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Noticias del Reino Unido
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The Guardian World News Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:51:55 GMT |
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Quartet blasts Israel over East Jerusalem settlements
Strongly worded statement from Middle East peace envoys calls for pullout from Palestinian territories within 24 months The Middle East quartet has strongly denounced Israeli moves to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem and urged the Israeli government and Palestinians to resume peace negotiations. In a hard-hitting statement after a meeting in Moscow, the UN, the EU, Russia and the US condemned Israel's "unilateral" construction plans and said the status of Jerusalem could only be resolved through negotiations between both parties. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, said: "The quartet condemns the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem." The quartet expected that talks between Israelis and Palestinians should lead to a negotiated settlement that "within 24 months" ends the occupation of Palestianian territories begun in 1967. The settlement should result "in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours". The quartet includes Hillary Clinton for the US; Russia's foreign secretary, Sergei Lavrov; Tony Blair, the quartet's special representative; and Lady Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief. The statement expressed deep alarm at the deteriorating situation in Gaza, urging Israel to lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip for both "humanitarian and commercial traffic" and calling for a "durable resolution to the Gaza crisis." Clinton said she had spoken last night to the Israel prime minister, Binyamin Netenyahu, following his apparent offer of "confidence-building measures" to encourage the renewal of peace talks. She described the conversation as "very useful and productive ... We don't believe unilateral action by any parties are helpful. We've made this clear." None of the quartet parties were willing to say what pressure they were prepared to put on Israel should the Israeli government ignore today's statement. A statement from Netanhayu's office said he proposed a series of steps that would make it easier for the Palestinians to join the talks. He did not specify what these would be, but they could include easing Israeli roadblocks in the West Bank, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from more parts of the West Bank and the release of Palestinian prisoners. He did not announce, as the US had demanded, a freeze on the construction of Jewish homes in Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem, the key sticking point. But diplomats in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem said Netanyahu had privately promised a temporary freeze on new construction. The work, while not cancelled, is to be postponed for several years. The Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, told the Washington Post: "The goal of both sides at this point is to put this behind us and go forward with the proximity talks as quickly as possible." A US state department spokesman, PJ Crowley, said Clinton and Netanyahu had discussed "specific steps" to improve the outlook for Middle East peace talks. Netanyahu's spokesman, Nir Chefetz, said the prime minister had proposed "mutual confidence-building steps" that both Israel and the Palestinians could take. Last night Israel retaliated for a Palestinian rocket attack that killed a Thai agricultural worker. Israeli planes struck at least two targets in Gaza, officials and witnesses said.
Latest on BA and train strike threat
British Airways and Unite are in last ditch talks ahead of tomorrow's planned three-day strike by cabin crew, as the RMT union is expected call for a national rail strike. Follow live updates 10.36am:
Unite has cancelled a photo opportunity it was planning at Sandown Park racecourse. Is this a sign that a resolution is in the offing? Channel 4's economics correspondent Faisal Islam tweets that it could be. 10.17am: BA passenger Jenny Bach, who was due to travel tomorrow, emails to say "now is not the time to hold one of Britain's flagship companies to ransom". She writes:
We had planned to travel with BA from Newcastle to London Heathrow on an early morning flight tomorrow in order to connect with a Malaysian Airways flight leaving at 10.50am.
As soon as we heard of the possibility of a strike we contacted BA. We were dealt with extremely courteously, sympathetically and efficiently and our flight was changed to today. This meant that we did have the extra expense of paying for a hotel room overnight, but we felt that the peace of mind involved was worth it. To date, the original 06.20 flight is operating, but we are still glad that we changed our schedule.
We wish all parties involved in this dispute a satisfactory outcome. Much harm has already been done on all sides - to the reputations of individuals and they country - and we fear for the airline and the workers in the future.
10.00am:
Tony Woodley, sounded chipper on the way to talks with Willie Walsh at Unite's offices, according to PA's industrial correspondent Alan Jones. Woodley said as he arrived that with goodwill on both sides, he was confident an agreement could still be reached and the action called off. "We need common sense and we need a settlement," he said. Woodley and Walsh spent all yesterday at the offices of the TUC, whose general secretary Brendan Barber has been trying to broker a deal for weeks. Woodley has stressed that while discussions are continuing there is some hope, but he appealed to the airline to put back on the table an offer it withdrew last week. The union has said it will suspend a three-day strike due to start tomorrow to give its 12,000 cabin crew members a chance to vote on the offer if BA puts it forward again. Walsh hit out at the union's planned strike, saying it "will be a blow not only to our customers and to British Airways but also to Britain". Unite is planning a second, four-day strike from March 27 and has warned of further walkouts from April 14 if the row over cost cutting and job losses is not resolved.
9.29am:
Our transport correspondent Dan Milmo has the latest from a Unite meeting. He just filed this from his BlackBerry: This morning Tony Woodley, Unite's joint general secretary, met representatives of the union's flight attendant branches, Bassa and cabin crew 89, to update them on the talks. However, with discussions going to the wire, BA cabin crew attending a Unite-hosted meeting this morning at Sandown race course could leave the gathering none the wiser as to whether they are striking tomorrow. Observers say that if Woodley irons out the remaining differences with Walsh, believed to centre on disciplinary procedures against 38 BA staff and plans to put new cabin crew recruits on a separate fleet, then it is possible he could suspend the strikes. However, that would lead to a tempestuous meeting at Sandown, with Woodley's deputy, assistant general secretary Len McCluskey, due to attend. McCluskey, the lead negotiator in talks until Woodley stepped in this week, will hold a press briefing at 1pm at Sandown.
9.18am:
Unite is planning to hold a mass meeting of cabin crew at Sandown Park racecourse in Surrey to rally the workers ahead of the strike. Even if there is progress on talks today (and that's a big if) it will be too late to reinstate some of the flights cancelled this weekend. This is worth a listen. The Guardian's business podcast asks how damaging the strike will be to BA and the government. Industrial relations expert Gregor Gall argues that BA is out to bust the union. He writes: "In industrial relations jargon, this is a classic "reforming conflict". The employer engages in a set-piece showdown, inflicts a massive defeat on the union, divides the workforce and thus re-orders the power relations between management and union."
9am:
"Transport chaos in the run-up to Easter" looks a distinct possibility. BA and the Unite trade union continue to wrangle over a compromise deal. The last ditch talks started badly, according to our transport correspondent, Dan Milmo. British Airways placed a full page advert in national newspapers today, in which chief executive Willie Walsh says his door "remains open" to Unite. The union states its case here. Meanwhile, a national rail strike also appears to be looming. Maintenance workers have already voted to strike over working and staff cuts and we are expected to hear today whether signal workers will be joining them. Talks between the RMT and Network Rail to avert a strike by signal workers ended in failure earlier this week. The result of an RMT ballot is expected at 11am today. Are you planning to travel with BA over weekend? If you are please share your experiences. What's it been like getting information from the company? Have you been forced to switch airlines? Have you tried claiming insurance? And how would a national rail strike affect you? Please let us know in the comments section below, or email me at matthew.weaver@guardian.co.uk.
Murder charge Briton admits killings
• Security contractor admits shooting two men dead
• Text messages to Guardian detail events of August 2009 A former British soldier facing the death penalty in Iraq for allegedly murdering two fellow security contractors has given his first detailed account of the killings to the Guardian, admitting to shooting both dead but insisting he acted in self-defence. Daniel Fitzsimons sent a series of messages to this newspaper detailing the events of last August in Baghdad's green zone that led him to become the first foreigner to face justice in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Fitzsimons told the Guardian that he shot one of the men, former Royal Marine Paul McGuigan, from Innerleithen in Scotland, three times as McGuigan allegedly pointed an assault rifle at him. He says the second victim, Darren Hoare, from Australia, was killed during a fight that followed. All three men had been contracted to work as guards for the British security firm ArmorGroup. Fitzsimons – who faces two counts of murder and one of the attempted murder of an Iraqi guard – and his lawyers claim he acted in self-defence and was suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder following a previous tour of Iraq and service in the military. His lawyers, who are aware of his admission to the Guardian, claim he should never have been allowed to work for a security company given his condition and record. This defence is disputed by relatives of McGuigan, who say Fitzsimons is trying to escape justice by concocting a story of a drunken fight when none occurred. Fitzsimons disclosed his version of the events of 8 August last year through a series of text messages. In the first, he reveals he was with a group using the internet in a colleagues' room. The meeting spiralled into a series of drunken brawls. Fitzsimmons wrote that he was "drinking Grants whiskey" and "chatting on MSN to friends in country and back home. Paul McGuigan came into the room, pissed out of his skull. He was being a knob, having a go at me and slating some of my pals. I had enuf [sic] and punched him once on the nose. He was shocked and didn't retaliate ... We shook hands. I held a towel to his bloody nose. Drank more. Started on me again, telling me to punch him again. He was unstable, not me. This went on, hot and cold. Darren came in ..." Fitzsimons said he, McGuigan and Hoare had made numerous visits to each other's rooms throughout the night, with tensions escalating each time. He claims the evening spilled over into violence when both men came to his room after he passed out from drinking half a bottle of whiskey. "Paul punched me repeatedly," his texts say. "I fought savagely to get out of bed. Managed to get out, but ended up on the floor being stomped on. I lost consciousness for a few seconds. Heard Paul shout: 'We're going to fucking kill you, you little ....' I was getting it from both of them." "Paul grabbed my M4, which I had been scattered away from my assault vest and armor. He cocked the weapon. I pulled the glock from my vest chambered a round. Paul had already told me he was gonna kill me now he had my M4 in his shoulder. I shot him three times in the chest. After the first shot he was still standing. I double tapped and put a further two into him. he was dead before he hit the ground. In slow motion I saw the life leave his body." He said Hoare then "went for the glock" and a struggle ensued. "We were like animals …The booze had rushed rnd my body so quick coz of the fighting. The exact events at this point are blotchy at best. I remember blackness then madness. I know I fought for control of the pistol with Darren and I know I gained control and he was shot at point blank I'm sure. We were literally wrapped together arms and legs. Fighting and biting when the shots were fired." Fitzsimons had only been in Iraq for three days on a third tour as a private security contractor since leaving the British army. He had spent seven months in prison in 2007 on a charge of being in possession of illegal ammunition. He had been receiving psychiatric treatment since 2004, when he was still in the army. He was consulted again in May 2008 and June 2009, with a psychiatrist confirming his condition had worsened each time. The last diagnosis was made two months before he was hired to return to Iraq. Clive Stafford Smith, director of the charity Reprieve, which is helping with Fitzsimons' defence, told the Guardian: "As a British soldier, in the service of his country in Kosovo, Danny came across the dissected body parts of a young boy who had been bringing the troops bread, floating in the water supply. After this and other horrors, it is hardly surprising that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. It is unfathomable that ArmorGroup would dispatch him to a war zone without a proper screening, and one must wonder who ultimately bears the greatest responsibility for the tragedy that followed." Fitzsimons's account of the night is at odds with a statement provided by McGuigan's former fiance, Nicola Prestage, who claims shespoke to McGuigan via webcam for most of the night from 5:30pm. "We eventually said goodbye and logged off at 12.03am," she said in a statement. "Paul was murdered at approximately 1.15am in an unprovoked attack." The confession also appears to conflict with the account ofJohn Pollard, the British coroner who received McGuigan's body in the UKa month after the incident. He said: "There were no injuries on his body which might have revealed he had been involved in a physical altercation." In response to questions by the Guardian, ArmorGroup said: "We confirmed publicly on 15 September that, in this particular case, although there was evidence that Mr Fitzsimons falsified information during the recruitment process, his screening was not completed in line with the company's procedures. "We received two separate medical documents which certified that Mr Fitzsimons was fit to work in Iraq. It has subsequently come to light that the most recent of those documents was forged – we have reason to believe it was forged by Mr Fitzsimons." Prestage continued: "The fact they were not shot from close range rules out any notion of self-defence. Paul was sat on one side of the room on a chair and Darren was sat on the other side of the room on a bed. Paul was shot through the heart, the chest and through the mouth, and Darren was shot from behind, through his legs and through his temple. Three weeks later, without the man I loved, I gave birth to his daughter, a beautiful baby girl who will never see her daddy, or receive a cuddle from him. I live a life sentence every minute of every day without Paul, and not fully enjoying our daughter. Everything she does is tinged with sadness knowing her daddy will never get to experience her. "Can I claim I have PTSD living through this? I think not." Fitzsimons has been sent by a Baghdad court for further psychiatric evaluation. His trial will resume on 7 April.
