Babar Ahmad, accused of raising funds for al-Qaida, was allegedly assaulted by Met officers in south-west London in 2003 A British Muslim man accused of raising funds for terrorist organisations was subjected to a “sustained and very violent assault” during his arrest by four specialist officers from the Metropolitan police, a court has heard. The jury at Southwark crown court was told the officers punched, kicked and stamped on Babar Ahmad, during an early morning raid at his home in south-west London in 2003. At one stage, the court heard, Ahmad, who was accused of raising money for al-Qaida, was forced into the Muslim prayer position as an officer shouted: “Where is your God now?” Prosecuting counsel Jonathan Laidlaw QC told the jury: “The officers began to shout and swear, calling Babar Ahmad a ‘fucking bastard’ and a ‘fucking cunt’, and he was punched and beaten on the floor. On the floor the assault continued as his wife called out for the police to stop.” The assault had continued in the back of a police van where Ahmad was forced on to the floor and punched and kicked. Laidlaw said: “The officer sitting nearest to Mr Ahmad’s head asked him where he was born and when he replied London, that officer punched him in the back of the head. The same officer then lifted Mr Ahmad’s upper body and held him in a headlock with both arms. After releasing him [the officer] said: ‘You fucking cunt, you’ll remember this day for the rest of your life.’ ” Laidlaw said the attack left Ahmad with a series of injuries. “There were areas of bruising, reddening and grazes to Ahmad’s head and neck, bruising to the chest, areas of bruising to Ahmad’s back, extensive bruising and grazing of the arms. In effect, there were injuries all over the victim’s body.” Police constables Mark Jones, Roderick James-Bowen and Nigel Cowley and Detective Constable John Donohue all deny assaulting Ahmad in December 2003. Jurors heard Ahmad was asleep in bed with his wife when he was woken by cries of “police, police” shortly after 5am. Laidlaw said officers raiding the property would have been briefed that the suspect had received terrorist training and had fought overseas in support of jihad. He said the arrest took place a few months after another terror suspect, Kamel Bourgass, stabbed an anti-terror squad officer to death during a raid on a house in Manchester. But the prosecutor said that, despite fears Ahmad might present a danger to arresting officers, the reality was quite different. “Dressed only in his pyjamas and barefooted, Mr Ahmad raised his arms above his head to indicate that he was not going to fight or to present any sort of danger or threat to the police,” he said. The court heard that James-Bowen, the first officer into the bedroom, threw himself at Ahmad, knocking him back against the window, which smashed. Laidlaw said there was “no complaint” about this but that the officers then violently assaulted the “entirely submissive” Ahmad. He was handcuffed and led downstairs to the prayer room in his house. It was here that he was put in the prayer position and asked: “Where is your God now?”, jurors were told. “The mocking of Mr Ahmad’s faith was to continue, and there were, as you will hear, further attempts to humiliate and to embarrass him,” Laidlaw said. The court was told that as part of its investigation into Ahmad’s alleged terrorist connections MI5 had bugged the house. The jury was played a 10-minute recording that covered the time of Ahmad’s arrest. Although largely indecipherable it was possible to hear screaming, shouting and what appeared to be muffled commands. Ahmad was taken to Charing Cross police station where he says he was led to a caged area not covered by CCTV and again punched and kicked. Laidlaw said the custody sergeant reported hearing his screams. “[The custody sergeant] describes the screams this way: ‘I would describe the screaming as what I believed was a man and that he was in prolonged discomfort and pain. It was definitely the sound of pain and not of him shouting out.’ ” The custody officer said Ahmad was bloodied and bruised and in “a collapsing state” when he was brought in by the territorial support group officers, who claimed he had been violent. Ahmad was released without charge shortly after his arrest. But the jury was told he has been in custody in the UK since his rearrest in 2004 following a request from the US over claims he helped raise money to fund terrorism. The hearing continues. Police London UK security and terrorism Crime Islam Religion Matthew Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Struggling tech giant says acquisitions have helped create growth, but pre-tax losses hit $11.2m in first quarter AOL’s display advertising revenue grew for the first time in more than three years in the first three months of 2011, helped by the acquisitions of Huffington Post, TechCrunch and GoViral. However, AOL reported a pre-tax loss of $11.2m for the quarter, down from a $78m