Former MI5 boss accuses US of hiding torture (AFP)

AFP - A former head of MI5 has accused the US of concealing its abuse of terror suspects, stepping up a fightback by the security service over accusations that it colluded in torture.

US hospital ship Comfort leaving Haiti (AP)

AP - The U.S. military hospital ship Comfort has completed its relief mission in Haiti and is heading home.

N.Ireland backs transfer of key powers despite row (AFP)

AFP - Northern Ireland's lawmakers have approved a landmark deal transferring key powers from London to Belfast, in what Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed as the "final end" to decades of conflict.

BNP plans to vet would-be members at their homes

Party's revised constitution would require all applicants to submit to a two-hour home visit, court is told

The British National party plans to send officials to vet all would-be members in their homes, a court heard today.

A clause in the far right group's revised constitution would require all applicants to submit to a two-hour home visit by two party officials, Central London county court was told.

That could operate as a form of indirect discrimination against non-whites, said Robin Allen QC, representing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is challenging the party's membership rules. "One way the provisions could operate would be to intimidate someone who wanted to join the party," he said, adding: "Of course, it could simply be a greeting."

BNP members last month voted to scrap the whites-only membership criteria after it was warned it faced legal action under equality laws.

The EHRC is arguing that the new constitution remains indirectly racist, even though the colour bar has been removed. That is rejected by the BNP, which argues that ever since it officially opened its doors to all ethnic groups it has acquired a "waiting list" of black and Asian would-be members.

The party's new constitution, which has yet to be published, remains prejudicial because it requires members to agree to clauses including that they are "implacably opposed to the promotion, by any means, of the integration or assimilation" of the UK's indigenous white population, Allen said.

"It would be jolly difficult for a mixed-race person to join the BNP without effectively denying themselves," he argued.

Gwyn Price Rowlands, representing the BNP, described the EHRC argument as nonsense and claimed the party already had a "significant number" of non-white members, all of whom were "welcome".

"I am informed that there is a waiting list of black, Asian and Chinese people to join," he said.

Judge Paul Collins is to rule on whether the new BNP constitution is indirectly racist on Friday.

An internal BNP memo seen by the Guardian tells members: "We don't expect any more than a handful of people of ethnic minority origin to apply to join the party nationally, and we will not let this deflect us from our political objectives of saving Britain and restoring the primacy of the indigenous British people."

The legal wrangling comes amid claims of a renewed challenge to the BNP from other extreme rightwing groups. The National Front says it has seen an upsurge in membership enquiries in recent months – mainly from BNP supporters who feel the party is "selling out".

National Front's spokesman, Tom Linden, said there had been a 70% increase in inquiries since Griffin appeared on BBC Question Time and the NF is expected to stand around 25 candidates at the general election.

"The British National party is no longer a white racist party, it is becoming a multi-racial party by giving into the race industry," he said.

• BNP
• The far right

Are you missing me? David Cameron tempts George Bush out of retirement

Intervention by the former US president in the Northern Ireland peace process receives a mixed reception

UK complained to US about terror suspect torture, says ex-MI5 boss

• Waterboarding of 9/11 suspect was 'concealed'
• Manningham-Buller criticises Bush staff

The government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed last night.

She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks.

"The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," Lady Manningham-Buller told a meeting at the House of Lords.

She also admitted MI5 were slow to recognise that the US was torturing detainees. Asked if Britain protested, she replied: "We did lodge a protest." She declined to elaborate but it is believed that the protests were made at ministerial level.

Manningham-Buller was answering questions after delivering a lecture in parliament sponsored by the Mile End study group set up by Queen Mary, University of London.

She said that in 2002 or 2003 she questioned how the US was able to supply Britain with intelligence gleaned from Sheikh Mohammed.

"I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners and terrorists was that they never said anything," she said.

"They said the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times," Manningham-Buller said.

She criticised senior figures in the Bush administration, including the president himself, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary for their attitude towards the treatment of terror suspects. She added: "Nothing, even saving lives, justifies torture."

Referring to criticism of MI5, and notably evidence in the mistreatment of the UK resident Binyam Mohamed, she said in her speech: "The allegations of collusion in torture and lack of respect for human rights will wound [MI5 officers] personally and collectively and, in some respects, whether proven or not, will make it harder for them to do their job."

Last month, Lord Neuberger, the master of the rolls, said MI5's insistence in a court case that it was unaware of the harsh treatment of some detainees held overseas in CIA custody was unreliable.

Manningham-Buller confirmed that Britain was aware of mistreatment cases before she left office.

In an original draft of a ruling, Neuberger also criticised MI5's supposed lax attitude toward the mistreatment of detainees. Manningham-Buller's successor as MI5 director, Jonathan Evans, has rejected the claims, and warned that the courts risk being exploited by those seeking to undermine British counterterrorism work.

But Manningham-Buller said she believes the allegations of complicity in torture could disrupt the future work of MI5 staff.

She spent 33 years in British intelligence, and was head of MI5 between 2002 and 2007. She said British spies are proud to be quietly effective, unlike the "gung-ho UK" intelligence officers portrayed in TV dramas.

"One of the sad things is Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush all watched 24." Manningham-Buller said, referring to the popular TV show about a counterterrorist agent. She said future terrorist attacks would involve chemical, biological and radioactive weapons. "After the next terrorist attack, there will be cause for fresh legislation, which should be resisted. The criminal law as it stands is enough. We have masses of legislation that deals with terrorism."

She predicted the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which was heavily criticised recently for its failure to hold MI5 to account, would be turned into a fully-fledged committee in the House of Commons.

• MI5
• Torture
• Global terrorism
• Terrorism policy

Karzai told by Britain: start Afghanistan peace talks now

Foreign Office officials believe elements of Taliban ready to talk but fears grow of long Afghan conflict, and growing casualties

Britain will today urge the Afghan government to put more effort into the pursuit of peace talks amid fears that the war could be prolonged – and more British lives lost – as a result of incompetence and lack of political will in Kabul.

A speech to be delivered in the US by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, will reflect growing anxiety in London that President Hamid Karzai's professed desire for a political solution has not been backed up by any serious planning or concrete proposals.

Unless more pressure is put on the Afghan government, some British officials predict that Karzai's proposed loya jirga, or grand peace council, due at the end of next month, will be little more than a PR stunt. "My argument today is that now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigour and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort," Miliband will say at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a text of the address seen by the Guardian.

British officials believe that significant Taliban leaders are ready to start talking about a political settlement in which they would sever ties with al-Qaida and put down weapons in return for a role in politics. But there is also concern that opportunities to open a preliminary dialogue are being lost, and that the conflict, which has already cost more than 270 British lives, is being intensified by Kabul's inefficiency and corruption.

"The Afghans must own, lead and drive such political engagement," Miliband will say in his speech. "It will be a slow, gradual process. But the insurgents will want to see international support.

"International engagement, for example under the auspices of the UN, may ultimately be required."

Karzai presented a paper on political reconciliation at a conference held by Gordon Brown in London in January. But officials who saw it, and subsequent Afghan proposals on peace talks, have variously described them as "empty" and "a C-team effort".

Gerard Russell, at the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard University, said: "We had a look at the Afghan government's thinking on reconciliation, but we haven't seen a concrete proposal or a workable methodology."

Russell, a former political adviser to the UN mission in Afghanistan, added: "There is a talk about having a loya jirga. But what is a loya jirga going to do? On its own, its not going to achieve anything."

The growing alarm at the lack of political initiative in Kabul comes at a time when back-channel contacts with the Taliban have also run into trouble, paradoxically as a result of a Taliban arrest hailed as a triumph last month.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban's military operations seized in Karachi by Pakistani intelligence agents, had taken part in tentative and secret contacts with Saudi intermediaries last year.

One participant in those talks told the Guardian that Baradar's arrest had been "a huge blow" to the peace effort.

Britain's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has been sent to Kabul as caretaker ambassador, with the primary mission of trying to inject more substance into the loya jirga planned for 29 April. Tomorrow, Miliband will also call for a direct international role in managing the peace process. Miliband's speech also carries a message for Washington.

While Britain's Foreign Office believes work on peace talks should begin straight away and be pushed behind the scenes by the Obama administration, most US officials, and some British generals, question whether such negotiations would produce results before Taliban morale has been depleted by the military surge.

"There is an important US audience for this," a British official said. "Nobody wants a PR stunt in Kabul that doesn't lead anywhere."

• Afghanistan
• Foreign policy
• David Miliband
• Hamid Karzai

Snow leaves 250,000 without power

A metre of snow fell in the Pyrenees leaving 6,000 travellers stranded and blocking up to 40 roads
In pictures: Barcelona in the snow

Nearly a quarter of a million people in north-eastern Spain were without power yesterday after the heaviest snowfall in decades brought major disruption to the region.

A metre of snow fell in the Pyrenees leaving 6,000 travellers stranded and blocking up to 40 roads on the border between Spain and France. Barcelona recorded its heaviest snowfall since 1962 causing road, rail and flight chaos.

Catalonia's interior minister, Joan Boada, said the power cuts, caused by a fault in a high-tension cable, were affecting the area around Girona, 60 miles north of Barcelona.

Spain's border with France at La Junquera was closed causing 30-mile traffic jams while 170,000 pupils had the day off as schools were shut, local newspapers reported. About 3,000 people were put up in a town hall overnight and many others stranded in their cars as railway lines and roads became impassable, Boada said.

Tens of thousands more were unable to get home after snow fell at lunchtime and many left their offices to photograph the rare scenes of central Barcelona and its beach lying under a blanket of snow.

"I've never seen anything like this here in all my life," said Barcelona resident Raquel Lasmarias, 35.

The Catalan regional president, José Montilla, toured the affected areas admitting things would not get back to normal as quickly as might be hoped. "Some things cannot be repaired in hours," he said.

Girona, where 50cm of snow fell, was effectively cut off from the rest of Catalonia with most roads and rail lines blocked and only five of the scheduled 31 departures leaving its airport. The Catalan meteorological office said conditions would slowly improve but warned that unusually cold conditions would continue with widespread frost and ice.

In the Aude region of southern France, firefighters brought hot supplies to 1,800 passengers stuck on trains, AFP reported.

"In Perpignan, passengers were able to bed down on a sleeper train, but we spent the night sitting up and didn't even get blankets until 3:00 am," complained Jean-Marc Rossignol, escorting his 75- and a 82-year-old parents to Toulouse.

• Spain
• Natural disasters and extreme weather

Men's sexual tastes broaden when they are stressed

The usual rules of sexual attraction go out of the window when men are stressed, say psychologists

Men are drawn to a wider range women when they are feeling stressed out, according to research into the psychology of sexual attraction.

People are usually attracted to partners with similar facial features to their own, but after a brief but stressful experience, men's preferences changed to include a wider variety of women, the study found.

Relaxed men who took part in the study rated women on average 14% less appealing if they looked very different from themselves compared with women who looked similar. But a group of stressed men found dissimilar women 9% more attractive.

Johanna Lass-Hennemann, who led the study at the University of Trier in Germany, said the findings echo research suggesting that animals lose their normal mating preferences when they are under stress.

"Men have a tendency to approach dissimilar mates and to rate these to be more pleasant when they are acutely stressed," Lass-Hennemann said. "[But] we are not sure how this might reflect in true mating decisions."

Scientists suspect the appeal of similar-looking partners may be linked to our tendency to have more trust in a familiar face, a factor that is important for long-term relationships. Under stress, however, the importance of pairing up with someone similar-looking seems to vanish.

Lass-Hennemann speculates that stress might increase men's tendency to "outbreed", or reproduce with more genetically dissimilar women, with the potential benefit that any children born from the relationship might be better equipped to cope with a stressful environment.