Birmingham social workers sacked
Six staff dismissed for not meeting standards at council which was criticised over death from starvation of Khyra Ishaq Six social workers at Birmingham city council criticised over the death from starvation of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq have been sacked, it emerged today. The staff were dismissed over the past year for not doing their jobs properly at the council, which is taking part in a serious case review of the death. The dismissals are not thought to be directly linked to Khyra's case, but they follow other child deaths in recent years. Khyra died in May 2008 from starvation, and her mother and stepfather were jailed last week for her manslaughter. Colin Tucker, the director of children's social care at the council, said the sacked staff showed "no sign whatsoever" of meeting expected standards. In an interview with the BBC, he said: "We are not appointing some staff, as well as that we have dismissed six staff in the last year. "There is a clear indication we are serious about our standards. They did not adhere to standards and expectations that we laid down. They showed no sign whatsoever that they were keen to do so, so we dismissed them." Khyra died when her body succumbed to an infection after months of starvation at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham. She was removed from school in December 2007 and social workers made several attempts to visit her home. Khyra's mother, Angela Gordon, was jailed for 15 years over her death, while her former partner Junaid Abuhamza was jailed indefinitely, with a minimum term of seven-and-a-half years. During the trial the judge, Mrs Justice King, said that "in all probability" Khyra would not have died had there been "an adequate initial assessment and proper adherence by the educational welfare services to its guidance". Tucker was brought in last year after Ofsted inspectors branded aspects of the council's children's department as "inadequate". He said there were about 120 vacant posts were filled with agency staff but he wanted to cut the number of agency staff to between 40 and 50.
Lloyds predicts return to profit
Shares in the bank, which is 41% owned by the taxpayer, rose this morning as it told the stock market it has incurred fewer bad debts than feared so far this year Lloyds Banking Group cheered its long-suffering shareholders this morning by predicting a return to profit this year, after incurring fewer bad debts than feared in recent weeks. The bank, which is 41% owned by the taxpayer following its takeover of HBOS two years ago, told the City that trading had been "strong" in the first 10 weeks of the year. It is keeping a tight lid on costs, which are lower than in the same period in 2009. The bank's net interest margin is still in line with recent guidance and this has supported "a good level of income growth". "Impairment provisions are currently trending at lower levels than anticipated and as a result the group now expects to deliver a better impairment performance than previously guided, in both the retail and corporate businesses, in 2010," Lloyds said in an unscheduled trading statement. "Overall … the group believes that it will be profitable on a combined businesses basis in 2010." The upbeat statement boosted shares in Britain's banks, and sent Lloyds shares up 8% to 60p in early trading. Royal Bank of Scotland gained nearly 6% to 44.45p, and Barclays rose almost 2% to 359.6p. "We did this impromptu update because there is a material improvement in the performance," said a Lloyds spokesman. "We felt in the ten weeks of trading since Christmas the trends are better than we expected. These are the first signs of an encouraging performance in the year ahead." But he added that the improvement is "not really a reflection of general market conditions" but specific to Lloyds' customers. A big increase in bad debts drove Lloyds to a £6.3bn loss last year. Impairments ballooned to £24bn from £14.9bn largely because the loans that HBOS granted to commercial property ventures in the run-up to the financial crisis went sour. Eric Daniels, the Lloyds chief executive, said three weeks ago that bad debts had peaked. Today's comments will calm fears about UK banks after Standard & Poor's warned yesterday that lenders remain vulnerable to a deterioration in loan quality and money markets. The rating agency said there is "limited scope" for banks to increase profits over the next two years. "Into 2010, we consider that UK banks will remain pressured by elevated loan impairments. Our expectation of a slow economic recovery may prolong the period in which losses are elevated relative to historic averages," S&P said in a report. Analysts at Redburn Partners noted that the commercial property market ended 2009 on a high with an 8% rise in capital values in the fourth quarter, underpinned by the highest level of investment activity since autumn 2007. "This has materially positive ramifications for Lloyds' most troubled loan book." Lloyds will update on trading again on 27 April. Today's comments are part of a presentation which Daniels will give to investors at the Morgan Stanley European financials conference on Wednesday. "In general banks have been very bullish in client meetings post their results. Given that interest rates are at a 350-year low, it is not surprising that credit quality is improving," said Bruce Packard at Seymour Pierce. "But UK households are around three times more indebted than during the early 1990s recession, and consensus forecasts for growth look far too optimistic compared to how the banks grew income coming out of the last recession." Today's news comes as a former Lloyds employee accused the bank of artificially inflating its profits by almost £1bn through the use of aggressive tax-avoidance schemes and exotic "Lehman-style" offshore deals.
Matt Smith debuts as the Doctor
The Doctor's 11th incarnation is 'boy-racer in geography-teacher elbow patches', writes Dan Martin Where Christopher Eccleston played the role of timelord like a tortured war veteran, and David Tennant veered between big-hearted goofiness and pained introspection, Matt Smith puts a new spin again on the role of planet Gallifrey's most famous export. Tonight, after one of the longest handovers in television history, the world finally got a first glimpse of the new Doctor in action: part preppy public-school head boy; part gung-ho adventurer and part "nutty professor" – a boy-racer in geography-teacher elbow patches. The Eleventh Hour, Smith's first full episode in the role, picks up directly after Tennant's swansong The End Of Time, and features the eleventh Doctor crash landing on earth and plummeting straight into a new alien threat while coming to terms with his new body. He immediately comes face to face with new companion Amy Pond. It gives little away to state that the relationship between the Doctor and his companion operates in a radically different fashion to any that viewers will have seen before. Smith puts in a commanding performance as the Doctor, with as much chaos running through his body as is unfolding around him in the fictional English village of Leadworth. Certain elements, of course, remain the same as throughout the series' entire history – he never uses weapons, and he is rarely quite as in control of his time machine as he claims to be. But if he has not yet had time to get used to the life of a timelord, Smith has certainly had time to adjust to life in the public eye. The level of interest in the show and the fear of leaks meant the BBC had to announce Smith's casting on a TV special in January last year, despite Tennant still having a year left to go in the role. Just as much scrutiny has been placed on Steven Moffat, who takes over from Russell T Davies as executive producer and lead writer. A lifelong fan, Moffat was responsible for writing some of the most acclaimed episodes from the Davies era, with stories such as The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink earning him a reputation as writer of "the scariest stories". Moffat has refreshed every aspect of the show, which returned in 2005 after a 16-year hiatus. As well as a new Doctor and companion, the new series boasts a refreshed HD shooting style, a new logo, remixed theme music and a redesigned Tardis interior. The Guardian was granted a tour of the new-look time machine, a chaotic steampunk-inspired set housed in South Wales' Upper Boat studios, where the series is filmed. Moffat explained: "At the end of the last story the Tardis was exploding, so it rebuilds itself around the new Doctor. And because the Doctor is completely mad, it builds itself around his madness." The new time machine is certainly different. Nearly twice the size of the previous interior, hexagonal and circular "roundlets" sit inside the bronze and concrete walls of the Tardis. It also sits on three levels, and for the first time has a doorway leading towards other rooms. At the centre is a console now made up of bric-a-brac – a typewriter, a 1980s touchphone, a gramophone speaker, a petrol pump, taps, dials and pistons all surround a central "time rotor" made of blown glass. Moffat explained the clash of ancient and modern by explaining that, because it is a time machine, "there is no such thing as modern to the Tardis" and that it complements the 11th Doctor in being "elegant but kind of a mess".
France open to sharing nuclear subs
Officials from both countries have discussed a deterrent-sharing scheme but Britain has so far opposed the idea France has offered to create a joint UK-French nuclear deterrent by sharing submarine patrols, the Guardian has learned. Officials from both countries have discussed how a deterrence-sharing scheme might work but Britain has so far opposed the idea on the grounds that such pooling of sovereignty would be politically unacceptable. In a speech this morning in London, Gordon Brown said he had agreed to further nuclaar co-operation with France last week after talks with Nicolas Sarkozy. The prime minister did not comment explicitly about submarines, saying only that the UK and France would both retain "our independent nuclear deterrent". Britain and France each maintain "continuous at-sea deterrence", which involves running at least one nuclear-armed submarine submerged and undetected at any given time. It is a hugely expensive undertaking, and its usefulness in a post-cold war world has long been questioned by disarmament campaigners. Britain's independent deterrent, based on Trident missiles carried by submarines, could cost the country up to £100bn, according to some estimates, once planned modernisation to the fleet has been completed. France also maintains a four-submarine Strategic Oceanic Force, with each submarine armed with 16 missiles. Last September Brown said Britain's submarine fleet could be reduced from four to three as a gesture towards disarmament, but the total financial savings were reported as relatively small. "We have talked about the idea of sharing continuity at sea as part of a larger discussion about sharing defence burdens," a French official said. A British official confirmed that the French government had raised the idea of shared "continuous at-sea deterrence", but added that any such scheme would cause "outrage" in the midst of an election campaign. Today, Brown said of his talks with the French president: "We have agreed a degree of co-operation that is, I think, greater than we have had previously but we will retain, as will France, our independent nuclear deterrent. "We wish, of course, to see multilateral disarmament around the world and we are ready to contribute towards that, but in a world that is so insecure, particularly with other countries trying to acquire nuclear weapons, we do not see the case for us withdrawing the independent nuclear deterrent that we have." Sarkozy and Brown discussed possibilities around nuclear defence co-operation when the French president visited London in March 2008. The joint declaration afterwards simply said the two countries would "foster our bilateral dialogue on nuclear deterrence". The same month, Sarkozy hinted at the potential for shared deterrence in a speech at Cherbourg. "Together with the United Kingdom, we have taken a major decision: it is our assessment that there can be no situation in which the vital interests of either of our two nations could be threatened without the vital interests of the other also being threatened," he said. Following an underwater collision between French and British nuclear-armed submarines last February, France's defence minister, Herve Morin, said the two navies would consider co-ordinating patrols. "Between France and Britain, there are things we can do together … one of the solutions would be to think about the patrol zones," he said. It is unclear whether Morin's offer was taken up by the Royal Navy. The Sarkozy proposal would go much further – Britain and France would take turns to maintain an underwater vigil. Proposals for closer UK-French defence co-operation have been driven by Paris, British defence officials emphasised yesterday, though Brown may raise the issue in remarks today to the Foreign Press Association in London. Britain and France could synchronise nuclear deterrent patrols and co-operate in the deployment of surface fleet task forces, sources say. However, British officials played down the possibility of formal agreements on the nuclear deterrent – or on sharing each other's aircraft carriers. "We could not make a full commitment," a defence source said, referring to the deployment of carriers. He referred to the British intervention in Sierra Leone 10 years ago and Iraq. France did not "want to have anything to do with" either operation, the source said. However, both governments say they recognise the potential scope for much closer co-operation both in terms of strategy and in procuring new weapons systems. Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, has spelled out the possibilities of closer co-operation on a number of occasions recently. "Our most important bilateral relationship in Europe is with France," he said in a keynote speech. "Most importantly, we are Europe's only two nuclear powers and we contribute greatly to Nato's security because of this. A future Conservative government will continue and strengthen this relationship." He added that if the Conservatives formed the next government, the Ministry of Defence would invite France to make a formal submission to the promised Strategic Defence and Security Review "stating what they expect from their relationship with the United Kingdom". Fox told the Commons earlier this week: "We will need to be able to project power on a strategic level alongside the US and France." He is expected today to point to the advantages of closer defence procurement co-operation with France – on a bilateral basis, he will emphasise. Successive British governments have been committed to a policy of "continuous at-sea deterrence", with one nuclear-armed submarine on patrol at any time. Naval commanders in the past have argued that to ensure this would require four Trident submarines – one on patrol, one preparing to go out on patrol, with two others being refitted, perhaps one needing an unexpected and long period in dock. Those in favour of maintaining four submarines also argue that producing three would be almost as expensive, because many of the costs go on initial research and development, building the infrastructure and training the workforce. France has three nuclear-armed submarines plus a new sub yet to be deployed. Unlike Britain it also has aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs.
BBC 6 Music denies hijack claim
Suggestions of 'guerrilla broadcasting' as song by 70s rockers The Undertones intrudes into Radio 4 scheduling The battle to save BBC 6 Music may have just turned ugly. Supporters of the threatened digital station, which has been earmarked for closure by BBC bosses, claimed a direct hit on the corporation last night after a three minute segment of a song from 6 Music intruded into Radio 4 scheduling. The track by The Undertones took over the airwaves at the end of the news at 7pm and just before The Archers, prompting a frenzy of tweets applauding the rumoured act of "guerrilla broadcasting". Twitter was abuzz with suggestions it was a hijack by disgruntled BBC 6 Music employees who have so far seen their appeals for the station to be saved rebuffed by BBC director general Mark Thompson. The BBC played down suggestions that rogue elements were at work: "Owing to a technical error Radio 4 transmission was lost for approximately 3 minutes this evening shortly after 7pm. We are very sorry to listeners for loss of service." On Twitter members of the Save 6 Music campaign were in no doubt Radio 4's impromptu foray into music was a deliberate act of digital sabotage. Thompson said he will close 6 Music and the Asian Network at the end of 2011. His announcement prompted furious response from loyal listeners of the eight-year-old music station, who say its distinctive output should be preserved. Nearly 8,000 listeners complained to the BBC after the announcement and DJs Richard Bacon, Phil Jupitus and Jarvis Cocker rallied to the station's defence. The BBC has opened a public consultation on the proposed closure. Sir Michael Lyons, the trust chairman, has hinted that a big public backlash could force the corporation to climb down.
