Polls say AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan could score a crushing victory with up to 50% of the vote in Sunday’s election From a five-storey billboard on the Tarlabasi Boulevard in downtown Istanbul, Turkey’s prime minister is making some typically bombastic promises. Vote for me, says a shirt-sleeved Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the traffic-congested megalopolis will be rewarded with a third airport and a third bridge across the Bosphorus. The pledges are just two examples of what even Erdogan describes as his “crazy projects” – the most memorable of which is probably his plan to build a mega-canal in Istanbul linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara . The 57-year-hopes his grand designs will ensure that he not only wins a third term in Sunday’s national elections, but is elected with such a “supermajority” that he would be able to singlehandedly rewrite Turkey’s heavily criticised constitution in his own favour. Pollsters say his Justice and Development party (AKP) is likely to triumph with up to 50% of the vote, leaving the main opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) trailing at 28%. The extent of Erdogan’s victory will have wide repercussions for this country of 74 million people straddling east and west. Round the corner from the gargantuan poster, barber Hasan Keke cites Erdogan’s infrastructure projects when explaining his approval of the prime minister. Keke says everyday life has got easier since Erdogan took power in 2003. “I’ll give you an example,” says Keke, as he gives a customer a cut-throat shave. “In 2002, I used to have to bring water with me to work. Tarlabasi had such an unreliable water supply back then. Now,” he says, turning on a tap, “that isn’t a problem.” In the pre-AKP days, when inflation reached 138% and buying a kebab in the old currency cost a seven-figure sum, Keke was constantly raising his prices. They have stayed the same now for four years. And, like many Turks, he feels richer: “Before Erdogan came in, I had never been on a plane. Now, I can pay just 35 Turkish lira (£13.50) to fly back to my home town, Kayseri [500 miles away in central Turkey].” Most people agree that the AKP has done a good job of rescuing Turkey’s economy from the abyss it fell into in the 2001 crash, getting inflation down to a sensible 7.2% while increasing wages. Some analysts see storm clouds ahead, but Turkey now boasts the sixth strongest economy in Europe and the 17th largest in the world, allowing the country to meet two of the four Maastricht criteria for EU entry – more, as Erdogan never tires of pointing out, than many EU members. The AKP has dragged Turkey’s legal system into the 21st century, too: before 2004, rapists were able to get a reduced sentence if they agreed to marry their victims, for example. But human rights organisations say Turkey still imprisons far too many people on spurious charges – especially Kurds – and free speech is not yet a reality. The gulf in support between the AKP and CHP was illustrated last weekend at rival rallies at Istanbul’s Kazlicesme Square. Erdogan got to his rally on Sunday almost two hours late. He arrived by helicopter wearing aviator shades and strode on stage with his headscarved wife, Emine, to a rock star’s welcome. “Papa Tayyip!” chanted hundreds of thousands in the crowd, cheering as he promised everything from ebooks for all students to earthquake-proof housing. “We had to bring in 600 people overnight to completely rebuild the stage and site it by the old city walls to fit in all our supporters,” said one adviser. The party put on “thousands” of buses to ship in voters from around the city. The day before, the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu had set out to the Guardian what he sees as the dangers of continued AKP rule. “They are putting pressure on business people, they’re putting pressure on the media, on universities. We’re entering a crisis situation,” he said. Earlier this month, the campaign had got grubby when Erdogan started suggesting Kilicdaroglu was not a “real Muslim” because the opposition leader is believed to be an Alevi, a liberal branch of Shia Islam. “AKP is not a democratic party,” said Kilicdaroglu, who has been nicknamed Gandhi for his passing resemblance to the late Indian democratic leader. “Their goal is simply to never lose power. If Erdogan senses he is losing ground, he starts to come out with this stuff.” Under party laws, Erdogan cannot run again as prime minister in 2015. But if he wins 367 seats or more in the 550-seat legislature, he could push constitutional reforms through parliament without calling a referendum. His opponents claim his real desire is to turn Turkey into a presidential system, installing himself again in the top job. In Kasimpasa, the working-class district of Istanbul where Erdogan grew up, some people expressed criticism. Sakir Sefer is a rare critic of the local-boy-done-good. “On a personal level, I like the man – I’ve known him for 10, 12 years,” says Sefer, who runs a shop selling pizza-like pide . “But I don’t like the way he is starting to separate people rather than bring them together.” Overhearing this, a customer butts in. “Don’t listen to him” she says. “Erdogan is the apple of our eye.” Elsewhere, Sati Aydin, who runs a chicken kebab shop is furious with Erdogan for bringing religion into the elections. “Until recently, it wasn’t an issue that we were Alevi. No one mentioned it. I’m very angry that Erdogan has made this a topic of discussion in the elections.” Baker Ali says Erdogan’s politics have torn his family apart. “Because of him,” says the 49-year-old Kurd, “my sister and brother are in jail and I may lose my property.” His neighbourhood, the predominantly Kurdish Tarlabasi , is earmarked for a controversial urban regeneration project and his ramshackle house is one of 278 set to be bulldozed to make way for a luxury gated development. Ali blames Erdogan: the contractors given the tender are part of a conglomerate headed by the prime minister’s son-in-law. The imprisonment of Ali’s siblings, meanwhile, is directly related to what most commentators agree is Turkey’s biggest problem: the