Tragic details are emerging from the shooting that left eight people dead and one critically wounded yesterday at a Seal Beach salon. Police have identified the alleged shooter as Scott Dekraai, 42, who they say was wearing body armor when they apprehended him a half-mile from the scene. Dekraai was…
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• Cameron backs £4bn plan for ‘new Atlantic frontier’ • Greenpeace warns of oil spills and rising emissions BP faced fresh condemnation from environmentalists on Thursday after it got the go-ahead to invest £4bn to develop one of the North Sea’s largest oilfields off Shetland. The company has been criticised by green campaigners for trying to open up “a new Atlantic frontier” west of Shetland, to replace dwindling reserves in other parts of the North Sea. BP’s latest move to extract oil from the Clair Ridge field was immediately criticised by Greenpeace, which claimed it was now “frankly risible for David Cameron to claim that this government will be the ‘greenest ever’.” Greenpeace said: “While [energy secretary] Chris Huhne likes to portray himself as the good green guy of the cabinet, all those around him are pledging the UK to a dirty fuel future that will do only one thing: increase CO2 emissions and cause irreparable damage to the environment.” Green groups have already criticised BP for seeking permits to drill a potentially hazardous deep-water well 1,300 metres below the surface in the North Uist field – a seabed block named after the Hebridean island but located 80 miles north-west of Shetland. However, the prime minister threw his weight behind BP, declaring: “We should be looking to try and make these things happen rather than ruling them out.” The firm had planned to start drilling in the North Uist area last year but the launch date was postponed following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, in which 11 workers were killed and 4.9m barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. Now the company is pushing ahead, prompting environmental groups to write to Huhne urging him to withhold consent. They warn that a spill could be disastrous and that exploiting new oil reserves would be harmful to the climate. But during a visit to BP’s headquarters in Aberdeen, Cameron appeared to dismiss those concerns when he said: “There are some people who you will never reassure, who quite frankly would probably prefer we weren’t recovering oil from any part of the North Sea. I don’t think you’re going to convince them.” Cameron said he was delighted to give BP the go-ahead for the next phase of development of the huge Clair Ridge field, 50 miles from Shetland, which is not in deep water. He said it was “great news for Aberdeen and the country and provides a massive boost for jobs and growth”. BP said its Clair investment was its biggest in a single year in the North Sea and, together with other recently announced projects off the UK, should enable it “to maintain our production from the North Sea to around 200,000-250,000 barrels a day until 2030″. The UK energy group, headed by Bob Dudley, desperately needs good news after several international setbacks that resulted in shares falling. Besides the disastrous Mexican Gulf oil spill, BP’s joint venture in the Arctic with Russia’s Rosneft collapsed. So far this year, BP has announced North Sea investments worth £10bn, including contributions from its partners, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. Dudley said: “Although it began over 40 years ago, the story of the North Sea oil industry has a long way yet to run. BP has produced some 5bn barrels of oil and gas equivalent so far from the region and we believe we have the potential for over 3bn more.” BP said after a “decade of decline”, industry-wide oil investment in the North Sea and the Atlantic margin was now increasingly strongly once more. The announcement of the Clair scheme comes after BP and its partners revealed plans earlier this year for a £3bn redevelopment of the Schiehallion and Loyal oilfields, also to the west of Shetland. In addition, they are investing £700m in developing the Kinnoull field in the central North Sea. Cameron said: “We live in a very dangerous and difficult world. We do not want to be over-reliant on energy supplies from difficult parts of the world, from unstable parts of the world. And it is a huge national advantage having such a brilliant oil and gas industry here in Aberdeen and here in the North Sea. “We should treasure that and want to see it expand, want to see it grow, want to see it be part of a good and diversified energy industry in the UK.” According to BP, since the late 1960s, £300bn has been invested in exploration drilling and field developments on the UK continental shelf – and a similar figure has been paid in corporate taxes. BP alone has invested about £35bn into the UK North Sea, paying more than £40bn to the government in tax Dudley said: “We have a major presence in the North Sea today, operating around 40 oil and gas fields, four onshore terminals and a network of pipelines that transport almost half of the UK’s oil and gas production. And as demonstrated by these announcements, the region still offers competitive, attractive investment opportunities, which we will pursue.” Over the next few years, BP will be bringing onstream more major project developments in the UK than ever before over a similar period, it said. BP Oil Oil Scotland Energy industry Oil spills Greenpeace Energy Commodities Fossil fuels Oil and gas companies BP oil spill United States Pollution David Cameron Activism Richard Wachman guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Vincent Tabak ‘joked with friends about police search for Joanna Yeates’s killer’
October 13, 2011 No Comment