"We think that chronically stressful environments should increase outbreeding, because inbreeding may lead to offspring that are not genetically diverse enough to deal with the varying circumstances that a risky and stressful environment imposes on them," she said.

In the study, 50 healthy heterosexual male students were divided into two groups. Those in the first group were asked to plunge one arm into a bucket of icy water for three minutes before taking part in the test. Those in the second group were asked to do the same, but with water heated to body temperature.

Measurements of the volunteers' heart rates and levels of the stress hormone cortisol indicated that the men in the first group were significantly more stressed before the test began than those in the second.

In the test itself, the men were shown a series of images on a computer screen. Some were of household objects, but others were of naked women. Some of the women's faces had been digitally altered to resemble either the person being tested or another man in the group.

Throughout the test, the scientists played occasional bursts of noise to startle the men and recorded their reactions. Previous research suggests people startle less when they are looking at something they find attractive. The men were also asked to rate the images by how appealing and arousing they were.

While men in the control group performed as expected and were more attracted to women who looked like them, the stressed men consistently rated the unfamiliar women as more appealing. Their startle reactions confirmed their preferences.

The research is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Lass-Hennemann said it is highly unlikely that the acute stresses of everyday life can switch someone's tastes when it comes to choosing a partner, but long-term stress might shift male preferences towards women who are more dissimilar.

• Reproduction
• Psychology
• Biology
• Relationships
• Genetics

DNA from fossilised eggshells could help reconstruct lives of extinct birds

Ancient DNA has been extracted from the fossilised eggshells of birds for the first time, and will eventually yield clues about their physiology, diet and how they went extinct

Scientists have collected DNA from the fossilised eggshells of birds that died hundreds and in some cases thousands of years ago.

The oldest eggshell to yield DNA came from an Australian emu that died around 19,000 years ago. It is the first time that scientists have succeeded in extracting ancient DNA from the fossilised eggshells of a bird.

Genetic material from the Madagascan elephant bird, the heaviest bird that ever lived, was also recovered, along with DNA from Australian owls, New Zealand ducks and flightless moas.

Elephant birds were native to Madagascar but had gone extinct by the 17th century. The ostrich-like creatures grew to around 3 metres tall and weighed up to half a tonne. Their eggs were bigger than footballs.

Eggshells from two other extinct species, the little bush moa and the heavy footed moa, both from New Zealand's north island, were estimated to be more than 3,000 years old. Attempts to collect DNA from a 50,000-year-old flightless Australian bird from the genus Genyornis failed because the DNA had degraded too much.

The ancient DNA has yet to be sequenced, but researchers will soon be looking to draw up genetic profiles of long-lost birds by extracting genetic material from eggshells held in museums and excavated at archaeological and fossil sites.

Previously, they had little hope of reading DNA from species that lived in warm climates because the genetic material breaks down so quickly.

By sequencing the genomes of ancient birds, scientists hope to build up a better picture of their physiology and how they dispersed and split into different species. It may even be possible to surmise their diets from genes encoding the enzymes for digesting particular types of food.

Charlotte Oskam, who led the study at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, is now analysing a large collection of eggshells from ancient sites in New Zealand and hopes that DNA profiles of the birds will help explain how the arrival of humans brought about the extinction of the giant moa around 500 years ago.

The researchers used a technique called confocal microscopy to see exactly where the DNA is located inside the egg shells of two of the extinct birds, the New Zealand giant moa and the Madagascan elephant bird.

From this they were able to say that the DNA almost certainly comes from the mother hen rather than the embryo growing inside the egg. When the egg moves away from the ovary, cells from the mother get mixed up in the calcium carbonate shell as it thickens.

The research, reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, does not mean scientists will soon be able to resurrect long-extinct birds. Although the DNA can be sequenced, scientists would need to know how to repackage it into chromosomes, the giant molecules that carry genes.

The same problem makes it unlikely that scientists will bring woolly mammoths back to life, even though their DNA has been sequenced from well-preserved specimens recovered from the Siberian permafrost.

"As with all ancient DNA, the DNA we isolated from eggshell is very fragmented," said Oskam. It will be possible to sequence extinct genomes from fossil eggshell, he said, "but it is a huge leap to imagine we can clone an extinct species."

• Fossils
• Genetics
• Evolution
• Biochemistry and molecular biology
• Zoology
• New Zealand
• Madagascar
• Australia

The eurozone | Fright Club | Editorial

Voters in many eurozone member countries can be forgiven for thinking that the single currency has only made things worse

The euro faced its first big challenge in this banking crisis – and it failed. That is not the assertion of a British newspaper but comes from Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, who admitted this week that "the sanctions we have were not good enough". She was referring to the Greek financial meltdown, but she could equally well have been talking about the fiscal crisis and violent demonstrations in Ireland in 2009 – or even the outbreak of the credit crunch over a year ago. As interconnected financial institutions across the continent tumbled like so many dominoes, the lack of a single eurozone banking watchdog (as opposed to a patchwork of national regulators from Austria to Malta to Slovenia) only made the crisis worse.

Indeed, voters in many eurozone member countries can be forgiven for thinking that the single currency has only made things worse. There has been the obvious problem inherent in a currency club that stretches across many nations in varying states of economic health, which means that Ireland, Greece and others in deep trouble can no longer devalue their punts or drachmas to make themselves more competitive but must rely instead on the more painful and certainly more unpopular task of driving down workers' wages. That was the congenital defect of the euro, but matters have been made far worse by the reluctance of individual governments to group together.

Whether Ms Merkel and her colleagues like it or not, they now share a currency and an interest rate with George Papandreou and his ministers in Athens. And yet, throughout the weeks that Greece has teetered on the abyss of economic collapse or massive political convulsions, Berlin has been unable to come out and stand behind Athens. This has nothing to do with altruism or international brotherhood, and everything to do with enlightened national self-interest. Clubs that do not hang together end up with the members being hanged separately, and in investors' minds Greece is not so different from Portugal, Italy or Spain: they all go on the target range marked Pigs. When he was Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, Larry Summers once remarked that "when markets overreact … policy needs to overreact as well". During this banking crisis, eurozone politicians have not overreacted – indeed, they have barely acted at all.

Which is why this week's suggestion from Berlin that the eurozone ought to set up its own version of the International Monetary Fund has come as such a surprise – even to other European governments. As it stands at the moment, the proposal is vaguer than a pitch on Dragons' Den, but it at least marks a recognition by Europe's anchor economy that the currency club urgently needs some more institutions if it is not to repeat the mistakes and missteps of the past few years. Ideally, an EMF (as it has inevitably become known) would stand behind the common currency and intervene when member governments get into financial strife. In Greece's case, such a body would have been able to give Athens some funds and a stamp of support that would have taken off some of the speculative pressure. The Washington-based IMF can already do this, but its intervention might dent European pride.

So much for the dream scenario: if an EMF is ever set up (a big if, given that it could force the renegotiation of the Lisbon treaty), it will probably not be so useful. It is more likely to go in for finger-wagging at governments that exceed their borrowing limits, and it is certainly hard to see German voters funding such an institution and its war chest. If that is what Ms Merkel has in mind, she should be warned: it will do nothing to glue together a eurozone that is slowly coming unstuck. If a 16-nation economic club is to grow up, it needs serious institutions and regulators – and for member governments to recognise that they are in it together.

• Euro
• Economics
• Greece

In praise of | Denis Avey | Editorial

A British soldier held as a prisoner of war near the main Auschwitz camps, he told the Times that he decided to enter them to gather evidence about what the Germans were up to

Listeners to Radio 4 yesterday morning may have heard a moving and modest interview with a remarkable man. "You get into trouble but you sleep at night," said Denis Avey, describing his experiences inside Auschwitz concentration camp, which, quite incredibly, he entered twice during the war in an effort to witness its appalling activities. Yesterday he received one of the first Hero of the Holocaust medals from Gordon Brown. A British soldier held as a prisoner of war near the main Auschwitz camps, he told the Times last year that he decided to enter them to gather evidence about what the Germans were up to: "Evidence would be vital. Of course, sneaking into the Jewish camp was a ludicrous idea. It was like breaking into Hell. But that's the sort of chap I was. Reckless." He befriended a German Jew whose sister had escaped to Britain before the war, managed to contact her, and passed her brother cigarettes, which he then traded to save his life. He also swapped places with a Dutch Jewish prisoner to spend a day and night inside the camp. And he lost an eye when an SS officer hit him with a Luger for trying to defend a Jewish child. After the war, he found the British military authorities uninterested in using his evidence. "I was shocked, especially after the risks I'd taken," he told the Times. "I felt completely disillusioned, and traumatised as well." Some may wonder at the decision to create a British Holocaust award, but it is impossible to be anything other than awed by Mr Avey's story.

• Second world war
• Radio 4

37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola three

In 1972, three men in a Louisiana prison were placed in solitary confinement after a prison guard was murdered. Two of them are still there – even though many believe they are innocent

Angola prison, the state penitentiary of Louisiana, is the biggest prison in America. Built on the site of a former slave plantation, the 1,800-acre penal complex is home to more than 5,000 prisoners, the majority of whom will never walk the streets again as free men. Also known as the Farm, Angola took its name from the homeland of the slaves who used to work its fields, and in many ways still resembles a slave plantation today. Eighty per cent of the prisoners are African-Americans and, under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback, they still work fields of sugar cane, cotton and corn, for up to 16 hours a day. "You've got to keep the inmates working all day so they're tired at night," says Warden Burl Cain, a committed evangelist who believes that the rehabilitation of convicts is only possible through Christian redemption.

Undoubtedly there is less violence and abuse among the prisoners under his wardenship than there was under his predecessors. But Angola is still a long way from being a "positive environment that promotes responsibility, goodness, and humanity", as he proclaims in the prison's mission statement. In fact at the heart of Cain's prison regime is an inhumanity that would make Jesus weep.

For more than 37 years, two prisoners, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have been locked down in Angola's maximum security Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) block – the longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history.

Having experienced the isolation of "23-hour bang-up" during my own 20 years of imprisonment, for offences of which I was guilty, I can attest to the mental impact that such conditions inflict. My first year was spent on a high-security landing where the cell doors were opened only briefly for meals and emptying of toilet buckets. If decent-minded prison officers were on duty we were allowed to walk the yard for 30 minutes a day. The rest of the time we were alone. The cells were 10ft x 5ft, with a chair, a table and a bed. You could walk up and down, run on the spot, stand still, or do push-ups and sit-ups – but sooner or later you had to just stop, and think.

As the days, weeks and months blur into one, without realising it you start to live completely inside your head. You dream about the past, in vivid detail – and fantasise about the future, for fantasies are all you have. You panic but it's no good "getting on the bell" – unless you're dying – and, even then, don't hope for a speedy response. I had a lot to think about. When the man in the cell above mine hanged himself I thought about that, a lot. I still do. You look at the bars on the high window and think how easy it would be to be free of all the thinking.

Such thoughts must have crossed the minds of Wallace and Woodfox more than once during their isolation. They are fed through the barred gates of their 9ft x 6ft cells and allowed only one hour of exercise every other day alone in a small caged yard. Their capacity for psychological endurance alone is noteworthy.

Wallace and Woodfox were confined to solitary after being convicted of murdering Angola prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. But the circumstances of their trial was so suspect that there are no doubts among their supporters that these men are innocent. Even Brent Miller's widow, Teenie Verret, has her reservations. "If they did not do this," she says, "and I believe that they didn't, they have been living a nightmare."

