Doctors are prescribing antidepressants rather than providing counselling and other treatments Mothers with postnatal depression are being failed by the National Health Service, which is ignoring international guidelines on the condition. Researchers from the charity 4Children surveyed all health trusts in England and Wales to find out what sort of treatment was being received by the one in 10 new mothers who suffers from the condition. They found that, of those whose symptoms were recognised at all by their GPs, the vast majority were being prescribed antidepressants, against guidance from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which recommends “talking therapies” – counselling and cognitive behavioural treatments – for mild and moderate cases of the so-called “baby blues”. The survey, by parenting club Bounty on behalf of 4Children, also found that few health authorities were collecting information on the prevalence or severity of postnatal depression, while others seemed to have only a patchy understanding of the issue. There were vast disparities between those who did hold information – two primary care trusts claimed they had had only one case in the past year, while another reported 1,350 cases. Only 9% of health trusts were keeping track of the condition in their area. “That’s pretty unlikely given the one in 10 figure that is widely accepted for postnatal depression,” said Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children. “This is not a rare condition. You’d think it might have rung an alarm bell with them, but what is perhaps more astonishing is that the Department of Health holds no statistics at all.” Longfield said that the results of the report were shocking and showed that postnatal depression was not being taken seriously: “It just reveals so much in terms of lack of empathy and sympathy for these people. It’s a complete disregard for their health and wellbeing. “It seems that, from the Department of Health’s point of view, it’s not an issue; they don’t even ask the questions or collect the information. It’s seen as an everyday little personal issue and GPs, I’m afraid, are not proving very sympathetic to those mothers that are coming through their door. At the end of the day, no one is taking it seriously.” Of more than 2,000 mothers questioned, 70% were given antidepressants when they approached their doctor. The Nice guidelines recommend early diagnosis and quick access to treatment to limit the damaging effect postnatal depression has on the baby, the partner and other children in the family. The international health body states that psychological therapies should be offered as an alternative to antidepressants. “The Nice guidelines are clear, just as it’s clear they are being flouted. This report shows a massive default towards antidepressants when proper care is within the gift of health professionals,” said Longfield. Several celebrity mothers, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Sadie Frost and Zoe Ball, have testified to the damaging effects of postnatal depression: “At my lowest, I was a robot. I just didn’t feel anything,” said Paltrow. One woman, identified only as Natalie, told the researchers: “I was concerned that I was losing weight, not eating, not myself. The GP was dismissive. He said: ‘You’ve just had a baby. It’s just your hormones. Antidepressants will help you get through it.’ I felt pushed out of his surgery with a prescription in my hand that I had said I didn’t want. “I’m the single mother of three children and need to be alert if I am to look after them properly,” she said. “Eventually, I went to the health centre just to get some food vouchers. The health visitor recognised the symptoms of postnatal depression immediately and organised counselling for me. After four weeks I started to feel a great improvement, but it was sheer luck that I finally got help.” For others, help came too late. Jess Stoneham, 36, suffered postnatal depression after the birth of her baby three years ago. It contributed, she says, to the breakup of her marriage. “I knew things were very different from the first time round, but everyone just said I was more tired because I had a toddler as well as a baby. It’s true I was shattered, too tired to stand up for myself – certainly with everyone, from the doctor to the health visitor to my mother, telling me I would be fine. “Well, I wasn’t fine, but no one recognised the symptoms and it makes me really sad that my son had to be without a mother for the first year of his life because I, effectively, was a wreck. It didn’t have to be like that.” Postnatal depression Depression Mental health NHS Health Women Health policy Tracy McVeigh guardian.co.uk
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Proposed changes will play into the hands of greedy developers, say conservation groups Strict rules compelling house builders to include affordable homes in private developments will be scrapped under the government’s controversial changes to the planning system. The revelation has raised fresh questions about the proposals, which ministers claim are vital for tackling the housing crisis. They have already drawn fire from conservation groups, who fear they will lead to an increase in building on greenfield sites. The National Planning Policy Framework, which will edit down more than 1,000 pages of legislation to just 52, removes a threshold under what are known as section 106 agreements, requiring that private developments of 15 properties or more contain an element of affordable housing. It also abandons stipulations that