• Bash F5 for the latest updates • Send your tiki-taka to scott.murray@guardian.co.uk • Click here for tonight’s other scores Scott will be here from 7pm. Ish. In the meantime, you can enjoy this superb animation of Barcelona’s 5-0 win earlier this season and also take a look at Sid Lowe’s pre-match report: This time it’s personal. Barcelona’s coach, Josep Guardiola, finally exploded, sending a year of pent-up anger and frustration gushing forth as he responded to José Mourinho on the eve of the Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid. The question now is whether Mourinho will feel that he has won the mental battle, dragging Guardiola into territory that is not his own, or if Guardiola will feel a release at having at last had his say. And what a say it was. The days of a respectful silence, of turning the other cheek, are definitively over. This was more like the aggressive weigh-in before a prize fight, complete with an air of “you and me outside”. Mourinho had pricked Guardiola’s pride once too often by accusing him of complaining about referees who get decisions right. It was an accusation that Guardiola, normally so measured, was not prepared to let pass – the last straw after a year that has been a war of attrition. Guardiola was finally drawn into battle. “He called me Pep, so I answered,” Guardiola said at the end of a breathtaking 45 minutes. “Normally, he talks in general terms about a team, a club or a manager, but this time he named me. If he says: ‘Pep,’ I say: ‘Hey, José.’” He said more than “hey”. Sitting down in the press room at the Santiago Bernabéu, he said: “As Mourinho has spoken so candidly about me and spoken about me by name, and using tú [the informal form of you], then I will do the same.” He then asked which of the gathered cameras was “Mourinho’s camera” and began. Article continues here Champions League Real Madrid Barcelona Scott Murray guardian.co.uk
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UK responds hours after Malawi deports Fergus Cochrane-Dyet in row over leaked diplomatic cable Britain has ordered Malawi’s acting ambassador to leave the country, hours after the African state expelled Britain’s envoy over his criticism of its leader. Malawi, a former British colony, expelled Fergus Cochrane-Dyet for calling President Bingu wa Mutharika “autocratic and intolerant” in a leaked diplomatic cable, a Malawian government spokesman said on Wednesday. Britain responded by expelling Flossie Gomile Chidyaonga. The foreign secretary, William Hague, hinted at further consequences in a statement , saying he had asked UK officials “to review rapidly the full range of our wider relationship with Malawi”. Britain gives about £93m in aid to Malawi a year, according to the British government. Malawi’s Weekend Nation newspaper published excerpts of the cable dating from March, which said Mutharika was “becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism”. Diplomatic sources at the British mission confirmed the authenticity of the cable. Mutharika has been heavily criticised by rights groups for trying to suppress free speech. Malawi already faces a freeze in foreign assistance over its hostility to gay people and a media crackdown. Hague called Malawi’s decision to expel Cochrane-Dyet “totally unacceptable and unwarranted”. “Mr Cochrane-Dyet is an able and effective diplomat who has behaved with integrity throughout his posting to Lilongwe, and who retains the full confidence of the British government,” he said. “It is a worrying sign that the Malawian government is expending its energies in this way, rather than focusing on the real and substantial challenges facing it, including the need for improved governance,” he said. Cochrane-Dyet was given a formal letter of expulsion on Tuesday night, a government spokesman, Vuwa Kaunda, told Reuters. “Government has decided to expel High Commissioner Fergus Cochrane-Dyet because the tone in the leaked cable was not diplomatic … Government has lost confidence in him,” he said. The European Union said in a statement released in Lilongwe that it was “deeply concerned” and surprised at the expulsion. “The European Union believes that the decision of the government of Malawi, which is apparently based on unconfirmed media reports and perceived criticisms of the government, is unjustified and inappropriate,” it said. Britain had warned on 19 April that “there were likely to be consequences affecting the full range of issues in the bilateral relationship” if Malawi expelled Cochrane-Dyet. Malawi’s government is heavily dependent on foreign aid, with donor funding normally accounting for more than 40% of official receipts. Malawi William Hague guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The first time I mentioned Ilya Sheyman, the progressive Democrat running for the northern Chicago suburban seat held by GOP freshman Robert Dold, it was in a long and rambling post lashing out against conventional wisdom . When I finally got to Ilya, former Field Director for Democracy for America and, more recently, National Mobilization Director at MoveOn, who Blue America was urging to run against Dold, he quoted Paul