour was seen as "hollow and disconnected" and said: "When Tony Blair says we don't need to move a millimetre away from New Labour I think he has not been on doorsteps recently and he has not recognised how we came to be seen." Leftwinger Diane Abbott issued a broadside on the Blair-Brown era by saying New Labour had "frayed" some of the community ties because of its obsession with markets. In a speech on how Labour should respond to the government's "big society" agenda, delivered today, she said: "I believe that it is time issues around family and community took centre stage in the debate about what the Labour party is for," she said. "New Labour regarded mutual organisation and co-ops as dusty and old fashioned compared to the bright shiny world of the free markets and international financial services. But now unfettered free markets have nearly crashed the world economy, maybe it is time for the Labour party to rediscover some of those old models. They might provide appropriate structures going forward for banks like Northern Rock currently in government ownership." As contenders bid to succeed Brown, the former premier revealed he going to work on projects including promoting global access to education and boosting internet use in Africa.
Iranian website puts spin on Obama
Website barackobama.ir promises 'an Iranian viewpoint on Barack Obama's opinions' A group of Iranian journalists sympathetic to the world view of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched barackobama.ir, a website set up to address "an Iranian viewpoint on Barack Obama's opinions". The news of its creation first appeared this week in a series of government-sponsored websites and news agencies, which endorsed it as an independent source of information about the life of Obama, his administration and issues such as 9/11, Israel and Iran's nuclear programme. The website has attracted nearly 100,000 visitors in its first week. It introduces itself as a group "that believes that Barack Obama isn't only a name but a political phenomenon". It depicts the American president as someone "who insists on the Arabic-Islamic part of his name: Hussein" and adds: "He is educated, lawyer, friendly, who observes the niceties of etiquette showing real oriental feeling in his innocent eyes that are the heritage of the occidental government's cruelty to the Negroes." But it adds that, by electing him as president, "the United States confessed to the increasing power of Islam". Among articles published on his life is one headlined: "Is he the first Jewish president?" Ahmadinejad sees the internet as a platform used for "psychological war against Iran" and has repeatedly asked its supporters to attack the "enemies" in the virtual society. Since the disputed presidential election last summer, when Iranian protesters exploited Twitter and Facebook to spread their voice, the number of government-supported websites and blogs has increased significantly, while access to almost all opposition websites has been blocked. An Iranian journalist who asked not to be identified said: "In Iran, all blogs and websites need to register with the government, especially those holding .ir domains, and the fact that barackobama.ir is set up without problem and is welcomed by governmental news agencies shows that it is backed by officials within the Iranian regime."
Scotland plans to raise alcohol price
Formal plans unveiled to fix minimum price for all alcoholic drinks at 45p per unit, trebling cost of cheapest ciders The dispute over the need for controls on the cost of alcohol intensified today after the Scottish government unveiled formal plans to fix a minimum price for all alcoholic drinks at 45p per unit. That would double or treble the cost of the cheapest super-strength ciders sold by major supermarkets, and raise the cost of cheap supermarket vodka by nearly £4 a bottle. Some own-brand whiskies would cost £3.40 more. Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish health secretary, said a minimum price was essential to help tackle the high death toll and health burden from alcohol abuse in Scotland, which drinks 25% more per head of population than the rest of the UK. Raising the cost to 45p a unit would immediately save about 50 lives a year, cut hospital admissions by 1,200 a year and mean nearly 23,000 fewer days lost from work in the first year. Within a decade, nearly 225 lives a year would be saved. "For too long, too many Scots have been drinking themselves into an early grave," she said. "It is no coincidence that as the affordability of alcohol has plummeted in recent decades, alcohol-related deaths, disease, crime and disorder have spiralled. It cannot be right that a man can exceed his weekly recommended alcohol limit for less than £3.50." The proposal will be added to an alcohol bill going through Holyrood this month and was immediately supported by Dr Harry Burns, Scotland's chief medical officer, and the British Medical Association in Scotland and at UK level. It was lambasted by the drinks industry and opposition politicians at Holyrood. The Scotch Whisky Association, which represents the producers of Scotland's most valuable single export, said the measure was probably illegal, because it breached competition law, would penalise responsible drinkers and cut whisky sales by nearly 13%. It would only cut total alcohol consumption by 4.3%, and simply banning supermarkets from selling below cost price would have a similar effect. "The Scottish government's scheme fails to meet the basic tests of EU law and will do little to address alcohol misuse," said Gavin Hewitt, the SWA's chief executive. Sturgeon has not won cross-party support for minimum pricing in Scotland, but has been heartened by supportive comments from health ministers in successive UK governments, including Andy Burnham and the current UK health secretary, Andrew Lansley. Last month, David Cameron said the government would look "very sympathetically" at proposals from 12 councils in the Manchester area for minimum pricing, to combat the binge drinking that led many town centres to look like the "wild west" at weekends. Liam Donaldson, England's chief medical officer, has repeatedly endorsed the proposal and has been pressing for a 50p minimum price. But the Department of Health in London quashed hopes that it would be adopted across England too. A spokeswoman said ministers were committed to "tough action" on problem drinking. The Home Office was consulting on proposals to ban shops from selling alcohol below cost price, and ministers were reviewing taxation. But more work was needed to understand binge drinkers. "No legislation or initiative will work unless we have a better understanding of what drives people's decisions. It is not clear that national minimum unit pricing is the best way to reduce harm, so we need to look at other options in England." Jackie Baillie, Labour's shadow health secretary at Holyrood, said the proposal was a "tax on the poor" which would increase revenue for supermarkets by £140m. "The SNP have got this one badly wrong. A minimum price of 45p per unit will make no difference to problem drinks, like Buckfast, but it will punish pensioners and people on low incomes," she said. Burns, a long-term advocate of price controls on alcohol, said since Scotland had "lead the way" on banning smoking public places, it could now show leadership on pricing. "Scotland has an unenviable reputation when it comes to alcohol. We are, sadly, world-class when it comes to damaging our health through heavy drinking," he said. The BMA in London said it too supported the measure across the UK. "There is strong scientific evidence that increasing price reduces rates of alcohol-related problems, particularly among young people," a BMA spokesman said. "We have consistently called for a minimum price per unit as part of a raft of measures to tackle alcohol abuse and would urge the other UK governments to follow the example set by Scotland."