profit in the equivalent period last year, as the business continues to restructure. Total revenues fell 17% to $551m – a better figure than analysts had expected – as the company’s US dial-up internet subscription business continued to wither with revenues down 24% to $215m. Tim Armstrong, the AOL chief executive, preferred to focus on the 4% year-on-year increase in total display advertising revenues to $130.5m – the first growth since the final quarter of 2007 – citing it as an “important milestone” in the turnaround of the beleaguered company. AOL said US display revenue grew 11% to $122m – the first time it has grown since the fourth quarter of 2009. Just over $5m of the $12.2m year-on-year growth in first-quarter domestic revenue was “primarily” due to the acquisition of Huffington Post and TechCrunch – bought for $315m and $25m respectively . US growth was 6% excluding acquisitions. Armstrong said the Huffington Post, which was acquired in January, was the fastest integration project he had ever worked on and that the business had experienced a growth rate of about 30% in the first quarter. The company said Huffington Post “exceeded budgeted revenue” in the first quarter. However, international display advertising revenues fell 46% year on year to $8.5m, while advertising through AOL’s third-party network fell 19% to $87.4m. Total advertising revenues fell 11% to $313m, some $40m down year on year. The company said the performance from ongoing businesses was “essentially flat” year on year, taking into account the $41.8m in ad revenue lost from the closure of some of AOL’s European operations and the disposal of assets including Bebo and ICQ. AOL added that profitability was affected by $9m in deal-related expenses, primarily for the acquisitions of the Huffington Post and GoViral – which it acquired for $69m in January – and $8.4m in “incentive compensation expenses” tied to buy-ups made in 2010 and in the first quarter of 2011. The company also took a $27.8m hit in restructuring expenses related to the Huffington Post acquisition and the “reassessment of our operations in India”. •
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Click here to view this media [ Flashback to 2004. ] This is an interesting little study via Romanesko: Op-ed columnists and TV’s talking heads build followings by making bold, confident predictions about politics and the economy. But rarely are their predictions analyzed for accuracy. Now, a class at Hamilton College led by public policy professor P. Gary Wyckoff has analyzed the predictions of 26 prognosticators between September 2007 and December 2008. Their findings? Anyone can make as accurate a prediction as most of them if just by flipping a coin. Their research paper, “Are Talking Heads Blowing Hot Air? An Analysis of the Accuracy of Forecasts in the Political Media” will be presented via webcast on Monday, May 2, at 4:15 p.m., at www.hamilton.edu/pundit . The paper will also be available at that address at that time. Questions during the presentation can be posed via Twitter using #hcpundit. The Hamilton students sampled the predictions of 26 individuals who wrote columns in major print media and who appeared on the three major Sunday news shows – Face the Nation, Meet the Press, and This Week – and evaluated the accuracy of 472 predictions made during the 16-month period. They used a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being “will not happen, 5 being “will absolutely happen”) to rate the accuracy of each, and then divided them into three categories: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The students found that only nine of the prognosticators they studied could predict more accurately than a coin flip. Two were significantly less accurate, and the remaining 14 were not statistically any better or worse than a coin flip. The top prognosticators – led by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman – scored above five points and were labeled “Good,” while those scoring between zero and five were “Bad.” Anyone scoring less than zero (which was possible because prognosticators lost points for inaccurate predictions) were put into “The Ugly” category. Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas came up short and scored the lowest of the 26… read on Since a liberal like Krugman tops the list, you won’t hear much about it from the Beltway Villagers. Now check out the bottom of the list: Those scoring lowest – “The Ugly” – with negative tallies were conservative columnist Cal Thomas; U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC); U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI); U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, a McCain supporter and Democrat-turned-Independent from Connecticut; Sam Donaldson of ABC; and conservative columnist George Will. John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham are at the bottom of the list, but are always on my freaking TV. I’m just sayin’.