American admits role in Mumbai terror plot
David Coleman Headley avoids death sentence with guilty plea in US court and pledges co-operation with police to avoid death sentence An American man has admitted helping plan the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people and plotting a strike on a Danish newspaper because of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. David Coleman Headley, 49, pleaded guilty in a US court yesterday to all 12 counts he faced. Under a deal with prosecutors, Headley will not face execution if he continues to co-operate with their terrorism investigation. He could face up to life in prison and a $3m fine when he's sentenced. A date has not been set. His attorney, Robert Seeder, said after the hearing that Headley's decision to talk was "a manifestation and example of his regret and remorse", and was not based solely on the fact that he will avoid a possible death sentence. "He has provided significant help to the United States and aided other countries," said Seeder. He declined to specify what help Headley had provided. In his plea agreement, Headley admitted he made surveillance videos and conducted other intelligence gathering for the November 2008 attack on Mumbai. Nine of the 10 gunmen were also killed in the three-day siege. The US and India say the gunmen were trained and directed by the Pakistani-based terrorist group Lashkar e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure"). Headley also said he met a Pakistan-based terrorist leader, Ilyas Kashmiri, in a tribal area of western Pakistan in May 2009, and that Kashmiri told him he had a European contact who could provide Headley with money, weapons and manpower for an attack on Denmark's Jyllands Posten newspaper. That attack never happened. He said men he knew as "elders," whom he understood to be leaders of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network, urged swift action in attacking the newspaper, which offended many Muslims in 2005 by publishing a dozen cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. He said Kashmiri wanted newspaper staff beheaded and the heads thrown from the building to send a message to the Danish authorities. Headley said Kashmiri said it should be a suicide attack, and that the attackers should prepare martyrdom videos. According to the indictment, Kashmiri has been in regular communication with al-Qaida's No 3, Sheikh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement from Washington that "not only has the criminal justice system achieved a guilty plea in this case, but David Headley is now providing us valuable intelligence about terrorist activities." "As this case demonstrates, we must continue to use every tool available to defeat terrorism both at home and abroad," Holder said. Headley could have been sentenced to death if convicted of the most serious charges – conspiracy to bomb public places in India and six counts of murdering US nationals in India – but the death sentence is "off the table" if Headley continues to cooperate, said Seeder. That could include testifying against his co-defendant, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, if he goes to trial. Rana, a 49-year-old Canadian co-defendant who also lived in Chicago, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism in Denmark and India, as well as to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Messages seeking comment were left for Rana's attorney, Patrick Blegen. Retired Pakistani military man Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed and Kashmiri are also accused in the newspaper plot against the Danish newspaper. Their exact whereabouts are unknown.
Hague under pressure over Ashcroft deal
Papers reveal Tory campaign to keep peer's tax privileges William Hague was said to be aware 10 years ago of a deal struck by senior Tories that eventually resulted in Lord Ashcroft secretly remaining a non-dom after obtaining his peerage, according to official documents released today. Hague, the former leader of the Conservative party who had been lobbying for the billionaire to secure a seat in the House of Lords, has repeatedly insisted that he was only told earlier this year that Ashcroft was a non-dom, and therefore not paying full UK tax on all his earnings. But previously confidential parliamentary correspondence published today showed that Hague's chief whip, James Arbuthnot, was instrumental in lobbying for Ashcroft not to have to give up tax privileges on his massive overseas earnings – despite assurances given by Hague that he would pay "tens of millions" to the Treasury. The papers also include a letter from Arbuthnot which suggests that Hague was fully aware of the deal between the Cabinet Office and Ashcroft. This raises fresh questions for Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, who was forced to speak about the issue today for the first time after some of the documents were leaked to the BBC. He has denied being aware of the full details of the deal. After a decade of refusing to clarify his tax status, Ashcroft revealed three weeks ago that he was a non-dom, appearing to contradict assurances made on his behalf by Hague, who fought hard to secure his seat in the Lords 10 years ago. The political honours scrutiny committee repeatedly made it clear that Ashcroft's elevation was dependent on him giving a promise that he would return to the UK and become a UK taxpayer. The peerage was agreed after Ashcroft gave a "solemn and binding undertaking" in writing that he would become permanently resident in the UK. Instead of becoming a permanent resident, however, he became a "long term resident" – a distinction that allowed him to avoid paying UK income tax on all his worldwide earnings. The correspondence released today by the public administration committee revealed for the first time that Arbuthnot was deeply involved in the negotiations that led to the downgrading of Ashcroft's undertaking. Arbuthnot, who was said to be acting as an intermediary for Ashcroft, insisted that the billionaire – under the terms of the assurances he had given – could take up his seat in the Lords despite not being domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. Sir Hayden Phillips, a senior civil servant, eventually agreed with Arbuthnot in July 2000 that Ashcroft needed only to become a long-term resident in order to comply with the undertakings he had given. In turn, Arbuthnot replied within hours, saying: "I confirm that I agree with your understanding of the position." He added: "The leader of the opposition is satisfied that the action adequately meets the terms of Michael Ashcroft's undertaking to take up permanent residence in the UK." The terms of that deal shocked members of the political honours scrutiny committee. Lady Dean, one of the two surviving members of the committee, said today: "We were continually of the view that Lord Ashcroft would maintain his undertaking to take up permanent residence ... It looks like the commitments and undertakings given were not carried through." The papers released today also show the scrutiny committee was determined that Ashcroft should honour the assurances he had given. The secretary of the committee had even suggested the businessman might be asked to show copies of Inland Revenue forms as proof that he was a full UK taxpayer; the IR Form P86, denoting arrival in the UK, and IR DOM1, proving he had become domiciled and would pay full tax. It repeatedly asked for evidence that this had been done before the undertaking was revised. The documents also show that all parties emphasised Ashcroft should live in the UK to become a full working peer and attend parliament regularly. But his Lords records show he has not spoken in a debate in the last year and has attended only 15% of votes. A spokesman for Hague insisted tonight that he had delegated the issue to his chief whip. "He didn't know any of the details [in 2000]. He asked James Arbuthnot to deal with the issue and make sure Downing Street was satisfied. He did. That was it," he said. However, Hague did concede today that he should not have promised that Ashcroft would pay tens of millions of tax. The foreign secretary David Miliband said that the letters proved that Hague was "intimately" involved in the process. He said: "It is now clear there has been a decade of deception at the top of the Conservative party and I repeat my call … that David Cameron sacks Lord Ashcroft."
Second year of student loans chaos predicted
With twice as many applications forecast this year, auditors fear more unanswered calls and unpaid loans England's student loans and grants system is at "substantial" risk of being hit by delays again this year, a damning report on last summer's fiasco warned today. The government said it was sending auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to check the Student Loan Company (SLC) was ready to process applications and answer customer enquiries this year, when it is likely to have to process twice as many applications for loans, grants and allowances. The National Audit Office said there was no proof the company could deal with the extra demand, and blamed the SLC and the government for failing to grasp the scale of last year's problems with the newly centralised system when applications piled up and applicants struggled to make contact on the phone. Tens of thousands of students faced delays to their grants and loans payments in the autumn, after the SLC took over processing applications by new students from local authorities. The audit office's report found that only 46% were fully processed by the start of the term, compared to 63% in 2008. As the crucial date approached, calls from students soared, with 4m made in September. Despite having a target of no more than 14% of calls left unanswered, some 87% went unanswered that month. Between February 2009 and this January, only a fifth of calls were answered in 60 seconds, with 56% left unanswered. An audit office survey of 1,000 first-year students found that half were asked to resend the same documents; half waited more than three weeks for a proper reply to a written question; and a third had to ring more than five times before making contact. Around one in six were told their documents had been lost. On average, it took more than 12 weeks for an application to be processed in 2009/10, compared to more than nine weeks in 2008/09, when local authorities were in charge. Amyas Morse, head of the audit office, said: "The question must be asked how the company, given its failure in 2009, will deal with twice as many applications in 2010, when it becomes responsible for applications from both first- and second-year students. "The department and the company must give the highest priority to achieving a radical improvement in the service and, in so doing, to restoring the confidence of applicants and stakeholders. They will have to manage substantial risks." The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills came under fire for failing to monitor the SLC. The report said "weaknesses" identified in 2006 should have served as a warning to "such a challenging programme". The higher education minister David Lammy said: "It is clear that the service offered by the Student Loans Company last summer fell well short of expectations. "It is important that we can be confident students and their families receive the service they deserve from the SLC throughout the rest of this year. This is why I have commissioned PwC to carry out this health check." He announced that an additional £16m would be given to the SLC, partly to fund extra resources for application processing and call handling at peak times. Two top SLC officials, ICT director, Wallace Gray, and the marketing and customer services director, Martin Herbert, quit in December. The resignations came after a government-commissioned review, by Professor Deian Hopkin, concluded a "conspicuous failure in key areas" which had had a far-reaching impact on students. The SLC chief executive, Ralph Seymour-Jackson, said: "We deeply regret the problems that students experienced last year. This was the first year of a three-year process to centralise student finance in England and I would like to reassure students and parents that lessons have been learned." The SLC said the service was currently running smoothly and backlogs were cleared some time ago. The report concluded: "The company expects to process at least twice as many applications in 2010, when it becomes responsible for applications from both first and second years, and it is unproven whether it has the capacity to provide a good service this year." It added: "Avoiding a recurrence of the 2009 problems is of the highest priority for 2010, but substantial risks remain to successful delivery of the service."
Derry bomb alerts paralyse city
Police station evacuated, roads cordoned off and college buildings closed because of suspicious vehicle and bomb threat A police station has been evacuated and a bridge closed in a series of bomb alerts across Derry city this morning. The centre of Northern Ireland's second city has been paralysed following three separate bomb alerts, two of them in Strand Road near Derry's main police station. A spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said a white van that had been hijacked was left outside the Strand Road police station, which was evacuated as a precaution. Roads were closed between Lawrence Hill and Asylum Road. Meanwhile an area around Bishop Street courthouse was cordoned off after claims a bomb had been left in the area. Army bomb disposal officers are being sent to both incidents. Motorists have been asked to avoid the areas, while the Northwest Regional college said its Northland Road building and Strand Road sites would be closed. Students were advised not to arrive for class. The disruption will be blamed on the Real IRA, which has a strong and growing presence in Derry.
Bring back brothels, says French MP
Chantel Brunel, of ruling party, says licensed bordellos would protect women from violence – and polls say the public agree France must bring back the brothel to protect its prostitutes from exploitation, trafficking and aggression in the street, an MP from Nicolas Sarkozy's rightwing party has said. Chantal Brunel, a member of the ruling UMP, called on French authorities to study the possibility of legalising centres where sex workers could serve clients within a regulated and protected framework. It was time, she said, to move away from attempts to stamp out prostitution and instead focus on making the sex trade more safe and transparent. According to a CSA opinion poll, Brunel's stance is supported by a majority of French people: 59% of respondents supported the reopening of so-called maisons closes (literally, closed houses). While that number has fallen slightly in recent years, the number opposed to the reintroduction of brothels has dropped from 26% seven years ago to just 10% now. Women remain markedly more against the idea than men. In 2003, Sarkozy, then interior minister, made passive solicitation a crime punishable by a jail term or hefty fine. Brunel voted for the law at the time, but now says the crackdown failed. She is urging the government to look at other countries, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, in which licensed brothels are legal. "Prostitutes are finding themselves even more badly treated and damaged than before," she said. "We have to stop their exploitation." Amid the shame of wartime "horizontal" Nazi collaboration and growing concern for women's rights, 1,400 maisons closes were shut in 1946 under what is known as the Marthe Richard law. Richard, a prostitute turned politician, fought to have brothels outlawed out of a desire to kill off the sex trade for good. Accused by some activists of encouraging a return to the bad old days, Brunel, author of a new book entitled Putting an End to Violence against Women, insists she is not calling for the resurrection of brothels as they were once known, but envisages maisons ouvertes in which shelter and medical care would be provided. "The idea is not to return to the situation before 1946," she said. She would like to see prostitutes working in groups "like in professional offices, like accountants". A boss figure or "landlord" to whom the workers would give part of their earnings would not be "essential", she added. Françoise Gil, a sociologist and member of a women's rights association, agreed the distinction was crucial. She said she would be against the return of maisons closes, but would be in favour of reopening maisons ouvertes in which sex workers could gather without a boss or a pimp. Other activists, however, are outraged at the proposals irrespective of caveats. "What kind of a society is it that shuts up its women for the pleasure of its men?" said Bruno Lemettre, president of the Mouvement du Nid anti-prostitution association. "Allowing such a thing in the country of human rights would be unacceptable," he said. There are thought to be between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time sex workers – male and female – in France, 80% from abroad. A working group, of which Brunel is part, is due to meet next week to discuss the country's approach to prostitution.
Guardian Daily: How bad is mephedrone?
Today we focus on mephedrone, the drug Lincolnshire police have linked with the tragic deaths earlier this week of two teenage boys in Scunthorpe. Reporter Robert Booth recounts what happened to Louis Wainwright, 18, and Nicholas Smith, 19. We also hear from an (anonymous) man who's used mephedrone. He describes its effects. Joining our studio panel is Martin Barnes, chief executive of Drugscope, and a member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which meets on 29 March to discuss a recommendation that mephedrone be banned. Niamh Eastwood, deputy director of Release, says the sacking of Professor David Nutt from the council led to a delay in the assessment of mephedrone's dangers. Alan Travis, the Guardian's home affairs editor, explains how the drug is made and the dangers that if it's banned it will simply be replaced by a similar compound. Reporter Adam Gabbatt looks at how internet users are discussing the drug and its possible prohibition.