One man who understands the nightmare that Wallace and Woodfox are living more than anyone else is Robert King. King was also convicted of a murder in Angola in 1973, and was held in solitary alongside Wallace and Woodfox for 29 years, until his conviction was overturned in 2001 and he was freed. Together, King, Wallace and Woodfox have become known as the "Angola three".

The case of the Angola three first came to international attention following the campaigning efforts of the Body Shop founder and humanitarian Anita Roddick. Roddick heard about their plight from a young lawyer named Scott Fleming. Fleming was working as a prisoner advocate in the 1990s when he received a letter from Wallace asking for help. The human tragedy Fleming uncovered had the most profound effect on him. When he qualified as a lawyer, their case became his first. "I was born in 1973," he says. "I often think that for my entire life they have been in solitary."

Through Fleming, Roddick met King and then Woodfox in Angola. Their story, she said later, "made my blood run cold in my veins". Until her death in 2007 Roddick was a committed and passionate supporter of their cause. At her memorial service King played two taped messages from Wallace and Woodfox. In the congregation was film-maker Vadim Jean who had become good friends with Roddick and her husband Gordon during an earlier film project. "Anita's big thing was, 'Just do something,'" says Jean. "No matter how small an act of kindness. Listening to Herman and Albert's voices at her memorial was like having Anita's finger pointing at me and saying, 'Just do something'." And so he decided to make In the Land of the Free, a searing documentary, released later this month.

The story Jean's film tells is one that has resonance on many levels. All three men were from poor black neighbourhoods In New Orleans. They grew up fearing the police, who would regularly "clear the books" of crimes in the area, according to King, by pinning then on disaffected young black men. "If I saw the police, I used to run," King says. He admits to being involved in petty crime in his early years, but "nothing vicious". Eventually King was arrested for an armed robbery he says he did not commit and was sentenced to 35 years, which he began in New Orleans parish prison – and there he met Albert Woodfox.

Woodfox had also been sentenced for armed robbery – and given 50 years. On the day he was sentenced he escaped from the courthouse. He made his way to Harlem in New York, where he encountered the Black Panthers, the revolutionary African-American political movement. He witnessed the Panthers engaging with the community in a positive, constructive way, educating and informing people of their rights. He says it was the first time in his life that he had seen African-Americans exhibiting real pride, pride that emanated from the young activists, he says, "like a shimmering heatwave".

Two days later Woodfox was caught and taken to New York's Tombs prison where he saw first-hand the militant tactics of imprisoned Panthers who resisted their guards with organised protests. In Tombs, Woodfox was labelled "militant" and sent back to New Orleans where he joined King on the parish prison block, known – due to the high concentration of Panther activists – as "the Panther tier". There Woodfox became a member of the Black Panther party.

Outside, confrontations between the Panthers – described by FBI director J Edgar Hoover as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" – and the police were escalating. In an attempt to undermine the influence of the Panthers in New Orleans parish prison, officials tried to shoehorn men they termed "Black Gangsters" on to the tier – men like Wallace, also serving decades for armed robbery. One day Wallace was suffering from the pain of ill-fitting shoes. One of the Panthers, on his way to a court appearance, took his shoes off and handed them to Wallace. "Right then I knew that that was what I needed to be a part of," he says. In the summer of 1971 Wallace and Woodfox were shipped to Angola.

The civil rights bill had been signed in 1964, but seven years later Angola was still operating a segregated regime. Prisoner guards carried guns and were also responsible, according to well-documented sources, for organising systematic sexual abuse of vulnerable prisoners, which flourished in the prison's mostly dormitory accommodation. And violence between prisoners had reached such levels that Angola was known as "the bloodiest prison in America".

Woodfox and Wallace quickly extended the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panthers into Angola, establishing classes in political ideology and exposing injustices. They organised work stoppages, demonstrating to fellow prisoners the liberating power of acting with a "unity of purpose" and worked to eradicate the prevalent sexual abuses. But their political activities made them targets for the administrators. By the spring of 1972, tensions in the prison were dangerously high.

These were the conditions in which Brent Miller met his untimely death. That April, a prisoner work strike drew the attention of the guards who were called from normal duties to deal with the disturbance. Miller, a strong, athletic young man of 23, stayed behind alone. He entered a dormitory holding 90 prisoners and sat on an elderly prisoner's bed, drinking coffee and chatting. Moments later he was attacked and stabbed 32 times.

Two days later, four men identified as "black militants", including Wallace and Woodfox, were accused of the murder. It was quickly ascertained that one of the four had been inserted into the case by the prison administration. Charges against him were dropped. Another, Chester Jackson, admitted to holding Miller while the guard was stabbed to death. Jackson turned state's evidence in return for a plea to manslaughter. The case was tried in a town called St Francisville, the closest courthouse to Angola. The jury had been picked from the local populace, many of whom earned their living from the prison or had families and friends that worked there; all were white. Wallace and Woodfox were found guilty of Miller's murder, sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and taken from the court straight to Angola's CCR block to begin their life in isolation.

Robert King was brought to Angola from the parish prison two weeks after Miller's killing, as part of a roundup of black radicals. King had never met Miller and was in a prison 150 miles away when the murder took place. Yet he was investigated for the crime and identified as a "conspirator" before being transferred to lockdown on CCR alongside Wallace and Woodcock.

The following year a prisoner named August Kelly was murdered on King's CCR tier. A man named Grady Brewer admitted that he alone was responsible for the killing, which he said he carried out in self-defence. But King was also charged. The two men faced trial together in the same St Francisville courthouse where Wallace and Woodfox had been convicted the year before. The sole evidence against King came from flawed prisoner testimony. He and Brewer had not been allowed to speak to their attorneys for any length of time before their trial. When they protested, the judge ordered their hands to be shackled behind their backs and their mouths gagged with duct tape for the duration of their trial. The men were convicted and sentenced to life without parole. King later won an appeal; the federal court ruled that he had not been sufficiently unruly in the dock to warrant the shackling and gagging. He went back to trial in 1975, was re-convicted and immediately sent back to CCR.

When, after Scott Fleming's intervention in the case of Wallace and Woodfox in the 1990s, new lawyers reviewed the original trial of both men, discovering "obfuscation after obfuscation". The state had used a number of jailhouse informants against them, many of whom gave contradictory accounts of what they saw. One was registered blind. The key witness in the case was a man called Hezikiah Brown who testified he witnessed the murder. In his initial statement to investigators however, Brown said he had not seen anything. Three days later, when he was taken from his bunk at midnight by prison officials and promised his freedom if he testified, he agreed to say that he saw Wallace and Woodfox kill Miller. At the time Brown was serving life without parole for multiple rapes. Immediately after he agreed to testify he was given his own minimum security private house in the prison grounds and a weekly cigarette ration.

Wallace and Woodfox did not give up. They fought their convictions from their cells and in 1993 Woodfox was granted an appeal, forcing a new trial. The case was sent back to the same courthouse to be tried in front of a new grand jury. A local author, Anne Butler, who had published a book in which she detailed the case and was convinced that the right people had been convicted, acted as jury chairperson. No witnesses were called. Instead Butler was called upon to explain the case. Once again, the jury was composed of people who worked in Angola or were related to people who worked there. Butler's husband and co-author was Murray Henderson, who had been the warden of Angola when Brent Miller was murdered. It is worth noting that Henderson was a key member of the original investigation team and that, during that investigation, a bloody fingerprint was found close to Brent Miller's body. It was determined that it did not belong to Woodfox nor to Wallace, but despite the prison holding all the fingerprints of all the prisoners, no attempt was made to find out whose it was. The bloody print was also ignored at Woodfox's retrial. He was reconvicted and sent back to isolation in Angola's CCR.

It was 26 years before King won the right to another appeal. In 2001 the Federal court found that the jury in King's original trial had systematically excluded African-Americans and women and agreed that the case should be reheard. This time around the prisoner witnesses recanted and the federal court sent the case back to the district court for review. The state negotiated a deal with King. Reluctantly, and with his left hand raised instead of his right, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy; an hour and a half later he was freed.

In September 2008, Woodfox's conviction was overturned; the federal court ruled that his core constitutional rights had been violated at his original trial. Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell could have set Woodfox free immediately. Instead he decided to contest the federal decision and Woodfox, now 64, was returned to Angola's CCR, where he remains. Herman Wallace, now 68, was moved to another Louisiana prison last year, where he too continues to be held in solitary confinement.

Today King, now 67, is still campaigning for justice for his friends. Albert Woodfox: "Our primary objective is that front gate. That is what we are struggling for and we are actually fighting for our freedom. We are fighting for people to understand that we were framed for a murder that we are totally, completely and actually innocent of." Robert King says he is free of Angola, but until his friends are free, "Angola will never be free of me."

Jean hopes his film will make a difference. "These men need help," he says. "Louisiana needs to be shamed into doing the right thing."

Further information: angola3.org. If you wish to help highlight the plight of the Angola 3, you can write to the Governor of Louisiana at the Office of the Governor, PO Box 94004, Baton Rouge, LA 70804, US.

In the Land of the Free is released on 26 March

• Prisons and probation
• United States

Read more [Guardian America]

Response: Argentina's claim to the Falklands is neither logical nor valid

Our large South American neighbour should not be allowed to force its colonial ambitions on us

Simon Jenkins fails to acknowledge that the Falklands have moved on (The Falklands can no longer remain as Britain's expensive nuisance, 26 February). Argentina's endeavours to force its colonial ambitions on a small country, against the freely expressed wishes of its people, ignore our basic right to self-determination.

"Anyone who studies the tortuous history and law of the Falklands will know that Argentina's claim to the islands was certainly strong," Jenkins says. But their claim to a territory 300 miles away is neither logical nor valid. Falklands inhabitants did not replace an indigenous population because there was none. The islands were claimed by Britain in 1765, long before Argentina existed as a country, and have been permanently settled since 1833. Some families, like mine, can now boast eight or nine generations on the islands. The Falklands are an overseas territory of the UK, with internal matters governed by a democratically elected legislative assembly, of which I am a member.

Jenkins talks of Argentina regularly protesting about their rights to the islands to "the UN's decolonisation committee, supported by other post-imperial states in South and North America". But the annual vote in this committee is a sham – the Islands are not a colony and the debate there is therefore an irrelevance. More relevant are the European convention on human rights and the international covenant on civil and political rights, both of which endorse the principles of self-determination.

We have repeatedly attempted to work with Argentina, and agreed a joint declaration on co-operation on oil exploration in 1995. This was renounced by Argentina in 2007. Co-operation on sustainable fisheries through a joint commission was a way for the Falklands and Argentina to conserve South Atlantic stocks through the exchange of scientific data and the setting of sustainable catch levels. Argentina not only withdrew from the commission but set unsustainably high quotas in some fish stocks.

Jenkins states that "Argentina has not threatened military action over the Ocean Guardian" (the oil rig currently drilling in our waters). But it is clear that our large neighbour is attempting to achieve by economic warfare what it failed to achieve by military means.

It has threatened sanctions against companies holding licences to fish in Falklands waters and tried to exclude our representatives from participating at international conferences. It prevents charter flights from other South American countries flying to the islands, and is now attempting to disrupt our oil exploration by threats to hinder shipping. These are hardly the acts of a friendly and peaceful neighbour.

We remain eternally grateful to those who liberated us from the Argentine aggression in 1982. By referring to that time as "the silliest of wars", Jenkins insults their memory and diminishes their incredible achievement.

Jenkins believes us to be an "expensive legacy of Empire". He should be aware that the Islands are self-financing – except for defence, which is purely because of the continued Argentine claim to my country. And our government has expressed the wish to contribute more to these costs, should oil be discovered in commercial quantities.