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Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire says society ‘saturated in sex’ and teenagers should be taught the ability to ‘just say no’ Teenage girls must be given lessons in how to say no to sex, a Conservative MP has told parliament. Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Nadine Dorries, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, proposed that would result in classes in abstinence, but only for girls aged 13 to 16. She said society was “saturated in sex” and teenagers should be taught that it was as “cool” to say no to sex as to know how to put a condom on their boyfriend. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics show teenage pregnancies are at their lowest rate since the early 1980s. The under-18 conception rate for 2009 was 38.3 conceptions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 17. This represents a fall of 5.9% compared with 40.7 conceptions per 1,000 women aged 15 to 17 in 2008. However, Dorries told MPs the sale of porn magazines in newsagents, and high street shops selling padded bikinis for seven-year-old girls showed “how far the sexualisation of young girls has gone in our society”. “The answer to ending our constant struggle with the incredibly high rate of teenage sexual activity and underage pregnancies lies in teaching our girls and boys about the option of abstinence, the ability to ‘just say no’, as part of their compulsory sex education,” she said. “Peer pressure is a key contributor to early sexual activity in our country. Society is focused on sex. Teaching a child at the age of seven to apply a condom on a banana is almost saying: ‘Now go and try this for yourself’. “Girls are taught to have safe sex, but not how to say no to a boyfriend who insists on sexual relations.” But Chris Bryant, a Labour MP who has investigated Britain’s high rate of teenage pregnancies, said Dorries’ 10-minute rule bill was “the daftest piece of legislation” he had seen. He said: “I am a gay man, so I’m not exactly an expert on heterosexual sex, nor on sex with girls. But … this is not the way to solve any of those problems – for a start, it’s just about girls. You’ve got to talk to the boys and the girls.” He said there was no evidence that teaching abstinence would lead to fewer pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases. “The single most important thing we can do for any young person is give them the self-confidence to be able to make good decisions for themselves,” he said. He added that he had never understood why teaching pupils how to put a condom on a banana or a cucumber was “of any use to anybody”. Dorries has courted controversy as one of England’s most outspoken politicians. The former nurse has criticised David Cameron’s proposal to create all-women shortlists for prospective MPs, and has been attacked for allegedly claiming expenses for furniture and gardening. She denied this, saying her patio furniture was a present from her mother. Dorries has also campaigned to reduce the time during a pregnancy when an abortion can take place from 24 to 21 weeks. In 2009, she was involved in a motion, discussed at the Trades Union Congress, to reduce the number of women wearing high heels at work. High heels give women lower limb pains, which mean they take time off work, the motion said. MPs voted 67 to 61, majority six, in favour of allowing Dorries to bring forward her bill. It will receive its second reading in January, but is unlikely to become law without government support. Conservatives House of Commons Sex education Schools Sexual health Health Young people Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk
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Gaddafi regime systematically opened fire on peaceful protests, says international criminal court prosecutor The Gaddafi regime has committed war crimes against Libyan pro-democracy protesters, opening fire “systematically” on peaceful demonstrations, according to a report to be issued today by the prosecutor for the international criminal court, who will seek arrest warrants against top members of regime later this month. The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has said he will ask judges at the court in The Hague for up to five warrants. He has not named his suspects but in his report to the UN security council today, he will indicate that they include people who gave orders for the alleged atrocities. “It is indeed a characteristic of the situation in Libya that massive crimes are reportedly committed upon instruction of a few persons who control the organisations that execute the orders,” the report says. “Arresting those who ordered the commission of crimes, should the judges decide to issue warrants, will contribute to the protection of civilians in Libya.” In the course of a two-month preliminary investigation, Moreno-Ocampo’s investigators found widespread evidence of crimes against humanity. “Concerning the manner and nature of the crimes, the shooting at peaceful protesters was systematic, following the same modus operandi in multiple locations and executed through security forces,” the report says. “The persecution appears to be also