Wellstone to me: “Politics is not just about power and money games, politics can be about the improvement of peoples lives, about lessening human suffering in our world and bringing about more peace and more justice.” Candidates with this kind of mindset are candidates Blue America is looking for to help solve the country’s problems. That’s why we’re enthusiastic about endorsing him today and why we’d like to invite you to meet him in the live forum in the comments section below. Until Dold’s vote to phase out Medicare and replace it with a pathetic voucher system so that the wealthiest Americans get more tax breaks, not many people had heard of him outside the 10th CD between Arlington Heights and Waukegan. But that triggered an angry reaction at Dold’s town hall meeting in Buffalo Grove last week and now Dold has become another right-wing poster boy for Paul Ryan’s dystopian vision of a mean, dark, reactionary America. Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.) cut a presentation on the federal deficit short at a town hall meeting he held last week, after audience members began firing questions at him about the Ryan budget and its changes to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Social Security, according to the Chicago newspaper the Daily Herald . Senior citizens in the audience expressed their discontent with turning Medicare into a voucher program, calling the change a “shell game” that would bog senior citizens down with uncertainty in dealing with private healthcare companies. And senior citizens are getting to know Dold better now that he’s been in Congress for 4 months. He may be trying to hide his support for dismembering Medicare but he’s surprisingly open about his contempt for Social Security and what he insists is the need to trim it back. Dold has been the perfect little rubber stamp for the radical House leadership, buying into all their harebrained schemes. “Rep. Dold and the right wing of the Republican Party,” Ilya confirmed “are hell-bent on dismantling Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and eliminating the foundations of the American Dream that have made millions of middle-class lives possible– and we can’t let them get away with it… The fact that he continues to advocate for cuts in Social Security benefits shows just how out of touch he is with the voters of the 10th District [and] his vote for the radical Republican budget that ends Medicare in order to give tax breaks to giant corporations and the wealthiest 2% of Americans should put to rest any notion that he actually cares about the deficit.” A few weeks ago a staffer for a DCCC-approved candidate called and asked if Blue America would endorse him. I asked to speak with him and, embarrassed, the staffer said he isn’t familiar enough with the issues to speak with the media yet but he’s learning them. That’s not the kind of candidates Blue America is looking for and that’s about as far from what Ilya Sheyman is all about as you can be. “I am in this race,” he told us, “because I believe that government and politics are about doing good. They’re about helping every man, woman, and child with a dream– and the willingness to work for it– achieve his or her potential… I’m sick and tired of a Democratic Party that on issue after issue seems to pre-negotiate, pre-triangulate, and pre-capitulate rather than standing up for the progressive values we know make a difference in real people’s lives.” This is what he’s been doing as a grassroots activist for years. We need people like Ilya in Congress to save us from Beltway Democrats who are chosen by the Establishment for one reason and one reason only: an ability to self-fund campaigns– i.e., whore themselves out to corporate interests. That isn’t Ilya: “I can’t wait to organize together with grassroots advocates in our community, and allies inside Congress, to pass a real jobs bill that will put millions of Americans back to work and pave the way to a new green energy economy. “Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s ‘Fairness in Taxation Act’ is a model of the kind of progressive legislation we should be fighting for, and I’m eager to work alongside her to bring back fairness to our tax code so we can invest in America again.” enlarge Dold was caught asking the Tea Party to not publicly endorse him in the general election because it could blow his cover as a fake moderate. Since getting into Congress with a narrow 51-49% win, in a district Obama won with 61% in 2008, Dold has blown his own cover, voting for Ryan’s toxic budget, voting to renew the Patriot Act and just marching along in lockstep to everything John Boehner and Eric Cantor wanted him for. This time Chicagoland voters get a real choice. Please help us welcome Ilya to the Blue America family and, if you can, please contribute to his campaign through our ActBlue page . An active admirer of Raul Grijalva’s and Keith Ellison’s Put America Back To Work Act, Ilya will be working inside the Progressive Caucus helping to advance real solutions for working families. It’s what he’;s campaigning on and it’s what has drawn him into politics. And it’s why Blue America has endorsed him.