24 hours in pictures
A selection of the best images from around the world
James Richardson's football press review
CSKA into the last eight, Madrid in denial and Bordeaux with plenty of bottle... James Richardson brings you the European paper's reaction to this week's action
Interview: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist who will soon take over Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, on why he wants to tell people that it's OK to speak out
Guardian Daily: Brown says sorry
Gordon Brown has told the Commons he made a mistake over defence spending in his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. Chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt assesses the damage to the prime minister. Reporter Helen Pidd looks at Labour's election strategy, which will include a series of intimate meetings with Gordon Brown in voters' front rooms. Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Irish Catholic Church, has said sorry for failing to tell the police in 1975 about a paedophile priest. The cover-up allowed Father Brendan Smyth to continue abusing children for 18 years. Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald says Cardinal Brady may be forced to resign. Europe's colonisation of the New World is the theme of this year's Edinburgh Festival. The festival's director, Jonathan Mills, told the Guardian's Scotland correspondent Severin Carrell about the highlights. Ai Weiwei, China's greatest living artist, is doing the Tate Modern's next Turbine Hall installation. He talks to Beijing correspondent Tania Branigan. A group of writers have ascribed imaginary lives to a collection of 16th and 17th century portraits of people whose identity has been lost in the mists of time. Steven Morris reports from a new exhibition at Montacute House in Somerset.
Torres refloats Anfield 'sinking ship'
On the scale of great European nights at Anfield this might not scrape into the top 40 but, as feats of escapology go, it was still a hugely satisfying occasion for Liverpool, given what it would have meant for them to go out of this competition. The Europa League is not a tournament the club would craves but it may yet have therapeutic qualities as they approach the final stages of a difficult, occasionally excruciating season. The pressure on Rafael Benítez could have risen dangerously close to intolerable had Liverpool been eliminated before the quarter-finals. Instead they set about the business of overhauling Lille with equal measures of panache and determination, Steven Gerrard putting them ahead with a ninth-minute penalty before Fernando Torres's two second-half goals showed the Spaniard is close to his predatory best after a season heavily disrupted by injury. These two talismanic figures were outstanding on a night when the only concern for Liverpool was the effect a second game in four nights might have on the players' legs before hostilities are renewed with Manchester United on Sunday. Liverpool put so much into this game their supporters could be forgiven if they find themselves fretting about the sapping effects. There was a heart-stopping moment in the first half when Gerrard went down after an innocuous aerial challenge and took an age getting to his feet, and there must be obvious concerns about facing a United side that has had the whole week to prepare. That, however, is a sacrifice everyone connected with the club will be willing to accept given the prize of invigorating their hopes of ending the season with a trophy – any trophy. Thursday night football, with that peculiar pre-match anthem, is not what anyone at Anfield aspired to at the start of the season but it could not be said that the players looked short of motivation or that there was any sense of this competition being beneath a club more accustomed to the Champions League. Gerrard was a commanding, ubiquitous figure and there were flashes of brilliance from Torres as he scored his first goals for Liverpool in European competition since the quarter-final against Chelsea last April. Torres has now scored five times in as many starts since recovering from a groin injury and, when he and Gerrard are in this mood, it encourages the sense that the team can end the season with a flourish. Benítez's men played as though it was not just the manager who was affronted by Albert Riera's description of a "sinking ship". Lille, a fast, counter-attacking side who have climbed to fourth in le Championnat, arrived at Anfield with a 1-0 first-leg advantage but the raw energy of the home side seemed to take them by surprise. Riera has been suspended by the club until Monday and will be fined two weeks' wages. "We will deal with it internally," Benítez said. "Sometimes, though, you don't need to say too much [in response]. You just look at the way the players stick together on the pitch." Point made. The match was a story of almost incessant pressure on Mickaël Landreau's goal. Only when the score was 2-0, with Lille pressing for the goal that would have turned the tie in their favour, did any nerves creep in. They subsided as Torres pounced on the rebound after Gerrard's shot had been parried by Landreau. Lille will reflect on the moment, just after the half-hour, when Eden Hazard burst through the Liverpool defence and tried to flick the ball over José Reina only for his shot to deflect off the goalkeeper's head. But it was a rare attack. Liverpool's intent was obvious from the start and for long spells their opponents looked as though they had just realised how Anfield, under floodlights, with the Kop in good voice, can inflict stage fright on even the most intrepid travellers. Their performance was riddled with mistakes and the game swung in Liverpool's favour after a nightmarish moment for Adil Rami, the Lille centre-half obligingly sticking out a leg as Lucas ran on to the ball inside the penalty area. Gerrard was calmness personified from the spot and, from that moment, Liverpool played with an assuredness that might not have been expected from a team with so much to lose. Benítez later spoke of Torres still not being fully fit – "he is working very hard with the physios but he can still improve" – but five minutes into the second half the striker reminded us why a case could be made for him to be recognised as the most lethal finisher in Europe. Ryan Babel's through-ball was little more than a long clearance but the hapless Rami misjudged the bounce and from that moment there was an air of inevitability about where the ball would end up. Torres held off the centre-half Aurélien Chedjou and dinked his shot beyond Landreau. When he beat Landreau for a second time it soothed any lingering nerves in the crowd. Liverpool could get to like the Europa League after all.
McCoy has point to prove on Denman
• Champion jockey wins Ryanair Chase after two spills
• Critics say McCoy too old for Gold Cup second favourite Tony McCoy has rarely looked more like the battered veteran than he did at 4.05pm this afternoon. He limped from the track after a fall in the fifth race at Cheltenham, his second spill of the day, with stitches in his chin thanks to a kick in the head after the first. But in between there was a victory in the Ryanair Chase, one of the feature events at the Festival, and for as long as those keep coming, all the punishment will seem worthwhile. Success on Denman in the Gold Cup this afternoon would be a balm to ease every ache and twinge in the 35-year-old's body. He has won the race just once before, in 1997, and may never get a better chance to win another. It would also erase the memory of his first ride on Denman, at Newbury last month, when McCoy was unseated after a horrible blunder three fences from home. "Gone, history, pfffft," was McCoy's answer when asked to reflect on that race. But for some punters, it raised doubts about the champion jockey, whether he is the right man for Denman and whether his famous strength is beginning to flag. If thoughts like that ever worm their way into McCoy's mind, his remarkable career will be as good as over. Tom Segal, arguably the most respected tipster in the business thanks to his Pricewise column in the Racing Post, has been the most prominent sceptic in recent months, though his concerns are not specific to Denman. "I don't think that McCoy riding him is by any means a negative, but if I was going to choose a jockey to ride any chaser I owned, he wouldn't be in my top five," Segal said. "Other jockeys win big races over fences and in general he doesn't. His win in the Ryanair was his first in a Grade One chase since 2008. "He now leans back at his fences, all the weight is on the back and withers of the horse, whereas if you look at a jockey like Barry Geraghty, all the weight is at the front and that makes it easier to get a horse into a rhythm. "It's really not surprising. He's nearly 36, he's been around for ages and taken loads of falls. I'd be the same. The longer you go on, the more you're slightly sceptical about getting a bad fall, and that's why you lean back. It's just what happens to jump jockeys." Like his jockey, Denman's bravery is beyond doubt and he is not a difficult ride. "He's straightforward," Ruby Walsh, who will ride Kauto Star, Denman's great rival, says. "Either he's in form or he's not in form. There's a lot of waffle about the fall [at Aintree in April 2009] and the unseated [at Newbury]. "You don't have to hold him up, you don't have to delay your challenge on him. You line him up, put him in the van and up the ante on him." Jonjo O'Neill, one of McCoy's regular employers and a Gold Cup winner himself, described him as "the magic man" after Albertas Run won the Ryanair, and it was certainly an example of McCoy at his best, as he seized the initiative coming down the hill and bent the race to his will. "Racing is made up of opinions," Ted Walsh, the Channel 4 pundit – and father of Ruby – said. "Obviously some jockeys suit some horses better than others. I remember Jonjo O'Neill won two races here on Dawn Run, but I was always of the opinion that she ran quicker and faster for Tony Mullins, who wasn't a patch on Jonjo as a jockey. "But I don't think this is one of those situations. Denman is straightforward, and Tony McCoy is one of the finest jockeys and horsemen that you could ever put across a horse." McCoy may think of Newbury as history, but he will have been planning how he might correct the record ever since. "The Gold Cup should be a great race, and it will be a better race if Denman beats Kauto Star," he said. "I think every racing enthusiast should be looking forward to it. "When I was on the ground [after falling in the first] the pain threshold was testing me to the limit, and I got a good kick in the back of the head so I'm pretty sore. But I could get up, and if you can get on a horse and you can push it and do it justice, you should ride it, shouldn't you?"
Review: I Love You, Phillip Morris
Jim Carrey is a fraudster who falls for Ewan McGregor in a Texas jail. Peter Bradshaw enjoys an intriguing, offbeat comedy Jim Carrey's rubbery, hyperreal face achieves a sheen of panic and desperate neediness in this stranger-than-fiction comedy drawn from real life. Steven Russell (Carrey) is a fraudster, a hypnotically plausible fantasist, and a formerly married ex-cop who comes out as a gay man, before finally getting sent to jail in Texas for insurance scams, and there finding the love of his life. This is the shy, young innocent Phillip Morris, nicely played by Ewan McGregor, who, like the rest of the world, trusts the exuberant and charming Steven implicitly. Morris himself tells his own story in a seductive, honeyed voiceover, rather like Reese Witherspoon's narration in Alexander Payne's Election. Electrified by his new romance, Steven redoubles his fanatical determination to trick and manipulate the world around him to get what he believes he wants: Phillip. When his own prison term ends, Steven poses as a lawyer to get Phillip released on licence – forging documents, faking voices on the phone, and maintaining a series of inspired bluffs – and then constructs a massive, fraudulent career in both law and finance so that they can live together in luxury as a super-rich gay couple. But it isn't long before the police close in, and Steven has to demonstrate his almost superhuman talents for evading the law: shabby deceptions theoretically consecrated to his love for his beloved Phillip, who hasn't grasped how he has been made complicit and co-dependent in Steven's delusional career of lies. This movie, from writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa – who wrote the Billy Bob Thornton comedy Bad Santa – is intriguing, at least partly because it is not immediately clear what it is centrally about. Steven's own lifelong identity crisis, which may stem from the traumatic discovery of having been adopted, has a parallel in the film. Is it about gay romance? Is it about a con man's criminal career? Are we, the audience, supposed to trust Steven Russell, to take him at his own estimation of himself? Not exactly, no. Even calling him a fraudster doesn't describe the character Carrey plays. His compulsive lying is an addictive habit like kleptomania; it forces him to live in a growing web of relationships based on bad faith, from which more scams will be needed to escape. Like many liars, Steven has developed a lovably roguish personality as a cover for when he gets caught and has to admit guilt, and as a face-saving device to allow his dupes to grimace and pretend they sort of suspected as much. Steven is not a con man in the sense of a cool, rational grifter who knows exactly what he is doing and why. He is in the grip of a compulsion, which distracts him from a batsqueak of terror that he doesn't know what or who he is. Steven seizes messianically on his gay identity and his gay love for Phillip Morris. The title of the film is a kind of personal mission statement. But to the very end, this grand passion may not entirely explain his behaviour. Steven's soon-to-be-ex-wife Debbie, played by Leslie Mann, asks a doctor if Steven's "gay thing and the stealing" are part of the same disorder. Steven's then-boyfriend Jimmy, played by Rodrigo Santoro, is disgusted by this homophobic remark. And yet Debbie, in her blundering way, has come close to something. It is not Steven's gayness that is of a piece with his stealing, but his pretending to be straight, and then pretending that his embrace of a gay identity is the solution to all his personal problems. What counts is the deception, and the way it melts into self-deception. With its chequered and meandering story-path, I Love You Phillip Morris reminded me surreally of serial killer films like David Fincher's Zodiac, Cédric Kahn's Roberto Succo and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine – about criminals whose modus operandi and repetitive patterns of behaviour look like a rationally pursued criminal "career" – but it is a career that could digress or disappear at any moment. Carrey and McGregor certainly succeed in making it all funny. Carrey's anti-hero is, after all, a very clever man, who gets away with a lot of stuff because of a genuine mental ability, which he unfortunately supplements with lies. (There's a nice montage sequence in which Steven tells a "lawyer" joke at the office, and then overhears dozens of people retelling that same joke badly, revealing their various crass prejudices.) And there is something funny and touching about this anarchic, abortive love affair, a chaotically doomed relationship that neither of the principals understand, and it is the very muddled and messy quality of this relationship that announces that it is drawn from real life. Steven's bluffs and blags are arguably just a crazily magnified version of the fake-it-till-you-make-it routine that many entirely honest people find themselves needing to use. Poor Steven does see himself as basically one of these decent, honest types. "Sometimes you've got to shave a little off the puzzle-piece to make it fit," he muses. The puzzle fits together very entertainingly here. Rating: 4/5
'I will kill myself at 80'