• Falkland Islands
• Argentina
• United Nations
• Oil
• Foreign policy
• Politics past

37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola three

In 1972, three men in a Louisiana prison were placed in solitary confinement after a prison guard was murdered. Two of them are still there – even though many believe they are innocent

Angola prison, the state penitentiary of Louisiana, is the biggest prison in America. Built on the site of a former slave plantation, the 1,800-acre penal complex is home to more than 5,000 prisoners, the majority of whom will never walk the streets again as free men. Also known as the Farm, Angola took its name from the homeland of the slaves who used to work its fields, and in many ways still resembles a slave plantation today. Eighty per cent of the prisoners are African-Americans and, under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback, they still work fields of sugar cane, cotton and corn, for up to 16 hours a day. "You've got to keep the inmates working all day so they're tired at night," says Warden Burl Cain, a committed evangelist who believes that the rehabilitation of convicts is only possible through Christian redemption.

Undoubtedly there is less violence and abuse among the prisoners under his wardenship than there was under his predecessors. But Angola is still a long way from being a "positive environment that promotes responsibility, goodness, and humanity", as he proclaims in the prison's mission statement. In fact at the heart of Cain's prison regime is an inhumanity that would make Jesus weep.

For more than 37 years, two prisoners, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have been locked down in Angola's maximum security Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) block – the longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history.

Having experienced the isolation of "23-hour bang-up" during my own 20 years of imprisonment, for offences of which I was guilty, I can attest to the mental impact that such conditions inflict. My first year was spent on a high-security landing where the cell doors were opened only briefly for meals and emptying of toilet buckets. If decent-minded prison officers were on duty we were allowed to walk the yard for 30 minutes a day. The rest of the time we were alone. The cells were 10ft x 5ft, with a chair, a table and a bed. You could walk up and down, run on the spot, stand still, or do push-ups and sit-ups – but sooner or later you had to just stop, and think.

As the days, weeks and months blur into one, without realising it you start to live completely inside your head. You dream about the past, in vivid detail – and fantasise about the future, for fantasies are all you have. You panic but it's no good "getting on the bell" – unless you're dying – and, even then, don't hope for a speedy response. I had a lot to think about. When the man in the cell above mine hanged himself I thought about that, a lot. I still do. You look at the bars on the high window and think how easy it would be to be free of all the thinking.

Such thoughts must have crossed the minds of Wallace and Woodfox more than once during their isolation. They are fed through the barred gates of their 9ft x 6ft cells and allowed only one hour of exercise every other day alone in a small caged yard. Their capacity for psychological endurance alone is noteworthy.

Wallace and Woodfox were confined to solitary after being convicted of murdering Angola prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. But the circumstances of their trial was so suspect that there are no doubts among their supporters that these men are innocent. Even Brent Miller's widow, Teenie Verret, has her reservations. "If they did not do this," she says, "and I believe that they didn't, they have been living a nightmare."

One man who understands the nightmare that Wallace and Woodfox are living more than anyone else is Robert King. King was also convicted of a murder in Angola in 1973, and was held in solitary alongside Wallace and Woodfox for 29 years, until his conviction was overturned in 2001 and he was freed. Together, King, Wallace and Woodfox have become known as the "Angola three".

The case of the Angola three first came to international attention following the campaigning efforts of the Body Shop founder and humanitarian Anita Roddick. Roddick heard about their plight from a young lawyer named Scott Fleming. Fleming was working as a prisoner advocate in the 1990s when he received a letter from Wallace asking for help. The human tragedy Fleming uncovered had the most profound effect on him. When he qualified as a lawyer, their case became his first. "I was born in 1973," he says. "I often think that for my entire life they have been in solitary."

Through Fleming, Roddick met King and then Woodfox in Angola. Their story, she said later, "made my blood run cold in my veins". Until her death in 2007 Roddick was a committed and passionate supporter of their cause. At her memorial service King played two taped messages from Wallace and Woodfox. In the congregation was film-maker Vadim Jean who had become good friends with Roddick and her husband Gordon during an earlier film project. "Anita's big thing was, 'Just do something,'" says Jean. "No matter how small an act of kindness. Listening to Herman and Albert's voices at her memorial was like having Anita's finger pointing at me and saying, 'Just do something'." And so he decided to make In the Land of the Free, a searing documentary, released later this month.

The story Jean's film tells is one that has resonance on many levels. All three men were from poor black neighbourhoods In New Orleans. They grew up fearing the police, who would regularly "clear the books" of crimes in the area, according to King, by pinning then on disaffected young black men. "If I saw the police, I used to run," King says. He admits to being involved in petty crime in his early years, but "nothing vicious". Eventually King was arrested for an armed robbery he says he did not commit and was sentenced to 35 years, which he began in New Orleans parish prison – and there he met Albert Woodfox.

Woodfox had also been sentenced for armed robbery – and given 50 years. On the day he was sentenced he escaped from the courthouse. He made his way to Harlem in New York, where he encountered the Black Panthers, the revolutionary African-American political movement. He witnessed the Panthers engaging with the community in a positive, constructive way, educating and informing people of their rights. He says it was the first time in his life that he had seen African-Americans exhibiting real pride, pride that emanated from the young activists, he says, "like a shimmering heatwave".

Two days later Woodfox was caught and taken to New York's Tombs prison where he saw first-hand the militant tactics of imprisoned Panthers who resisted their guards with organised protests. In Tombs, Woodfox was labelled "militant" and sent back to New Orleans where he joined King on the parish prison block, known – due to the high concentration of Panther activists – as "the Panther tier". There Woodfox became a member of the Black Panther party.

Outside, confrontations between the Panthers – described by FBI director J Edgar Hoover as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" – and the police were escalating. In an attempt to undermine the influence of the Panthers in New Orleans parish prison, officials tried to shoehorn men they termed "Black Gangsters" on to the tier – men like Wallace, also serving decades for armed robbery. One day Wallace was suffering from the pain of ill-fitting shoes. One of the Panthers, on his way to a court appearance, took his shoes off and handed them to Wallace. "Right then I knew that that was what I needed to be a part of," he says. In the summer of 1971 Wallace and Woodfox were shipped to Angola.

The civil rights bill had been signed in 1964, but seven years later Angola was still operating a segregated regime. Prisoner guards carried guns and were also responsible, according to well-documented sources, for organising systematic sexual abuse of vulnerable prisoners, which flourished in the prison's mostly dormitory accommodation. And violence between prisoners had reached such levels that Angola was known as "the bloodiest prison in America".

Woodfox and Wallace quickly extended the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panthers into Angola, establishing classes in political ideology and exposing injustices. They organised work stoppages, demonstrating to fellow prisoners the liberating power of acting with a "unity of purpose" and worked to eradicate the prevalent sexual abuses. But their political activities made them targets for the administrators. By the spring of 1972, tensions in the prison were dangerously high.

These were the conditions in which Brent Miller met his untimely death. That April, a prisoner work strike drew the attention of the guards who were called from normal duties to deal with the disturbance. Miller, a strong, athletic young man of 23, stayed behind alone. He entered a dormitory holding 90 prisoners and sat on an elderly prisoner's bed, drinking coffee and chatting. Moments later he was attacked and stabbed 32 times.

Two days later, four men identified as "black militants", including Wallace and Woodfox, were accused of the murder. It was quickly ascertained that one of the four had been inserted into the case by the prison administration. Charges against him were dropped. Another, Chester Jackson, admitted to holding Miller while the guard was stabbed to death. Jackson turned state's evidence in return for a plea to manslaughter. The case was tried in a town called St Francisville, the closest courthouse to Angola. The jury had been picked from the local populace, many of whom earned their living from the prison or had families and friends that worked there; all were white. Wallace and Woodfox were found guilty of Miller's murder, sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and taken from the court straight to Angola's CCR block to begin their life in isolation.

Robert King was brought to Angola from the parish prison two weeks after Miller's killing, as part of a roundup of black radicals. King had never met Miller and was in a prison 150 miles away when the murder took place. Yet he was investigated for the crime and identified as a "conspirator" before being transferred to lockdown on CCR alongside Wallace and Woodcock.

The following year a prisoner named August Kelly was murdered on King's CCR tier. A man named Grady Brewer admitted that he alone was responsible for the killing, which he said he carried out in self-defence. But King was also charged. The two men faced trial together in the same St Francisville courthouse where Wallace and Woodfox had been convicted the year before. The sole evidence against King came from flawed prisoner testimony. He and Brewer had not been allowed to speak to their attorneys for any length of time before their trial. When they protested, the judge ordered their hands to be shackled behind their backs and their mouths gagged with duct tape for the duration of their trial. The men were convicted and sentenced to life without parole. King later won an appeal; the federal court ruled that he had not been sufficiently unruly in the dock to warrant the shackling and gagging. He went back to trial in 1975, was re-convicted and immediately sent back to CCR.

When, after Scott Fleming's intervention in the case of Wallace and Woodfox in the 1990s, new lawyers reviewed the original trial of both men, discovering "obfuscation after obfuscation". The state had used a number of jailhouse informants against them, many of whom gave contradictory accounts of what they saw. One was registered blind. The key witness in the case was a man called Hezikiah Brown who testified he witnessed the murder. In his initial statement to investigators however, Brown said he had not seen anything. Three days later, when he was taken from his bunk at midnight by prison officials and promised his freedom if he testified, he agreed to say that he saw Wallace and Woodfox kill Miller. At the time Brown was serving life without parole for multiple rapes. Immediately after he agreed to testify he was given his own minimum security private house in the prison grounds and a weekly cigarette ration.

Wallace and Woodfox did not give up. They fought their convictions from their cells and in 1993 Woodfox was granted an appeal, forcing a new trial. The case was sent back to the same courthouse to be tried in front of a new grand jury. A local author, Anne Butler, who had published a book in which she detailed the case and was convinced that the right people had been convicted, acted as jury chairperson. No witnesses were called. Instead Butler was called upon to explain the case. Once again, the jury was composed of people who worked in Angola or were related to people who worked there. Butler's husband and co-author was Murray Henderson, who had been the warden of Angola when Brent Miller was murdered. It is worth noting that Henderson was a key member of the original investigation team and that, during that investigation, a bloody fingerprint was found close to Brent Miller's body. It was determined that it did not belong to Woodfox nor to Wallace, but despite the prison holding all the fingerprints of all the prisoners, no attempt was made to find out whose it was. The bloody print was also ignored at Woodfox's retrial. He was reconvicted and sent back to isolation in Angola's CCR.

It was 26 years before King won the right to another appeal. In 2001 the Federal court found that the jury in King's original trial had systematically excluded African-Americans and women and agreed that the case should be reheard. This time around the prisoner witnesses recanted and the federal court sent the case back to the district court for review. The state negotiated a deal with King. Reluctantly, and with his left hand raised instead of his right, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy; an hour and a half later he was freed.

In September 2008, Woodfox's conviction was overturned; the federal court ruled that his core constitutional rights had been violated at his original trial. Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell could have set Woodfox free immediately. Instead he decided to contest the federal decision and Woodfox, now 64, was returned to Angola's CCR, where he remains. Herman Wallace, now 68, was moved to another Louisiana prison last year, where he too continues to be held in solitary confinement.

Today King, now 67, is still campaigning for justice for his friends. Albert Woodfox: "Our primary objective is that front gate. That is what we are struggling for and we are actually fighting for our freedom. We are fighting for people to understand that we were framed for a murder that we are totally, completely and actually innocent of." Robert King says he is free of Angola, but until his friends are free, "Angola will never be free of me."

Jean hopes his film will make a difference. "These men need help," he says. "Louisiana needs to be shamed into doing the right thing."