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Bill O’Reilly wants WikiLeaks put on trial for revealing US extrajudicial indiscretions, while Hannity and Beck look to 2012 Bill O’Reilly Bill O’Reilly was horrified that the secret files on Guantánamo detainees – which exposed the grim facts that many of the prisoners were held for years on little or no evidence, that many detainees attempted suicide or went on hunger strike and that the 172 detainees who are still captive may never receive a fair trial – are now on public record ( view clip ). He insisted to regular guest Bernard Goldberg that the person or organisation responsible for leaking the documents (which he has decided is WikiLeaks, despite the New York Times’s attribution to a third party source ) be tried for espionage immediately. Goldberg tried to make the case to O’Reilly that unless WikiLeaks colluded with or actively encouraged whoever actually downloaded the secret documents, they should not be prosecuted for publishing the information – any more than the New York Times should be prosecuted. He went further to suggest that, like any other news organisation, WikiLeaks has a right and even a responsibility to make the information public. O’Reilly argued that he would never stoop so low on his news programme as to make information about what the American government is up to a matter of public record, just because the information was made available to him, particularly if it was damaging. OK, this is an ongoing situation. The press, some of the press is seizing upon it. If I got leaked WikiLeaks documents, I wouldn’t put them on air. I would tell everybody flat out I wouldn’t do it. Especially if it put the USA in any kind of dangerous situation – which the Guantánamo Bay thing can whip up people easily around the world. It is true that people get upset when they hear stories about innocent people being held for years without charge and subjected to harsh interrogation methods (or in the case of Mohammed Qahtani, leashed like a dog, sexually humiliated and forced to urinate on himself) while in US custody. Perhaps it was out of deference to the public’s sensitivity about these issues that O’Reilly chose not to mention a single word about the documents contents and focused instead on punishing the leaker. With this in mind, he explained to Goldberg that he accepted his point about news organisations and free speech and what have you, but still thought there must be some way of bringing a charge against WikiLeaks. I know what you’re saying, but now you have, it’s almost like the Rico situation you know with organised crime where they charge people with a Rico ongoing organised crime thing. You say that yourself, this [WikiLeaks] is an anti-American organisation that’s looking, searching and encouraging people to come to them with stolen purloined top secret documents. I think you can get them under that Rico thing. And I think you could probably issue … Now, is Sweden going to extradite over here? I don’t know whether they will or not. I think you can make a strong case that these people are practising espionage against this country. Goldberg reiterated that he didn’t think any such charge would be feasible and so ended the discussion. Sean Hannity 2012 can’t come fast enough for Sean Hannity who is exhilarated by the prospect of ousting President Obama in favour of a more palatable candidate who will not keep threatening to raise his taxes and who will not secondguess America’s role as the world’s super power ( view clip ). He discussed the field of GOP hopefuls with regular guest Dick Morris, who was surprisingly upbeat about the current lineup and particularly jazzed by Donald Trump’s entry into the race. I think Trump has just energised the whole election cycle and I think what people like more than anything else is that he’s so hardhitting and so not politically correct. Now, there does seem to be, and you acknowledge this in your column … I think he’s going to have a little bit of a problem with the base in the Republican party – conservatives. I think he’s going to have to talk about protectionism. He’s going to have to talk about once supporting healthcare and tax increases and once pro-choice. Morris suggests that the base might want to consider waiving the purity test in Trump’s case, because he is a billionaire, after all, and you could not ask for a better defender of the “free enterprise, economic laissez faire win system” that Morris believes has made America the great country it is. Hannity asks Morris about the rest of his top tier of candidates, which includes Mike Huckabee (“warm and knowledgeable”), Newt Gingrich (“amazing”) and Michele Bachmann (“Refreshing, intelligent and savvy”). Sadly, neither men believe that Sarah Palin will be able to run because she has had so much baggage foisted on her by the “outrageous sexist liberal media”. But aside from that, Morris concludes that “it’s one heck of a field.” See, I agree with you, those that have been dismissing this field to me … really, they’re just all in Obama worship-land. I agree he’s a weakened president and if food prices continue