Peter Greenaway makes one thing very clear to Catherine Shoard: there is nothing more to life but sex and death "I don't know much about you," says Peter Greenaway, sipping his mint tea, "but I do know two things. You were conceived, two people did fuck, and I'm very sorry but you're going to die. Everything else about you is negotiable." Negligible, too. For Greenaway, there's sex and there's death and "what else is there to talk about?" He believes, he continues, as relaxed as if predicting rain tomorrow, "that all religion is about death and art's about life. Religion is there to say: hey, you don't have to worry – there's an afterlife. Culture represents the opposite of that – sex. A very stupid Freudian way of looking at it, but one is positive and one is negative. Especially against people like you. All religions have always hated females." Steam billows up from the cup into his face. He looks half David Attenborough, breath fogging the lens as he explores the Arctic (he has the same energy, the same gleaming curiosity), half Chris Tarrant, emerging from a cloud of dry ice. We're in a cafe on a grand, damp square in Amsterdam; Lady in Red on a loop, sausages on the menu. Greenaway, 67, lives nearby with a theatre director called Saskia and their two young children – he also has couple of grownup daughters from a previous marriage to Carol, a potter. Looming opposite is the Rijksmuseum, of which Greenaway has just given me a first-class tour, embracing the role with relish: rolling his r's, spitting his t's, hammering great deep cleaves between each syllable. Tourists stop and goggle, not necessarily at the Vermeers. We wound up at The Night Watch, Rembrandt's musket-heavy canvas and the subject of Greenaway's latest film, Nightwatching. It's a sort of Renaissance-era CSI (a show he admires; he's also a Midsomer Murders fan) investigating the puzzles in the painting itself and the mystery of the artist's sudden fall into virtual penury. Martin Freeman plays Rembrandt: oddly plausible and often nude. In fact Nightwatching is rather more conventional than much of his back catalogue. It's an easily digestible examination of – yep, sex and death – and Greenaway's other key concerns: painting, snobbery, conspiracy. It's the latest in an ongoing project to unpick nine art masterpieces through movies and attendant installations. He's already knocked off The Last Supper and The Marriage at Cana ("Which I think is the wedding of Christ"). The motherlode is Michelangelo's Last Judgment. Talks, he says, are underway with the Vatican. The Night Watch, he reckons, is the first work of real cinema, on account of Rembrandt's manipulation of artificial light. Though were Rembrandt around today, "he would have been shooting on holograms. He would be post-post-James Cameron." He shakes his head. "All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil." In Greenaway's case, that means moving towards "feature film as essay. Like Montaigne. It's much more discursive. It doesn't hang on to a psychological narrative and it's not impressionistic. I don't want to take you anywhere. It's not a piece of escapism." At 67, Greenaway is no longer interested in cinema per se – it's a half-dead medium wasted by taking its cues from books, "telling bedtime stories for adults. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are illustrated books. Not cinema. I want to be a prime creator. As every self-regarding artist should do." He believes cinema needs to figure out a way to get out of the dark ("Man's not nocturnal"), get rid of the frame, and the camera, too. "We have a cinema of what we see, not what we think." Until that happens, though, he's still making films. And still, apparently, enthused by their possibilities. He talks as much about two other films he has in the pipeline as he does Nightwatching: one about Eisenstein losing his virginity in Mexico, another – "my first, real, dyed-in-the-wool pornography" – about a 17th century Dutch engraver. He fishes a postcard from his blazer pocket. It's another Rijksmuseum highlight, this time by Hendrik Goltzius. "Here you can see Lot and his two daughters; this is a few minutes before they fuck him in order to produce a continuation of the human race." Why does he do so much? "Maybe it's a hunger. A horror of the empty space. Without wishing even remotely to impress you, I'm involved in 26 projects at the moment all over the world. It's a glorious opportunity to practice being an artist." Greenaway is an incurable self-promoter, forever ready with a barrage of stats about how many people he VJ'd in front of in Gdansk, or have seen The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover. There will always be, he says, "people who travel thousands of miles to see a Greenaway film. And I'm still painting – I've got a big exhibit coming up in Milan soon. And that's even more private." Yet it is on show to the public? "Yes. Well, do you think a person who keeps a diary keeps it for himself? Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else. So if I'm making very private films I want people to see them; of course I do." There's a soreness beneath the swagger. In England, at least, Greenaway must be his own cheerleader. He's come under attack from his peers; even some of his defenders qualify their praise. He's also had a rough write-up in a lot of interviews. He suggests various explanations: because he's a jack of all trades, not a specialist. Because he's not Oxbridge. Because the English are "textually minded … and so those who practise the image are regarded as not kosher." He cites an ally in undervaluation: RB Kitaj, another artist of ideas. "He had a big exhibit in Tate 10 years ago and he was absolutely excoriated by people like you because he did your job so much better than you can. He understood it so much more than you did." He's happy in Holland. He likes the lack of snobbery, the openness, the freedom. "For a long time now they've been able to talk about homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia at the breakfast table. Elsewhere people turn away in embarrassment or run for the hills." He is, he says, planning to take advantage of the freedom afforded and kill himself when he's 80. "My youngest daughter will be 21 so I can see her to full adulthood. Why would it be sad? I've got 14 years left. They say the most valuable thing about death is that you never know when it's going to happen. But I think this a curse. I think if we knew we'd make much better use of life. I've had a fantastic life and I'm still enjoying it and am an extremely happy man, but there has to be a trade-off somewhere. I'm a Darwinian. All I can think is that we're here to fuck, to procreate. And we're incredibly focused towards it. All our literature and television is pushing us towards it. But I passed on my genes a long time ago, so I have to justify my place in the human race some other way." You may have to cook up a purpose in life for yourself "since we've thrown away God and Satan and Freud", but he's evangelical about the necessity of doing so. "I'm not here to play tiddlywinks and I don't think you are either." He's off soon after, striding across the square in his thick pinstripes, booming into his mobile, bursting to crack on with those 26 projects while he's still got the time. • Nightwatching is released on 26 March. Peter Greenaway will be taking part in a Q&A for Nightwatching at the ICA in London on 28 March. • This is a longer version of the interview published in Film&Music.
Sahil Saeed reunited with parents
Exhausted boy back with family in Oldham after abduction for ransom in Pakistan
The state of the student vote
John Harris visits Manchester to measure the impact of student politics on the election
Bluefin tuna left off protected list
Japan, Canada and scores of developing nations opposed the measure on the grounds that ban would devastate fishing economies
• Mediterranean EU countries block bluefin tuna ban
• Push to ban trade in endangered bluefin tuna Global talks on the conservation of endangered species have rejected calls to ban international trade in bluefin tuna, raising new fears for the future of dwindling stocks. Countries at the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Qatar voted down a proposal from Monaco to grant the fish stronger protection. The plan drew little support, with developing countries joining Japan in opposing a measure they feared would hit fishing economies. It is understood that the UK, the Netherlands and possibly other European nations voted in favour of the Monaco proposal, against the EU's official position. Campaigners complained that debate on the fate of the Atlantic bluefin fishery was cut short and an immediate vote pushed through by Libya. Seventy-two out of 129 Cites members voted against the trade ban and 43 voted in favour, with 14 abstentions. Dr Sergi Tudela, head of fisheries at WWF Mediterranean, said: "After overwhelming scientific justification and growing political support in past months, with backing from the majority of catch quota holders on both sides of the Atlantic, it is scandalous that governments did not even get the chance to engage in meaningful debate about the international trade ban proposal for Atlantic bluefin tuna." The UK environment secretary, Hilary Benn, said: "As we have long argued, bluefin tuna must be afforded protection if we are to avoid losing it forever. Today the UK has shown its commitment to bluefin tuna. We are disappointed that proposals to list bluefin tuna on appendix I of Cites were defeated." Monaco introduced the proposal because it said only extreme measures can save stocks of the iconic migratory fish, which have fallen by 75% due to widespread overfishing. Only the United States, Norway and Kenya supported the proposal outright. The European Union asked that implementation be delayed until May 2011 to give authorities time to respond to concerns about overfishing. It's official position was to abstain in the vote on the Monaco proposal. Japan, which imports 80% of Atlantic bluefin and had led the opposition to the ban, restated its position that Cites should not regulate tuna and other marine species. It said it would accept lower quotas for bluefin tuna, but said they should come from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which currently regulates the trade. "Japan is very much concerned about the status of Atlantic bluefin tuna and has been working so hard for many years to ensure recovery," said Masanori Miyahara, of the Fisheries Agency of Japan. "But our position is very simple. Let us do this job in ICCAT, not in Cites. This position is shared by majority of Asian nations." Tudela said: "ICCAT has so far failed miserably in this duty so every pressure at the highest level must come to bear to ensure it does what it should. It is now more important than ever for people to do what the politicians failed to do, to stop consuming bluefin tuna." WWF said it would step up calls for restaurants, retailers, chefs and consumers around the world to stop selling, serving, buying and eating the endangered fish. Monaco had said its proposal would not mean a permanent ban and that trade could resume once stocks recovered. "This exploitation is no longer exploitation by traditional fishing people to meet regional needs," Monaco's Patrick Van Klaveren told delegates. "Industrial fishing of species is having a severe effect on numbers of this species and its capacity to recover. We are facing a real ecosystem collapse." The tuna defeat came hours after delegates rejected a US proposal for a Cites ban on the international sale of polar bear skins and parts. The US argued that the sale of polar bears skins was compounding the loss of the animals' sea ice habitat due to climate change. There are projections that numbers of the bears, which are estimated at 20,000 to 25,000, could decline by two-thirds by 2050 because of habitat loss in the Arctic. "We're disappointed," said Jane Lyder, the Department of Interior's deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks. "But we understand that Cites is still trying to understand how to incorporate climate change into its decision-making." Canada, along with Norway and Greenland, led the opposition to the US proposal. They said the threat from trade was minimal and the hunting carried out by indigenous people was critical to their economies. Only 2% of Canadian polar bears are internationally traded and the country strictly manages the commerce, Canada said.
YouTube accuses Viacom over suit
Faced with claims that it encourages piracy, YouTube accuses its rival of sour grapes - as well as claiming it ran covert operations to upload thousands of videos to the site American media conglomerate Viacom considered buying YouTube just months before it launched a $1bn (£655m) piracy lawsuit against the video sharing site, according to court documents. Files released today by a US court suggest that the television giant - which owns channels including MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central - had considered purchasing YouTube in 2006 in what executives said could prove a "transformative acquisition". That deal was scotched when YouTube was bought later that year by internet leviathan Google for $1.65bn - shortly before Viacom launched its billion-dollar lawsuit accusing YouTube of "massive intentional copyright infringement". The claims have come to light after the US court hearing the case unsealed hundreds of documents as it prepares to make a ruling on Viacom's claims. Lawyers have been arguing the case, which experts say could redefine the relationship between media and internet companies, behind closed doors since 2007 - but the court's move has made the astonishing revelations from both sides public for the first time. Viacom's case hinges around the accusation that the video sharing site's founders - Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim - knew that copyright infringement was taking place, deliberately encouraged it and then failed to act properly when asked by rights holders. In one filing, Viacom quotes an email from Chen who tells his colleagues to "concentrate all our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil". The company also submitted evidence showing that Karim was among those who had submitted videos that infringed on the copyright of its owners - and that his colleagues were aware of the situation. YouTube has consistently rejected the accusations, however, suggesting that it does not encourage illegal activity and that US copyright law means that it does have to police every uploaded to its servers. It says that Viacom's evidence is largely used out of context - and that the entire court case could even be an outbreak of sour grapes. One filing by YouTube suggests that Viacom had seriously entertained the possibility of buying the website in 2006, referring to an internal Viacom presentation which said that "we believe YouTube would make a transformative acquisition for MTV Networks/Viacom that would immediately make us the leading deliverer of video online, globally". It is not clear how serious this proposal was at the time. In addition, YouTube argues that not only did Viacom "routinely" take the step of deliberately leaving pirated clips from ordinary users on the site because of their promotional value, but that it actually put up videos on YouTube - often surreptitiously. "For years Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there," said Zahavah Levine, YouTube's chief counsel, in a blog post published today. "It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately 'roughed up' the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses." Faced with underground marketing efforts which had the stated aim of making video "look hijacked" in order to make sure it would "leak on YouTube", the site argues that it could never have been expected to accurately gauge whether or not had permission to post videos online. Under American copyright law, internet service providers and websites are not directly responsible for the actions of their users and it is the duty of copyright holders to request that pirated versions of their be taken offline. However, the situation has become more complex in recent years with the advent of widespread file sharing and systems that make it easier to share copyrighted content without permission. In the seminal Betamax case of 1984, a judge found that home video taping was legal because the technology could be used for legal purposes and not just piracy. But in 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled against file sharing site Grokster - whose lawyers had argued their case on the same basis - because it found that the company had deliberately encouraged users to infringe copyright. Since launching in 2005, YouTube has become the world's most popular video website - garning hundreds of millions of users worldwide and having 20 hours of video uploaded to its system every minute. A final ruling from US district court judge Louis Stanton, who is hearing the case, is not expected for several months.