Tibetan nomads under threat
Scientists say desertification of the mountain grasslands of the Tibetan plateau is accelerating climate change Like generations of Tibetan nomads before him, Phuntsok Dorje makes a living raising yaks and other livestock on the vast alpine grasslands that provide a thatch on the roof of the world. But in recent years the vegetation around his home, the Tibetan plateau, has been destroyed by rising temperatures, excess livestock and plagues of insects and rodents. The high-altitude meadows are rarely mentioned in discussions of global warming, but the changes to this ground have a profound impact on Tibetan politics and the world's ecological security. For Phuntsok Dorje, the issue is more down to earth. He is used to dramatically shifting cloudscapes above his head, but it is the changes below his feet that make him uneasy. "The grass used to be up to here," Phuntsok says, indicating a point on his leg a little below the knee. "Twenty years ago, we had to scythe it down. But now, well, you can see for yourself. It's so short it looks like moss." The green prairie that used to surround his tent has become a brown desert. All that is left of the grasslands here are yellowing blotches on a stony surface riddled with rodent holes. It is the same across much of this plateau, which encompasses an area a third of the size of the US. Desertification Scientists say the desertification of the mountain grasslands is accelerating climate change. Without its thatch the roof of the world is less able to absorb moisture and more likely to radiate heat. Partly because of this the Tibetan mountains have warmed two to three times faster than the global average; the permafrost and glaciers of the "Third Pole" are melting. To make matters worse, the towering Kunlun, Himalayan and Karakorum ranges that surround the plateau act as a chimney for water vapour – which has a stronger greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide – to be convected high into the stratosphere. Mixed with pollution, dust and black carbon (soot) from India and elsewhere, this spreads a brown cloud across swaths of the Eurasian landmass. When permafrost melts it can also release methane, another powerful greenhouse gas. Xiao Ziniu, the director general of the Beijing climate centre, says Tibet's climate is the most sensitive in Asia and influences the globe. Grassland degradation is evident along the twisting mountain road from Yushu to Xining, which passes through the Three Rivers national park, the source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. Along some stretches the landscape is so barren it looks more like the Gobi desert than an alpine meadow. Phuntsok Dorje is among the last of the nomads scratching a living in one of the worst affected areas. "There used to be five families on this plain. Now we are the only one left and there is not enough grass even for us," he says. "It's getting drier and drier and there are more and more rats every year." Until about 10 years ago the nearest town, Maduo, used to be the richest in Qinghai province thanks to herding, fishing and mining, but residents say their economy has dried up along with the nearby wetlands. "This all used to be a lake. There wasn't a road here then. Even a Jeep couldn't have made it through," said a Tibetan guide, Dalang Jiri, as we drove through the area. By one estimate, 70% of the former rangeland is now desert. "Maduo is now very poor. There is no way to make a living," said a Tibetan teacher who gave only one name, Angang. "The mines have closed and grasslands are destroyed. People just depend on the money they get from the government. They just sit on the kang [a raised, heated, floor] and wait for the next payment." Many of the local people are former herders moved off the land under a controversial "ecological migration" scheme launched in 2003. The government in Beijing is in the advanced stages of relocating between 50% and 80% of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau. According to state media, this programme aims to restore the grasslands, prevent overgrazing and improve living standards. The Tibetan government-in-exile says the scheme does little for the environment and is aimed at clearing the land for mineral extraction and moving potential supporters of the Dalai Lama into urban areas where they can be more easily controlled. Qinghai is dotted with resettlement centres, many on the way to becoming ghettos. Nomads are paid an annual allowance – of 3,000 yuan (about £300) to 8,000 yuan per household – to give up herding for 10 years and be provided with housing. As in some native American reservations in the US and Canada, they have trouble finding jobs. Many end up either unemployed or recycling rubbish or collecting dung. Some feel cheated. "If I could go back to herding, I would. But the land has been taken by the state and the livestock has been sold off so we are stuck here. It's hopeless," said Shang Lashi, a resident at a resettlement centre in Yushu. "We were promised jobs. But there is no work. We live on the 3,000 yuan a year allowance, but the officials deduct money from that for the housing, which was supposed to be free." Their situation was made worse by the earthquake that struck Yushu earlier this year, killing hundreds. People were crushed when their new concrete homes collapsed, a risk they would not have faced in their itinerant life on the grasslands. Many are once again living under canvas – in disaster relief tents and without land or cattle. In a sign of the sensitivity of the subject, the authorities declined to officially answer the Guardian's questions. Privately, officials said resettlement and other efforts to restore the grassland, including fencing off the worst areas, were worthwhile. "The situation has improved slightly in the past five years. We are working on seven areas, planting trees and trying to restore the ecosystem around closed gold mines," said one environmental officer. The problem would not be solved in the short term. "This area is particularly fragile. Once the grasslands are destroyed, they rarely come back. It is very difficult to grow grass at high altitude." The programme's effectiveness is questioned by others, including Wang Yongchen, founder of the Green Earth Volunteers NGO and a regular visitor