Protesters call ‘general assembly’ at site in Moorgate and declare it a second occupation after St Paul’s A second Occupy London protest camp has sprung up in a sign that campaigners are spreading from St
Continue reading …Filed under the what-recession category: A UK chef has concocted the world’s most expensive dessert that will set you back $35,000, reports Time . Along with dark chocolate pudding, champagne caviar, and gold-laced buscuits, you get a 2-karat diamond. The dessert from chef Marc Guibert at the Lindeth Howe Country…
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Western Australian authorities vow to track down 10ft shark that killed US diver and may have taken 64-year-old swimmer A great white shark killed an American diver in the second fatal shark attack off Western Australia in 12 days. A witness on a dive boat saw “a large amount of bubbles” before the 32-year-old man surfaced with obviously fatal injuries, Western Australia police sergeant Gerry Cassidy said. People on the boat described the shark as a 10ft great white. It struck off the resort of Rottnest Island, 11 miles from a Perth mainland beach where a 64-year-old swimmer is believed to have been taken by a great white on 10 October. The diver who died was staying in Perth on a working visa. Police would not release his identity. It is unclear whether he was killed by the shark that is believed to have taken Bryn Martin as he made his regular morning swim from Perth’s Cottesloe Beach towards a buoy about 400 yards offshore. But an analysis of Martin’s torn swimming trunks recovered from the seabed near the buoy pointed to a great white shark being the culprit. No other trace of Martin has been found. “It’s a cloudy old day today, which is the same as we had the other day with Cottesloe, and they are the conditions that sharks love,” Cassidy said yesterday. It is the third fatal shark attack off Western Australia in less than two months and the fourth in 14 months. Fatal shark attacks average fewer than two a year nationwide. Colin Barnett, the leader of Western Australia state government, said the shark would be killed if possible. Great whites can grow to more than 20ft in length and 5,000lb in weight. They are protected in Australia, a primary location for the species. Associated Press Australia Oceans guardian.co.uk
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Basque separatists start to seek forgiveness from victims after group declares end to campaign of violence The hand stretched out to Iñaki García Arrizabalaga was, at least figuratively, covered in blood. But when the 50-year-old university lecturer walked into a cold, anonymous meeting room in the Basque regional capital of Vitoria a few months ago and a member of the terrorist group that killed his father put out his hand, García decided to shake it. “I had no idea what he was going to say, whether he was going to try to justify what he had done, but I believe that people should be given a chance,” he explained. “In fact, he was more nervous than I was. We spoke for 20 minutes before he could look me in the eye.” The meeting between victim and killer was as remarkable as it was exceptional. García was meeting one of the few members of the Basque separatist group Eta prepared to express genuine repentance for the killing of 829 people over the past 43 years. The encounter came as the Basques, tired of senseless bloodshed, sensed that peace might finally come to this small, northern region of Spain. That peace came last week, when three masked Eta leaders – believed to be lawyer David Pla and two women, Iratxe Sorzáabal and Izaskun Lesaka — declared a definitive end to the bombings and shootings. They did so without achieving their aim of an independent Basque state composed of four Spanish provinces and part of south-west France. Eta was, in effect, admitting defeat. Peace will not, however, bring back García’s father, Juan Manuel – the provincial boss of state telephone company Telefónica. His killing, exactly 31 years ago on Sunday, is just part of the painful divide Eta’s campaign leaves behind – and which must now be healed. “I was 19 and I turned down my father’s offer to drive me to university that morning so that I did not have to cycle in the rain,” García recalled. “Two hours later my brother appeared in my class and said our father hadn’t reached his office. Then we heard that a body had been found on a hillside, so we went to look and there, underneath a blanket, we saw his corpse. “My father left a wife and seven children,” he explained. “My world fell apart. We asked ourselves whether we should flee and the best decision we made was to stay. My father, my mother, and all of us were born here. Why should we go? My first reaction was of hatred, of wanting his killers to suffer the same fate. But with time I realised that hate only destroys you and everything around you,” he said. “So I rebelled and told myself I would not let them ruin my life.” For many years Eta victims kept their heads down, especially in places like San Sebastián – where victims’ families had to put up with graffiti telling them to “Give us back the bullet!” That changed over time, but then García realised that many victims had themselves become haters. “I was worried about the messages I was hearing opposed to reconciliation. Then I got a call asking if I was interested in meeting Eta prisoners who had done some soul-searching and wanted to ask the victims for pardon. I said yes,” he said. He will not name the man he met, but knows – although he was not involved in García’s father’s death – that he had killed several people. “He had spent 20
Continue reading …Betty Confidential was at New York Comic Con recently, where it caught one particularly spooky panel: “Celebrity Ghost Stories.” Read on, if you dare: Kate Hudson: Apparently one of the most haunted celebs around, Hudson says she’s seen ghosts more times than she can number, including a beyond-the-grave version of…