Therapeutic retribution
Justice is a public health concern too. Offenders meeting victims can cut the trauma crime causes It was when the man sitting opposite him in HMP Pentonville casually referred to "the first time we met" that Will Riley finally erupted – because the businessman had not encountered Peter Woolf at a drinks reception but when the prolific burglar broke into his home and attacked him. "I was like a fire hydrant going off," Riley recalls. "I shouted at him that he had crushed every belief I had that I could handle myself and protect my family. " For Woolf, this was the moment his perspective shifted irrevocably. "I wanted the ground to swallow me up, I felt so ashamed. So I went on the defensive, then Will started listing the effect I'd had on him – so many things I hadn't given a thought to before." The men were brought together by a process of "restorative conferencing", a model of restorative justice that holds the offender directly accountable to the people he has harmed, often in front of others he trusts, including members of his family or community. Though many lobbyists would argue that it puts victims' experience at the heart of the criminal justice system, where it belongs, that too readily lends itself to reinterpretation as retributive tabloid shorthand. More aptly, it can be said that restorative justice offers a controlled environment in which the anger, trauma and guilt surrounding an offence can be discharged by victim and offender, resulting in a – not necessarily instantaneous and certainly not simplistic – coming-to-terms for both. Eight years later, Woolf has not reoffended, and is working as a restorative conference facilitator, while Riley was so inspired that he went on to found Why Me?, an organisation that campaigns for conferencing to be made available to all victims of crime. Yet, despite numerous glowing evaluations in Britain and abroad, as well as copious government lip service, only a handful of the 10.7m crimes with an identifiable victim committed last year were resolved with a restorative element. But with the shadow prisons minister, Alan Duncan, last month making a commitment to implement the scheme nationally if elected, that may be about to change. Restorative justice is the most effective tool the criminal justice system doesn't use. Four different evaluations of pilot schemes by the Ministry of Justice have found an average fall of 27% in reoffending rates, while the Restorative Justice Consortium estimates that for every £1 spent on conferences it saves the taxpayer £8 through the reduction in reconviction. Just as important, the schemes are hugely popular among victims, with a takeup rate of 77% and a satisfaction rate of 85%. Most compelling, compared with a control group of victims, those who had been through restorative justice were 32% less likely to show high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder. In New Zealand, where legislative provision for restorative practice was enshrined in 2002, the impact on reconviction and incarceration, particularly for young offenders, has been marked. Of course, the purpose of any criminal justice system is to adjudicate, not ameliorate. Still, as Baroness Stern argued this week in her report on rape prosecution, a focus on conviction should not come at the expense of consideration for victims. According to Karin Madsen, who runs a pioneering centre in Denmark using restorative techniques with victims of sexual violence, the authorities can forget that victims have an immense need for information, which is excluded by a court system that requires defendants to counter allegations rather than explain their behaviour. Restorative justice humanises the cold instrumentalism of punishment. Critics on the right display an unhelpful tendency to equate the restorative model with cleaning off graffiti instead of serving time. But it wasn't conceived of to divert serious offenders from custody. While many community sentences do now have a restorative flavour – and, yes, that can include graffiti removal – it's the specific nature of public confrontation and shaming involved in conferencing that has most impact. Liberal sceptics are suspicious of this public element, but it is very different in intent and execution from the kind of punitive, unstructured shaming that results with an antisocial behaviour order (asbo). The Australian academic John Braithwaite, a leading advocate for restorative methods, believes that current criminal justice practice creates shame that is solely stigmatising and thus counterproductive, as it serves to symbolically exclude the criminal from law-abiding society long after their sentence has been served, making reoffending more likely. Reintegrative shaming, on the other hand, allows offenders to acknowledge wrongdoing, then offers ways to expiate that shame while encouraging others to readmit the offender to society. Restorative justice is about balance: between therapeutic and retributive models; between the rights and responsibilities of offenders and the needs of victims; between a community's desire for local solutions and the state's duty to punish. Most fundamentally though, it recognises that justice should be as much a public health concern as a rational legal process.
Giving animals rights is moral chaos
Better to assert the human qualities of kindness to all creatures and avoid unnecessary pain to any of them Should animals get the vote? If they are said to have rights, surely they should have representation; and if representation, then the vote. In Switzerland, they have lawyers and fight cases. Their lobbyists cite chapter, verse and precedent for their moral status. We are thinking of widening the franchise to under-18s and prisoners. How long before we embrace animals? Country Life magazine this week goes a step further. If animals did vote, it asks, which party would they support? Using random sampling (a "fox pop") and presumably assessing closeness to a polling station, the magazine lists voting intention by species, based on predictable responses to recent laws. Thus, rural foxes vote Conservative to go back to simple hunting and end the present carnage of shooting, snaring and poisoning. Urban foxes vote Labour thanks to the demise of weekly rubbish collection. Hounds vote Conservative, fed up with trying to work out what they are or are not allowed to chase. Badgers and bats vote Labour for their ever wider statutory protection. In other words, animals behave just like humans. Grouse vote Conservative to sustain their moors. Rabbits vote Labour for more child support. Horses vote Tory to get horse passport inspectors out of their stables. Red squirrels vote SNP to keep the greys out of Scotland. Ladybirds vote BNP to stop foreign harlequins invading. Cows are Tory, through Labour's obsession with foot-and-mouth and their wind expulsions. Such harmless fun is an ingenious way of viewing politics from the ground up. But the argument about rights, duties and obligations fast takes on ghoulish reality if applied to all living things. There is a voluminous literature on the psychology and ethics of our relationship with animals. From the extremities of Peter Singer and Marc Bekoff (author of Wild Justice) to the tortuous authors of cruelty legislation, the concept of an "animal right" is difficult to define. Research claims to demonstrate how higher mammals evolve social behaviour to aid survival – notably apes, elephants and whales that live in groups. Whales are well-endowed with brain "spindle cells", believed to hold the key to species empathy and emotion. Bekoff cites cases of collective responsibility among primates, with tribe leaders stopping fights, showing love and loyalty, and policing the collection of food. We all know about ants and bees. The peril in conferring on this behaviour the idea of rights, as the philosopher Roger Scruton has argued, is the vacuity of a right whose recipient has no way of acknowledging it and no intention of granting it to others. Even the nicest whale disregards the rights of plankton. We seem content that our pet cat should torture birds and mice to death. That such an argument leads up an ethical blind alley does not lessen its appeal to public emotion. Scruton, for all his enthusiasm for hunting, has sympathy for the view of the theologian Andrew Linzey, in his Why Animal Suffering Matters. Scruton points out that our concern should be not so much for the supposed rights of animals but for the vices of humans. The principle of not doing unnecessary harm "does not involve extending to animals the privileges and protections that are the gift of moral agency". It derives from our aversion to the human vice of enjoying suffering for its own sake. This offers some protection to the meat industry and to vivisectionists – if not much to huntsmen. But avoiding human blood lust leaves intact the concept of out of sight, out of mind. We are told that nothing induces vegetarianism so much as a day in an abattoir. Since most of us eat meat, do we not have a moral duty to see inside one before tucking in to a steak? Enjoying the steak, goes the argument, carries the moral implication of enjoying the slaughter that went into its preparation. The most searing account of this conundrum is Jonathan Safran Foer's recent book, Eating Animals. After years of studying meat, he is sufficiently revolted to have nothing more to do with the stuff. Yet his reaction is largely to do with an aversion to factory farming. He is aware of the multiplicity of double standards involved, such as not eating beef yet drinking milk and wearing shoes. He admits that "the vision of sustainable farms that give animals a good life and an easy death has moved me", which rather gets the organic farmer and meat-eater off the hook. Again, it is only our feelings we are discussing. The cow may dislike an organic death as much as a factory one. All this is different from ascribing so-called natural rights to animals. I am not sure what such a right is, tending to Bentham's regarding them as "nonsense on stilts". I prefer to assert the human qualities of kindness to all living creatures and the avoidance of unnecessary pain to any of them. We may not understand an animal-eye view of rights but we know the nastiness of pain. Animal rights may be merely a rhetorical version of the same sentiment. But we should be careful. The growing anthropomorphism with which the public treats animals may be the fault of Beatrix Potter, Walt Disney and the distance most of us live from nature red in tooth and claw. But it is getting out of hand. A local pike recently sued a Swiss angler (after he had eaten it) because of the unnecessary 10 minutes he took fishing it from the river. The fish duly won 6,000 "friends" on Facebook. The pike's state-financed lawyer asked the court for its reaction if the fisherman had spent 10 minutes killing a puppy with a hook in its mouth. Moral chaos beckons. It is becoming impossible to kill anything with fur on it, but not rodents without fur. Avian raptors are protected from gamekeepers' dogs but we let cats eat blackbirds with impunity. You can kill a fox with a bullet but not a dog bite. In giving ever more protection to animals, statute law is trying to respond to human emotions, rather than any consistent ethical code. If tyrannosaurus rex returned to devastate the land, I bet every schoolchild would race to offer it candy. So I see a cloud over Country Life's bit of fun. If animal rights stray beyond the bounds of our own humanity, where will they end? We have played fast and loose with the franchise over the years. Until 1948, Britain allowed two votes to graduates and businessmen, on the basis that enhanced wisdom or wealth merited a greater stake in the community. Perhaps if other creatures are only half as deserving, they might get half a vote? What of the old lady alone in her house, her family long gone and with only her faithful dog for company? It is her guardian and companion. It makes use of such public services as the pavement, the park, the vet and neighbourhood watch. If it could speak, it would have a more informed view of public policy than a drug-crazed teenager. It is well known that care home managers used to fill in voting slips for their senile inmates. Why should our old lady not register half a vote on Fido's behalf?
Rule 1: don't clash with the sofa!
Dressing for TV is tricky – get it wrong and the public will pounce. And the BBC presenter is hardly likely to wear her work clothes off screen Nothing too racy, nothing too dull, nothing too scruffy, nothing too posh. Don't attract comment from the public and don't dare clash with the sofa. Frankly, it is a weekday wardrobe dilemma that nobody would wish for, and certainly not if their working day started at 4am. And yet, despite having one of the trickiest jobs in the world to dress for, BBC Breakfast presenter Sian Williams has been refused a tax rebate on her work clothes by HM Revenue and Customs. Judge Christopher Staker saw fit to deny her £1,800 rebate on the £4,500 she spends on her appearance because he thinks it is impossible to divide the business and private benefit of the expenditure. I'm sorry your honour, but you are talking out of your full-bottomed wig here. When else, apart from when she is at work, do you think Williams is likely to wear her capsule wardrobe of fitted jackets, tailored sheath dresses and strict belts? It is hardly weekend casual wear for a mum of four is it? The truth is that Williams's appearance, particularly her screen wardrobe, really matters. To us, way more than to her. Every morning she is subject to the scrutiny of millions of bleary-eyed toast-munching viewers. She is breakfast TV's answer to Anna Wintour with her sharp collars, her posture-enhancing belts and neat-but- approachable bob. This is no accident. Her controlled sass is as much a part of the visual package as the red sofa and the BBC Breakfast logo. Flip over to GMTV and you have Emma Crosby with a Sex and the City-style blow-dry and Kate Garraway in a Roland Mouret-alike cocktail dress, clicking perfectly with ITV's fluffier content. Broadcaster style (for women, anyway) is important – put a foot wrong, ignore a dry-cleaning need and the public will surely pounce. Williams claims that if she wore the same thing too often she would be sacked. Though they don't say it explicitly in her contract, her bosses undoubtedly agree. My colleagues in the styling sorority tell me that they are often required by TV companies to "find a new look for so-and-so presenter, she's getting it completely wrong". It's not a job that these professional dressers relish. High street tailoring can look shoddy and creased in HD, distinctive designer looks profligate, stripes strobe on screen, white is a complete no-no . . . It's a styling nightmare, leaving only a handful of broadcast-friendly labels. Honestly I'm amazed Williams isn't forced to spend more on her wardrobe. What is really annoying though isn't just the HMRC ruling. It's the way some commentators have described the row as being a tax on Williams's "shopping", that a "nice hairdo" isn't an expense she can reasonably get a rebate on. You can be sure this wouldn't happen if her co-presenter, Bill Turnbull, were claiming a rebate on his entirely unremarkable tailored suits. But then he probably doesn't have to. Two identical business suits, a couple of shirts and a rota of jazzy ties is all he needs in his TV wardrobe. You can bet that BBC bosses don't imply in his contract that he really shouldn't wear the same dark suit more than a couple of times a month. Just as they would surely be hollering for the stylists if Williams took to wearing a black skirt suit and just changing her belts occasionally. So really Mr Revenue and Customs, admit it, this is a tax on women isn't it? No wonder Williams has stubbornly been quibbling over the matter for five years. Sian – hold firm. Who gets a clothing allowance?