to rise and gas prices are rising and the economy’s not getting better … Well, you never know what might happen. But at the moment, anyway, Hannity is starting to believe that the road to 2012 may not be so rocky, after all. Glenn Beck Glenn Beck decided to take the high road this week and to put an end to the recent spat of rightwing infighting that he has found himself at the centre of ( view clip ). There is just too much chaos going on in the world for conservatives and Republicans to be fighting among themselves , and Beck is certainly not going to be accused by anyone of damaging the conservative cause or providing entertainment to liberals. It’s about the right-on-right infighting that’s happening right now. For liberals, that’s like girl-on-girl porn. It is! And the media is going to cover that whenever they can, because they think “oh look, we can show the right’s falling apart”. Beck has had a war of words with fellow Fox News host and potential GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who got a little upset recently when Beck accused him of being a “progressive” for supporting Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. He has also been feuding with Huffington Post blogger Andrew Breitbart, who is being sued for his involvement in the Shirley Sherrod incident , and is now claiming that Beck stole his material and threw him “under a bus” . Beck does not feel that he has wronged either party, and if he has, he certainly didn’t mean to. He claims that his criticism regarding the edited version of the Shirley Sherrod NAACP speech (which falsely depicted her as a racist and got her fired from her job at the department of agriculture) was directed at the NAACP and not Breitbart. As for Mike Huckabee, who responded to Beck’s insults last week by telling him to “stick to conspiracies that can’t be so easily de-bunked by facts”, Beck claims that just because Huckabee has done some objectionable things while he was governor of Arkansas, such as supporting a sales tax on internet goods, this does not mean that Beck meant any insult when he called him out for being a “progressive” – although Beck has equated that term in the past to being a Nazi. But if offence was taken, Beck is sorry for that – even though he is the one who is really being wronged. It’s almost like anyone who poses a threat to the establishment, somebody that calls a progressive a progressive, Lindsay Graham, and all of a sudden you’re going to get a tire iron shoved into your wheels. Isn’t that weird?! You’re getting shot from the front and the back! Beck realises, however, that no matter how much his fellow conservatives upset him, what unites them – the need to defeat President Obama in 2012 – will always supersede what divides them. Fox News US television Fox Republicans Barack Obama Donald Trump Mike Huckabee Michele Bachmann US elections 2012 US politics United States WikiLeaks Guantánamo Bay The Guantánamo files Newt Gingrich Sarah Palin Sadhbh Walshe guardian.co.uk
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Brockholes nature reserve opens by M6, offering weary travellers a break among bird hides and a floating visitor centre A green service station has opened beside one of the UK’s busiest motorways, offering a bird hide and floating “eco village” alongside tea and cake. The £10m project is located in a nature reserve flanked by the M6 at Preston, Lancashire, and is making a pitch for travellers “who don’t know the difference between a reed bed and an unmade bed”, as well as nature lovers. Housed in flooded gravel pits at Brockholes, it features one of the few floating buildings in the UK, a cluster of shingled, high-roofed structures inspired by houses in south-east Asia and the wetlands of southern Iraq. Offerings not usually available on motorway stop-offs include lavatories flushed with lake water and the curious cry of the water rail. “It sounds like someone being strangled,” says a cheerful caption beside a press-button display which fills the reception area with the water rail’s squawks , the piping of sedge warblers or skylark song. “We think there’s real potential here to re-engage people with nature,” says Lindsey Poole of Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside Wildlife Trust , which raised an unprecedented £10m for the project. “Our research found that too many people are almost scared of nature reserves, thinking they’re only for specialists. “We had more than 5,000 people at our opening weekend over Easter and the message was: it doesn’t matter a jot if you don’t know your Canada goose from your whimbrel. This is a place to enjoy, have a break and have fun.” The floating island, essential for a flood plain regularly inundated by the nearby River Ribble, is at least half made-up of shopping and eating places, with floor-to-ceiling views over the former sand and gravel quarries. Budget forecasts estimate that the “village” will be self-sustaining, with architect Adam Khan drawing on high roof spaces and floods of natural light to cut down on power bills. Successfully floated just before Easter, when the quarry was reflooded, the 