treatment of the estimated 14 million Kurds who make up about a fifth of the population. Ali’s 24-year-old sister gave birth to her first son in jail last year. A former town hall worker, she is one of 151 people – NGO workers, Kurdish politicians and their employees – charged in 2009 with supporting terrorism. His brother, meanwhile, is facing a seven-year sentence for throwing a stone at police during a demonstration. “In 2005, Erdogan said to us, I will solve this problem. He is a liar,” says Ali, referring to the landmark moment in 2005 when the prime minister became the first modern Turkish leader to admit the Kurds had been mistreated by Ankara administration . “We might have believed that he was going to help us at the last elections, but we’re not going to fall for it again.” The Kurds are still banned from using their own language in any official contexts , particularly in schools, and Ankara has not yet worked out a political solution to the bloody conflict between the Turkish army and the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which is estimated to have claimed 45,000 lives since 1984. After a long honeymoon with commentators at home and abroad, it is clear Erdogan does not enjoy the support he once did. “He could have become the new Ataturk,” says Cengiz Aktar, professor of EU studies at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, referring to the idolised founder of the secular Turkish republic whose likeness still adorns the walls of millions of Turkish homes and businesses today. “If you go back to the golden years of Turkish democracy – 2002, 2003, 2004 – Erdogan was on that track. “One example of that would be how the AKP managed to curtail the power of the army, which used to be a big problem in this country. But in 2004, he stopped reforming. Now he talks like an old conservative. He cares less and less about joining the European Union. He doesn’t think he needs to. This over-confidence is very much there, not just vis-a-vis the EU but also the whole world,” said Aktar, referring particularly to what many see as a failure of Turkey’s “zero problems with the neighbours” policy in the light of the Arab spring. But Sinan Ulgen, a former career diplomat in the Turkish foreign office who now runs the Centre For Economic and Foreign Policy Studies thinktank in Istanbul, says Turkey is an inspiration: “There are a number of areas were we can say that Turkey’s experience could be an aspiration or inspiration for Arab states. “For example, how Turkey has been able to combine a predominantly Muslim state with democracy and economic success, as well as social development.” But will Turkey still be an inspiration in years to come? Will it regress or progress? Shift to the east or the west? The result on Sunday night should provide a clue. Polls suggest the Justice and Development party (AKP) will win 45-50% of the vote, as in 2007, but whether this gives it a constitutional majority will depend on the performance of smaller parties. Under the current constitution, in order to send MPs into parliament in Ankara, a party must win at least 10% of the national vote. Though the CHP will almost certainly make that hurdle, the question is whether the far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP) will manage the leap after a serious of grubby scandals involving sex tapes forced 10 senior members to resign. If the MHP does not make the grade, its votes will be divided between the AKP and CHP and could give the AKP a supermajority. If they end up with more than two-thirds of the vote, the AKP does not legally need to consult the rest of parliament when rewriting Turkey’s constitution – though Erdogan claims he will, whether he has to or not. All sides agree the constitution needs to be radically updated – although it has been amended a few times, it is essentially the 1982 text that was drafted by the army after a military coup in 1980. But Erdogan’s opponents fear that left to his own devices, he will simply install an AKP version of democracy which would concentrate too much control in his own hands. There are also worries that an AKP-approved constitution would put an end to Turkey’s EU hopes. The talks are already deadlocked over a number of issues and without some progress after the election, perhaps by a unilateral concession to allow Cypriot ships to dock in Turkish ports, the talks might yet break down. The parties Polls suggest the Justice and Development party (AKP) will win 45-50% of the vote in Sunday’s election but whether this gives it a constitutional majority will depend on the performance of smaller parties. Under the current constitution, in order to send MPs to parliament, a party must win at least 10% of the national vote. The Republican People’s party (CHP) will almost certainly make that hurdle, but it is unclear whether the far-right Nationalist Action party (MHP) will do the same after sex scandals forced 10 senior members to resign. If the MHP fails to make the grade, its votes will be divided between the AKP and CHP. If it gets more than two-thirds of the vote, the AKP does not legally need to consult the rest of parliament when rewriting the constitution – though Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims he would do so anyway. All sides agree the constitution needs to be radically updated: although it has been amended a few times, it is essentially the 1982 text that was drafted by the army after a military coup in 1980. But Erdogan’s opponents fear that left to his own devices, he would concentrate too much control in his own hands. There are also worries that an AKP-approved constitution would put an end to Turkey’s EU hopes. Turkey Middle East Europe Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Married father-of-two groomed at least one girl a year and showered her with gifts A primary school teacher filmed himself sexually assaulting pupils as young as six in his classroom, sometimes when other children were present, a court has been told. Nigel Leat, 51, a married father-of-two, groomed at least one girl a year and showered her with gifts, afforded her privileges and organised one-on-one teaching sessions. Leat would swear his victims to secrecy