to the plateau for 10 years. "Overgrazing was considered a possible cause of the grassland degradation, but things haven't improved since the herds were enclosed and the nomads moved. I think climate change and mining have had a bigger impact." Assessing the programme is complicated by political tensions. In the past year, three prominent Tibetan environmental campaigners have been arrested after exposing corruption and flaws in wildlife conservation on the plateau. Infestation Another activist, who declined to give his name, said it was difficult to comment. "The situation is complicated. Some areas of grassland are getting better. Others are worse. There are so many factors involved." A growing population of pika, gerbils, mice and other rodents is also blamed for degradation of the land because they burrow into the soil and eat grass roots. Zoologists say this highlights how ecosystems can quickly move out of balance. Rodent numbers have increased dramatically in 10 years because their natural predators – hawks, eagles and leopards – have been hunted close to extinction. Belatedly, the authorities are trying to protect wildlife and attract birds of prey by erecting steel vantage points to replace felled trees. There is widespread agreement that this climatically important region needs more study. "People have not paid enough attention to the Tibetan plateau. They call it the Third Pole but actually it is more important than the Arctic or Antarctic because it is closer to human communities. This area needs a great deal more research," said Yang Yong, a Chinese explorer and environmental activist. "The changes to glaciers and grasslands are very fast. The desertification of the grassland is a very evident phenomenon on the plateau. It's a reaction by a sensitive ecosystem that will precede similar reactions elsewhere." Phuntsok Dorje is unlikely to take part in any study. But he's seen enough to be pessimistic about the future. "The weather is changing. It used to rain a lot in the summer and snow in the winter. There was a strong contrast between the seasons, but not now. It's getting drier year after year. If it carries on like this I have no idea what I will do." Additional reporting by Cui Zheng
'It's OK to embarrass yourself'
With one band Nick Cave has a carefully built musical legacy. With his other, he can visit his 'lower self' and make chaotic noise. Alexis Petridis meets Grinderman You would be hard-pushed to call the video for Grinderman's new single Heathen Child anything other than striking. On one level, that's far from surprising. The director is John Hillcoat, best known for his harrowing adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. His most recent collaboration with Nick Cave was the multiple award-winning 2005 film The Proposition, and that was pretty striking, too: the kind of film you watch through your fingers, a feast of blood and brutality set in 19th-century Australia. Then there's the racket Cave makes with Grinderman, which seems to have more in common with the nihilistic violence of his early 80s band the Birthday Party than the stately, beautifully wrought ballads that populate his most recent albums with the Bad Seeds. Like Grinderman's previous singles, Get It On and No Pussy Blues, Heathen Child is a scouring, ferocious din built around Cave's rudimentary explorations of the guitar, an instrument he only took up a couple of months before the band recorded their 2007 debut album ("What do you mean, have I become more adept?" he deadpans. "What, you're saying I wasn't adept before? Would you ask Jimi Hendrix that question on his second album?"). Under the circumstances, it seems fairly easy to predict the kind of visual accompaniment Cave and Hillcoat might have dreamed up. But, as swiftly becomes apparent when Cave calls up the video on his laptop, striking comes in many forms. It opens with a beautiful girl submerged in a bath of milk, before Cave and his fellow Grindermen – Jim Sclavunos, Martyn Casey and Warren Ellis, Bad Seeds all – appear. They seem to be dressed as Roman centurions, their plumed galeae and thigh-length tunics accessorised, in Cave's case at least, with a pair of leopardskin underpants. "We're actually sort of Olympian deities, loosely modelled on the God of War," corrects Sclavunos. "He was an aggressively, arbitrarily violent god." "There was a miscommunication with the costume department," nods Cave, a little ruefully. "And we ended up looking like gay Roman footsoldiers." He brightens a bit. "Still, we've got the legs for it." "I think if you keep watching the video, and you witness the supernatural powers we exhibit, then it will become clear how godlike we truly are," suggest Sclavunos, as the kind of very low-rent death-ray special effect you used to get on Tom Baker-era Doctor Who episodes shoots from the eyes of his onscreen counterpart. Later he does a slow-motion hip-swinging dance that reveals Cave drew the long straw when it came to underwear in the video: beneath his tunic, Sclavunos appears to be wearing some kind of posing pouch. As his buttocks fill the screen, the pair dissolve into laughter. The video is, they claim, all part of the concept surrounding the second Grinderman album, the prosaically titled Grinderman 2, which arrives complete with an accompanying book of illustrations by a German artist who contacted Cave after making a video for the Bad Seeds song Moonland as part of her finals: "I got her to illustrate the whole record, so that we could work out a kind of overarching narrative that ran from one song to the next." What exactly that overarching narrative might be remains a moot point, at least today: "You have to buy the fuckin' record and work it out," snaps Cave, when the subject is broached. Grinderman's debut served up the sound of what Cave described as "a mammoth midlife crisis" in a sleeve that featured a photograph of a monkey apparently masturbating ("Just for the record," Cave clarifies, "it's not wanking, it's holding on to its genital area, terrified"). The songs were fixated on sex and ageing and masculinity in crisis: Cave depicted himself sucking his gut in and offering to do DIY in doomed attempts to attract female attention: this from a man who in his youth was wont to write songs in which he dealt with recalcitrant females by stabbing