Further information: angola3.org. If you wish to help highlight the plight of the Angola 3, you can write to the Governor of Louisiana at the Office of the Governor, PO Box 94004, Baton Rouge, LA 70804, US.

In the Land of the Free is released on 26 March

• Prisons and probation
• United States

Letters: Pay for women still in the middle ages

The fact that less than 11% of board members in major British companies are female is a damning indictment of this government's failure to offer a coherent strategy for fighting inequality and championing women's rights (Absence of women on top boards 'unacceptable', 8 March). What's more, given that fewer than 20% of MPs are female, Brown and Harman would do well to look closer to home and actively address why women also continue to be marginalised in the political world.

On Monday, International Women's Day, the Green party launched its manifesto for women. The Greens support the introduction of quotas to ensure that boards of major companies are at least 40% female, based on the model already successfully implemented in Norway, and being considered in France. Further, we would insist that all large and medium-size companies carry out equal pay audits and redress inequalities uncovered; and that the law be changed to make joint suits for equal pay cases simpler. We also propose better provisions for maternity and paternity leave – with a focus on paid paternity – to make sure that responsibilities are shared.

Greens, unlike politicians from the grey Westminster parties, have the courage in our convictions to propose the kinds of solutions we need if we are to secure a fairer deal for women.

Caroline Lucas MEP

Green party leader

• What a shame Gordon Brown didn't also stop to consider his own government's woeful record on equal pay. If the equality bill gets carried, it will continue to replicate the outdated Equal Pay Act. This was a great advance in 1970, but after 40 years of individual women taking cases to tribunals – which can take many years to complete – we still have a pay gap of around 17%, one of the worst in Europe. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to introduce mandatory equal pay audits and representative actions on behalf of groups of women in workplaces has been squandered because of Brown and co's adherence to the "light touch on business" philosophy.

Lena Calvert

Luton

• It is incorrect to say that the second world war saw large numbers of women enter the workforce for the first time (International Women's Day poster, 6 March). Since the high middle ages women have undertaken various forms of paid employment outside the home. Many households of the labouring poor would have been unable to subsist without women's financial contributions, and women's work was central to the industrialisation of Britain. Moreover, as Professor Judith Bennett has noted, in the 14th century the average woman's wages were 71% of those of the average man, while today women earn around 75% of what their male counterparts receive.

Dr Tim Reinke-Williams

University of Nottingham

• Equality
• Feminism
• Green party
• Gordon Brown
• Harriet Harman
• International Women's Day

At Adelphi Theater in London: Same Phantom, Different Spirit

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s belated sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera” feels as eager to be walloped as a clown in a carnival dunking booth.
Read more [International Herald Tribune]

Pompey rock bottom while Sunderland savour victory (AFP)

AFP - Crisis club Portsmouth remained four points adrift at the foot of the English Premier League as Birmingham City gained revenge on their FA Cup conquerors with a 2-1 win at Fratton Park on Tuesday.

Iranian suitors offered marriage course

Prenuptial training for young people aims to tackle country's rising divorce rates

There was a time when Iranian women seeking husbands prioritised job status and financial security – not to mention love – at the top of their list of needs.

Now potential suitors face the prospect of having to fulfil a daunting new requirement before asking for a bride's hand – having the right government certificate.

Acquiring the appropriate official qualifications before popping the question is part of a plan for prenuptial training courses approved by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the aim of reversing declining Iranian marriage rates and rising divorce statistics.

From next week, online courses will be offered to young people to prepare them for the pitfalls of married life. The three-month courses, involving weekly tests, will be run by the state-governed national youth organisation, and those who successfully complete them will receive a certificate as proof of their readiness for matrimony. Mohsen Zanganeh, the head of the national youth organisation for Tehran province, said the courses would provide young people with an understanding of the "alphabet of life" and were intended as an essential gateway to marriage.

"We intend that within the next two years, if a boy attempts to woo a girl, she will answer only if he has finished his course," he told the Fars news agency. "We are trying to increase the level of information among young people concerning marriage."

Zangeneh said the course would run along similar lines to a universityand have a panel of 40 experts serving as its scientific board. The idea has been partly prompted by the rising divorce rate.

Iranian decision-makers are also alarmed at a rise in the average marrying age, which scientists say is leading to an increase in premarital sex and abortions arising from unwanted pregnancies.

• Iran
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Marriage
• Divorce

3D television's early adopters: To buy or not to buy?

The principal message is: don't hurry to buy one unless you delight in getting the first version of things

Have you bought a digital TV? Dithered over buying a high definition TV, and then wondered whether you were getting any high definition content? Felt puzzled by Blu-ray DVDs, and whether they would look better on your old TV or your HD TV? Get ready for another round of confusion as 3D TV rushes closer – beginning with the World Cup this year, a dedicated Sky Sports channel in 2011 and the Olympics in 2012.

The principal message is: don't hurry to buy one unless you delight in getting the first version of things. Adam May, a producer with 3D producers and consultants Vision 3, says TV companies have started showing interest in making programmes in 3D; but the big push to sell the sets will come this Christmas.

But right now, the easy way to find out if you need or want a 3D set is to look at your household bills. Is there a huge monthly payment to Sky Sports there? If so, then maybe you do want 3D because it has already started broadcasting. Otherwise, just wait: the prices are going to fall, as they do with all consumer electronics as volume, and production quality, rises.

That's not the message that Sony and Samsung will want you to hear, but the introduction of any new technology for displaying a new form of content is always a chicken-and-egg challenge: why push the content if nobody can watch it? But why sell the gear if there's no content? Sky clearly sees a way to accelerate the process through sports (which clearly benefit from 3D, just as action films do; nobody is proposing to splurge on a 3D version of Lark Rise to Candleford).

The best thing to do is sit on your hands until there's both content you want and a set you can afford. In the end, it's only television.

• Television
• Television industry

Britain gives one million pounds to S.Africa for condoms (AFP)

AFP - Britain announced Tuesday one million pounds in aid to South Africa for the purchase of condoms to tackle HIV and AIDS in the world's worst-affected country ahead of the 2010 World Cup.

Belfast: this deal is a big deal | Denis Murray

Devolution completes the Northern Irish jigsaw, but the DUP's worst nightmare is elsewhere

Northern Ireland's politicians have agreed on something. Just. Take a note of the date. The devolution of policing and justice powers has finally been voted for by the assembly. And as far as most of the electorate is concerned, about time.

The only party to vote against it are the Ulster Unionists, who argued that the power-sharing executive (or cabinet) is dysfunctional – and therefore simply not able to cope with those powers at a time when it cannot cope with other matters like education, for instance. That party's view is why on earth should another major matter be dumped on the body politic when it is not ready and able for it.

Everybody else, of course, says the Ulster Unionists are just throwing a hissy fit, because this deal on the devolution of justice has been agreed by the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin.

Former United States president George W Bush phoned Conservative leader David Cameron last week – since the Ulster Unionists now have an alliance with the Tories – to get them to vote yes to policing and justice. Cameron's view seems to be: OK, but I can't tell the unionists how to vote. At the same time, isn't it amazing that this is the subject with which Dubya, absent from politics since his retirement, has chosen to break his silence? President Bush, I always thought, wanted to stay out of the way of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, unless he was wanted. In the duration of the peace process, he wasn't as essential as Bill Clinton had been. Not uninterested – just when required.

Hillary Clinton has been involved too, phoning other parties.

So why is this such a big deal? Here's why: devolution in a post-conflict society – a real conflict – is actually watched round the world. The Middle East? Yes. And elsewhere.

That's because it has taken years, and years, and years, for this one to resemble one that's about to work. That people who, in their terms, "fought a war" can now not just live together but can govern together.

Whatever you think of Bill Clinton, here's his contribution: he persuaded unionists that an American influence could be a benign influence – not simply an Irish-American, and therefore "united Ireland" influence. The new American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has carried that on.

Policing and justice powers are being devolved now for lots of reasons. It completes the Northern Ireland political jigsaw. It makes the unblocking of the logjam in devolution much easier. And I won't bore you with all the details – but my goodness, has there been a logjam.

The two biggest parties are the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin. The Unionist party reviled the IRA, and yet is now sharing power with Sinn Féin – for may unionists, the front men for the IRA.

Which leads me on to the electoral point. Many DUP voters are horrified that Martin McGuinness, a former IRA leader, is now Northern Ireland's deputy first minister. Bad enough – there will be another assembly election in 2012, which might, with Sinn Féin's electoral might, make McGuinness first minister.

But the DUP's worst nightmare is elsewhere – that a man who was in the DUP twice, and resigned twice, and now has his own party, Traditional Unionist Voice, will split the unionist vote three ways. Jim Allister is his name. And he's massively opposed not just to the devolution of policing and justice but to sharing power with Sinn Féin in the first place. Might he be the next kingmaker in Northern Ireland?

But the devolution of these powers was always inevitable. In two years, nobody will remember it was an issue.

• Northern Ireland
• Sinn Féin
• George Bush
• David Cameron
• Hillary Clinton

Bob Geldof | My rage at this World Service calumny

Rageh Omaar's defence of the discredited BBC report on Band Aid beggars belief. He ignores the total collapse of standards at the World Service

Rageh Omaar's piece "Even Band Aid is not above criticism" is ridiculous. It is of course not about me, or Band Aid, but rather a defence of journalistic exceptionalism, and the now thoroughly discredited BBC World Service programme that "sexed up" a claim that nigh-on the entire humanitarian relief effort by all aid agencies was diverted to arms in Tigray province in 1985.

He allies himself with the programme's dubious technique of using a "star" name to attract attention to an otherwise unexceptional or dubious point of view in the hope that it will gather attention.

So let me first say that far from being above criticism, should Rageh or the World Service colleague he seeks to protect have done the basic journalistic gig of doing a teensy bit of research before they write their stories by, say, doing something basic like maybe Googling my name, he would immediately be overwhelmed by a 35-year torrent of vituperation and condemnation of everything about me – from my suspiciously foreign-sounding name to my shaving and bathing habits, hairstyle (fair enough!), my partners, children, domestic life, temperament, driving habits, political views, attitudes, clothing, style, music, driving and on and on. No, Rageh, rest assured, I am definitely not above criticism – but again, please, for the sake of veracity, and again, I extend this to the wretched Martin Plaut, your fellow journalist, stop venturing palpably untrue statements dressed up as fact.

And how arrogant you are, how self-important, that you should deign to lecture on the implied assumption that you, and by extension all journalists – and specifically in this case the BBC World Service – are above the criticism that you are so busily wagging your finger at me for, and which I (clearly getting above my station) have last weekend meted out to your incompetent mate and his associates at the Beeb. Get it straight, pal – you are not. Either as individuals or organisations. It's about time a little humility was allowed into your closed self-regarding little media world. But like the bankers and the MPs these days, you lot just don't get it, do you?

As for Band Aid, well, as a trustee said to me, sickened upon seeing the shameful Times cartoon which accepted the BBC story as gospel (of course) without asking any questions: "We've taken it on the chin for 25 years and never said anything. Not this time." Definitely not this time. The Band Aid Trust is reporting BBC World Service to Ofcom and the BBC board of directors, and we have requested transcripts of all interviews from the show in question from the deputy chairman of the BBC. We will also take a view on what legal action we may take both against the journalist in question and World Service in general. Criticism, no problem, Rageh. Calumny, no.

Band Aid, too, Mr Omaar, has been a constant target over the years, had you but had the decency to bother checking before uttering your pathetic interpretation of press freedom as allowing any clown carte blanche to interpret reporting as an excuse for half-truth, distortion, and innuendo and unsubstantiated claims. The journalism of "making it up".