councils set a target for the number of affordable properties they intend to be built in their area and, on larger sites, to establish the proportion of private and affordable housing needed. Instead, the new framework says only that planning authorities should “use an evidence base to ensure that their local plan [in which a local authority sets out its building strategy] meets the full requirements for market and affordable housing in the housing market area”. The National Housing Federation, which represents England’s housing associations and has been broadly supportive of the framework, warned that the combined impact of the measures will represent a major setback for affordable home building. It said more than half of the 50,000 affordable homes built each year in England are built under section 106 agreements, worth more than £2bn annually. There are also concerns that a reduction in mixed housing developments will see poorer people “ghettoised” in less attractive areas. “While we broadly support the government’s planning framework and its potential to help get more homes built, there are serious dangers that it could let private developers off the hook in terms of delivering thousands of affordable homes on their developments,” said David Orr, the federation’s chief executive. “With no targets for local authorities to meet in terms of building affordable housing in their area, the new framework could see these section 106 deals ripped up in future and many developments built without any social homes at all. This would be a disaster for the millions of people stuck on housing waiting lists.” The federation estimates there are 700,000 people on waiting lists in rural England. But critics fear the framework plays too much into the hands of property developers who favour building expensive properties on greenfield sites. The issue is likely to cause heated debate at this week’s Tory party conference. Many backbenchers are nervous about the strategy. John Redwood appeared to criticise the government’s plans recently when he attacked the “myths” of housing shortage on his blog. Redwood claimed “there were 738,414 empty homes in the UK in 2010 – there will be around the same number today. Yet I read we are short of houses and need to build more.” The issue has angered conservation groups, with many members considered traditional Tory voters. More than 100,000 people have signed a National Trust petition urging the government to rethink the reforms. “There is a desperate need for new, affordable housing, especially for young families in areas of the country where the number of households is growing rapidly,” said Ben Cowell, the trust’s director of external affairs. “But this fact alone cannot be used to overturn the need for a properly balanced approach to decision-making.” Cowell warned that the scrapping of the affordable housing threshold “could do a huge disservice to the provision of proper levels of housing”. A spokeswoman for the Department for Communities and Local Government defended the plan to scrap the affordable housing threshold and target. “Five million people are languishing on social housing waiting lists,, the average age of a first-time buyer is 37 and house building has fallen to its lowest level for any peacetime year since 1924,” she said. “The draft framework will help to deliver more affordable housing by requiring councils, in consultation with the community, to make sure local plans meet the full requirements for market and affordable housing so that it caters for the demand in their area.” Planning policy Social housing Communities Housing Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
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Charities and voluntary groups are sounding alarm bells at the number of people going hungry as benefits fall and prices rise Stuck around the walls of the church hall at St Paul’s in the heart of Leicester is a series of green laminated signs. There’s one for the Centre Project and another for The Bridge. There’s the Welcome Project, the Leicester Aids Support Service, the St Paul’s over-60s group and more besides. Stacked up tidily in front of each one, awaiting collection, is food. Lots of it. Boxes of fresh vegetables sit alongside bags of freshly baked bread; jars of seafood pasta sauce, still under plastic wrap, are tucked in alongside sacks of rice. Each one of these heaps, obtained by the Leicester branch of the food waste charity FareShare, is a marker for chronic hunger; a profound hunger that, as the economic forecasts worsen and the Conservative party meets in Manchester this weekend to argue over what can be done about it, is only deepening. “There’s a big increase in demand,” says John Russell of the Centre Project, a drop-in project in the heart of Leicester supporting people in need. “We used to feed 30 or 40 people a week. Now it’s 70 or 80.” Housing provision and benefit rules have changed, he says, and that’s creating need. Keith Harrold of Project 5000 in Loughborough, which runs a hot food service once a week from a local church, agrees. “People are struggling. Supermarket prices are shooting up and they aren’t coping.” Yvonne Welford, who runs the over-60s group for St Paul’s, is seeing the same picture. “There’s been a major increase in demand, especially in the last six months, and I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse.” Poverty has al ways been a fact of life, even in good times. But FareShare is now seeing a serious growth in the number of people without the resources to feed themselves properly that is, experts