When Angela Ahrendts was made the new chief executive of Burberry in 2006, much was made of her generous clothing allowance: around £14,000 a year, to be spent on the fashion house's clothes at a hefty discount, of course. (Her predecessor, Rose Marie Bravo, had received a similar sum.) But this is nothing compared with the rumoured £130,000 that Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, is said to receive every year. Some television presenters – those expected to look good while not wearing the same outfit too often – are also given generous allowances, though details are hard to come by, not least because such allowances often form part of salary negotiations. The BBC is not saying whether Sian Williams gets one, but when Natasha Kaplinksy was lured to Channel Five from the BBC, the newsreader was said to have been given an allowance worth many thousands of pounds. Rachel Riley, who took over from Carol Vorderman on Countdown last year, was reportedly given a £10,000 allowance and a stylist to advise her on what to buy. "When I first started, I bought clothes I thought a presenter should wear – jumpers and trousers," she said, before her stylist encouraged her into her current ever-shrinking dresses. Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue, the female judges on the X Factor, are also reported to have been given clothing allowances. During the US presidential election campaign, the Republican running mate Sarah Palin was vilified for her $150,000 (£98,500) allowance for clothes, hair and makeup. Here, Sarah Brown does not have an allowance; instead she hires clothes from her favourite designers for public functions, which are paid for with her own money. Even those who are not in the public eye sometimes get an allowance as a perk of the job. Many fashion companies, including Mulberry, Boden and Jigsaw, give their staff a clothing allowance, and it is not uncommon for recruitment consultants and top PAs, especially those who meet clients, to be given an annual amount to spend on business clothes. Which seems fair enough, because who would want to spend their own money on dull suits? Emine Saner
The women who want to be obese
This week, Donna Simpson announced her plan to be the fattest woman in the world. But are 'gainers' who purposefully overeat risking their health or liberating themselves? There isn't much that Emma Allen doesn't know about dieting. She once gave up solid food for four months. It didn't work out. She tried the weight-loss programme NutriSystem, but needless to say, they didn't help either. She was even one of the first generation of Atkins devotees who were required, among other things, to test their own urine. Yet while she was publicly attempting to shed the pounds, secretly, Emma liked being overweight. As a child she had fantasies of taking a pill that would make her fatter and fatter until she eventually just floated away. She never told anyone, but when she got pregnant 18 years ago, everything changed. "It was like a religious epiphany," Emma says. "I remember having this incredible feeling that I could think about what was good for me, instead of calories. The possibility of thinking about food differently was a big turning point." Over the next 10 years, Emma immersed herself in the world of size politics. She paid closer attention to the size liberation movement: a political movement that started in the 1970s and made size an axis of oppression. Groups such as Fat Underground and Fat Activists Together (FAT) fought for anti-discrimination legislation on the grounds of weight. Then three years ago she finally took the decision to do something she had always wanted to do. "I'd had these fantasies all my life and had been restraining them all my life. There came a time when I wanted to explore," she says. "I wanted to know more about what they were about. How would I feel about actually gaining weight, would I enjoy it?" In spring 2007, she took the plunge and gained 33lb, to reach a total weight of 17.5st. Emma is a 49-year-old professor at a university in the north-west of England. She is also a "gainer" – sometimes known as a "feedee" – who overeats in an active attempt to put on weight. Although there are no statistics on the number of people doing this, gaining is more common than one might think. "They are everybody: every age, every country, every size; I mean, tiny, skinny people wanting to gain . . . it really is a case of, look around you, somebody is having these fantasy scenarios," says Emma. This week Donna Simpson, a 42-year-old mother from New Jersey who weighs 43st, made headlines by revealing that her ongoing weight gain was part of her plan to become the fattest woman on earth. Pictured with an enigmatic smile and a burger in her hand, the press coverage showed varying degrees of restraint in highlighting the £400-a-week food shops, fast-food binges and unrepentant bid to hit 73st. Gaining is often linked to feederism; a topic that occasionally pops up as freakshow fodder in magazines, chat shows or documentaries such as Fat Girls and Feeders: a 2003 Channel 4 documentary. This focused on the relationships between men and the overweight, vulnerable women they chose to fatten to immobility and beyond. Yet many women actively seek to gain weight of their own volition. There are many websites and groups dedicated to gaining but Fantasy Feeder (FF to its members) is perhaps the most comprehensive. There are forums, stories and photographs that show unbuttoned blouses revealing pot bellies, wobbly tummies and impressive mounds of flesh cascading over waistbands. Large bosoms escape the confines of their bras, and rolls ripple beneath over-stretched T-shirts. Before and after pictures show the usual weight transformation journey, but in reverse. The poses are proud, matter-of-fact and often sexual. There are lots of men on the site, but it is the images of female gainers that catch the eye. In our present landscape of body blandness, they stand out as controversial, bold and visually political. Fat is still, most definitely, a feminist issue for some female gainers."I think being a feminist has affected my relationship to my body and gaining in several ways," says Emma. "I started, very young, bucking the trends of beauty norms, like bra-wearing and shaving and makeup. I always thought that these practices were ridiculous; so that made it easier to go against the norm. Gaining is very liberating." Others say they like making a statement with their weight because it challenges our stereotypical notions of beauty. Some, like Helen Gibson, a 40-year-old nurse from the Midlands, gain weight simply to please themselves. "It is my right to be fat; nothing about making a point." Yet even she concedes putting on weight after her marriage made her feel free: "Those three months were the most liberating of my life; I could feel the fat going back on. My tummy returned to its former glory – fat, soft and flabby, just how it should be." Helen's husband knows she is a gainer, as do friends, who are well aware of how much she "adores being fat"; understandably, though, being an NHS employee, she cannot come out of the gaining closet completely. At the latest estimate, 57% of women were classified as being overweight, including 25% who were obese. Overall, obesity and related health issues now account for 9% of the NHS budget. As a nurse, says Helen, she cannot be seen to publicly advocate being overweight. For others, anonymity is the result of not wanting anyone to know, which might explain the profusion of headless pictures on the FF website. As any gainer will tell you, life outside the community can be harsh. There is still a huge amount of derision and discrimination towards the obese, so the decision to keep their gaining a secret isn't really a surprise. Lauren, a 20-year-old American gainer, says she does not want to offer more ammunition to people by explaining the predilection. "As a fat woman, I have experienced fat discrimination almost on a daily basis," she says. "It's usually not so glaring as an intolerant jerk screaming, 'Diet, fatty!' but smaller, more painful ways: going to parties and no one talks to me, being glared at while I'm eating in restaurants, the snickering in changing rooms in department stores." For many non-gainers, the practice seems strange because of the health implications – both physical and psychological. Even organisations such as the US-based National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (Naafa) dismiss gaining on health grounds. Obesity experts say that being overweight can cause everything from heart problems and diabetes to high blood pressure and gall stones. The message is that fat and health don't mix. But Emma disagrees. She says that it would be more useful for people to consider the multimillion-pound diet industry and its "95% failure rate", and feels overweight people are instead blamed for all the world's ills. "I think people worry about health because it's the easiest place to hang fat hatred. The data actually suggests that it has to do with activity, and not size. People respond badly to anything that asks them to reconfigure their presumptions and preconceptions." Psychologically, gaining is still a grey area. While one would assume purposefully overeating to gain weight is as much of a disorder as not eating, Susan Ringwood, chief executive of Beating Eating Disorders (Beat), says that isn't the case. "It isn't an eating disorder as such, because there is no morbid fear of fatness, or weight gain. In its extreme forms it is more likely to be a personality disorder that is organised around submission/domination and sexual fantasies." Another theory, says psychotherapist Phillip Hodson, is that intentional weight gain for women could well be an avoidance tactic: they don't want to attract the unwanted attention of men, so they transform themselves into something deemed conventionally unattractive. Most women don't feel this way, but it could be true for a small minority. "I have come across cases where it's quite obvious that women deliberately become large, or remain large, for psychological reasons," he says. "These include trying to avoid attention and becoming sexually invisible. Some women use food to become so different from the stereotype and to avoid all that is involved in fitting that stereotype: from wolf whistles to being propositioned." It's a thought, but it doesn't appear to mean anything to Emma or Helen who define weight gain in very sexual terms. Although Donna Simpson's press coverage glossed over the sexual aspect of gaining, for them, more fat means more sex appeal; the extra flesh that everyone else is attempting to shed fuels their desires. Emma goes one step further to say that gaining is an intrinsic part of her sexual identity. She cannot gain at the moment because of MS and diabetes, but still calls herself a gainer. For most of us, weight gain seems simple: a bit too much butter on your toast and one chocolate biscuit too many can mean the difference between zipping up your jeans or not. But the question of how to gain weight is quite a hot topic on Fantasy Feeder. There are "Eat Yourself Fat" tailormade diet plans to increase your weight, and the advice ranges from eating ice cream before bed to homemade milkshakes and lots more pasta. While some favour junk food overload, others, like Emma, say that it is the very antithesis of what gaining is about. "For me, it's all about a kind of hedonism; it's about opening the doors and allowing in fleshy pleasures, whether it's food itself, or what happens to my body, or what happens to somebody else's body. I need a big variety, because what's appealing to me are contrasts of textures and tastes and aromas and colours . . . if I have to eat a big bowl of pasta, I'm not interested. I mean, I love pasta, but I'm not going to eat four servings of it." Instead Emma maintains a healthy eating regime. "I know no one will believe this, but I eat lots of wholegrains, fruit and veg; probably a bit too much cheese, and chocolate – although I now only eat sugarfree candies. Fish, if it's fresh . . . of course. My diet isn't primarily McDonald's and KFC; in fact, it almost never is." Likewise, Helen's love of gaining is as much about the act of eating as the result. "It's the pleasure of food that is the biggest pleasure for me; followed by each extra roll of fat that comes with the amount that I eat," she says. "I adore how I look naked – and I have been known to spend far too much time admiring myself in the mirror." The presence of online gaining communities has provided people with a support system. Many say it is like coming home. "This is our small part of the world where we are surrounded by people who say, 'You're not weird; it's perfectly fine to feel as you do, in fact, we think you're great because of it,'" says Lauren. "To virtually everyone, it is a liberating, wonderful feeling." Emma says that she is in the privileged position of "coming out" because she has little to lose: her partner will not leave her because of it, and she is unlikely to lose her job. Colleagues don't know, but she doesn't think they will be too surprised, given her outspoken views on fat issues. As a moderator on the FF site, she comes across a lot of people who on the one hand are desperate to be fat, on the other, desperate to be thin. "Real desires need attention, not curing," she says. "Lots of people in the community want to understand why they have these fantasies and desires, and there's sometimes an undertone of; 'so that I can cure them'. Not always, but there are definitely people who feel that way." Some, she says, are just as unhappy with their bodies as those trying to lose weight. "Most people who tell you that they're happy with their bodies are lying. There are people who are like, 'Yeah, I'm cool: fat is beautiful – I'm having weight loss surgery . . . certainly, there are women on FF who are dieting." Being a gainer isn't as straightforward or easy as it might seem, she says. "One comes into contact with messages about weight loss, health and beauty, about, I don't know, 20 times a day. Every time you open your email, a magazine, every time you turn the television on . . . so any attempt to do anything different, takes incredible strength and courage – and we all fall down," including Emma. "Of course it gets me down! I often feel like all men – and women – believe that stereotype is beautiful, even though I know better," she says. "I hammer myself over not being that stereotype, but only when I'm having a bad time and am already vulnerable because of other things going on around me." If we look around us, says Phillip Hodson, it is clear that regardless of increased pressures to be thin, we are getting fatter as a nation. "The natural figure of the hunter-gatherer has returned: good childbearing hips and a good abdomen," he says. "But I would be worried about people who are saying they want to get fat." But Helen is not worried. At 16st she still only considers herself to be pleasantly plump. She has a picture in her head, she says, of what she will look like when she is fat. "I am a long way off that, although I am on my way," she says. "With each mouthful, calorie and year, I am on my way to achieving it." Some names have been changed
McLaren unveils £150,000 supercar
Ron Dennis will oversee production in new £40m Woking facility after he quit carmaker's Formula One team last year Ron Dennis, the boss of McLaren, insisted today he had "moved on" from Formula One as he launched the company's new super car. Production of the road car, the MP4-12C, which will cost about £150,000, will start next year at a new £40m facility at the company's futuristic headquarters in Woking, creating 300 jobs. McLaren Automotive, which is planning more new models, is hoping to eventually sell 4,000 cars worldwide each year. The company has made limited numbers of more expensive super cars in the past, but never this many. Speaking to the Guardian, Dennis admitted he had expected withdrawal symptoms at the Australian grand prix last spring, his first after quitting the sport. "I was full of expectation in Australia last year that I would go and get some sort of withdrawal," the 62-year-old said. "But I don't have to watch every minute of a grand prix even when I'm not there. It's part of my life and it's not gone but I've moved on to bigger challenges." Nevertheless, he retains a strong attachment to the sport which he dominated for decades. Looking out from his office, over a lake and towards the field where the new production facility will be constructed, he said a tunnel would be built to connect the two sites, carrying what he calls "umbilical cords" such as IT lines. Dennis, whose fortune the Sunday Times last year estimated at £87m, is clearly proud about McLaren's achievements in F1, making it the sport's second most successful team after Ferrari. Asked if he was worried that McLaren's push into larger-scale manufacturing was a risk, given the demise of other iconic British sports car manufacturers such as TVR, he said: "I don't want to be in any way derogatory to the business models of any of the other small car manufacturers. I never saw them in any grand prix or have any success in the motor sport it represents." He also hit back at speculation that he had been forced to pass on the reins of the F1 team after McLaren was fined $100m (£65m) by its governing body, run by Max Mosley, over the 2007 "spygate" saga. He insisted he had been planning his move for some time. "The story is I'm afraid heavily spun. My plan was always to pass team principal to Martin [Whitmarsh] at the beginning of 2009. Even if you're reluctantly pushed on to a pedestal then there's nothing more certain that the same people pushing you on to the pedestal will take every opportunity to rip you off it," he said.