systematic and implemented in different cities. War crimes are apparently committed as a matter of policy.” As well as the use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators, the ICC investigation found evidence of a range of abuses including torture, systematic rape, the use of cluster munitions and other heavy weaponry in urban areas, the use of civilians as human shields and the blocking of humanitarian supplies. It says “civilians in Tripoli and other areas are reportedly subject to different forms of persecution because of their suspected association with the uprising. Systematic arrests, torture, killings, deportations, enforced disappearances and destruction of mosques have been reported in Tripoli, al-Zawiya, Zintan and the area of the Nafousa mountains. The victims are allegedly civilians who participated in demonstrations or talked to international media, activists, journalists, as well as citizens of Egypt and Tunisia that were arrested and expelled en masse because of their perceived association with the popular uprising.” The ICC prosecutor’s office is also looking into several reports that anti-government crowds attacked and killed dozens of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, who were suspected of being pro-Gaddafi mercenaries. “A number of sub-Saharan Africans were allegedly arrested by the new authorities in Benghazi and it is unclear whether they were innocent immigrant workers or prisoners of war,” it says. The report was commissioned by the security council on 26 February when it referred the case to the ICC. The investigation is highly significant politically as Nato went to war in Libya on “humanitarian grounds” on the strength of security council resolution 1970 authorising “all necessary measures” to protect civilians. If the court approves the arrest warrants it will help insulate the alliance against international criticism of his prolonged campaign in Libya. Moreno-Ocampo will present his first application for an arrest warrant to the ICC’s pre-trial chamber in the next few weeks. “It will focus on those most responsible for crimes against humanity committed in the territory of Libya since 15 February 2011,” he will tell the security council today. The prosecutor told Reuters news agency on Monday that he would initially ask for up to five warrants. If the judges grant his request, the question will be who should carry out the arrests. Moreno-Ocampo will say today that if the Libyan government fails to act, the security council itself “should evaluate” how to do it. It is unclear whether Russia or China would veto the authorisation of Nato to carry out the arrests. That would most likely involve sending troops into Tripoli. Libya Middle East Muammar Gaddafi Julian Borger guardian.co.uk
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Departing director of conservation at RSPB vents anger at neglect of UK’s environment A leading green campaigner has sparked a row over the cause of declining wildlife in the UK by accusing farmers of being “fundamentally anti-environment.” Mark Avery, who last week left his post as director of conservation at the RSPB , also says environment ministers have brought little knowledge or enthusiasm to their jobs, attacks successive governments of “muzzling” state agencies meant to protect wildlife, criticises global “over-consumption” in a Guardian article on Wednesday that looks back on 25 years at the charity. Avery attacks “conservative” farmers for what he sees as their failure to reverse the massive population declines in farmland birds – numbers are now at their lowest levels in England since formal attempts to record them began in 1966 – before criticising the body that represents them in England. He says that “at almost every opportunity, the [ National Farmers Union (NFU) ] chooses the option which will harm the environment – it is weak on greenhouse gas reduction measures, in favour of biofuels, argues against improving the effectiveness of farming grants, is against clamping down on pesticide use and wants its members to carry out what will be an ineffective cull of badgers. “The NFU lacks a coherent view of what the future of farming should look like except that the cheques must keep coming from the taxpayer.” Politicians also get short shrift, apart from Conservative John Gummer , now Baron Deben, who was agriculture minister then environment secretary between 1989 and 1997, and Michael Meacher, who never made a Labour cabinet and was sacked as environment minister of state after serving for the first six years of Tony Blair’s tenure as prime minister. “In contrast to today’s politicians, they were keen to set targets for wildlife recovery. Both had a passion for wildlife and both got things done,” Avery goes on, adding that the current Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs incumbents Caroline Spelman and Richard Benyon might too “provided they are given time to deliver”. Government agencies such as Natural England “have been neutered, muzzled and tied up out of harm’s way”, says Avery. Without their leadership or critical comment, non-governmental agencies must speak out about “how nature is threatened and where government is failing”. But ordinary