and even write letters to them in which he would describe what he wanted to do to them and ask them to reply to him. Leat pleaded guilty to 36 counts involving five pupils aged between six and eight at Hillside First School in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset over five years. The offences included sexual assault, attempted rape, voyeurism and possessing extreme pornography. Police believe they could have charged him with as many as 500 offences and said he may have been offending for 12 years. Leat will be sentenced on Tuesday. The abuse went undetected at the school – where he taught for 15 years – until last December when one victim told her mother that he had been touching her. He was arrested within hours and officers found hundreds of films of his abuse stored on memory sticks in his classroom. Simon Morgan, prosecuting at Bristol crown court, detailed the content of more than 30 videos. In many of them children could be seen holding cuddly toys, drawing at a table or practising their reading while Leat filmed and touched them or they touched him. Leat was heard in films referring to the girls as “sweetie pie” and “darling” and asking them how much they loved him. Morgan said: “It is clear from … the videos that these children were well-versed in doing what was expected of them. “The children were abused in the classroom, in the resources room, in the staff room. He arranged the rooms in such as way as to avoid detection from anyone who looked into the room.” Leat’s offending was uncovered when a girl identified only as Child E took home a book called My Perfect Pony he had given her. Her mother became suspicious about the gift and asked whether Leat had touched her. Morgan told the court: “She said that he had touched her on every day apart from when the teaching assistant was in class.” Leat, a former musician, bird watcher and cyclist, qualified as a teacher in 1984 and has only taught at Hillside. He was warned in 2008 about being too “tactile” with the girls in his class by the deputy head, as staff were worried that it might leave him open to accusations of improper behaviour. No further action was taken. A parent once expressed concern after he asked a girl if she had a webcam so they could stay in touch after she left his classroom. The concerns were not passed on to the authorities. The court was told Leat became interested in images of child abuse on the internet 10 years ago when his marriage became “asexual”. He then began abusing girls in his classroom. Nicholas Gerasimidis, for Leat, said: “It might be said that had he not been in the position that he was that this interest may never have found an opportunity for expression.” After the hearing, Detective Superintendent Geoff Wessell said officers continued to work with his victims. “The court has heard the full extent of the behaviour of Nigel Leat in the most shocking detail,” he said. “It is quite clear that the court has heard how he is a predatory paedophile who has broken the trust and confidence of both the parents that sent children to the school and its staff.” Crime Child protection Primary schools Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Anti-Gaddafi forces say they desperately need helicopters to be sent in to help repel attacks from government forces Commanders in the besieged Libyan rebel enclave of Misrata have complained that Nato has ignored requests for air support during a week of heavy attacks by pro-Gaddafi forces. Government troops launched infantry and artillery attacks on Friday on the western end of the Misrata pocket, inflicting heavy rebel casualties. A Reuters journalist counted 10 bodies in a hospital after three rebel ambulances were destroyed on the road to the front. At Misrata’s Hikma hospital, a steady stream of ambulances brought wounded fighters in from the front. Radio Misrata reported that three Gaddafi tanks had joined infantry on an attack on the front line, but that the rebel positions had not been penetrated. After days of infantry assaults and bombardments in which dozens of rebel fighters have been killed and at least 45 wounded, the Misrata military council says pleas for Nato air support have gone unanswered. “We asked through the operations room in Benghazi for the Apaches [helicopters] to take part in the fight with Gaddafi troops but up to now we did not get any promise,” said Fathi Bashaga, who is responsible for Nato liaison. “What we expect from Nato is the introduction of their Apaches.” Four British Apaches went into action near Brega last weekend , 400 miles east of Misrata, along with French Gazelle attack helicopters. Late on Thursday, Apaches attacked a communications installation and a multiple rocket launcher near Misrata, a Nato spokesman said. French press said the Apaches hit 14 targets. Rebel commanders appeared unaware of the strikes, but officials involved in the Nato campaign say the frustration on the ground reflects tension between what the insurgents want to do and the mandate laid out by the UN. “Nato nations are in Libya to protect civilians. The rebels have proved themselves to be very courageous but we are not there to act as their air force,” said one. Officials say they are concerned about creating a situation where civilians are caught up in chaotic fighting between rebels and Gaddafi’s forces. This has been heightened by fears of a lack of co-ordination between rebels on the front line and Nato commanders, who are responsible for approving air strikes. “It’s getting better, but it’s not perfect,” said the source. Rebel calls for Nato air support have grown stronger as Misrata has come under the heaviest attacks since mid-April, when rebels secured the city from pro-Gaddafi forces. There have been heavy daily bombardments with mortars and Grad rockets, along with two major infantry attacks. Volleys of grad rockets were landing to the west of the city on Friday. “Gaddafi troops tried again to enter Misrata from three sides, the south, the west, the east,” said Misrata army spokesman Ibrahim Betalmal. “We ask Allah to be merciful to the martyrs who fell to the Gaddafi troops.” Privately, rebel commanders say they are baffled with the non-appearance of the