400-tonne concrete pontoons can rise by up to four metres. The island has two drawbridges which are raised at night and it will eventually be surrounded by a fringe of reeds, bulrushes and other water plants. Named after badger colonies historically associated with the soft, sandy soil, Brockholes is less than four miles from the centre of Preston, as well as drawing potentially on the streams of north-south traffic on the M6 and other nearby motorways to Blackpool and the mid-Lancashire towns. The site was spotted back in 1992 by the trust’s chief executive, Anne Selby, and chair, Ted Jackson, when it was a working quarry, providing aggregate for the motorway network from which the floating village now hopes to profit. “To start with, we were thinking in terms of a straightforward nature reserve to join the 45 or so which we administer,” says Poole. “But the fact that the motorway runs right past the site gave us the confidence to go for something much bigger. “Our whole purpose is to protect the natural world for the future, but to do that, we need to involve as many people as possible. Here they all were, but rushing past.” The trust has 18,500 members and 800 active volunteers, of whom 100 are being deployed to Brockholes. The centre is free but with a £1 charge for an hour’s parking and is working with the nearby Tickle Trout services which offer more conventional services, such as fuel. Both are just off the M6′s junction 31 with the A59 at Preston. Travel and transport Green building Wildlife Birds Road transport United Kingdom Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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The Metropolitan police’s crackdown on student protesters seems part of a wider attempt to suppress legitimate dissent In what can only be described as a
Continue reading …The Washington Post Sunday Outlook section had an article from the President of American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks , making the conservative case for why wealthy people shouldn’t be taxed very much, and why it was so nasty for President Obama to make arguments about fairness in his criticisms of the Ryan budget, which radically lowers taxes for the richest 10 percent of Americans while raising taxes on everyone else , ends the guarantee of health care and nursing home care for seniors and those with disabilities, forces the average senior citizen to pay more than $6,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses, and cuts money for food stamps, health care for children, Pell Grants, and education funding by at least a third . Brooks’ argument boils down to the idea that if you are rich, it is probably because you earned the money by working harder and being smarter than most other people, and that this kind of merit doesn’t deserve higher taxes; that in fact we should reward merit. He goes on to say the kind of redistribution us lefties support “for the sake of fairness, it weakens free enterprise, lowers opportunity and impoverishes us in many ways.” It is an interesting, if very familiar (conservatives in America have been making it for about 230 years), argument, and it is important to discuss because it goes to the heart of what conservatives in this country believe. Brooks does a good job of including some nuance in his argument, acknowledging for example that luck might have something to do with becoming wealthy, and that government had some modest role to play in a modern society, but essentially, he is very open about what conservatives believe: if you are wealthy, it is almost always because you deserve to be; if you are poor or working class, that is probably what you deserve as well. I want to first make the case why the argument itself is wrong, and then move to a broader discussion of how this basic argument exposes how modern conservatism has gone so deeply off the rails. The meritocracy argument is most flawed in its basic conception: as Joan Williams points out in another WP Outlook article, only 18 percent of the income of the wealthy comes from actual work, and class mobility in this country is actually quite a bit lower than in other industrialized nations. Much of the wealth in this country is inherited, and even a great many people who go on to make money on their own do it because of the great schools, great connections, and early investments their wealthy parents were able to provide them. Beyond that, though, is the ugly but undeniable fact that a great deal of the wealth earned in 21st Century America’s economy comes not from inventing great new gadgets, or having the gumption to build and sell products many people want to buy, but is derived from speculative financial trades done by insiders: finance is now about 40 percent of our economy, and six banks control assets equal to 64 percent of our GDP. Some of the other big sources of wealth in our country come from big oil companies who get heavily subsidized by the government; military and other kinds of government contractors taking advantage of sweetheart deals and no-bid contracts; health insurance giants with near-monopolies in many of the states they