people are rebuked too. “Tigers and skylarks get rarer because of the way we live on this planet – putting biofuels in our cars, eating too much meat from livestock fed on grain and just sucking up the world’s resources too quickly and too carelessly. “Rarely does someone shoot a skylark or stamp on its nest but our over-consumption drives species’ declines much more certainly than could a man with a gun.” The attack on farmers drew a furious response from Peter Kendall, the NFU president. “In Mark Avery’s time at the RSPB fertiliser use has reduced by 33%, pesticide use has declined steadily and water quality has improved dramatically. Although some farmland bird populations have dropped, his children have more opportunity to see goldfinch, greenfinch, reed buntings and whitethroat which have all increased in numbers.” Kendall said there had also been drops in populations of some woodland and urban species. “No one has provided a satisfactory explanation for all these changes. Avery has, however, relentlessly pedalled the line that agriculture is the primary cause. Was it because some of the other known factors- domestic cats and dog-walking- are less palatable to RSPB members or was it simply his prejudice against productive agriculture? “We know that the world demand for food will continue to increase while its capacity to produce it will be impaired by issues like water availability and climate change. We believe this country could and should produce more – indeed has a moral duty to do so.” The way forward was “sustainable intensification,” said Kendall. “I want farming to be in a place where it is much less reliant on public support. Ironically, it is Mark himself who wants to make farmers less able to respond to the market and operate efficiently who is guilty of wishing to perpetuate a dependency culture.” He hoped that with Avery’s departure, “the RSPB and the NFU can have a more constructive relationship, and the RSPB will find it possible to celebrate achievements rather than endlessly harping on the negatives.” RSPB Farming Birds Wildlife Conservation Green politics James Meikle guardian.co.uk
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Has Doctor Who become too full of cheap shocks for its family audience? Two dads debate whether the programme is safe to watch with their kids Yes: Clever writing, but not great for getting the kids to sleep The new Doctor Who is too dark and convoluted. I’m a lifelong Whovian, but in the Matt Smith era there’s been too much doctorin’ of the Tardis by Steven Moffat and his writers. The opening scene of the new series had the Doctor being shot by an impossible astronaut and dying before he could regenerate. Yes, it was in the future and he may be rescued by a plot twist, but this would be deeply unsettling for young children (and indeed middle-aged dads). Most kids care more about the Doctor than God, and he shouldn’t die just for the sake of a clever plot. There’s too much sex, too. The Doctor should be a father figure, but now every assistant seems to fall in love with him and on Saturday he was snogging River Song. My 10-year-old daughter had to turn away during this section with a cry of “Eerrgh! Yuk!” The Silence – who erase your memories of seeing them – were a classic Who creation and my 12-year-old daughter now has symbols on her arm to remember if she’s seen them (three so far). The series has become increasingly reliant on the internal fears of children. The crack in the bedroom wall that is really a tear in space and time and the Weeping Angels that send you into the past when you blink. Clever writing, but not great for getting the kids to sleep. In the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras, there was a clearer realisation that the monsters were men in rubber suits. It was fairly easy to explain to a child that a church gargoyle was not that likely to come to life and inspire the Brigadier to order “Jenkins, chap with the wings there, five rounds rapid!” The Doctor should be a maverick wanderer, a rebel with a Tardis console, not a superhero. Now every plot seems to centre round the Doctor or his companions as being crucial to the very fabric of the universe. At the end of the David Tennant era the stars went out and the Earth moved, while in the last series we had the Tardis exploding and destroying the universe, at least until some more infuriatingly complex time hopping by Matt Smith. The death of Rory Williams was more gratuitous sensationalism; nice guy Rory is shot and falls through a crack in space and time and is then bought back as an Auton with Rory’s memories who shoots Amy. Sometimes you just yearn for aliens invading a home counties quarry, and a simple good versus evil plot – and with proper Daleks, not the redesigned Teletubby versions . The Christopher Eccleston story The Doctor Dances had it right: scary gas mask monsters but at the end the nanogenes repair the dead, and the Doctor exclaims: “Just this once, everybody lives!” At present the writers seem intent on proving how clever they are through too much complexity and too many cheap shocks. Pete May No: It’s important for kids to learn about fear My seven-year-old son fancies himself as fearless. All it has