Apaches, saying conditions are ideal for their use against Gaddafi’s infantry as troops attack in the open. Witnesses to a dawn attack on the eastern edge of the pocket told the Guardian that Gaddafi troops came across two miles of flat open grassland between the front lines in pickup trucks with their lights on, a seemingly obvious target for air power. That attack was beaten off by rebel units, as was an infantry assault on the western end of the pocket around Dafniya, but Betalmal said rebel forces were bracing for a third offensive. “We have information that several thousand Gaddafi troops are gathered, probably they will attack from seven sides,” he said, possibly referring to highways leading into the pocket. Rebel troops have begun building fortifications along their front line, constructing networks of trenches, bunkers and shipping containers filled with sand. Aggressive rebel patrolling has brought back a steady haul of prisoners, including three female soldiers, who Betalmal said were captured on the western front line. “As our fighters are good-natured, we released them,” he said. While the daily bombardments on the city are taking a steady toll, rebel fighters are outwardly confident they can hold their lines, saying Gaddafi’s infantry appear demoralised and unwilling to press home attacks. “Our fighters managed to inflict so many casualties among the Gaddafi soldiers,” said Betalmal. “We gained so many weapons and ammunition from them after they fled the battlefield.” A Nato spokesman said it was not clear whether Gaddafi’s forces west of Misrata were capable of mounting a major offensive against the city. The front lines west of the city, said Wing Commander Mike Bracken, spokesman in Naples for the Nato Libya mission, were “volatile and unstable,” but it was “unconfirmed” whether the regime troops could muster “the capability to launch a largescale attack”. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Africa Nato guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Anti-Gaddafi forces say they desperately need helicopters to be sent in to help repel attacks from government forces Commanders in the besieged Libyan rebel enclave of Misrata have complained that Nato has ignored requests for air support during a week of heavy attacks by pro-Gaddafi forces. Government troops launched infantry and artillery attacks on Friday on the western end of the Misrata pocket, inflicting heavy rebel casualties. A Reuters journalist counted 10 bodies in a hospital after three rebel ambulances were destroyed on the road to the front. At Misrata’s Hikma hospital, a steady stream of ambulances brought wounded fighters in from the front. Radio Misrata reported that three Gaddafi tanks had joined infantry on an attack on the front line, but that the rebel positions had not been penetrated. After days of infantry assaults and bombardments in which dozens of rebel fighters have been killed and at least 45 wounded, the Misrata military council says pleas for Nato air support have gone unanswered. “We asked through the operations room in Benghazi for the Apaches [helicopters] to take part in the fight with Gaddafi troops but up to now we did not get any promise,” said Fathi Bashaga, who is responsible for Nato liaison. “What we expect from Nato is the introduction of their Apaches.” Four British Apaches went into action near Brega last weekend , 400 miles east of Misrata, along with French Gazelle attack helicopters. Late on Thursday, Apaches attacked a communications installation and a multiple rocket launcher near Misrata, a Nato spokesman said. French press said the Apaches hit 14 targets. Rebel commanders appeared unaware of the strikes, but officials involved in the Nato campaign say the frustration on the ground reflects tension between what the insurgents want to do and the mandate laid out by the UN. “Nato nations are in Libya to protect civilians. The rebels have proved themselves to be very courageous but we are not there to act as their air force,” said one. Officials say they are concerned about creating a situation where civilians are caught up in chaotic fighting between rebels and Gaddafi’s forces. This has been heightened by fears of a lack of co-ordination between rebels on the front line and Nato commanders, who are responsible for approving air strikes. “It’s getting better, but it’s not perfect,” said the source. Rebel calls for Nato air support have grown stronger as Misrata has come under the heaviest attacks since mid-April, when rebels secured the city from pro-Gaddafi forces. There have been heavy daily bombardments with mortars and Grad rockets, along with two major infantry attacks. Volleys of grad rockets were landing to the west of the city on Friday. “Gaddafi troops tried again to enter Misrata from three sides, the south, the west, the east,” said Misrata army spokesman Ibrahim Betalmal. “We ask Allah to be merciful to the martyrs who fell to the Gaddafi troops.” Privately, rebel commanders say they are baffled with the non-appearance of the Apaches, saying conditions are ideal for their use against Gaddafi’s infantry as troops attack in the open. Witnesses to a dawn attack on the eastern edge of the pocket told the Guardian that Gaddafi troops came across two miles of flat open grassland between the front lines in pickup trucks with their lights on, a seemingly obvious target for air power. That attack was beaten off by rebel units, as was an infantry assault on the western end of the pocket around Dafniya, but Betalmal said rebel forces were bracing for a third offensive. “We have information that several thousand Gaddafi troops are gathered, probably they will attack from seven sides,” he said, possibly referring to highways leading into the pocket. Rebel troops have begun building fortifications along their front line, constructing networks of trenches, bunkers and shipping containers filled with sand. Aggressive rebel patrolling has brought back a steady haul of prisoners, including three female soldiers, who Betalmal said were captured on the western front line. “As our fighters are good-natured, we released them,” he said. While the daily bombardments on the city are taking a steady toll, rebel fighters are outwardly confident they can hold their lines, saying Gaddafi’s infantry appear demoralised and unwilling to press home attacks. “Our fighters managed to inflict so many casualties among the Gaddafi soldiers,” said Betalmal. “We gained so many weapons and ammunition from them after they fled the battlefield.” A Nato spokesman said it was not clear whether Gaddafi’s forces west of Misrata were capable of mounting a major offensive against the city. The front lines west of the city, said Wing Commander Mike Bracken, spokesman in Naples for the Nato Libya mission, were “volatile and unstable,” but it was “unconfirmed” whether the regime troops could muster “the capability to launch a largescale attack”. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Africa Nato guardian.co.uk