As you probably know anyway, but it just doesn't fit into your pompous guff this time, Band Aid has been under the most intensive scrutiny since and most particularly during the mid-80s. Quite rightly, too. We have an obligation to all those who entrusted us with their money and more particularly to those in whose name it was given. That is what I and my fellow trustees have been doing for the last 26 years. Same guys, same trust. And we ain't stopping now. Pretty weird, however, that not one, not a single one of the dozens of journalists of record and others who have travelled with me or covered Band Aid "discovered" Martin Plaut's "story" (and story is indeed what it is). Some feel the press has a right to lie. Rageh, no such right exists.

The real story of this sorry saga is the intense systemic failure of the World Service, that cherry on the cake of the BBC's reputation. It's a rotten old cherry these days. And I am as bereft as a jilted lover. Of all the taxes I pay, I pay only one gladly – my licence fee. I am Mr World Service. I have done ads promoting the BBC, I have written and spoken in its defence, it is indeed the BBC who started me and others on this African journey; I believe it must, at all costs, be retained very similar to what it is now, albeit cutting away the deadwood and slack. But basically: "I Want My BBC!"

But this BBC story was neither about me nor Band Aid. By disingenuously posturing as "serious" reporting, it pretended the total failure and negligence of all the great humanitarian workers and their organisations in the worst famine in modern times, and how miraculously not one of them spotted that no one was getting food despite everyone supplying it!

It beggars belief that anyone would take that seriously. Where were all the dead people then? If no one was getting food, why was nobody dying? That would have been one of the first questions I'd have asked. But they weren't dying because they were getting help, and massive amounts of it. But of course no one did ask where the bodies were at the World Service. That and many, many, other unasked questions.

No, this story here is of the total collapse of standards and systems at the World Service, which has a special and particular duty of care to the truth. Why? Because in hundreds – perhaps thousands – of small rooms in the many dark spots of our planet people huddle secretly and in great danger to hear the reality and the truth behind their situation. Because in deserts and jungles, I have listened to the world tell its story to me through this miraculous brave station. And to tabloid all that away of an instant? Tragic beyond measure.

Where were the producers and editors and seniors? Why was Plaut allowed to go mad on his pre- and post- media interview circus around the world with bonkers wild accusations? Just to get an audience? Did he and the World Service for one second comprehend the enormous damage and danger he immediately put every humanitarian worker in? Particularly the huge, brave and brilliant Red Cross? Did he not consider, for one microsecond, the consequences of accusing them, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that they had handed over 95% of their cash to purchase arms?

It literally beggars belief at the enormity of the consequence had his lie not been nailed immediately and with as much vehemence as could be mustered. How appalling the utter and total disregard or incomprehension of the result of his actions. What if the Red Cross, now compromised in their neutrality, were ordered away from war zones, or forbidden access to the deepest dungeons, or concentration camps? What then, Rageh Omaar and Martin Plaut? What then of your smug certitudes and thin pieties? Then you could report on the blood on your own hands rather than falsely smear it over the hands of others. How dare you, Rageh Omaar, attempt to defend the awful indefensible. Just for that alone, Plaut should be fired. You people, you self-important mediators of "news", should wise up and accept a little humility rather than attack the aid agencies and their workers for being above criticism and ask yourself, as I do, who the hell are you to lecture?

Just as the Ross-Brand affair exposed the systemic weaknesses of the BBC in the area of entertainment, so this now does in the news sector of the World Service – albeit with far more drastic consequences. Where were the editors, subs and producers? As the Independent rightly asked, "Did the bells not go off" early on in this sorry tale? Where were the checks, balances, neutrality, even-handedness? They all failed at the World Service. Worse, they inconsistently and continuously contradicted themselves in their ludicrously pompous Rorke's Drift-type face-saving insistence on "sticking by their story". Well, they were right in the use of the word "story".

Despite the on-the record refutation of everything in Plaut's report by very senior White House advisers, high-level UN delegates, senior British ex-ambassadors and diplomats, all the aid agencies, the leader of rest the Tigrayan relief group at the time, the prime minister of Ethiopia and rebel leader at the time, and me, and without a single shred of evidence, not one iota of evidence, they cannot bear to acknowledge the grim reality, the actual truth – that they were wrong. The BBC World Service is so far off the rails it quite literally cannot recognise or acknowledge truth when it encounters it.

Martin Plaut, Andrew Whitehead and Peter Horrocks should be fired. There should be an immediate investigation into what went wrong; steps should be taken to rectify the identified faults; and the World Service must work very, very hard to re-establish its glorious trust and hard-won reputation as the world broadcaster of excellence.

• BBC World Service
• BBC
• Ethiopia
• Public service broadcasting

Bob Geldof anger at BBC over Band Aid allegations

Documentary on rebels siphoning cash sparks fury, with legal action threatened and sackings demanded

Bob Geldof has launched a furious attack on the BBC World Service over its claim that 95% of the $100m aid raised to fight famine in northern Ethiopia was diverted by rebels and spent on weapons.

Writing in today's Guardian, the musician and mastermind of the 1985 Live Aid concerts accuses the World Service of a "total collapse of standards and systems", threatens it with legal action and calls for the sacking of the reporter behind the story, his editor and the head of the World Service, Peter Horrocks.

Geldof also uses the Guardian's Comment is Free website to lash out at the journalist Rageh Omaar for penning a "ridiculous" opinion piece for the site on Monday in which the former BBC correspondent defended the corporation's story and its right to investigate the fate of millions of pounds of aid money.

The row began last week when the World Service broadcast an Assignment programme in which a former Ethiopian rebel commander claimed that in 1985, only 5% of the $100m destined for famine relief in the northern province of Tigray reached the hungry.

The report, by the World Service's Africa editor, Martin Plaut, also carried an allegation from another former rebel that the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front had tricked aid workers into giving them money meant to buy food for the starving.

Geldof and the Band Aid Trust are talking to some of the world's biggest charities – including Oxfam, Unicef, the Red Cross, Christian Aid and Save the Children – about reporting the BBC to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom and the corporation's governing body, the BBC Trust.

But Geldof has now announced his intention to go further.

"We will also take a view on what, if any, legal action we may take both against the journalist in question and the World Service in general," he writes. "Martin Plaut, [the BBC World Service news and current affairs editor] Andrew Whitehead and Peter Horrocks should be fired. There should be an immediate investigation into what went wrong, steps should be taken to rectify the identified faults and the World Service must work very, very hard to re-establish its trust and hard-won reputation as the world broadcaster of excellence."

In his article, Omaar had argued that while the interplay of politics and aid was complicated, the BBC felt it had uncovered "credible evidence" during a nine-month investigation and was entitled to broadcast its findings.

He added: "As a Somali, looking at what happened in my country during the US-led humanitarian intervention in 1992 and what is happening today, what I find unacceptable is that a humanitarian operation can be elevated to the status of being above criticism."

Geldof, however, has hit back at Omaar – and the media as a whole – for continuing to cover the allegations, which he insists are baseless.

"How can you deign to lecture on being above criticism, prompted by the criticism I meted out last weekend to your incompetent mate and his associates at the Beeb, while falling back on the implied assumption that you and by extension all journalists, are above the criticism yourselves? Get it straight, pal – you are not. Either as individuals or an organisation. It's about time a little more humility was allowed into your closed, self-regarding media world. But like the bankers and the MPs these days, you lot just don't get it, do you?

He also asks Omaar why Plaut's allegations have only now surfaced.

"Band Aid has been under the most intensive scrutiny since and most particularly during the mid-80s. Quite rightly too. Pretty weird, however, that not a single one of the dozens of journalists who have travelled with me or covered Band Aid 'discovered' Martin Plaut's 'story'."

A BBC spokesman said the World Service would continue to defend its report.

"This was a well-researched programme and the BBC stands by its journalism," he said. "We are happy to repeat that there is no suggestion that any relief agency was complicit in any diversion of funds".

However, a senior BBC source told the Guardian that there was concern about the amount of criticism that "a relatively obscure documentary [which] didn't even mention Band Aid" had attracted. He said: "We are concerned we are going to come under fire. We hear from sensible people in the aid business that 'of course money went missing – we are just concerned about the 95% figure' [but] Bob Geldof's exaggeration that 'not a penny went missing' looks ridiculous to us".

• BBC World Service
• BBC Trust
• Charitable giving
• Charities
• BBC
• International aid and development
• Ethiopia
• Somalia

One killed and five injured in Kapiti crash

A 16-year-old girl has been killed and five others injured - one of them critically - after a 4WD ute rolled on the Kapiti Coast this morning.The accident happened on Maungakotukutuku Rd, inland from Paraparaumu, just after 9am.A...
Read more [New Zealand Herald]

Dangerous dogs – a bone of contention since 1839

Few MPs relish the prospect of having to legislate over dogs again – the issue is always divisive

Few MPs today relished the prospect of having to legislate again about dangerous dogs. In a nation of animal lovers and haters the issue is always divisive, and whatever they decide will make politicians even more unpopular with some voters.

It has been so since MPs first tried to curb fierce, unmuzzled dogs in public places in 1839. The police power to judge a dog both dangerous, not under proper control and liable to be destroyed dates from the 1871 Dogs Act. Respectable Victorians were very snifffy about the "mongrels" of the poor.

Dogs also provoke awful puns. "Barking mad," declared one gleeful Tory after hearing today that ministers are going out to canine consultation. It could lead to compulsory third-party insurance and microchips as a means of curbing the rapid growth of aggressive "status dogs" which are bred and owned to frighten people.

Policymakers agree there is a problem, though officials who drafted the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act – widely condemned as a prime example of bad, hasty legislation, cleaned up by the Lords – insist it did the job intended.

In 1991, Tory home secretary of the day, Kenneth Baker, initially dismissed calls to ban dangerous breeds as unenforceable. Dubbed a "wet windbag" in Tabloidland, he quickly changed his mind. In a tempestuous debate Labour wanted to go further, proscribing rottweilers as well as the four breeds on Baker's list, and setting up a dog register. But it did not oppose the bill: there was an election looming.

Ingenious crossbreeding to avoid the law and dogs as a substitute for knives, as well as the resurgence of dogfights, have put dogs back on Westminister's agenda – along with another looming election.

So Alan Johnson, a twice-bitten ex-postman, and unbitten Hilary Benn want voters' views. As well as microchips and insurance, should current restrictions be extended to private property? Should dog asbos (instantly dubbed "dogbos") be introduced?

Nick Herbert, Tory environment spokesman, was quick to chase the ball. Don't impose a "dog tax" on the law-abiding majority, target the irresponsible minority of owners, he said. Target dogs, not breeds, said other MPs who know that some constituents feel very strongly on both sides of the argument. So do animal lobbies such as the RSPCA, which wants owners, not dogs, to be targeted. The British Veterinary Association favours mandatory microchipping and a control of dogs act such as the one now being enacted in Scotland, whose dogs have been devolved.

Labour MPs can point to trees in constituency parks which are used to train savage dogs (blood and bite marks on the lower branches tell the tale) and relish further restrictions. Libertarian-minded Tories see the issue as another attempt to tame the demonised underclass.

"The government's proposals on chipping and insurance are designed to curb the behaviour of the very people who are least likely to take any notice," one Tory MP said yesterday.

• House of Commons
• Conservatives
• Alan Johnson
• Labour
• Animals

Pope's brother admits violent past

• Former choirmaster did not know of sexual abuse
• Pupils claim headteacher was sexual 'sadist'

The elder brother of Pope Benedict XVI admitted today that he slapped pupils at a Catholic boarding school where he was choirmaster and was aware of violent incidents that took place at the school, but not the extent of the abuse. He asked victims for forgiveness for his failure to act.