say, without precedent in modern Britain. All of the organisations in Leicester that are supplied by FareShare describe themselves as being dependent on the charity, which obtains food from manufacturers and supermarkets that might otherwise end up rotting in landfill sites, and supplies it to groups helping those in need. Founded in 2004, the charity works from 17 sites in the UK and shifts 3,600 tonnes of food a year, worth more than £8m. In the past 12 months the number of people it feeds has risen from 29,000 to 35,500. The number of organisations signed up to receive food has risen from 600 to 700. And 42% of those organisations are recording increases of up to 50% in demand for their services. John Willetts, a former NHS trust chief executive and now the volunteer project director for FareShare in Leicester, said: “It’s a constant ramping up in demand all the time. The volume of food we’re distributing has risen from 41
Continue reading …Libyan fighting in Sirte leading to humanitarian crisis, say aid agencies
October 1, 2011 No Comment
Aid workers enter Gaddafi’s hometown as civilians flee amid fighting between rebels and forces loyal to ousted dictator Aid workers have made it into Muammar Gaddafi’s besieged hometown of Sirte amid fears that a humanitarian crisis could unfold amid continued heavy fighting between revolutionary forces and fighters loyal to the ousted dictator. The arrival of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Saturday came as hundreds of people continued to stream out of Sirte and forces allied to the interim government intensified their shelling of the coastal city. Fighters from eastern Libya have seized control of Sirte’s first residential district and a hotel where pro-Gaddafi snipers were based, according to a rebel commander. “There is heavy fighting going on in the streets of Sirte right now,” said Mustafa al-Rubaie. “The enemy is besieged from the south, east and west, but it’s still in possession of highly sophisticated weapons and a large amount of ammunition.” Gaddafi forces were also in control of strategic positions inside the city, including high-rise blocks where snipers are positioned, slowing the advance of the revolutionary forces. “The plan is that the eastern and western forces will meet in the middle of Sirte,” Rubaie said. “When we reach this point, we will celebrate the liberation of Sirte.” Rubai said although the fighters had surrounded Sirte from all sides, a path out had been left for civilians who still wanted to leave the city. A truckload of supplies and two cars carrying European ICRC workers arrived at a checkpoint manned by fighters loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC). Some NTC commanders said they would try to allow the foreign workers safe passage into the city but shelling continued. An ICRC worker, Karen Strugg, told Reuters her colleagues had made it inside. “They’re inside delivering medical aid. And they want to come out,” said Strugg from a road leading into the centre. A doctor at a frontline hospital said a family of four from Sirte had been killed while driving toward the revolutionaries’ positions. It was unclear who killed them. Dr Nuri Naari said the bodies of two children and their parents were brought to his makeshift hospital early this morning, adding that they had died from machine-gun fire. After weeks of fighting inside Sirte, forces loyal to the NTC say they now hold positions about three miles (5km) from the city centre. The Libyan defence ministry has said the fighters also seized Sirte’s port, military base and airport last week. Sirte is one of only two main remaining strongholds still held by pro-Gaddafi forces and the NTC has failed to take it with several assaults in the past two weeks. The UN and humanitarian organisations such as the ICRC have warned that there may be civilian casualties in the city and that living conditions are dire. Doctors at a field hospital outside Sirte told Reuters that one woman had died of malnutrition there, and that they had seen other cases of malnutrition. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Africa guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Libyan fighting in Sirte leading to humanitarian crisis, say aid agencies
October 1, 2011 No Comment
Aid workers enter Gaddafi’s hometown as civilians flee amid fighting between rebels and forces loyal to ousted dictator Aid workers have made it into Muammar Gaddafi’s besieged hometown of Sirte amid fears that a humanitarian crisis could unfold amid continued heavy fighting between revolutionary forces and fighters loyal to the ousted dictator. The arrival of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Saturday came as hundreds of people continued to stream out of Sirte and forces allied to the interim government intensified their shelling of the coastal city. Fighters from eastern Libya have seized control of Sirte’s first residential district and a hotel where pro-Gaddafi snipers were based, according to a rebel commander. “There is heavy fighting going on in the streets of Sirte right now,” said Mustafa al-Rubaie. “The enemy is besieged from the south, east and west, but it’s still in possession of highly sophisticated weapons and a large amount of ammunition.” Gaddafi forces were also in control of strategic positions inside the city, including high-rise blocks where snipers are positioned, slowing the advance of the revolutionary forces. “The plan is that the eastern and western forces will meet in the middle of Sirte,” Rubaie said. “When we reach this point, we will celebrate the