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Follow our live blog as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting Sarah Palin emails with your help 12.40pm ET / 5.40pm BST: Rachel Weiner, a reporter for the Washington Post, has tweeted a photograph of a stack of boxes in Juneau. Inside these boxes may be Sarah Palin’s email trail. 12.30pm ET / 5.30pm BST: Mother Jones’s David Corn has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian explaining his role in the legal background to the release of Sarah Palin’s emails: As journalists scurried to Alaska and searched for any titbit, I headed to the website for the Alaska state government and discovered the state had a decent open records law. A week after Palin hit the headlines, I sent a request to the governor’s office on behalf of Mother Jones, my magazine, asking for all “emails written by her, emails sent to her, and emails cc-ed to her”. The state had previously released emails from her office in response to narrow requests – though it had withheld a lot of material under questionable justifications. Still, I was not sure that this request, which covered a lot of records, could be processed before the November election. Other media outfits in subsequent weeks submitted related requests for particular emails, such as all of Palin’s emails to and from her husband. But I had been the one to ask for the whole pile. 12.20pm ET / 5.20pm BST: The Guardian is only one of the many media organisations in Juneau today. The Associated Press, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones and others are in town waiting to get the Palin email dump – and they all have plans to release them to the public in one form or another. 12 noon ET / 5pm BST: So what are we expecting to find in the Sarah Palin email dump? What’s being published are emails from Palin’s term as governor of Alaska: starting in January 2007 through to her resignation in July 2009. Expect lots of detail about internal Alaska state politics, not to mention Palin’s unhappy “Troopergate” affair . There’s also the negotiations over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which Palin often mentions as her biggest success as governor. But most interest will initially focus on the period when John McCain nominated her to be his presidential running mate in 2008. But who knows what else is in there? It’s the Alaska gold rush of 2011 : after a tortuous process, thousands of emails from Sarah Palin’s time as Alaskan governor are released publically today – and the hard work of trawling through the 24,000 pages of emails begins. Follow our live blog of the key developments as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting emails with your help. Guardian journalists in Juneau, Alaska, will be combing through thousands of Palin emails as fast as they can read. And Ian Katz explains how the Guardian plans to post the entire cache of emails , allowing readers to take part by reading through them: Given the size of the cache, we reckon the collective eyes of thousands of you will find the juicy bits more quickly, so we’ll be publishing the raw mails on our website as quickly as we can and asking you to tell us which ones are interesting and why. They’ll be pretty rough and ready – no headlines or details of what they’re about – but we hope you’ll help us by using our simple system to tag them according to what subjects they cover, and how interesting they are. We’d love it if you’d alert our editors, via a button on each email, or Tweet us at @gdnpalin , about any emails that you think our reporters should be examining. Remember that each numbered document represents a single page, so you have to click to previous and subsequent pages to see a full email. Now, as Ms Palin once exhorted: “Drill, baby, drill!” Stay tuned with our full Palin email coverage on the site – and on Twitter follow the latest developments at our special feed @gdnpalin . And of course we’ll be following all the latest developments from the US media and around the web right here. As always, you can take part by leaving your comments below. I’ll be tweeting at @RichardA . Sarah Palin emails Sarah Palin Alaska US politics United States Republicans Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Follow our live blog as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting Sarah Palin emails with your help 12.40pm ET / 5.40pm BST: Rachel Weiner, a reporter for the Washington Post, has tweeted a photograph of a stack of boxes in Juneau. Inside these boxes may be Sarah Palin’s email trail. 12.30pm ET / 5.30pm BST: Mother Jones’s David Corn has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian explaining his role in the legal background to the release of Sarah Palin’s emails: As journalists scurried to Alaska and searched for any titbit, I headed to the website for the Alaska state government and discovered the state had a decent open records law. A week after Palin hit the headlines, I sent a request to the governor’s office on behalf of Mother Jones, my magazine, asking for all “emails written by her, emails sent to her, and emails cc-ed to her”. The state had previously released emails from her office in response to narrow requests – though it had withheld a lot of material under questionable justifications. Still, I was not sure that this request, which covered a lot of records, could be processed before the November election. Other media outfits in subsequent weeks submitted related requests for particular emails, such as all of Palin’s emails to and from her husband. But I had been the one to ask for the whole pile. 12.20pm ET / 5.20pm BST: The Guardian is only one of the many media organisations in Juneau today. The Associated Press, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones and others are in town waiting to get the Palin email dump – and they all have plans to release them to the public in one form or another. 