Court hears Tabak told friends that whoever murdered Yeates must be a ‘detached, crazy person’ to carry on acting normally The man accused of the murder of landscape architect Joanna Yeates joked about the police search for the culprit at a dinner party and offered a theory about the sort of character who would commit such a crime, his trial has heard. Vincent Tabak discussed the case with friends over a vegetable curry and said he believed that whoever murdered Yeates must have been a “totally detached, crazy person”, the jury was told. Tabak, a 33-year-old engineer, from the Netherlands, joked at the party that police had opened a drawer in his flat to see if there was a body there, it was claimed. Bristol crown court also heard that Tabak had been planning to marry his girlfriend, Tanja Morson, and start a family. Tabak has admitted the manslaughter of 25-year-old Yeates but denies murder. The prosecution claims he strangled her to death at her flat in Clifton, Bristol, on 17 December 2010, before putting her body into his car and dumping it on the verge of Longwood Lane, Failand. The jury was told about a dinner party that Tabak and Morson attended on 15 January. In a written statement one of the guests, Sarah Maddock, described how the conversation turned to Yeates. She said Tabak had said that whoever killed Yeates had to be a “totally detached, crazy person” to be able to “carry on acting normally after something like that”. Maddock described Tabak as perfectly normal at the dinner party and said he held his girlfriend’s hand under the table. She also revealed that Morson had told her of their plans to marry and start a family. Andrew Lillie, an engineer who hosted the party, said Tabak and Morson were recounting how police had searched their flat after Yeates went missing. His statement, read to the court, said: “Vincent just made a small remark about how police opened a drawer so they could look for a body. This was said in a light-hearted way.” The court also heard that Tabak drank champagne at a party the night after the alleged murder. He attended a friend’s birthday at a bar on Bristol harbourside but seemed “unwilling to talk” and “short”, according to Linda Marland, a witness. Jurors also heard more about the night Yeates was allegedly murdered . She had spent the early part of the evening with work colleagues at the Ram pub in Bristol. One colleague, Elisabeth Chandler, an office manager, said Yeates was dreading the weekend because her boyfriend, Greg Reardon, was away. Other colleagues described how Yeates told them she was going to spend the weekend baking bread and cakes. After leaving the pub, the prosecution says, she walked home and within a few minutes was attacked by Tabak. Florian Lehman told the court that he and his wife, Zoe, heard two screams as they walked up the path of a house opposite Yeates’s flat on their way to a party. He said: “We were through the gate and we were in the middle of the footpath between the gate and the entrance. That’s when I heard two screams. They were quite loud. They seemed to me to come from quite a distance. “The first scream was just for a moment, a scream and then a little pause, maybe just two seconds, and a second scream which was a lot shorter. The first one was louder. The first was longer.” Zoe Lehman said she also heard screams and a thud. “I heard a loud scream and turned around to have a look. The first one was loud, then there was a gap of about two seconds, then the second one was slightly less loud – a bit stifled. Then afterwards there was what sounded like furniture falling over, a thud.” Harry Walker, who lived behind Yeates’s flat, said he heard a scream at about 8.30pm. He told jurors: “I would say it was definitely a human noise. It was definitely not an animal. At the time I thought it must have been students out in the road as it was the end of term.” The trial continues. Joanna Yeates Crime Bristol Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Michael Bloomberg made a surprise visit to Zuccotti Park yesterday to warn Occupy Wall Street protesters that power washers are coming tomorrow to clean up the place. “The last three weeks have created unsanitary conditions and considerable wear and tear on the park,” Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway tells the New…
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New retirement age plan benefits people born from 6 January-5 September 1954, at cost to taxpayers of £1.1bn The work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has announced that the planned rise in the state pension age to 66 will be delayed until October 2020 in a move the government claims will benefit thousands of women. The original plans in the pensions bill meant women faced an increase in their state pension age to 65 from November 2018, followed by a further one-year increase to 66 from April 2020. That would have resulted in 33,000 women waiting an extra two years before they could claim the state pension. The new timetable will cap the increased wait to a maximum of 18 months, costing taxpayers £1.1bn. Campaigners had bombarded ministers, MPs and the media with letters demanding the rise in pension ages should be slowed down. They argued that women hit by the biggest increases in retirement age, most of whom are now aged 57, need more time to plan their finances or ensure they have work to cover any shortfall in retirement income caused by the later pension payments. Duncan Smith said: “We have listened to the concerns of those women most affected by the proposed rise in state pension age to 66 and so we will cap the increase to a maximum of 18 months. We have always made clear that we would manage any change fairly and ensure any transition is as smooth as possible.” However, only men and women born between 6 January and 5 September 1954 will benefit from the six-month delay. Lynda Hudson, a crown court employee in Birmingham who was born in December 1953, said: “I will still have to wait 18 months for my pension. What the politicians don’t appreciate is that it was very different for those of us born in the 50s: we didn’t have the same opportunity to go to university or help with childcare enabling us to work and build up our own pensions. It makes us feel that they don’t value anything that we’ve done. We’re just a burden.” The government said it had brought forward the increase in state pension age to 66 because of dramatic increases in life expectancy and the need to ensure no unfair burden was placed on the next generation. It said it would spend £45bn extra on pensioners by 2025 because of the triple guarantee to uprate the basic state pension by 2.5% or, if higher, the rate of increase in either earnings or prices. Chris Ball, chief executive of the Age and Employment Network, said: “The soundness of raising the state pension age and forcing people to go on working when the number of jobs available is shrinking will be rightly questioned.” He said asking people in physically demanding jobs to wait for their pension without making adequate provision to allow them to change roles and ease down in later life was “harsh at best”. Retirement age State pensions Iain Duncan Smith Pensions Retirement planning Work & careers Family finances Employee benefits Economic policy Jill Insley guardian.co.uk