liberation of Sirte.” Rubai said although the fighters had surrounded Sirte from all sides, a path out had been left for civilians who still wanted to leave the city. A truckload of supplies and two cars carrying European ICRC workers arrived at a checkpoint manned by fighters loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council (NTC). Some NTC commanders said they would try to allow the foreign workers safe passage into the city but shelling continued. An ICRC worker, Karen Strugg, told Reuters her colleagues had made it inside. “They’re inside delivering medical aid. And they want to come out,” said Strugg from a road leading into the centre. A doctor at a frontline hospital said a family of four from Sirte had been killed while driving toward the revolutionaries’ positions. It was unclear who killed them. Dr Nuri Naari said the bodies of two children and their parents were brought to his makeshift hospital early this morning, adding that they had died from machine-gun fire. After weeks of fighting inside Sirte, forces loyal to the NTC say they now hold positions about three miles (5km) from the city centre. The Libyan defence ministry has said the fighters also seized Sirte’s port, military base and airport last week. Sirte is one of only two main remaining strongholds still held by pro-Gaddafi forces and the NTC has failed to take it with several assaults in the past two weeks. The UN and humanitarian organisations such as the ICRC have warned that there may be civilian casualties in the city and that living conditions are dire. Doctors at a field hospital outside Sirte told Reuters that one woman had died of malnutrition there, and that they had seen other cases of malnutrition. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Africa guardian.co.uk
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Temperature of 29.9C in Gravesend, Kent, is hottest since records began, beating previous high set in 1985 It’s official: it is the hottest 1 October since records began 101 years ago. As sunbathers packed the beaches across the country, the Met Office in London confirmed the previous record for 1 October was broken at 13.27 in Gravesend, Kent, when a temperature of 29.5C was recorded. But temperatures at this time of the year peak at around 2pm and by mid-afternoon Gravesend was basking in scorching heat of 29.9C. The previous record for England was set in 1985 in March, Cambridgeshire, when temperatures for 1 October reached 29.4C. Lauren Cherry, manager at the Rum Puncheon in Gravesend, said it was overwhelmed by the spike in custom on account of the weather. The pub overlooks the Thames and Tilbury docks and has a large outdoor terrace and patio area. “We were absolutely rammed to capacity,” she said. “Everyone is talking about how shocked they are at the weather for this time of the year. Normally we would do about 10 to 15 lunches, but today we did more than 50.” A forecaster at the Met Office said Wales had also set a new national record with temperatures of 28.2C in Hawarden. Saturday’s glorious sunshine has meant three consecutive record-beating days. On Friday, Cambridge set a new record temperature for the hottest ever 30 September with 29.2C, beating the 27.8C set in Maidenhead, Berkshire, in 1908. And on Thursday Kew Gardens in west London set another record with 28.8C – the highest ever 29 September temperature, beating the mark of 27.8C set in York in 1985. Sunbathers packed the beaches and parks across the country as the nation made the most of the exceptional weather. In Brighton, tourism officials reported a 30% increase in people clicking on to the city’s official tourist website, visitbrighton , and calls to the Brighton visitor information centre rose by more than 50%. The unseasonally warm weather is expected to continue on Sunday, although rain has already broken the dry spell in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Brighton tourism councillor Geoffrey Bowden said the boost in visitors was a “welcome fillip” at the end of the summer season and helped support the 13,500 jobs dependent on tourism in Brighton. He said: “Brighton and Hove always looks brilliant in the sunshine and it’s no surprise that visitors are heading our way to make the most of it.” The value of tourism to a resort like Brighton is £732m. More than 8.5 million people visit the East Sussex city a year. Weather Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Temperature of 29.9C in Gravesend, Kent, is hottest since records began, beating previous high set in 1985 It’s official: it is the hottest 1 October since records began 101 years ago. As sunbathers packed the beaches across the country, the Met Office in London confirmed the previous record for 1 October was broken at 13.27 in Gravesend, Kent, when a temperature of 29.5C was recorded. But temperatures at this time of the year peak at around 2pm and by mid-afternoon Gravesend was basking in scorching heat of 29.9C. The previous record for England was set in 1985 in March, Cambridgeshire, when temperatures for 1 October reached 29.4C. Lauren Cherry, manager at the Rum Puncheon in Gravesend, said it was overwhelmed by the spike in custom on account of the weather. The pub overlooks the Thames and Tilbury docks and has a large outdoor terrace and patio area. “We were absolutely rammed to capacity,” she said. “Everyone is talking about how shocked they are at the weather for this time of the year. Normally we would do about 10 to 15 lunches, but today we did more than 50.” A forecaster at the Met Office said Wales had also set a new national record with