12 noon ET / 5pm BST: So what are we expecting to find in the Sarah Palin email dump? What’s being published are emails from Palin’s term as governor of Alaska: starting in January 2007 through to her resignation in July 2009. Expect lots of detail about internal Alaska state politics, not to mention Palin’s unhappy “Troopergate” affair . There’s also the negotiations over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which Palin often mentions as her biggest success as governor. But most interest will initially focus on the period when John McCain nominated her to be his presidential running mate in 2008. But who knows what else is in there? It’s the Alaska gold rush of 2011 : after a tortuous process, thousands of emails from Sarah Palin’s time as Alaskan governor are released publically today – and the hard work of trawling through the 24,000 pages of emails begins. Follow our live blog of the key developments as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting emails with your help. Guardian journalists in Juneau, Alaska, will be combing through thousands of Palin emails as fast as they can read. And Ian Katz explains how the Guardian plans to post the entire cache of emails , allowing readers to take part by reading through them: Given the size of the cache, we reckon the collective eyes of thousands of you will find the juicy bits more quickly, so we’ll be publishing the raw mails on our website as quickly as we can and asking you to tell us which ones are interesting and why. They’ll be pretty rough and ready – no headlines or details of what they’re about – but we hope you’ll help us by using our simple system to tag them according to what subjects they cover, and how interesting they are. We’d love it if you’d alert our editors, via a button on each email, or Tweet us at @gdnpalin , about any emails that you think our reporters should be examining. Remember that each numbered document represents a single page, so you have to click to previous and subsequent pages to see a full email. Now, as Ms Palin once exhorted: “Drill, baby, drill!” Stay tuned with our full Palin email coverage on the site – and on Twitter follow the latest developments at our special feed @gdnpalin . And of course we’ll be following all the latest developments from the US media and around the web right here. As always, you can take part by leaving your comments below. I’ll be tweeting at @RichardA . Sarah Palin emails Sarah Palin Alaska US politics United States Republicans Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Follow our live blog as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting Sarah Palin emails with your help 12.40pm ET / 5.40pm BST: Rachel Weiner, a reporter for the Washington Post, has tweeted a photograph of a stack of boxes in Juneau. Inside these boxes may be Sarah Palin’s email trail. 12.30pm ET / 5.30pm BST: Mother Jones’s David Corn has an excellent piece in today’s Guardian explaining his role in the legal background to the release of Sarah Palin’s emails: As journalists scurried to Alaska and searched for any titbit, I headed to the website for the Alaska state government and discovered the state had a decent open records law. A week after Palin hit the headlines, I sent a request to the governor’s office on behalf of Mother Jones, my magazine, asking for all “emails written by her, emails sent to her, and emails cc-ed to her”. The state had previously released emails from her office in response to narrow requests – though it had withheld a lot of material under questionable justifications. Still, I was not sure that this request, which covered a lot of records, could be processed before the November election. Other media outfits in subsequent weeks submitted related requests for particular emails, such as all of Palin’s emails to and from her husband. But I had been the one to ask for the whole pile. 12.20pm ET / 5.20pm BST: The Guardian is only one of the many media organisations in Juneau today. The Associated Press, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, Mother Jones and others are in town waiting to get the Palin email dump – and they all have plans to release them to the public in one form or another. 12 noon ET / 5pm BST: So what are we expecting to find in the Sarah Palin email dump? What’s being published are emails from Palin’s term as governor of Alaska: starting in January 2007 through to her resignation in July 2009. Expect lots of detail about internal Alaska state politics, not to mention Palin’s unhappy “Troopergate” affair . There’s also the negotiations over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which Palin often mentions as her biggest success as governor. But most interest will initially focus on the period when John McCain nominated her to be his presidential running mate in 2008. But who knows what else is in there? It’s the Alaska gold rush of 2011 : after a tortuous process, thousands of emails from Sarah Palin’s time as Alaskan governor are released publically today – and the hard work of trawling through the 24,000 pages of emails begins. Follow our live blog of the key developments as the Guardian attempts to identify and collate the most interesting emails with your help. Guardian journalists in Juneau, Alaska, will be combing through thousands of Palin emails as fast as they can read. And Ian Katz explains how the Guardian plans to post the entire cache of emails , allowing readers to take part by reading through them: Given the size of the cache, we reckon the collective eyes of thousands of you will find the juicy bits more quickly, so we’ll be publishing the raw mails on our website as quickly as we can and asking you to tell