Continue reading …Barack Obama has an unlikely role model in his bid for re-election: George W. Bush, circa 2004. So says the AP and New York Times , who separately report that Obama strategists are so struck by the similarities between Bush’s campaign against John Kerry and the 2012 race that they are…
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Liberation declaration will lead to elections, a new government and constitution. But resurgence of rivalries remains a concern Libya’s new leaders will put a formal end to Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule on Sunday when they declare the country liberated and ready for a free and democratic future. Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, the justice minister under the old regime and now president of the western-backed National Transitional Council (NTC), is expected to make the announcement in the eastern city of Benghazi, where the most successful but by far the bloodiest of this year’s “Arab spring” uprisings erupted in February. No definitive figures are available, but about 30,000 people are estimated to have been killed and thousands more injured. Elaborate celebrations are planned three days after Gaddafi’s sensational and much photographed death in the coastal city of Sirte, the last bastion of loyalist resistance. Worryingly, plans to issue the declaration in Benghazi have attracted criticism because of echoes of historic rivalry between eastern and western Libya and fears that regional, tribal and political divisions that were kept in check in the past could now resurface. The liberation will trigger a timetable for elections within eight months for a 200-strong National Council that will draft a constitution and form an interim government. It is a daunting pace and a huge challenge for a country that has not had an election since the 1950s, when Libya was ruled by King Idris, a western-backed monarch who was overthrown in 1969 by Gaddafi and fellow nationalist army officers, who were admirers of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. The formation of the country’s first post-revolution political movement, the Libyan Solidarity party, headed by a previously exiled banker, was due to be announced last night. Mahmoud Jibril, the NTC prime minister, who is now expected to step down, said that the death of Gaddafi had left him feeling “relieved and reborn”. In Tripoli, there is an atmosphere of unbridled elation and optimism about the post-Gaddafi era – and profound relief that with his death the old regime has finally gone. Uncertainty remains, however, about the whereabouts of other key figures, like the dictator’s second son, Saif al-Islam, erstwhile reformer and darling of the west; and of the hated security chief Abdullah Senussi – who was reported to have been spotted in northern Niger. But no one believes in the possibility of a regime comeback. According to unconfirmed reports, Saif was captured and badly injured, but there is speculation that he may also have been summarily killed. “In Hay al-Islam, where I live [in Tripoli], most of my neighbours did support Gaddafi, but once they heard the news of his death on Thursday you could feel that change quickly,” said Mahmoud Umran, 23, an electrician. “Now there are no more green flags flying.” Khalid al-Jibouni of the Tripoli Youth Union – a volunteer organisation promoting civil society – had no doubts. “Now Gaddafi is dead, the pillars of the regime have all fallen,” he said. “Until now, some people still thought that Gaddafi could somehow come back. No one else but him matters. Now we can really breathe freely.” In Tripoli, celebrations continued, with street parties and a permanent combination of funfair and patriotic rally in Martyrs’ Square in the city centre. Mobile phone messages and television advertisements urged an end to the dangerous and deafening habit of celebratory gunfire, which has caused several deaths and scores of injuries. “The best thing is that we can now close the Gaddafi chapter and move on,” said Muhannad Alamir, a businessman. “If he had been captured or put on trial, it would have dragged on. Yes, in an ideal world he would have been brought to justice. Yes, we should be more civilised than he was. But this was poetic justice. It means closure.” Looking beyond the liberation ceremony, the NTC faces a mammoth task. Tensions have emerged between easterners, and the rebel leaders from Misrata, Tripoli and other western areas who take credit for the Nato-backed uprising that captured the capital in August, and now complain of being under-represented politically. Benghazi has special weight as the home of much of the important oil industry and the country’s main source of wealth. “We need an inclusive government,” said an official of the powerful Tripoli Military Council, which has a sometimes tense relationship with the civilian members of the NTC, and whose heavily armed fighters are far more important than the old Libyan army. “If anyone can hold things together, Abdel-Jalil can,” predicted Ahmed al-Atrash Ahmed, a political scientist at Tripoli University. “It’s true that some in Tripoli are unhappy that the declaration of liberation is being issued in Benghazi – but that’s where the revolution began after all.” The signs are that opposition from some battalions within the rebel coalition – especially the 17