them in the head. There's some more of the same on Grinderman 2: "My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster," growls Cave, "two humps and then I'm gone." He says Grinderman's method of songwriting – improvising everything, including lyrics – tends to bring out his lower self: "You can't write that stuff down on a piece of paper. I can't sit in my office and write it down, because when you're writing, you're working from the mind and your mind is telling you: 'Don't write that down, don't go there, it's not a good idea, it's not worth the grief.'" But like the sound of the album, the lyrics also seem more dense and strange, less prosaic than its predecessor. "From the get-go, there were images cropping up in the ad-lib lyrics that Nick was coming up with," says Sclavunos. "There were various hairy beasts. Wolfmen. There were threads. There is a consistent atmosphere of oppressive, hallucinatory evil, an anxious undercurrent. It's got its peaks and valleys, but it permeates everything." Cave chuckles. "This is Jim's third day of interviews," he shrugs. In person, Cave and Sclavunos make a great double act. Cave speaks with that rising Australian inflection that makes every statement sound like a question, which shouldn't be surprising, but somehow is. Sclavunos's voice is a low, dolorous rumble that emerges from within a beard you would describe as vast if it wasn't next to that of Warren Ellis, a man whose tonsorial arrangements beggar belief. Similarly, Sclavunos's sharp brown suit pales a little when placed next to Cave, who today sports a scarlet shirt open to mid-chest and a spectacular variety of medallions. They are both infectiously enthusiastic about Grinderman, whose existence Cave credits with revitalising the Bad Seeds. "It just had a kind of cataclysmic effect, you know? It just turned things upside down. For me, sonically, there was just too much going on in the Bad Seeds. There's a sound that's really unique to them, this kind of monstrous sound, and there's nothing I like more than going onstage with them and having this monstrous kind of thing about me, but something had happened where it felt really difficult to make a record like The Boatman's Call again, where you could go in and say, all right, this is basically piano and drums and bass, everybody sit back. It felt like every time I took a song into the Bad Seeds, everyone piled in on it. In the Bad Seeds," he smiles, "you play a song, and everyone's grabbing a fuckin' maraca, y'know?" Both are extremely funny, which comes as a relief. Cave, in particular, trails a reputation for prickly relations with the press that's perhaps a little out of date – yes, he did once write a song called Scum in which he colourfully decried Mat Snow, then of the NME, as "a miserable shitwringing turd who reminded me of some evil gnome" and yes, he did once punch a journalist in the middle of an interview, but that stuff all happened decades ago, at the height of his heroin-sozzled dissolution. Judging by his more recent cuttings, Cave takes umbrage at journalists depicting him as a former hellraiser now living a life of domestic contentment with his family in Hove, but there's no doubt his life is more settled than it once was. You could argue that it's virtually impossible to imagine how Cave's life could be any less settled than it once was, but, nevertheless, his current arrangement seems to suit him. At 52, his productivity is torrential: by contrast, even Sclavunos – who balances the Bad Seeds and Grinderman with his own band, the Vanity Set, and a burgeoning career as a producer for, among others, the Horrors and the Jim Jones Revue – is taking it easy. When, in the wake of The Proposition's success, Variety magazine named Cave one of 10 screenwriters to watch, he claimed: "The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood … It's a waste of fucking time and I have a lot to do." Indeed, last year alone, as well as working on another film with Hillcoat, the Brighton-set Death of a Ladies' Man, he produced two film scores, a second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro – which garnered both good reviews and a nomination for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction awards – and narrated an animated film called The Cat Piano. And 26 years after they formed, the Bad Seeds are in the midst of a startling artistic purple patch: their last two albums, the double Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus and 2008's astonishing Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! are probably the best Cave has ever put his name to. He says he produces records so quickly his label doesn't know what to do with them: "Daniel Miller from Mute had a quiet talk to me to say, 'Pull your fuckin' head in and stop doing so much stuff. You've become a marketing nightmare.' I took some time off." He laughs. "Well, a weekend. It becomes a problem, how to pace all the stuff." The critical acclaim that seems to come as standard with the latterday Bad Seeds' career is a long way from the polarising effect both Cave and Sclavunos's early bands had on listeners: while Cave seemed to spend as much time with the Birthday Party punching the front row as he did singing, Sclavunos was doggedly thumping a solitary snare drum in Lydia Lunch's screeching no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. You get the feeling that both of them miss at least some of the chaos they once provoked, hence Grinderman. "There's a comfortability with the Bad Seeds that Grinderman disrupts," says Cave. "That's what's chaotic about Grinderman. I get very different responses to it from my very close friends, from my colleagues, people I work with. Some love it, some are baffled by it. Some are like flat-out, 'What the fuck are you doing?' which is exciting to me. There's a pressure with the Bad Seeds that I don't feel in Grinderman. Within the Bad Seeds there is a sense of duty for me to the band's legacy. I don't want to put out a whole load of shitty records with the Bad Seeds. There's a kind of open rule within Grinderman that it's OK to embarrass yourself, to go to places that could be potentially disastrous." "We've tried flute solos," interjects Sclavunos. "Drum solos. All sorts of dubious territory." "No one's going to come down on you for it," Cave says. "It's