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President says US will call on international community to further isolate Iran – but doubts remain over whether plot was genuine The United States will apply the “toughest sanctions” to further isolate Iran over the alleged plan to murder the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Barack Obama said on Thursday, despite growing scepticism over the amateurish nature of the plot and the apparently shambolic nature of the main suspect. Obama repeated the US line that he would not take any options off the table in dealing with Iran, which is diplomatic code for the possibility of military action. Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the plot. US authorities said on Tuesday they had evidence of a plot by two men linked to Iran’s revolutionary guard to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, by setting off a bomb in a Washington restaurant. In addition to prosecutions, Obama said he would continue “to apply the toughest sanctions, and continue to mobilise the international community to make sure Iran is further and further isolated and pays a price for this kind of behaviour.” He said: “We don’t take any options off the table in terms of how we operate with Iran. But we will continue to apply the sort of pressure that will have a direct impact on the Iranian government until it makes a better choice in how it interacts with the rest of the international community,” he said at a news conference with South Korean president Lee Myung-bak. The president’s comments came as two congressional committees held hearings on Iran on Thursday. In testimony to the Senate Banking committee, David Cohen, the US Treasury’s under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told the committee that the administration was considering sanctions against Iran’s central bank. Cohen described the alleged plot as a “dramatic reminder that the urgent and serious threat we face from Iran is not limited to Iran’s nuclear ambitions”. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Affairs committee, said the assassination plot “illustrates Iran’s active campaign” to partner with extremists groups and drug traffickers. But as more details have emerged, there has been growing scepticism over the true nature of the threat, not least because the main suspect has been revealed to be a car salesman, nicknamed “Scarface”, with a string of failed businesses behind him. Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalised US citizen, was arrested last month, and stands accused of running a global terror plot that stretched from Mexico to Tehran. He is accused of having links to Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The other suspect, Gholam Shakuri, is said by the US to be in Iran. But Tom Hosseini, a friend and former roommate of Arbabsiar’s, questioned his ability to carry out the plot and told the New York Times: “His socks would not match. He was always losing his keys and his cellphone.” Hosseini said when he last saw his friend two months ago, Arbabsiar told him he had been in Iran and was “making good money.” US officials concede that the plot and its alleged mastermind are unusual. ”We would expect to see the Quds Force cover their tracks more effectively,” one official told Reuters. Another said a plot to launch a violent attack inside the United States was ”very outside the pattern” of recent Quds Force activities. Kenneth Katzman, an Iran specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said there were elements of the alleged plot that did not make sense. ”The idea of using a Texas car salesman who is not really a Quds Force person himself, who has been in residence in the United States many years, that doesn’t add up,” Katzman said. ”There could have been some contact on this with the Quds Force, but the idea that this was some sort of directed, vetted, fully thought-through plot, approved at high levels in Tehran leadership I think defies credulity,” he said. Obama administration United States Iran Global terrorism Saudi Arabia US foreign policy Karen McVeigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Conservative evangelicals implore GOP presidential hopefuls to tone down immigration rhetoric
October 13, 2011 No CommentA group of conservative evangelicals is reaching out to the Republican presidential field and imploring them to tone down their rhetoric on illegal immigration. Dr. Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Dr. Matthew Staver, dean of Liberty University Law School, told reporters today that they admire Gov. Rick Perry for standing
Continue reading …Forces fighting for Libya’s new regime say they are on the verge of taking Sirte, Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown and one of just two Libyan cities still held by pro-Gadhafi fighters. But a spokesman for the National Transitional Council says that contrary to earlier reports, there has been no confirmation that…