us which ones are interesting and why. They’ll be pretty rough and ready – no headlines or details of what they’re about – but we hope you’ll help us by using our simple system to tag them according to what subjects they cover, and how interesting they are. We’d love it if you’d alert our editors, via a button on each email, or Tweet us at @gdnpalin , about any emails that you think our reporters should be examining. Remember that each numbered document represents a single page, so you have to click to previous and subsequent pages to see a full email. Now, as Ms Palin once exhorted: “Drill, baby, drill!” Stay tuned with our full Palin email coverage on the site – and on Twitter follow the latest developments at our special feed @gdnpalin . And of course we’ll be following all the latest developments from the US media and around the web right here. As always, you can take part by leaving your comments below. I’ll be tweeting at @RichardA . Sarah Palin emails Sarah Palin Alaska US politics United States Republicans Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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European commission president José Manuel Barroso says country should join in 2013 after six years of negotiations Croatia took its biggest step towards joining the EU as its 28th member state on Friday when the European commission said it was ready to close six years of negotiations. In a statement awaited with both hope and fear in Zagreb, José Manuel Barroso, the commission’s president, said Croatia should join the EU in July 2013. Stefan Fuele, the commissioner for enlargement in charge of the negotiations with Zagreb, said he was confident that all EU governments would support the recommendations. Britain, along with the Netherlands, has been the most reluctant EU country to give the green light to Croatia. Jadranka Kosor, the Croatian prime minister, made her first visit to Downing Street on Friday, reflecting her anxiety about UK opposition, but emerged from a meeting with David Cameron confident that the UK government would not veto entry. Membership negotiations for the small country of 4.5 million people have been troubled, lasting six years and taking longer than those for all of the eight former communist central European countries that joineden masse in 2004. The lengthy process reflected deep weariness across Europe over EU expansion, suggesting that the other five countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as Albania, face a long slog to get in, despite promises to the Balkans from Brussels. For years, Croatia was also handicapped by its refusal to locate and hand over war crimes suspects for trial at the special tribunal in The Hague and a territorial waters dispute in the Adriatic with its neighbour Slovenia, which blocked negotiations for a year. The 27 governments of the EU still have to endorse Friday’s commission proposal, meaning that the British or the Dutch could yet delay agreement. An accession treaty then has to be agreed and signed by the end of the year, subjected to a referendum in Croatia and ratified by 27 parliaments. Battling widespread corruption, especially among the judiciary, courts, police and political elite in Zagreb, has been the biggest challenge for the Kosor government, with the EU setting tougher standards for entry because of blunders made on Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007. The EU shifted the goalposts at the last minute – at the insistence of the British, the French, and the Dutch – to demand a new process of monitoring Croatia’s compliance with its EU commitments over the next two years. If things go smoothly, Croatia’s entry will be hailed as a breakthrough, paving the way for the rest of the former Yugoslavia to join the EU less than two decades after the wars of the 1990s. But growing euroscepticism, populism, and nationalism across much of Europe could jeopardise such hopes. Croatia European Union Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …European commission president José Manuel Barroso says country should join in 2013 after six years of negotiations Croatia took its biggest step towards joining the EU as its 28th member state on Friday when the European commission said it was ready to close six years of negotiations. In a statement awaited with both hope and fear in Zagreb, José Manuel Barroso, the commission’s president, said Croatia should join the EU in July 2013. Stefan Fuele, the commissioner for enlargement in charge of the negotiations with Zagreb, said he was confident that all EU governments would support the recommendations. Britain, along with the Netherlands, has been the most reluctant EU country to give the green light to Croatia. Jadranka Kosor, the Croatian prime minister, made her first visit to Downing Street on Friday, reflecting her anxiety about UK opposition, but emerged from a meeting with David Cameron confident that the UK government would not veto entry. Membership negotiations for the small country of 4.5 million people have been troubled, lasting six years and taking longer than those for all of the eight former communist central European countries that joineden masse in 2004. The lengthy process reflected deep weariness across Europe over EU expansion, suggesting that the other five countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as Albania, face a long slog to get in, despite promises to the Balkans from Brussels. For years, Croatia was also handicapped by its refusal to locate and hand over war crimes suspects for trial at the special tribunal in The Hague and a territorial waters dispute in the Adriatic with its neighbour Slovenia, which blocked negotiations for a year. The 27 governments of the EU still have to endorse Friday’s commission proposal, meaning that the British or the Dutch could yet delay agreement. An accession treaty then has to be agreed and signed by the end of the year, subjected to a referendum in Croatia and ratified by 27 parliaments. Battling widespread corruption, especially among the judiciary, courts, police and political elite in Zagreb, has been the biggest challenge for the Kosor government, with the EU setting tougher standards for entry because of blunders made on Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU in 2007. The EU shifted the goalposts at the last minute – at the insistence of the British, the French, and the Dutch – to demand a new process of monitoring Croatia’s compliance with its EU commitments over the next two years. If things go smoothly, Croatia’s entry will be hailed as a breakthrough, paving the way for the rest of the former Yugoslavia to join the EU less than two decades after the wars of the 1990s. But growing euroscepticism, populism, and nationalism across much of Europe could jeopardise such hopes. Croatia European Union Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Universities asked to replace old degree classifications with new grading system