out there in those regions that interesting things are found, but it's creatively dangerous to go there. We go into the studio with nothing at all. No lyrics, none of that, no chord charts. The only thing I had for the first record was an empty notebook with the words No Pussy Blues written on one page. This time I didn't even have that. We play for five days, then we listen to this morass of … bullshit that we've played, and suddenly these great bits of music emerge." "There's no disrespect to the Bad Seeds," Sclavunos says. "It's more like we want the disruption. I think sometimes the public starts thinking along the lines of, 'Oh, we've got their number,' and they start compartmentalising you. We do make an effort with every Bad Seeds record to do something new, to challenge ourselves. Grinderman helps that along. We want the public to be as on the edge of their seats as we put ourselves." "People seem to be more concerned about what the Bad Seeds is and what Grinderman is than we are," Cave sighs. "We understand it's confusing. We don't understand what's going on with it all. Life's too short to worry about it." There's a pause. "There was definitely a feeling on this record that we wanted to get back to something that had a really malign feel to it, and take great pleasure in it." Why? "It's just more natural," he says, and returns his attentions to his laptop screen, where Jim Sclavunos's buttocks have been replaced by the diverting sight of Nick Cave, middle-aged man of letters, recent recipient of an honorary doctorate from Dundee University for his "visionary songs, stories, books films and poetry", dressed as a Roman centurion, firing an unconvincing death-ray special effect out of his bum. Grinderman 2 is released on Mute on 13 September. They play the Garage, London, on 23 September, then touring.
Chief rabbi challenges Hawking claim
Lord Sacks accuses astrophysicist of logical fallacy in book excluding possibility of supernatural creation The chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, hit back at Stephen Hawking after the astrophysicist said God did not create the universe. In his new book, The Grand Design, published next week, Hawking concludes that science excludes the possibility of a deity and that it is unnecessary to "invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going". But his findings were described by Sacks as an "elementary fallacy" of logic. Writing in the Times, the chief rabbi said: "There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn't interested in how the universe came into being." Sacks also said the mutual hostility between religion and science was one of "the curses of our age" and warned it would be equally damaging to both. "But there is more to wisdom than science. It cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live. Science masquerading as religion is as unseemly as religion masquerading as science." In an earlier book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking was apparently more open to the idea of God, suggesting that a scientific understanding of the universe was not incompatible with a creator. "If we discover a complete theory … it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God," he wrote.
Study raises hope for older mothers
UK research identifying loss of key protein in mice eggs is seen as a breakthrough that may help prevent birth defects Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding why older women become less fertile, suffer a miscarriage or have a baby with Down's syndrome. The discovery could ultimately lead to treatments that would increase the chances of a successful pregnancy for growing numbers of would-be mothers in their late 30s and early 40s. Researchers led by Dr Mary Herbert, an expert in reproductive biology at Newcastle University's Institute for Ageing and Health, have identified why some older women produce abnormal eggs, according to findings published in the journal Current Biology. It has been known for a long time that would-be mothers who are nearing the end of their fertility are at higher risk than usual of having eggs that are affected by chromosomal abnormalities, but the underlying cause has been unclear. The new study has identified problems arising from a woman's declining stock of proteins called Cohesins, which act as binding agents to hold chromosomes together by keeping them inside a ring. They are vital to ensure that chromosomes split evenly when cells divide. Women's supplies of Cohesins fall as they age, Herbert and her colleagues discovered. Tests on eggs taken from both young and old mice indicated that the amount of Cohesins in women's bodies declines after their mid-30s. When that happens it means that chromosomes are less tightly held together and they are therefore more likely to result in defective eggs, which can cause problems such as miscarriage and Down's syndrome. Every cell in the human body, apart from eggs and sperm, contains two copies of each of the body's 23 chromosomes. Sperm and eggs must lose one copy each as they prepare for fertilisation. That process involves a complicated form of cell division. This problem is compounded with eggs, because the attachments that hold chromosomes together have to be maintained by Cohesins until the egg divides just before ovulation. When Herbert's team studied chromosomes during division in the egg, they found that the lower levels of Cohesin in eggs in older females led to some chromosomes becoming trapped and unable to divide properly. "Reproductive fitness in women declines dramatically from the mid-30s onwards. Our findings point to Cohesin being a major culprit in this", said Herbert. More work was needed to understand why Cohesin declines over women's reproductive years, and such knowledge could lead to ways being developed to stop that loss from occurring. Dr Peter Bowen-Simpkins, the medical director of the London Women's Clinic network of private fertility clinics and spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the study was "very exciting" and could lead to real improvements in older women's chances of having children. "This breakthrough could mean the difference between success and failure – them having a baby or not – for the fast-growing number of women who are trying to conceive after their late 30s," he added.