Georg Ratzinger, 86, who was choirmaster at the Regensburger Domspatzen in Bavaria between 1964 to 1994, said he occasionally struck boys in his care, according to what he said had been the "normal reaction" at the time.

But he denied any knowledge of sexual abuse. "These things were never discussed," Ratzinger told the Catholic daily, the Passauer Neue Presse. "The problem of sexual abuse that has now come to light was never spoken of."

Former pupils at the boarding school to which the choir was attached have reported how the former headteacher was a "sadist" who "imposed a reign of terror", and beat the children "black and blue".

A composer, Franz Wittenbrink, who was a pupil at the school, has spoken of an "ingenious system of sadistic punishments linked to sexual satisfaction", claiming that the headteacher, who died in 1992, had habitually "taken two or three" eight and nine year old boys "into his room of an evening" and plied them with wine and masturbated with them. In one incident he is accused of beating a boy with a stool until it broke.

Ratzinger said he himself had occasionally given boys "clips round the ear", as part of the "discipline and rigour" needed to reach a "high musical and artistic level", but had "never beaten" pupils "black and blue". He said he had been "relieved" when a ban on corporal punishment had put an end to the practice.

"I always had a bad conscience and I was happy when in 1980 corporal punishment was banned by lawmakers," he said. He described the practice of striking pupils as "simply the normal reaction to failings or disobedience".

He said he recalled being struck himself once as a child "for mixing up a school book", but could not recall any incident in which the future pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, had been maltreated.

Ratzinger said he had only learned later that the headmaster at the school between 1953 and 1992, who has been identified only as Johann M, had been "very violent", but had not known the extent of the abuse. "Had I known at the time what excessive violence he was using I would have said something back then," he said.

He said that nowadays such incidents are "condemned more, because we have become more sensitive". He said choirboys had referred to physical abuse during concert tours, "but their reports didn't reach me to the extent that I believed I had to intervene," Ratzinger said.

Asked why the church had held its silence over the issue for so long, he replied: "I believe it's not only the church that was silent. In the whole of society people didn't want to get involved in things that they themselves would nevertheless have condemned." He said today he would view the matter differently, and for that, he said, he apologised to the victims.

The school where the abuse took place was attached to the choir but the two institutions were independent of each other.

Earlier this week Ratzinger told La Repubblica he was willing to give evidence to an inquiry into sexual abuse at the school.

The revelations from Regensburg are the latest in a string of abuse scandals to have shaken the Catholic church in Germany since January. On an almost daily basis new incidents have come to light over abuse at church-run schools which took place over decades and in recent days reported incidents have also started coming from Austria and the Netherlands.

The pope himself is likely to be called to question over how much he personally knew of sexual abuse in the church during his time as professor of theology in the 1960s, most prominently at Regensburg University and later as Archbishop of Munich and Freising between 1971 and 1982.

• Germany
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Catholicism
• Religion

Art 'crime'

UK painter defiant despite Turkish conviction
Read more [BBC Europe]

Viewpoint: Talk of an EMF sounds like euro-manoeuvring

The scheme's supporters are mostly German, other countries will be suspicious

The strangest part of all this talk about the creation of a European Monetary Fund is the timing.

Eurozone members are in the middle of dealing with the Greek debt crisis and are desperately trying to maintain the line that Greece's problems can be fixed by the adoption of austerity measures. Yet here is a proposal seemingly designed to deal with cases where austerity is not enough and bailout cash is required.

Supporters might reply that an EMF would deal with the "next Greece," rather than fix the current mess, but markets will inevitably see the message as weak and confused. No wonder speculators are salivating. No wonder Axel Weber, president of the Bundesbank, would prefer everybody to shut up. Discussions about "the institutionalisation of emergency help," he declared , are "unhelpful".

Weber has a point. Most of the voices arguing in favour of an EMF are German. Other European states – especially smaller countries – will be suspicious. They might, in theory, welcome the creation of a fund that could help in a crisis. In practice, they will view the manoeuvre as a way for Germany to impose fiscal restrictions on its neighbours while neglecting to get its consumers spending again.

If the creation of an EMF would require a new European treaty – which is German chancellor Angela Merkel's view – it is hard to see how the idea will get off the ground in the near-term. In which case, concentrate on the immediate problem.

• Greece
• Financial crisis
• Banking
• Europe
• Angela Merkel
• Germany

Special Report: Paris Fashion Week: McQueen's Mesmerizing Finale

Alexander McQueen’s last creations had subtlety and beauty as well as the urgent futurism that was the essence of his spirit.
Read more [International Herald Tribune]

Sachs calls for Robin Hood tax on 'smirking' Wall Street

Economist Jeffrey Sachs says transaction tax would meet aid promises, ease spending cuts – and curb the power of the banks

A tax on every deal conducted by the financial industry would curb the excessive power of Wall Street, avoid the need for swingeing cuts in public spending and pay for the west's unfulfilled promises to poor countries, one of the world's leading economists saidtoday.

Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor at Columbia University in New York, told a London audience that the so-called Robin Hood tax was a means of exercising control over bankers and ensuring they paid the right amount of tax.

"Wall Street has had the most profitable year in its history. It made profits of $55bn (£37bn) in the midst of the biggest downturn since the Great Depression," Sachs said, adding that the profits had only been possible because of taxpayer bailouts and the zero interest-rate policy pursued by the Federal Reserve, the US central bank. "Bankers are brazenly smirking as they pocket large amounts of our money."

A tax on all financial transactions is one of the options being considered by the leaders of the G20 developed and developing nations in the wake of the financial crisis of the past two-and-a-half years. Barack Obama has expressed support for a levy on banks that would pay for any future bailouts, but France and Germany favour a transaction tax.

With the International Monetary Fund due to produce a report to the G20 next month, Sachs said that a Robin Hood tax levied at 0.05% on every transaction would help countries repair the damage to their public finances caused by the recession. "We need the money," he said ."The financial sector is under-taxed. It is out of control."

Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, is deeply sceptical about a transaction tax but Sachs said Europe should try to shame the US into action. "Europe can and should lean on my country and say 'you get on the case too'."

Sachs said later that if Europe ran up against intractable US opposition to a transaction tax it should be willing to go it alone in a "coalition of the willing".

Wall Street had become so "politically powerful that it has written its own ticket for the past 25 years in a way that's shocking. The results are shocking. The lack of political responsibility is shocking."

The Robin Hood tax was an attempt to fight back, Sachs said. "It would be a low tax harmonised across countries. It is a progressive and non-distortionary tax."

Sachs said one use for the extra tax revenue was to meet the promises made at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005 to double aid to Africa to $60bn. "We are $20bn short of that promise."

Sachs said the crisis had been caused by an unregulated financial system in which the market in credit default swaps had grown from nothing to $62tn – equivalent to the output of the global economy – over the past decade. "It happened without one regulator asking one single question. It was a shocking dereliction of responsibility."

The Royal Society of Arts event was also addressed by the actor Bill Nighy, star of a Richard Curtis film supporting a Robin Hood Tax. "It's a very simple and beautiful idea," Nighy said. "Its time has come."

• Global economy
• Tax and spending
• Global recession
• Banking
• G20
• Financial crisis
• Obama administration
• Timothy Geithner
• Economics
• Economic policy
• Poverty
• G8
• IMF

Launch of 3D televisions promises revolution in home entertainment

Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month

The friendly green monster Shrek, the blue-skinned Na'vi of the planet Pandora and Wayne Rooney's shots on goal will shortly take on a new, three-dimensional glory.

Spurred on by the success of the Hollywood fantasy blockbuster Avatar, the world's top electronics companies believe they can make 3D television sets the norm for consumers in the US and Europe within three years.

The Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push – and battle for brand supremacy – by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month.

Billed as the world's first high definition, three-dimensional LED televisions, Samsung's range will be serenaded by the Black Eyed Peas at a glitzy global marketing debut in New York tomorrow.

At a press conference today, Samsung said its televisions and Blu-ray devices will come with a starter pack of two pairs of 3D glasses and a Blu-ray version of Monsters vs Aliens under a tie-up with the movie studio DreamWorks Animation.

"It's quite simply the entertainment revolution of our time," said DreamWorks' chief executive, Jeffrey Katzenberg. "It's as important as the introduction of sound or colour."

Keen to get in on the act, the Japanese company Panasonic will sell its first 3D television at a BestBuy electronics shop in Manhattan this week. And Sony, which expects to begin selling its sets in June, has set an ambitious target of selling 2.5m 3D televisions by March 2011 – amounting to roughly one tenth of all its global television sales.

In British shops, John Lewis's vision buyer, David Kempner, said he expected demand to be a "slowburn", with an opening price point of £2,000. "HD is still a relatively new concept and consumers are just getting used to it but 3D will be the next big thing. Given it has the support of all the major manufacturers, 3D technology has got momentum of its own but it also requires content providers to support it and there is a time lag there."

Experts say that 3D televisions are likely to enjoy mainstream uptake because the technology behind them barely costs any more than existing sets. To achieve three dimensions, manufacturers need more powerful processors but the fundamental make-up of the television changes only marginally. The only substantial extra cost is making 3D glasses.

"The add-on cost of manufacturing isn't significant," said Jim Bottoms, director of the technology consulting company Futuresource. "Set makers are starting to incorporate 3D in higher-end televisions this year. Very quickly, certainly by 2015, virtually every full-sized television will have 3D capability."

Although pricing for British shops is yet to be finalised, Sony's 3D televisions range in Japan from around £2,150 for a 40in set to double that amount for a 60in model, while Samsung is charging $2,000 (£1,350) to $4,000 in American stores.

Sport and films will be the early applications for 3D home entertainment. Under a deal with Sony, Sky has already begun showing certain Premier League matches in pubs on 3D televisions and this summer's World Cup could be a watershed for the technology: Sony will film 25 matches in South Africa using 3D cameras.

The opening ceremony of Vancouver's Winter Olympics was available in 3D. More than 20 movies in 3D are scheduled for release this year, including Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which topped Britain's cinema box office charts at the weekend.

Mainstream television programming will take longer. The BBC and ITV have expressed interest in experimenting with 3D content.

But Bottoms said everyday shows were unlikely to go 3D until technology arrives to eliminate the need for special glasses, which is thought to be up to five years away.

"We see the next three to five years as being 'event-driven' for 3D. When we get to a glass-less solution, then we'll really see 3D become more pervasive," he said.

It has taken decades even to get to this point. The first 3D film, The Power of Love, was made back in 1922 and dozens of movies came out in the 1950s including such gems as Creature from the Black Lagoon.

But a key problem was "3D fatigue" whereby viewers' eyes became tired from distinguishing the twin images needed to create depth perception.

Samsung's president of visual display products, Boo Keun Yoon, told the Guardian that 3D fatigue killed off three-dimensional filming in the 20th century but that new techniques have overcome this lingering problem by creating a more consistent image.

"We've recently had developments in how 3D films are shot," said Yoon. "I believe 2010 will be the year of the 3D television revolution. Probably by the end of this year, we'll see an explosive growth in demand."

• Television
• Television
• Television industry
• Retail industry
• United States

Launch of 3D televisions promise revolution in home entertainment

Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month

The friendly green monster Shrek, the blue-skinned Na'vi of the planet Pandora and Wayne Rooney's shots on goal will shortly take on a new, three-dimensional glory.

Spurred on by the success of the Hollywood fantasy blockbuster Avatar, the world's top electronics companies believe they can make 3D television sets the norm for consumers in the US and Europe within three years.

The Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push – and battle for brand supremacy – by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month.

Billed as the world's first high definition, three-dimensional LED televisions, Samsung's range will be serenaded by the Black Eyed Peas at a glitzy global marketing debut in New York tomorrow.