temperatures of 28.2C in Hawarden. Saturday’s glorious sunshine has meant three consecutive record-beating days. On Friday, Cambridge set a new record temperature for the hottest ever 30 September with 29.2C, beating the 27.8C set in Maidenhead, Berkshire, in 1908. And on Thursday Kew Gardens in west London set another record with 28.8C – the highest ever 29 September temperature, beating the mark of 27.8C set in York in 1985. Sunbathers packed the beaches and parks across the country as the nation made the most of the exceptional weather. In Brighton, tourism officials reported a 30% increase in people clicking on to the city’s official tourist website, visitbrighton , and calls to the Brighton visitor information centre rose by more than 50%. The unseasonally warm weather is expected to continue on Sunday, although rain has already broken the dry spell in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Brighton tourism councillor Geoffrey Bowden said the boost in visitors was a “welcome fillip” at the end of the summer season and helped support the 13,500 jobs dependent on tourism in Brighton. He said: “Brighton and Hove always looks brilliant in the sunshine and it’s no surprise that visitors are heading our way to make the most of it.” The value of tourism to a resort like Brighton is £732m. More than 8.5 million people visit the East Sussex city a year. Weather Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
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New revelations have emerged about the notorious Oxford club, including claims of fist fights, cocaine and trashed restaurants The chancellor of the exchequer endeavours to present a sober and serious image as a man who can steer us through crisis. But it seems that George Osborne was not always so buttoned up. New details have emerged of Osborne’s wild university days as a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club. The all-male dining club, which the prime minister, David Cameron, also belonged to as an undergraduate, is open only to sons of aristocratic families or the super-rich and is famed for its riotous behaviour. A 1992 photograph of Osborne in tie and tails with his fellow members, including the multimillionaire financier Nat Rothschild, has been much reproduced. Osborne, who belonged to the Bullingdon while studying modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the early 1990s, has never spoken in detail of what he got up to as a member, preferring to draw a veil over his youthful antics. But in an interview with the Observer Magazine , one of Osborne’s Bullingdon contemporaries has spoken for the first time about some of the astonishing escapades to which the future chancellor bore witness. They include an alcohol-fuelled party which degenerated into a fist fight, allegations of cocaine use by another member of the club, and an evening during which the members trashed a Michelin-starred restaurant. The contemporary, who asked not to be named, said that on one evening in 1992, shortly after the famous photograph of Osborne was taken, the Bullingdon members boarded a double-decker bus to Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Rothschild family seat. “It started to get really out of control,” he said. “I remember Nat [Rothschild] being comatose on the lawn, being tended to by a butler who was applying cold towels to his forehead, trying to bring him round. One of the guys got into a fist fight because he was Italian and a football match was on and there’d been some racial taunting. Plates had been thrown. As usual, it escalated.” The source added: “I think George was mildly alarmed. He was enjoying the food and wine, enjoying watching the football and I just remember him looking at me with raised eyebrows at what was going on. I never saw him take drugs.” On a different occasion, with Osborne also present, the source recalled one Bullingdon member “trying to snort lines of coke from the top of an open-top bus and the bus was speeding along so it kept blowing away. I said to him: ‘You’re stupid, it’s blowing away,’ and his response was: ‘I can afford it.’” Another time, Osborne and the Bullingdon went for a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Berkshire where, coincidentally, the comedian Lenny Henry and his then wife, Dawn French, were having dinner. The source said: “A couple of the boys started getting obnoxious and talking about their family wealth and Lenny Henry said: ‘Actually, sod off.’ There was a slight altercation when a member put a cigar out on someone else’s lapel and it turned into a fist fight and furniture was broken. It was horrible, horrible. We used to smash everything up and then pay a cheque saying ‘It’s OK, we can pay for it.’” Unlike many of his cabinet colleagues (including William Hague, a fellow Magdalen alumnus), there has never been any sense until now that Osborne was particularly involved in student politics. But the Observer can reveal that, as a 19-year-old, he did stand for the post of entertainments representative in his college junior common room. In fact, his electioneering was so enthusiastic that his rival for the position wrote a letter of complaint to the JCR vice-president outlining the future Conservative MP’s underhand tactics. The letter, dated 15 November 1990, accuses Osborne of “electorate malpractice” on several counts including “the dissemination of five different wordings of posters, instead of the mandatory two” and “the attempt on the part of Mr George Osborne to pervert the democratic process by electioneering in the JCR”. The letter was