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David Cameron vows to face down Eurosceptic MPs as eurozone finance ministers close in on cash deal for banks The Conservative party has descended into open warfare over Europe as David Cameron vows to face down the expanding ranks of Eurosceptic MPs demanding a referendum on the UK’s EU membership. Ahead of a Commons vote on Monday that is likely to see the biggest revolt of Cameron’s premiership so far, with up to 60 MPs defying the whip, Downing Street struck a defiant note, insisting that the prime minister would not give an inch to the rebels. “We have to have a fight on these issues some time and there is no time like the present,” said a senior official. “People have to sober up. Having a referendum on membership is not our policy.” In a high-risk move that could inflame sentiment in the party even further, the prime minister will stick by his insistence on a three-line whip, effectively ordering MPs to reject the referendum motion. Downing Street said the prime minister would take a “dim view” of those who defied him, and indicated they could say goodbye to chances of promotion. As Tory MPs voiced their disgust at the stance, former Tory leadership contender and ex-minister for Europe David Davis suggested the government was fighting shy of a referendum because it fears the British public would vote to leave the EU or drastically change the terms of membership. In a message to Cameron and his ministers, Davis said: “Do not refuse the people their right to answer the question just because you’re afraid of what the answer could be.” Another senior MP, the Tory chairman of the public administration committee, Bernard Jenkin, said that if Cameron did not lift the three-line whip, the Conservative party would become “irrelevant in the eyes of voters”, many of whom were deeply concerned about the EU and wanted a say. In a further development that will fuel the Eurosceptic fire, one of the most vocal proponents of the European single currency, Lord Turner, admits he was incorrect to propose that the UK should have joined the euro at the start of the last decade. “I got it wrong,” Turner tells the Observer in an interview . Turner, who is now chairman of the Financial Services Authority, led a vociferous campaign for the UK to join the euro while he led the employers’ body, the CBI, during the late 1990s – and in 2002, when at City firm Merrill Lynch, he co-authored a seminal paper on “Why Britain should join the euro”. Downing Street said the prime minister was very sympathetic to the wider Eurosceptic cause and would fight for powers to be repatriated if and when a new treaty was negotiated. But, with the eurozone in crisis, the UK had to play its part now in sorting out the mess, rather than being distracted by a referendum. Nick Clegg, who has been demanding that EU leaders concentrate on long-term growth and competitiveness, said talk of a referendum was a “dangerous form of displacement activity”. Clegg said: “I think we have to deal with the emergency on our doorstep, rather than tilting at windmills.” As chancellor George Osborne joined fellow finance ministers in Brussels, it emerged that the EU could tap sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Gulf in order to boost its financial firepower to bail out countries suffering debt distress in an attempt to prevent the contagion spreading. Finance ministers from the 17 eurozone countries are discussing the option of creating a “special purpose vehicle” for the European financial stability facility (EFSF) in order to boost its current €440bn [£383bn] lending capacity. This emerged as finance ministers from all 27 EU countries approved in principle plans to recapitalise some of Europe’s most important banks with around €90bn, so that they can withstand contagion from potential debt problems in other eurozone countries. Banks are also being told they face losses, or “haircuts”, of at least 40% on their exposure to Greek debt, according to ministers. Senior EU officials have been dispatched to speed up negotiations with holders of sovereign bonds. But one source cautioned: “Nothing has been agreed until everything has been agreed.” Desperate EU leaders are trying to stitch together a “comprehensive and ambitious” deal to solve the sovereign debt crisis over the next few days, starting with an EU summit, at which David Cameron will be present, and then a eurozone summit later today. A deal is due to be sealed at a second eurozone summit on Wednesday, but rumours have swept Brussels that yet another summit, possibly extended to non-euro countries such as Britain, could also be called. The idea of creating a special purpose vehicle for the EFSF, according to sources, would be to attract further money from both official and private investors, with the sovereign wealth funds of countries such as China, Singapore or Qatar a prime target. Some of these already invest in European banks such as Barclays and UBS. Qatar has already invested in distressed Greek banks and is thought to be looking at other devalued European assets. Its premier, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, said of EU efforts to solve the crisis: “If there is nothing positive then we will find a very difficult situation, not only in Europe but in the world, that would take a decade to fix.” Downing Street officials said Cameron, who will attend a meeting of EU heads of government in Brussels today, might cut short a visit this week to New Zealand and Australia, where he is due to attend the Commonwealth heads of government conference, if a further, full EU summit of all 27 nations is called. Conservatives European Union Europe David Davis European banks Banking David Cameron Toby Helm Jill Treanor David Gow guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The NFL isn’t making exceptions about its policy that players stay unplugged during games: It fined Troy Polamalu of the Steelers $10,000 for making a call from the bench during last Sunday’s game, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Polamalu, though, wasn’t showboating or looking for some digital advantage—he borrowed…
Continue reading …If you’re reading this on your smartphone, you might want to go wash your hands now: A new study out of London finds that one out of six cellphones has fecal matter on it. UK researchers swabbed 390 mobile phones and the British hands that used them, and found that…
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