taken to disprove his belief in his own bravery these past couple of weeks has been to turn on BBC1 on Saturday tea-time. He’ll crouch down at one end of the sofa, curling himself into a ball, until I ask if he wants a cuddle. He’ll scuttle over, and squeeze himself into me, without ever daring to take his eyes off the screen. What’s scared him so much, of course, has been The Silence , the swollen-skulled, black-suited monsters of the opening episodes of the new series of Doctor Who: a bizarre almagam of Reservoir Dogs and John Merrick. Matt Smith, the actor who plays the current Doctor, has already claimed they’re the scariest ever Who monsters . But too scary? Nonsense. Doctor Who’s great gift has been to introduce generations of kids to dread, with the safety net of knowing, first, that the Doctor and his assistants will prevail, one way or another; and second, that the fear will pass in less than an hour. It’s important for kids to learn about fear, to experience the rush of adrenalin it produces, to recognise their own reactions to it, and there’s no better way than Who. It’s in the same family of experience as learning about risk: after a couple of decades of trying to eliminate that factor from play by sanitising playgrounds, it’s now understood that children need to learn to assess risk, and so playgrounds are becoming more challenging again. The similarity between the two experiences lies in the elimination of hazard, that being a danger that cannot be assessed. There’s no hazard in Doctor Who: if it’s too scary, a child can leave the room, or turn off the TV, or hide behind the sofa, like an older generation did when the Daleks rolled on to the screen. Yes, today’s monsters are creepier than the Daleks, but so what? The Hammer version of Dracula was terrifying once, but now it’s about as unsettling as Anne of Green Gables. The threshold of horror rises with every passing generation and always has done, but there’s no reason for Doctor Who to remain stuck in the past. And just as kids like the thrill that comes from leaping around a good playground, so they like being scared. Not too scared. Not so scared they can’t sleep at night, but just so scared they can’t quite tear themselves away from what frightens them. That’s certainly how my son reacted to The Silence. What the best Who monsters do is teach our children that the world is an uncertain place, that there can be dangers in our everyday world. That is true; it’s also something most parents teach their children. What Who also does is remind kids that there is someone doing their best to protect them from these dangers, again something most parents happily do. But the scariest-ever Who monsters? Has Matt Smith already forgotten the Weeping Angels ? Michael Hann Doctor Who Television Science fiction Fantasy BBC1 BBC Television industry Michael Hann Pete May guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Margaret Carlson: ‘Professor Obama Turned Into General Obama And Ran This Incredible Raid’
May 4, 2011 No Comment
Just when the media adulation of Barack Obama might have been showing signs of waning, along comes the killing of Osama Bin Laden to drive it to new sycophantic heights.
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Is your perfect picnic a masterpiece of planning, a pot luck adventure or an impromptu last-minute affair? The latest combination of religious and royal festivities, public holidays and sunshine have lured Brits into the country’s green spaces for picnics. But while seizing an opportunity to bask in the British heat in the company of a cold drink is as easy as pie, the question of picnic food often provides more of a challenge. Reading Elizabeth David’s Of Pageants and Picnics , I became aware of an old school sense of ceremony around picnics. For her, a picnic is as much (if not more) of a treat as fine dining: “As you drink wine from a tumbler, sprinkle your bread with olive oil and salt and eat it with ripe tomatoes or rough country sausage you feel better off than in even the most perfect restaurant.” She refers to “evolving” one’s “picnic technique”, plans the “packing and transport” down to a tee, and considers complementary drinks: “a stout red wine such as a Mâcon or a Chianti … ” The Davidean picnic, it would seem, would have been nothing short of a feast. A far cry from those of the present-day, which are so often reliant on express supermarkets and other quick fixes. Scanning the huddles of picnickers on Clapham Common over the bank holiday, it was obvious that – from a food perspective – few take these outdoor repasts as seriously as David. Continuing in the vein of the Subway-sponsored Picnic Rocks event held on the common a couple of years ago, ready-made sandwiches and cans of ready-mixed Pimms are ubiquitous, as are plastic tubs of hummus, pre-prepared carrot batons, crisps, little cheeses, and packets of prawns with a separate compartment of cocktail sauce for dunking. Is anyone with me in thinking this a missed opportunity? The institution of the picnic needs to be done justice. It dates back to medieval Europe, where outdoor banquets of cooked meats, bread and pastries were served as pre-hunting feasts. It’s unlikely the word “picnic” (probably