The best of the latest US TV imports
Conspiracies, zombies, assassins, cops – there's plenty to get your teeth into in the latest shows coming across from America
Autumn treats: comedy highlights Is US TV out to get you this year? We've got not one, but two conspiracy thrillers on the horizon, plus a zombie invasion, conmen, assassins – and a lot of undercover cops. Here's a quick look at some of the best of the new US dramas coming to UK screens this autumn. Rubicon - BBC4 AMC's conspiracy thriller is all hidden clues in crosswords, clandestine meetings in libraries and (very) slow-moving plots – the perfect show to settle down with in the long winter months. James Badge Dale (The Pacific, 24) is the junior intelligence analyst who starts to wonder whether he's working for one of those ultra-secret societies who are out to control the whole world. Miranda Richardson, Arliss Howard and Roger Robinson are all involved, somehow. "The assassination plot … is not the event." "The disappearance is not the event." "The CIA cover-up is not THE EVENT." Another giant conspiracy to keep you guessing this autumn. But where Rubicon seems to be drawing on The Conversation, Three Days Of The Condor and The Parallax View, the reference points here are more 24, FlashForward, Lost … and possibly even the X Files. What's so secret that the secret service haven't even got President Blair Underwood on their "need to know" list? Hmm. Big, bloodthirsty epic about the fight to build a cathedral in 12th century England, based on the novel by Ken Follett. Ian McShane (no stranger to muddy battles after his days in Deadwood) is wrangling with a cast that includes Matthew Macfadyen, Rufus Sewell, Donald Sutherland, Sarah Parish and Hayley Atwell. Dylan McDermott (The Practice) teams up with Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica) for this undercover cop squad drama where they plot against drug dealers from one of those dimly lit HQs that look a bit like pool halls. Hong Kong action star Maggie Q follows in the high-kicking high heels of Anne Parillaud, Bridget Fonda and Peta Wilson to play the rogue assassin who's looking to take down Division, the mysterious agency who trained her. (Didn't they used to pop up and give Jack Bauer a hard time at CTU?) The True Blood vampires will be back soon but, until then, maybe it's time to let some other monsters into your life? Based on a cult comic and produced by Frank "The Shawshank Redemption" Darabont, The Walking Dead offers at least the possibility of seeing Andrew Lincoln being eaten by zombies, which should make it worth a look. It's also produced by AMC – the American home of Mad Men and Breaking Bad – which suggests there should be a lot to it than hordes of lurching undead stalking malls. Hawaii Five-0 – Bravo You know the names, you know the number and you'll be familiar with the theme tune: this re-imagining of the classic cop show brings Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight), Scott Caan (Ocean's Thirteen), Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) and Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica) together as an all-new elite squad dishing out island justice. Masi Oka (Hiro in Heroes) is also on board as the team's coroner. Also back …The mighty Mad Men return with a new office next week on BBC4; terrestrial viewers get a chance to wallow in the Southern gothic of True Blood's second series on Channel 4 – the third (with added werewolves prowling the Bon Temps woods) is on FX later in the year. Medics Nurse Jackie (BBC2) and House (Sky1) are also both set to return - but who'll be the first to get an iPhone stethoscope app storyline? Looking ahead to early 2011Sky's deal with HBO will kick in next year, with Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire, David Simon's Treme and the "fantasy Sopranos" Game Of Thrones all on the cards. Sky1 has also bought Ride-Along – a new cop show from The Shield's creator Shawn Ryan starring Jennifer Beals, and Lone Star - think The Riches with a dash of Dallas. Over on More4, meanwhile, there's Shameless USA, with William H Macy putting a Chicago spin on Frank Gallagher's messy family guy. Still waiting for…Breaking Bad. Are Five ever going to show the second series of this brilliant show again? That quick run last Christmas went by way too fast. And what about the third? Surely Bryan Cranston's Emmy win this year should ensure that it gets a proper slot?