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European edition of Rupert Murdoch’s flagship title under scrutiny over allegations of artificially boosting sales figures The newspaper circulation watchdog is set to launch an investigation into Rupert Murdoch’s flagship Wall Street Journal Europe, following the resignation of its publisher amid allegations that it artificially boosted its sales figures. The Audit Bureau of Circulations said it had “recently” decided to take another look at the sales scheme that sold bulk copies to students at cut prices on the basis of “new evidence”, although it did not elaborate on when exactly it received the evidence. Andrew Langhoff, one of Murdoch’s most senior European executives, resigned on Tuesday after the Journal said he had inappropriately agreed to publish two articles as part of a commercial agreement with a Dutch company. On Wednesday the Guardian reported that the Dutch company had been involved in a scheme designed to artificially boost the newspaper’s sales figures. The scheme included a contract struck by WSJE’s circulation department and a Dutch consulting firm, called Executive Learning Partnership, which ran from May 2009 until April 2011 and involved sponsorship in the paper and an agreement to publish articles promoting the firm . Through Executive Learning Partnership and other companies, the Journal had effectively been secretly buying thousands of copies of its own paper at low prices, boosting its audited circulation . In total, 41% of the Wall Street Journal Europe’s audited circulation of 75,000 came via this method. ABC, the official body responsible for auditing the sales of newspapers in the UK, said on Thursday that it had originally reviewed the scheme when it began in 2009 and was “deemed to be compliant with the rules” that govern the category of circulation measurement called “multiple copy subscription sales”. A second audit of the WSJE’s circulation, carried out to provide a sales figure for the six-month period to the end of December, also gave the newspaper a clean bill of health with ABC stating that it “found the scheme to be in order”. However, in the light of the resignation of Langhoff and the further allegations, ABC has now changed its stance. “More recently we have re-examined the scheme based on some new evidence available,” said Jerry Wright, chief executive of ABC UK. “There now appears to be additional new information which may give grounds for further investigation.” According to the official ABC definition of what constitutes a “multiple copy subscription sale”, which it has deemed that the WSJE’s scheme fell into, is as follows: “These are multiple subscriptions purchased on a contractual basis by an organisation for their employees/members, or for students at educational establishments. The final recipients of these copies do not need to be known but the publisher must be able to demonstrate that the subscription copies are delivered to the same fixed pool of individuals. Payment may be by someone other than the recipient”. •
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Women working for Médecins sans Frontières taken hostage after gunmen target Dadaab camp near Somali border Gunmen have kidnapped two female Spanish aid workers and shot their driver in a refugee camp in northern Kenya in the latest attack on foreigners close to the Somali border. The women work for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), which runs health centres for the more than 400,000 Somali refugees in the sprawling Dadaab refugee settlement, the world’s largest. The kidnappers struck at about 1.15pm in Ifo camp, wounding the Kenyan driver before escaping in the MSF four-wheel drive with the two women. The vehicle was seen heading in the direction of Somalia, 50 miles away. Kenyan police said they had launched a manhunt and sealed the border to prevent the kidnappers crossing. The border is in fact porous and impossible to close off. The kidnapping comes weeks after Somali gunmen abducted a British woman and a French woman from beach resorts in separate incidents along the northern Kenyan coast. Both women are being held hostage in Somalia. Security experts believe that the attacks are an extension of the sea piracy that has netted Somali gangsters tens of millions of dollars in ransom a year. MSF confirmed the attack on its staff in Dadaab. “One driver was injured; he is currently in hospital and is stable. Two international staff are missing. A crisis team has been set up to deal with the incident,” it said. The Spanish foreign ministry confirmed the nationality and gender of the kidnap victims. Osman Bare, a Somali refugee who works as a translator in Dadaab, said local reports suggested three gunmen had ambushed the MSF vehicle in a new section of Ifo camp that had not yet been populated. The driver was shot in the neck, Bare said. “The armed guys escaped towards Somalia. All the refugees are talking about this attack and some are fearing for their lives,” Bare said. The kidnapping was not the first attack in Dadaab. Last month a Kenyan driver for the international charity Care was abducted in the refugee settlement. Neither he nor his vehicle have been seen since. The latest kidnapping is likely to have an impact on humanitarian work in Dadaab. Oxfam said it had temporarily suspended work in the camps until the weekend, with staff staying within a secure compound until security conditions have been reassessed. Established in 1991, Dadaab has had a huge surge in arrivals this year due to fighting in Somalia as well as a famine that has cost tens of thousands of lives. The NGO Safety Programme, which advises charities on security in Somalia, said the armed groups responsible for the recent kidnappings appeared to be operating out of the Lower Juba region of Somalia. The al-Shabaab Islamist movement to overthrow the government in Somalia may be complicit. “It is also likely that the AS [Shabaab] administration in Kismayo is at least informed of the intended actions of the perpetrators, allows them to conducts the actions and could maybe benefit from them,” the NGO Safety Programme said in a statement to aid agencies following Thursday’s kidnapping. Kenya Africa Global terrorism Somalia Aid Refugees Xan Rice guardian.co.uk
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