Greece warns it could go to IMF
George Papandreou has threatened to turn to the IMF in exasperation with the EU's lack of clarity on a plan to resolve the Greek crisis Greece raised the stakes in the row over how to stabilise the euro today when prime minister George Papandreou set European leaders a deadline of next week for unveiling rescue plans for his battered economy and threatened to turn instead to the International Monetary Fund for help. Clearly exasperated by the lack of clarity from the EU on what it might do to help resolve Greece's ballooning debt and deficit crisis, Papandreou effectively told European leaders it was time to put up or shut up. The 16-country eurozone had to deliver on its pledge last month of coming to Greece's rescue if need be by putting a "loaded gun on the table" which would deter speculators betting on a Greek sovereign default and reduce the punitive rates on Greek borrowing. "This is an opportunity we should not miss," Papandreou told the European parliament in Brussels. "We are expecting this from the summit next week." Papandreou's remarks put him on a collision course with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who became the first European head of government on Wednesday to demand that the rule book for the euro be rewritten to enable the ejection of persistent fiscal delinquents. Merkel's call has no chance of support across the 27 countries of the EU who would need to agree on the radical step. On Monday eurozone finance ministers agreed to pay out "coordinated" bilateral loans to Greece if Athens requests help. But the governments have refused to divulge the details and terms of the rescue measures and today it appeared that Merkel was getting cold feet over the plan. Declaring that he was making the most savage and radical spending cuts in Greece ever, Papandreou complained that Athens was getting the worst of both worlds – an IMF-style austerity package without the concomitant IMF standby loans. "This is where Europe has to come in and say OK, we have to provide what the IMF would provide or Greece has to go to the IMF. We hope that won't be necessary." Resorting to the IMF is strongly opposed by the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, the head of the eurozone, Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, and other key players. They view calling in the IMF as an act of despair, a humiliating failure for Europe's single currency zone. But for the first time influential voices in Germany are stating that the IMF would be the lesser evil if Greece needs to be bailed out. Calls for an IMF role are supported in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Deeper frictions"It would be cheaper for Greece to go to the IMF," said Daniel Gros, economist and director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, noting that if eurozone countries supply bilateral loans, they could be on stiffer terms than available from an IMF deal. Papandreou is enraged at the exorbitant rates of more than 6% Greece is having to pay to borrow, twice as high as Germany, a predicament he constantly blames on market speculators. The Greeks fear the borrowing costs are hastening the prospect of insolvency and want more than vague signals of support from an EU summit next week. But Merkel said on Wednesday that any rapid action could be "disastrous" and appears in no rush to step into the breach. The Greek crisis is exposing deeper frictions over common policy-making in the eurozone and chronic current account imbalances exacerbating the frailty of the euro. France and Germany are locked in verbal fisticuffs over excessive German surpluses and calls for Merkel and Schaeuble to tinker fiscally to boost German consumption. The Germans complain they are being criticised for success. A senior MEP following the financial crisis closely said that many in Brussels were fed up with Berlin's "holier-than-thou" position. The captive eurozone market is a boon for German exporters. Papandreou also disclosed more tensions with Germany today by saying that the question of second world war reparations was not closed. "This is still an open issue. We sometimes discuss it with the Germans. But it's inopportune to bring it up at this time," he said. "We are basically under an IMF programme, whatever you want to call it," said Papandreou. "But we don't have the facilities the IMF could give, namely the money, if necessary."
Video breaks: Kumbh Mela, India
Georgia Brown joins millions of pilgrims travelling for the huge religious gathering
Design in Milan: a top 10 guide
A local's guide to galleries, warehouse studios and quirky cafes in the city's burgeoning arts district of Chiesa Rossa, ahead of next month's Milan Design Fair Milan, the world capital of design, has much more to offer than its exclusive Via della Spiga and Via Monte Napoleone, where fashion victims and models air kiss and live off froth. Beyond the historical Duomo, beyond the boho-chic Brera, the southern district of Chiesa Rossa - ensconced between Porta Ticinese, Porta Genova, the canals and the art deco former central electric on Via Giovanni da Cermenate – was once home to factory workers, but is now where young designers dream up the shapes of the future. Our guide was born and bred in Chiesa Rossa - film director and photographer Marina Spada, former assistant to actor, comedian, screenwriter and director Roberto Benigni, who garnered international awards for Come l'Ombra, her 2006 film which takes place over a summer in Milan. 1. Design at SuperStudioTwenty-six years ago, Italian fashion photographer Fabrizio Ferri and fashion editor Flavio Lucchini decided to convert the disused factories and warehouses off the Via Tortona into a place to train aspiring fashion photographers. "Their initiative really started the conversion of the area which until then was still considered an industrial suburb," says Spada. During the 90s, Ferri and Lucchini opened 19 studios. Soon after, Armani asked Japanese architect Tadao Ando to transform the former Nestlé building into his new headquarters. Today, SuperStudio offers some of the best fashion photographic studios and sets in the world. However, the area has retained its 20th-century industrial and artisan spirit; via Tortona, via Forcella and via Savona are worth a long détour. SuperStudio organises fashion and design events, art shows and concerts all year long.
• Via Forcella, 13-17; superstudiogroup.com. 2. FormaOpened only five years ago in a disused tramway warehouse, this international centre for photography is the first of its kind in Milan to offer a print lab, an exhibition space, a school, a bookshop and a restaurant. "Located on a former cemetery, it has a special atmosphere and is full of art students," says Spada. "I also love taking a peek at the nearby tramway depot through the big glass windows on the terrace." Until 2 June, there is an exhibition of Paolo Morello's vintage prints covering the history of Italian photography from the post war years through to the mid 1970s.
• Piazza Tito Lucrezia Caro, 1, formafoto.it; admission: €7.50 (£6.70). 3. Café Divan Launched exactly a year ago, Café Divan offers freshly baked brioches, panini and soup, which will keep you going while you surf the web for free surrounded by black candelabras and white stucco, black lacquered tables and giant white sofas. "It may look extremely sleek, but the atmosphere is very relaxed" says Spada. "More than the décor, I come for their food which is very fresh, and prepared and cooked on the premises."
• Via Vigevano, 33; cafedivan.it. 4. Mercato Communale"This covered market is a miracle," says Spada. "I go there often just to see something that may be natural in France or Britain but feels revolutionary here in the land of Berlusconi: old local ladies sharing recipes and jokes with South American grocers." Open Monday to Saturdays, this 1940s public market with its traditional Italian butchers and newly-arrived Peruvian and Argentinean grocers is a lively, colourful and aromatic meeting point for Milanese of all ages, right by the canals at Porta Ticinese.
• Piazza XXIV Maggia. 5. Le TrottoirThis 400-year-old gate house where visitors had to pay to enter the city now offers drinks and all-night music at weekends. Conceived as a meeting point for artists, it is located in the middle of Piazza XXIV Maggia. It's spread over three levels, and has a grotto-esque feel thanks to its candle-lit bar and its many little salons all connected to each other through little corridors. It also has a terrace for daytime coffee. Le Trottoir organises cultural events throughout the year.
• Piazza XXIV Maggia, 1; letrottoir.it. 6. La Darsena's canals"The canals give Milan the charm and warmth it may lack at first sight, especially for first-time visitors," says Spada. Designed by Leonardo da Vinci then redesigned by Mussolini's architects in the 1920s, they offer an exquisite respite from the frantic pace of Milanese life. Lined with art galleries, cafés and bars, Naviglio Grande and Naviglio Pavese are also famous for their boat-restaurants and mini-cruises (€12 for an hour cruise, running every hour from Friday to Sunday). Also, every year, since the 1930s, 11 teams compete on racing boats to win the Leonardo Trophy (8 and 9 May).
• naviglilombardi.it. 7. Gelateria di Ripa di Porte CineseThe walls of this compact antiquated shop are covered with wooden and glass cabinets displaying hundreds of rows of ice-cream cones turned upside down. Located right at the angle with Via Gorizia, and facing Naviglio Grande, it has a wooden bench outside with a view on to the canal. "My parents used to come here when they were teenagers during the war," says Spada. "Many shops around here haven't changed at all since the 1920s, sometimes earlier." If you're wondering what the Italians call "English soup" (zuppa inglese), it's custard flavoured ice-cream, and it's delicious. "They also do Nutella pancakes," adds Spada.
• Ripa di Porte Cinese, 1; Two scoops: €3. 8. Fondazione Arnaldo PomodoroMilan's answer to Tate Modern is located in a former 1926 turbine hall. The museum, which bears the name of the great Italian sculptor, Arnaldo Pomodoro, opened its doors in September 2005 and is primarily dedicated to sculpture. The Fondazione welcomes guest curators and cross-disciplinary arts and there are exhibitions all year round, as well as events and concerts. Currently showing is Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias' poetic sculptures. "I love what architect Pier Luigi Cerri did with the space of this former electric factory," comments Marina Spada, "it's so full of energy. I never know if it's the art or the ghost of electricity."
• Via Andrea Solari, 35; fondazionearnaldopomodoro.it. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 11am to 6pm. Admission: €8. 9. Il LibraccioWith a permanent 50% off tag, Il Libraccio offers the best book bargains in town and the secondhand section extends to another shop opposite. Don't miss the art and architecture section with more than 5,000 titles, among them small publishers' books. Il Libraccio has a foreign language section and very helpful assistants. Discreet browsing is also allowed and made possible in the bookshop's large alleys. Il Libraccio at number 2, on Naviglio Grande, is dedicated to books at €2. You can also sell your books there.
• Naviglio Grande, 2 and Via Corsico, 9; libraccio.it 10. Villa NecchiThis place is outside the Chiesa Rossa, but it's worth the detour. Built between 1932 and 1935 by Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi, Villa Necchi has been left unchanged since then. Bequeathed to the Italian National Trust a few years ago, it tells the story of a rich family who, on returning to their villa after the war, decided to embellish it with rococo and neo-renaissance additions. A clash of powerful styles makes for an unforgettable experience. Don't miss the black bathroom in the guests' apartments on the first floor, the impeccably art-deco butler's tea-room and the framed autographed pictures of Europe's royalties who often stayed here as family friends.
• Villa Mozart, 14; casemuseomilano.it. Admission: €8 (with a free 75-minute guided tour). • Milan Design Fair runs 14-19 April, 2010.
Ugandan domestic violence bill stalls
? Museveni criticised for not signing bill into law
? Will new law impact on rural communities? The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has been criticised for not signing a domestic violence bill into law. Alice Alaso, the secretary general of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the main opposition party in Uganda, said the president had yet to give the bill assent, despite it being passed by parliament. It was given the green light by the cabinet more than a year ago. Alaso said this meant women's rights were continuing to be undermined in Uganda. "We have passed several laws which the president has assented to, except for the domestic violence law, yet women have continued to be abused," she said. During celebrations to mark International Women's Day in Katine last week, the state minister for youth and children's affairs, Jessica Alupo, said the delay was because the president was still studying the bill. Apparently sections of the bill have been opposed, although she did not elaborate on which sections. The bill will afford legal protection to people in abusive relationships for the first time. Currently, most women have no say in affairs relating to their home life, and many have lost their lives through domestic violence. The bill is intended to protect sufferers of domestic violence, punish perpetrators and set guidelines for courts on the protection and compensation of abused women. The bill defines a domestic relationship as "a family relationship, a relationship akin to a family relationship or one in a domestic setting that exists or existed between a victim and a perpetrator". These relationships include those between spouses, relatives and between householders and domestic workers. According to figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics in 2007, 68% of married women aged 15 to 49 had experienced some form of violence inflicted by their spouse or intimate partner. According to the 2006 Uganda Law Reform Commission study, domestic violence is most common in northern Uganda, where it was reported to have occurred in 78% of homes. Most women do not report cases of domestic violence to authorities and police rarely intervene or investigate.
Often women are reluctant to file a complaint for fear of reprisal, embarrassment, poverty, ignorance of the law or not knowing where to report abuse. A report published on the Refworld website, citing figures from various sources, found that 60% of men and 70% of women in Uganda condone "wife beating" if, for example a woman burns food or refuses sex. In rural areas like Katine, where the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref) is implementing a development project funded by Guardian readers and Barclays, cases of domestic violence are often handled among the community, rather than by the police. In most cases this means women are returned home to their partners. Often parish leaders are initially brought in to settle disputes between couples. More serious cases are passed on to sub-county leaders or the district gender officer, who may encourage police involvement. Cases of domestic violence have hindered women's emancipation in Katine, said Christine Agwero, a women's representative on the Katine sub-county council. Often women do not attend meetings or take up leadership positions because they are threatened by their husbands, she said. Speaking at International Women's Day, Agwero asked the government to protect women and provide them opportunities to empower themselves economically. At the mid-term workshop held in Soroti last year to discuss progress in Katine, Agwero voiced her concerns about the lack of women in attendance and the threat of violence some face when they want to get involved. "Seriously, we need to bring women on board to participate in committees. It needs both parties... we need to move together to bring development," she said. She explained that a major obstacle to women taking a more active role was lack of education, which affected their confidence. "If not well educated, women fear answering questions [in meetings]." She added: "Women are busy, but not so busy. Some men don't feel women should be at the meetings because they will have to take care of children if women go." The workshop heard from other attendees that women had been beaten up by their husbands for attending village savings and loans associations, which have had a positive impact on women's lives in the sub-county, given them a means to save and invest money. Alaso said that the longer the delay in implementing the law, the worse the situation will get for women in rural communities. Once the law is passed, it will be up to local government officials to ensure it is interpreted correctly in their communities and that men and women know their rights.
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