Sexual healing
Try to excite him in other ways - erotic massage might do the trick I enjoy sex with my boyfriend of two years – he has a stunning body that really turns me on. But lately he seems bored and has started pressing me for anal sex, to use sex toys and to have a threesome. None of that appeals to me, but I'm worried that if I don't try these novelties, he'll break up with me. How can I keep him happy without doing things I don't fancy? Your reason for enjoying sex with him is his appearance, so your main arousal trigger may be visual. To help excite him in a more palatable manner, find out which of the five senses cue him erotically. For example, try erotic talk to see if it is auditory (describing scenarios involving threesomes might do the trick), or erotic massage for touch. For taste, try using food such as chocolate, or bring enticing scents into the bedroom (don't deny him your own natural one). In the process of investigating you'll demonstrate that you too can be experimental. He may be finding your focus on his body objectifying (men experience that as well as women), so he could be trying to deflect that by suggesting erotic play that puts the focus back on you. The "novelties" may seem more appealing once fully discussed. Safety considerations are often the biggest barrier, so negotiation is vital. Anal sex, threesomes and toys all involve trust; he may be unconsciously asking you to do just that. Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders. • Send your problem to private.lives@guardian.co.uk
Martin Kettle
That opening A of the composer's stunning first symphony, to be played at the Proms tomorrow night, still touches more than words The offer of an exclusive pre-publication interview with Tony Blair about his memoir wasn't something to turn down. Having snapped it up, preparation took me over last week, getting a detailed advance read of A Journey, then interviewing Blair himself for 80 minutes on Sunday and finally writing it all up for Wednesday's Guardian. Long days. Lots of work. Hugely interesting. Now for my confession. Throughout this time, a large part of my mind was somewhere else. Even when it was least expected, a musical chord – and then the piece of music that grows out of it – kept sounding in my head. If you want the technical details, though they aren't essential, it is a chord of the note A, stretching across seven octaves and played with quietly throbbing pregnancy by the strings of a symphony orchestra. It's the opening chord of Gustav Mahler's first symphony and, absorbing though the former prime minister's words are, I confess that Mahler ousts even Tony Blair every time. Mahler's chord is in my brain because tomorrow night at the Proms, Simon Rattle will stand on the conductor's rostrum in the Royal Albert Hall and give the downbeat to the Berlin Philharmonic strings to play it, along with the rest of Mahler's symphony, in one of the glamour nights of this year's season. Every ticket sold out on day one of public booking – almost as if it was Glastonbury. As Lynsey Hanley recounted in these pages last week, Britain's class-forged cultural manacles mean that this massively exciting classical music prospect will leave most of the population cold. This partly explains why, even in an article in this newspaper, I am worming my way towards my subject rather too gradually and even apologetically, laying false trails about Blair and pop festivals. But the plain truth about the Rattle concert is this: it's a great Mahler symphony played by what is often the best orchestra in the world – and I can't wait to get over to Kensington. The writer Norman Lebrecht has entitled his own recent book – like Blair's, it is by turns fascinating and vain – Why Mahler?. My question would be What Is It About Mahler? What is it about this composer, in his grave for 99 years, that means, as Lebrecht says, that his nine completed symphonies have displaced Beethoven's as classical music's biggest box office draw? What is it about Mahler's music that has such a particularly powerful effect on so many people in the modern world? There are, be clear, a lot of us around. Lebrecht may claim "Mahler is mine", but plenty of others say it too. Just before he was deposed, no less than the not-particularly-musical Mikhail Gorbachev pronounced – after a performance of Mahler's fifth – that it "somehow touched our situation, about the period of perestroika with all its passions and struggles". Listening to Mahler does not illuminate Soviet history much for me. But it certainly makes me think about mortality. Everybody Mahlers – Lebrecht thinks the composer's name should be turned into a verb – in their own way. Perhaps the answer is that Mahler was a public intellectual who addressed the world in music, not words. Mahler once told Sibelius that a symphony is "like the world" and should encompass everything. In Lebrecht's view, Mahler's first symphony tackled the issue of child mortality, his second the challenge of the afterlife, his third the destruction of the environment, while his fourth proclaimed racial equality. These are large and unmusical claims. But music is a language of communication. Mendelssohn said it was a more precise language than words – a potent thought. And, as Lebrecht says, Mahler is not authoritarian. He is a kind of symphonic blogger, a composer seeking unmoderated responses, anxious for feedback and interaction. So why not a symphony about ecology or race? Since Mahler's music also often feels as if it is written on the cusp of a transition from a settled past into an unsettled future, and since that sense of transition is also an ever-present sensibility in our own era, it is hardly surprising that Mahler sometimes seems to have found a hotline to the modern psyche. Lacking Lebrecht's self-confidence – not difficult – my views about Mahler are more tentative. It seems to me that Mahler was lucky and gifted enough to have begun his first symphony with a chord that somehow implies the birth of everything, a declaration by a stunningly original musical voice for which all things were possible. But Mahler was also lucky enough, if lucky is the right word for a man who died too soon, that he ended his last completed symphony, the ninth, with music that is a profound and, in many respects, highly affirmative meditation on mortality. Last month, at the Lucerne festival, I heard perhaps the finest of all current orchestras under the baton of the most eminent of all conductors playing Mahler's ninth. Claudio Abbado's Mahler is the yardstick by which to judge all the rest, partly because his Lucerne festival orchestra is simply so astonishingly good, but also because Abbado's encounters with mortality – he has survived major cancer surgery – bring exceptional power to his extremely rare performances. When the symphony finally subsided into silence, no one in the hall moved a muscle for around two minutes. This was as good as it gets. Later on I came across Mahler's letter of farewell to the Vienna opera orchestra in 1907 after a turbulent and unwilling resignation. "Instead of the whole, the complete creation that I dreamt of, I leave behind something fragmented and imperfect – as man is fated to do," Mahler wrote. "It is not for me to judge the value of my work, but at this moment I am entitled to say of myself: I was honest in my intentions and I set my sights high. In the press of battle, the heat of the moment, there have been wounds and errors on both sides, yours and mine. But when a work succeeded, when a task was accomplished, we forgot all troubles and sorrows and felt richly rewarded." That's what Mahler's music says too. And what a political memoir ought to say. I wonder if Blair knows his Mahler? Emotional intelligence? Few greater. Bring on that chord of A.