written by Rupert Harding, who won the election. Harding, who now runs a language school in Finland, has little memory of the event. Contacted by the Observer , he said: “Perverting the democratic process I think meant going up to people after Neighbours and asking them to vote for him.” Although Osborne no doubt abandoned such dirty politics as soon as he was elected the Conservative MP for Tatton in 2001, his friendship with Nat Rothschild continues to this day. In October 2008, Rothschild claimed that Osborne had tried to solicit a £50,000 donation from the Russian aluminium magnate Oleg Deripaska while on Deripaska’s yacht in Corfu along with Rothschild and the Labour peer Lord Mandelson. Such a move would have been a violation of the law against political donations by foreign citizens. A formal complaint was made to the Electoral Commission, which rejected the claims. George Osborne University of Oxford Elizabeth Day guardian.co.uk
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• Email scott.murray@guardian.co.uk with all your thoughts • Press F5 to refresh this page or use our auto-refresher • Click here for all the stats you will ever need • You want the latest scores? Click here While we wait: Why not take a trip down memory lane with this week’s Merseyside-derby-related Joy of Six ? Referee: Martin Atkinson (W Yorkshire) Liverpool drop Jordan Henderson for the first time in the league this season: Reina, Kelly, Carragher, Skrtel, Jose Enrique, Kuyt, Lucas, Adam, Downing, Suarez, Carroll. Subs: Doni, Gerrard, Henderson, Coates, Spearing, Flanagan, Bellamy. Louis Saha makes his first start of the season for Everton, who relegate captain Phil Neville to the bench: Everton: Howard, Hibbert, Jagielka, Distin, Baines, Coleman, Fellaini, Rodwell, Osman, Cahill, Saha. Subs: Mucha, Bilyaletdinov, Drenthe, Stracqualursi, Neville, Barkley, Vellios. Today’s brouhaha begins at: 12.45pm. But while the glory days have gone, the Merseyside derby has continued to deliver, the most consistently entertaining stramash in English football. Goals, red cards, thundering challenges, last-minute winners, outrageous tackles, penalties, kicks, stamps, slaps, fistfights, refereeing controversies, goalkeeping calamities, simulations of decadent nights hoovering up the jazz salt: there’s usually something for everyone. Thoughts turn today to Kenny Dalglish’s last involvement in a Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. That was, of course, the famous 4-4 draw in the fifth round of the FA Cup in 1991. Less than 48 hours after the final whistle, Kenny was gone, the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster finally taking its terrible toll. His departure signalled the end of an era for Liverpool. Everton, too, were on their way down from the heights of the 1980s, during which the pair had taken turns to be the best team in the land. That seems a long time ago now, as Louise Taylor reports. Premier League 2011-12 Everton Liverpool Premier League Scott Murray guardian.co.uk
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Palestinian Authority accuses Congress of holding back aid to punish Mahmoud Abbas’ bid for UN statehood The Palestinian Authority has accused the US of “collective punishment”, after the US Congress blocked $200m (£128m) in aid in response to President Mahmoud Abbas’ bid for UN statehood. The decision to freeze the payments was reportedly made by three congressional committees on 18 August, before Abbas’ planned bid for statehood recognition at the UN the following month. The funds, intended for food aid, health care, and infrastructure projects, were supposed to have been transferred within the US financial year, which ends today. The Obama administration is reportedly negotiating with congressional leaders to unlock the aid. “It is another kind of collective punishment which is going to harm the needs of the public without making any positive contribution,” Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib told the Independent. “It is ironic to be punished for going to the United Nations.” USAid has already started scaling back its aid operations in the West Bank and Gaza, and there are fears it may be forced to end all humanitarian work and distribution of financial support to the Palestinian Authority by January. There are also fears the move could lead to a security crisis in the Palestinian territories. “Security co-operation with the Palestinians is excellent at the moment and we do not want to jeopardise that,” a senior Israeli military official official told the Independent. Republican Gary Ackerman, member of the House sub-committee on the Middle East and South Asia, told a meeting of representatives and leaders of Jewish organisations outside the UN headquarters on Monday that “there may need to be a total cut-off of all aid to the Palestinians for pursuing this course of action which is very dangerous and ill advised.” Former president Bill Clinton recently warned Congress to leave the issue of aid to the Obama administration. He said: “Everybody knows the US Congress is the most pro-Israel parliamentary body in the world. They don’t have to demonstrate that.” A UN security council panel on admitting new members to the UN met to discuss the Palestinian bid for the first time on Friday. After the meeting, Lebanese UN ambassador Nawaf Salam said the committee unanimously agreed to hold further meetings next week. Palestinian territories Middle East Mahmoud Abbas United Nations United States Aid Barack Obama guardian.co.uk
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