June 10, 2011 No Comment
Pilot scheme provides detailed reports of students’ abilities including module results and extra curricular achievements Every university in the country will be asked to adopt a new detailed electronic record of a student’s achievement to replace the “blunt instrument” of the traditional first, second or third-class honours degrees. The new higher education achievement report (HEAR), which gives an in-depth portrayal of students’ abilities, will be rolled out nationally from next autumn after being trialled at 27 universities this year. Robert Burgess, vice-chancellor of Leicester University and head of a steering group that has co-ordinated the new approach to measuring student performance, said the ambition was to replace the current “crude classification system”. Every university is being asked to take up the new system from next year to meet students’ expectations of a better service in exchange for higher fees, Burgess said. The two systems are due to run in parallel, but the expectation is that firsts and seconds will be phased out once employers become used to the richer information available in the new report. Describing the pilots, Burgess said: “We are producing information that drills down to modular level and indeed indicates whether a student does better at timed examinations, projects, dissertations, all those type of things. “The other thing is that the HEAR also records students’ achievements in extra-curricular activities – a student who has represented the university in terms of sport or perhaps been conductor of the university orchestra.” The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) warned last year that firms had raised the bar on degrees amid fierce competition for graduate jobs, and graduates with a 2:2 or worse faced being filtered out by automated applications. While the graduate job market went on to improve during the year, with a surge in recruitment in the closing months of 2010, a survey for the AGR illustrated how sharply employers were discriminating on the basis of degrees. The poll found that nearly 78% were insisting on a 2:1. Universities including Leicester that have piloted the new system will award the first HEARs to graduates this summer. Burgess said that the “template is in place” for every institution to take up the scheme next year. Other universities that are already taking part in trials of the system include Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth and St Andrew’s. He said: “The intention is to propose to the sector, as from October 2012, that all students entering higher education institutions will get the opportunity to achieve a HEAR having worked with it through a three-year period.” The intention is to make the HEAR available to employers (with the student’s consent) before he or she graduates so it can be used in early job applications. Burgess said that over time, the detailed information available in the new record would make the traditional categories look “pretty much like blunt instruments”. “The summary — first, 2:1 and so on — is just that, a summary, it doesn’t give the richness of the experience. “In a situation where students are paying [higher] fees they’re going to expect a much more detailed evaluation of their performance and a detailed evaluation that can be given to employers and can be used in order to help them in their careers.” The vice-chancellor said that employers would be able to use the HEAR to match jobs with graduates on the basis of relevant skills. “If you’re choosing an employee on the basis they’ve got a 2:1 — how do you know what they’re really good at, were they really good in timed examinations? If that’s the only thing they’re good at, that’s not necessarily going to be a skill you really require.” Next year’s admissions round, when two-thirds of English universities are seeking to charge the maximum fee, will also see a more systematic use of background information in assessing candidates for places on degree courses. For the first time, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) will provide universities with data on the GCSE and A-level performance of a candidate’s school, as well as figures for the percentage of pupils on free school meals at the applicant’s school. While some institutions already gather their own contextual data, others do not use any additional data when assessing candidates. Burgess, who is chairman of UCAS, urged universities to be cautious in the use of such data when selecting candidates. He told the Guardian: “Using contextual data in respect of selection is somewhat problematic. It may be seen as unfair if it looks like it is giving some students a helping hand in selection. “It is not as straightforward as some might think. A student might live in a desirable area, but their parents may not have professional jobs. Or they may have gone to independent school, but their parents have been working horrendous overtime hours to be able to pay for that.” The Office for Fair Access (Offa) is currently vetting universities’ plans to charge higher fees. In its submission to Offa, Cambridge has said that its “minimum objective” is simply to maintain the status quo in terms of its state school intake, because of the uncertainty over whether a fee rise will deter some applicants. Higher education Students Graduation Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
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