3D TV dominates electronics show
Panasonic and Sony show off new 3D products at the IFA 2010 consumer electronics show in Berlin 3D television has dominated the early agenda at IFA, Europe's largest consumer electronics show, with Panasonic and Sony both announcing flurries of new products and initiatives. Panasonic showed off what it claimed was the first genuine 3D consumer video camera, the HDC-SDT750. This will allow users to shoot their own footage in 3D. Makoto Nagura, director of Panasonic's video camera business unit, said this would put 3D firmly into the hands of consumers. "There is still one thing missing [today]...That is to keep your precious moments in 3D," Nagura said. The SDT750 will go on sale in October. UK pricing was not available but it is expected to be priced at $1,399 (£908) in the US. Most of Panasonic's press conference in Berlin was devoted to 3D – one indication of how keen the electronics industry is to persuade consumers that they should embrace the new technology, and spend considerable sums of money upgrading their home electronics set-up. Alongside new 3D televisons and Blu-ray players, Panasonic also announced a new service to deliver 3D movies and films directly to users' living rooms. This could fix one of factors that is holding back 3D – a lack of content. Panasonic said that around 2,000 films would be available to be downloaded over a broadband connection to one of its TVs or Blu-ray players. News, sport and music channels would also be supported. Hirotoshi Uehara, who runs Panasonic's TV business, told IFA that this 3D IPTV service would help to propel 3D into the mass market. However, hefty price tags may continue to hold the technology back. One of the Panasonic TVs unveiled at IFA, the 42in TX-P42GT20, is available for pre-order at £1,499. Epson also cast a cloud over the 3D euphoria in Berlin when it failed to show off a 3D projector. It took a much more cautious line than Panasonic, saying that the technology was not yet ready for mass adoption. "When the market is ready, when the content is ready and when the technology is ready we'll be there," Jean-Marie Lacroix, commerical director of Epson Europe, told journalists. Sony, though, took a very different view as it beat the 3D drum with considerable gusto. It claims to be the only end-to-end 3D provider, as it produces movies shot in 3D, the cameras that are used to film them, and TVs that people can watch them on. Unlike Epson, Sony did announce a 3D video projector. The WV-90 will let consumers project a 3D film onto a wall, which could give a cinema-style experience. The Japanese giant also had a prototype model of its first 3D-capable laptop, which chief executive Sir Howard Stringer said would be commercially available next year. Like Panasonic, Sony is trying to increase the amount of 3D content on the market with a new television service. Stringer, who cited James Cameron's Avatar as a crucial factor in driving 3D forward, cautioned that film-makers should not rely on 3D at the expense of storyline. "A hit is still a hit, is still a hit, except that in 3D it's a bigger hit." Sony's entire press conference was filmed live in 3D and broadcast on a large screen. This, however, highlighted one of the other drawbacks to 3D broadcasting – that viewers need to wear special glasses. Stringer, who described Sony as the "biggest engine" in the 3D train, also argued that the technology could be about more than just films and sport, and demonstrated this with footage of a performance by Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Lang Lang himself then played live at IFA, telling the press conference that he was a fan of 3D as it let music lovers "get closer to us".
Schnabel brings Palestine to Venice
Director talks of 'responsibility' to tell story of Middle East conflict in film Miral, told through eyes of two Palestinian women The American artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel said he felt a "responsibility" as a Jew to tell the story of Palestine when he opened his new movie at the Venice film festival. Schnabel's film Miral, competing with 22 others for the Golden Lion award, brought a note of seriousness to an event that sometimes veers towards the frothier side of culture. Miral is told mainly through the eyes of two Palestinian women, covering 40 years of history from the birth of the state of Israel in 1948 to the failed Oslo peace accord of 1993. Its message is that education is the only hope to bringing any kind of resolution to the conflict. Yesterday Schnabel said he felt a responsibility to bring the story to the big screen. "Coming from my background, as an American Jewish person whose mother was president of Hadassah [the Women's Zionist Organisation of America] in 1948, I figured I was a pretty good person to try to tell the story of the other side." Schnabel has admitted not knowing much about the Palestinian people until he read the semi-autobiographical book by Rula Jebreal on which the film is based. "I felt it was my responsibility to confront this issue because, maybe, I've spent most of my life receding from my responsibility as a Jewish person." He said there was an urgency to his film. "This conflict has to end. Every time a child dies on each side — there's no reason for it." Miral tells the story of the Dar al-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem, which was set up by a rich socialite called Hind Husseini in 1948 after she came across 55 orphans in the street. Within six months she had a school for 2,000 children. The film shows how one of the orphans, Miral, is forced to grow up fast when she falls in love with a Palestinian activist. Miral is played by Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto, and while there have been eyebrows raised at the Indian actor's casting as a Palestinian, Pinto bears an uncanny resemblance to Jebreal, on whom the character of Miral is based. Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe have small cameo roles. Schnabel said the values that were instilled in him by his mother were the same as the ones instilled in Jebreal by Hind Husseini. "One of the reasons why I made this film is that it was so obvious to me that there are more similarities between these people than differences." The debut of Miral was well-timed, coming on the day the US president, Barack Obama, opened a new round of Middle East peace talks. Meanwhile, Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been forbidden by the authorities from attending the premiere of his new short film Accordion. He was arrested last year and imprisoned for making a film looking at the Iranian elections, but had planned to attend.
|
|
|
Seleccionar la fuente:
|
|