At a press conference today, Samsung said its televisions and Blu-ray devices will come with a starter pack of two pairs of 3D glasses and a Blu-ray version of Monsters vs Aliens under a tie-up with the movie studio DreamWorks Animation.

"It's quite simply the entertainment revolution of our time," said DreamWorks' chief executive, Jeffrey Katzenberg. "It's as important as the introduction of sound or colour."

Keen to get in on the act, the Japanese company Panasonic will sell its first 3D television at a BestBuy electronics shop in Manhattan this week. And Sony, which expects to begin selling its sets in June, has set an ambitious target of selling 2.5m 3D televisions by March 2011 – amounting to roughly one tenth of all its global television sales.

In British shops, John Lewis's vision buyer, David Kempner, said he expected demand to be a "slowburn", with an opening price point of £2,000. "HD is still a relatively new concept and consumers are just getting used to it but 3D will be the next big thing. Given it has the support of all the major manufacturers, 3D technology has got momentum of its own but it also requires content providers to support it and there is a time lag there."

Experts say that 3D televisions are likely to enjoy mainstream uptake because the technology behind them barely costs any more than existing sets. To achieve three dimensions, manufacturers need more powerful processors but the fundamental make-up of the television changes only marginally. The only substantial extra cost is making 3D glasses.

"The add-on cost of manufacturing isn't significant," said Jim Bottoms, director of the technology consulting company Futuresource. "Set makers are starting to incorporate 3D in higher-end televisions this year. Very quickly, certainly by 2015, virtually every full-sized television will have 3D capability."

Although pricing for British shops is yet to be finalised, Sony's 3D televisions range in Japan from around £2,150 for a 40in set to double that amount for a 60in model, while Samsung is charging $2,000 (£1,350) to $4,000 in American stores.

Sport and films will be the early applications for 3D home entertainment. Under a deal with Sony, Sky has already begun showing certain Premier League matches in pubs on 3D televisions and this summer's World Cup could be a watershed for the technology: Sony will film 25 matches in South Africa using 3D cameras.

The opening ceremony of Vancouver's Winter Olympics was available in 3D. More than 20 movies in 3D are scheduled for release this year, including Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which topped Britain's cinema box office charts at the weekend.

Mainstream television programming will take longer. The BBC and ITV have expressed interest in experimenting with 3D content.

But Bottoms said everyday shows were unlikely to go 3D until technology arrives to eliminate the need for special glasses, which is thought to be up to five years away.

"We see the next three to five years as being 'event-driven' for 3D. When we get to a glass-less solution, then we'll really see 3D become more pervasive," he said.

It has taken decades even to get to this point. The first 3D film, The Power of Love, was made back in 1922 and dozens of movies came out in the 1950s including such gems as Creature from the Black Lagoon.

But a key problem was "3D fatigue" whereby viewers' eyes became tired from distinguishing the twin images needed to create depth perception.

Samsung's president of visual display products, Boo Keun Yoon, told the Guardian that 3D fatigue killed off three-dimensional filming in the 20th century but that new techniques have overcome this lingering problem by creating a more consistent image.

"We've recently had developments in how 3D films are shot," said Yoon. "I believe 2010 will be the year of the 3D television revolution. Probably by the end of this year, we'll see an explosive growth in demand."

• Television
• Television
• Television industry
• Retail industry
• United States

Read more [Guardian America]

Combined threat of British Airways and Network Rail strikes could disrupt travel plans for millions

British Airways cabin crew warn walkout is looming, with Easter weekend the likely target for rail workers

Industrial action is threatening to disrupt the travel plans of millions of rail and air passengers over the next month as disputes at Network Rail and British Airways move towards strike action.

A walkout by BA cabin crew is possible after the airline asked for an extension to talks until tomorrow afternoon in order to consider a last-ditch offer of a 2.6% pay cut by flight attendants. The Unite trade union has ruled out striking over the Easter holidays, but a strike could be called for next week if discussions fail.

Unite's cabin crew branch, Bassa, warned members last night that a walkout was looming. "It would appear that at this stage it is also increasingly unlikely that an agreement will be reached," said Bassa representatives in an email.

Network Rail, the owner of Britain's rail tracks and stations, also warned yesterday that a national strike could follow straight after a BA walkout — with the bank holiday weekend the likely target. Maintenance workers and signallers at the RMT union are being balloted over job reductions and changes to working conditions, with the poll results due in the next week.

Robin Gisby, Network Rail director of operations, said he expected 5,500 signallers and thousands of maintenance staff to strike over Easter, in what would be the first national rail strike since 1994.

"Our guess is that it will come together this Easter weekend," he said, but indicated that the company would not back down over the changes to shift patterns and voluntary job cuts underpinning the dispute. "I cannot live with the RMT holding the whole country to ransom."

Gisby also accused the RMT of using the imminent general election to strongarm the company. "The timing of this dispute and the clinical attempt to bring together ops and maintenance issues at the same time is an obvious political move by the RMT to maximise pain for passengers over a holiday period – Easter – and to disrupt a potential election campaign."

Gisby admitted a strike by signallers would cause significant problems, possibly shutting down the busiest parts of the network, because major signalling centres would be left unstaffed. Network Rail believes it can withstand a strike by maintenance workers for a week, but anything longer could see speed restrictions imposed, with some branch lines being shut down. The RMT said the cuts would make a rail disaster an "inevitability".

Meanwhile, the BA dispute inched towards a conclusion yesterday as officials at Unite and Bassa haggled over cost-cutting proposals. Unite tabled a package including a pay cut this year and reductions in perks such as telephone allowances. Unite claimed the proposals exceeded the airline's annual savings target of £60m, but the airline was still mulling them over as the 5pm deadline for ending the talks passed. BA requested the extension, which was accepted by the trade union. If it fails to produce an agreement, a walkout could take place as soon as next Wednesday or Thursday once the union has given BA the obligatory seven days' notice. According to a poll on the Bassa website, nearly one-third of BA's 12,000 cabin crew want a strike lasting longer than 10 days.

A draft agreement between both sides, waiting to be published in the event of a deal, contains a pledge to "rebuild the trust damaged by the recent dispute". However, that will take some effort after months of increasingly bitter wrangling.

BA has drawn up plans to break any strike with 1,000 volunteer cabin crew drawn from the ranks of its 38,000-strong workforce and a fleet of 23 chartered jets. Willie Walsh, the chief executive, last week said he hoped to operate a "substantial proportion" of the airline's Heathrow long-haul operations and a "good number" of short-haul flights.

BA will operate its entire schedule from London City airport during the expected strike, and has also claimed more than two-thirds of its Gatwick-based crew will work normally.

The airline operates 650 flights a day with its 239-plane fleet, mostly from Heathrow, but has not said which routes would be kept open by the stand-in workforce. Meanwhile, the Irish national carrier, Aer Lingus, yesterday said it would have to fire a quarter of its cabin crew in order to stem losses.

• British Airways
• Rail transport
• Rail travel
• Air transport
• Transport policy
• Transport

Latino voters can't wait till mañana | Stewart J Lawrence

Barack Obama won Latino support by promising to reform immigration laws – but so far, he has failed to deliver

Immigration reform advocates have been abuzz with the news that President Obama is to meet with Republican senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic senator Charles Schumer at the White House later this week. But insiders say the closed door meeting, which the president requested, is largely for show. Officially, Graham and Schumer say they need two more GOP co-sponsors for their bill, which includes a sweeping legalisation programme for undocumented immigrants, and stepped up border and workplace enforcement. But with mid-term elections just eight months away, and the campaign season likely to start in early May, there's not much time left to make legislative headway.

Republicans have been racking up one election victory after another and would rather deal with immigration from a position of strength, with their own party leaders chairing judiciary and other key congressional committees (which they will, if the GOP takes back one or both chambers). And for GOP nativists, further delay, followed by a Republican consolidation of power, is their best hope for derailing the Democrats' dreaded "amnesty" programme. In fact, neither party has the luxury of waiting much longer to address the nation's most contentious policy issue after healthcare. Obama's Latino support – he beat John McCain 2-1, reversing the GOP inroads made with Latinos under Bush – is shrinking. And not just because he has continually delayed action on immigration reform.

Latinos, in fact, are moderate voters, and they typically split their political preferences among Democrats (35-40%), Republicans (20-25%), and Independents (35-40%). That means Latinos are falling away from Obama for the same reason other swing voters are: disenchantment with his handling of healthcare, rising deficit, and joblessness. But they are not falling away as fast or as hard because Latinos still see Democrats as their friends on immigration, and most Republicans, as adversaries.

But that perception could soon change, depending on how Republicans act. GOP gubernatorial candidates who won in Virginia and New Jersey, and more recently Scott Brown in Massachusetts, were able to capture an enormous share of the independent vote because they not only emphasised bread and butter issues, but also soft-pedalled their opposition to abortion and illegal immigration, and reached out to ethnic minorities. In pre-election polls, Bob McDonnell, the GOP candidate in Virginia, ran virtually neck-and-neck with Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds among Latinos – an astounding turnaround from Obama's drubbing of McCain two years ago.

Republicans at the national level are also taking note of the need for a new approach to immigration, lest the party lose Latinos for an entire generation, or longer. To capitalise on recent Republican gains, GOP chairman Michael Steele is urging his party to include Hispanics as an integral part of GOP campaign planning. And even Sarah Palin is getting in on the act, telling a TV interviewer last month that immigration was part of America's "legacy" and the GOP needed to get back to "welcoming" immigrants, rather than "excluding" them. Alas, for the Democrats, the days when Republicans could be counted on to try to use immigration as a "wedge" issue – only to have it blow up in their face – may finally be over.

But for the GOP, turning their immigrant-friendly posturing into party-wide support for immigration reform is still a work in progress. It's certainly news to the Tea Party, the grassroots conservative movement that Palin, among others, is assiduously courting to attract new GOP voters. Tea Partiers are staunch critics of immigration policies that, in their view, favour liberal pressure groups at the expense of "mainstream" America. That's why Hispanic Marco Rubio, who is running for the Florida Senate seat vacated by fellow Cuban-American Mel Martinez, is not just a bright light for the Tea Party, and for the GOP, but also a potential challenge. He's a patriotic American, and a staunch defender of private enterprise and smaller government. But his parents were dirt poor peasants who migrated to America thanks to a fast-track legalisation programme that treats the Cuban-born as an elite class of immigrant exempt from "normal" entry rules.

Many Cubans Rubio's age periodically try to make the perilous journey to America aboard makeshift rafts. Mexican "illegals" that lack the Cuban privilege make just as perilous a journey by land to reach America safely. There's not much difference there. That's why Rubio's Cuban-American counterparts in the House, all staunch Republicans, have long supported immigration reform. Assuming Rubio wins this November, he'll be hard pressed to resist reform of some kind, and so will the GOP.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are beginning to make the same mistake they made in the pre-Bush years when they took the Latino vote for granted. Latino leaders are furious that the White House enlisted them in the healthcare reform debate, then stabbed them in the back by agreeing to GOP demands that illegal immigrants be barred from receiving healthcare benefits. The White House tried to mollify the leadership by promising to push immigration reform, which would allow illegal immigrants to get healthcare once they became legal residents. But the administration, still bogged down on healthcare, and unable to reverse the nation's jobless rate, hasn't lived up to its side of the bargain.

Hence, this week's White House showpiece meeting with Schumer and Graham. It's meant to say to Latinos and to immigration advocates, "I am still with you". But for Latinos, long accustomed to being courted, then shunted to the side, all it really says is: "Mañana."

• US immigration
• Race issues
• Barack Obama
• Republicans
• Democrats
• US politics
• United States

Read more [Guardian America]