stemming from “piquer”, the French verb meaning “to pick”) was applied until the 17th century, when the tradition became for each attendee to contribute a homemade dish. And it’s from here that the American notion of the “potluck picnic” sprang: no one knew of what the spread would consist, lending the event an exciting culinary variety. Needless to say, a last-minute scour of the aisles in Sainsbury’s Local does little to honour the tradition. The quick fix finger food fetishists are at one end of the spectrum, and at the other sit a more decadent crowd frequenting the likes of Glyndebourne . Here you can hire a dining table, order three extravagant courses (think lobster salad, dressed crab, fillet of beef) and even a porter service. While I’m all for injecting a little more ceremony into picnics, this may be a step too far. Their charm lies in being a bit ad hoc: an impressive and spontaneous spread of food. A picnic is as much of a gastronomic opportunity as any meal eaten indoors, albeit simpler. In fact, in the simplicity of a picnic lies its beauty – leftovers, Scotch eggs, pork or gala pies , hard cheeses and unfussy cooked dishes brought from home. David advocates “cold escalopes of veal, fried in egg and breadcrumbs”; my personal favourite is a protein-rich salad of tinned tuna, butter beans, minced onion, lemon and thyme. Whatever your preference, keep it simple and learn to love your Tupperware. If you’re a seasoned picnicker how much effort do you go to between buying and making, keeping and transporting the food? My grandmother religiously took a raw onion on picnics, to be placed on wasp stings or even eaten (in the unlucky event of the sting being inside the victim’s mouth). Every food lover knows that homemade dishes are always more rewarding than shop-bought equivalents, and picnicking is no different. The American comedienne Minnie Pearl once said: “Kissing a man with a beard is a lot like going to a picnic. You don’t mind going through a little bush to get there.” The likes of our urban parks and common land may not be far off the beaten track, but Pearl does touch on the reward that picnics can bring with a little effort. This summer, wouldn’t it be great to reinstate the potluck feast into the noble picnic? Food & drink Mina Holland guardian.co.uk
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Electronics giant recruits specialist to track down hackers who stole personal details of more than 100 million online gamers Sony has hired private investigators to track down the computer hackers who stole the personal details of more than 100 million online gamers. Meanwhile the UK information commissioner’s office, which probes data breaches of this kind, said on Wednesday that it has contacted Sony and is making inquiries into whether to investigate the attack, which affected a number of UK gamers. The Japanese electronics giant has recruited a former special agent with the US Naval Investigative Service to work alongside security experts from Guidance Software and Protiviti in the aftermath of the online attack. The FBI has launched a separate investigation into the huge breach. The crisis at Sony deepened on Tuesday after the company admitted that the names, email addresses, phone numbers of 25m Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) customers were stolen in the attack, which also hit 77m PlayStation Network (PSN) gamers. Debit card records of 10,700 customers in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain were compromised in the attack, Sony said. Sony moved to placate growing fears over the security of its users after earlier declining a chance to testify in front of a US congressional hearing. A spokeswoman for the company admitted that an “outdated database” from 2007, featuring personal details belonging to 23,400 people outside the US, was broken into on 16 and 17 April – two days prior to the huge PSN attack. A Canadian law firm on Tuesday launched a $1bn (£600m) proposed class action lawsuit against Sony for breach of privacy. The company admitted that it did not known when or where the next attack would come. “They are hackers. We don’t know where they’re going to attack next,” the spokeswoman said. Another Sony spokeswoman said that there was no evidence that the stolen personal details had yet been used for financial gain. However, some people have contacted the Guardian saying that they have seen unusual activity on their account: one said that since the attack they had seen money regularly taken from their account via a cash machine in Florida. Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal wrote to Sony on Tuesday asking how many credit card accounts were compromised in the attack, which first came to light last week . Blumenthal said he would ask US attorney general Eric Holder to investigate whether the company’s handling of the breach makes it civilly or criminally liable to prosecution. The PlayStation Network remains offline after being shut down more than two weeks ago, when Sony first discovered the breach. PlayStation Sony Data and computer security Games Hacking United States Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
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