do business in; and agribusiness giants heavily subsidized by the government. This is not meritocracy: it is crony capitalism, special interests making money off the rest of us. In fact, rather than contributing to society, these people and companies are leeching off it. To say they shouldn’t have to pay a reasonable share of taxes because of their merit, hard work, and entrepreneurial spirit is a pretty outrageous argument. But even for those outstanding companies and businesspeople making their money in a way that really does contribute to society, they also do owe something back. The technology companies and engineers making great new products we all like, the manufacturers and construction companies building things that add to our country’s infrastructure and economic health, the solar and wind power companies and the retrofitters and recyclers helping us create wealth and a greener society, the hard working small businesspeople who make every community in America a better place to live: these kinds of businesses are admirable, and they help our economy grow. But they get a great many things from the public sector, and have a responsibility to contribute a reasonable share back into it. Public roads and bridges get their goods to market; public schools give them educated employees; police and firefighters make the communities they operate in safer and more secure; government oversight keeps their competitors from cheating and stealing, making the marketplace more fair. Many businesspeople got student loans from the government, or start-up money from the SBA, or benefit from the internet that was created by government research. They don’t have to worry as much about their parents and grandparents because of Social Security and Medicare, and their workers are more productive because their disabled children are getting some help from government. To whom much is given, much is required, and these successful Americans have been given a great deal by their country, and they do owe something back. Here’s what conservatives don’t want to acknowledge: the point of progressive taxation isn’t redistribution of wealth, it is simply that we should all pay our fair share of taxes for this country we need to nourish, for all the things government needs to do to make a decent and secure society, and we should pay more if we can afford to. That is what progressives mean by fairness. It is a pretty basic concept, but selfishness and greed sometimes do make it hard to understand. Which leads me to my broader point about the nature of modern conservatism: The strident and angry complaints, repeated endlessly, about Obama’s fairness argument against a budget like Ryan’s show how completely devoid of balance Republican politicians and the conservative movement are. Expressing shock and outrage that Democrats would complain about the end of Medicare and Medicaid’s historic guarantees of coverage, and the decimation of programs like food stamps and Pell Grants, in order to fund tax breaks for the top 10 percent — because remember, this budget doesn’t actually do that much to reduce the deficit — is more than a little disingenuous. Because they don’t want to have an honest debate over whether programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Pell Grants should actually exist, they fall back on the same arguments against progressive taxation they have been using since time immemorial: we want class warfare, redistributionism, blah, blah, blah. Conservatives have always believed in the free market and small government, and they have always opposed progressive taxation, but these policy arguments have become a kind of fundamentalist religion. The free market is always right, government is always wrong, and any tax on anyone wealthy is always socialism. If there was any intellectual honesty here at all, they would just admit what their budget does — end Medicare and Medicaid, radically slash all money for student loans, etc. — rather than going away the country saying they are trying to “strengthen and preserve” these programs. These are big issues, and we should have the argument.
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US president says in TV statement he is puzzled at how questions over his place of birth have persisted The White House has released Barack Obama’s full birth certificate in an effort to finally put to rest what Obama called “carnival barkers” making the matter a distraction from the serious issues facing the US. In a televised statement, Obama said he had been “puzzled” at how questions over his place of birth had persisted since his election in 2008, declaring: “We do not have time for this kind of silliness.” “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Obama said. Donald Trump, the real estate dealer and television personality reportedly weighing a run for the Republican presidential nomination, immediately took credit for Obama’s announcement. “Today I’m very proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else was able to accomplish,” Trump told journalists at an airport in New Hampshire, after repeatedly raising the subject in recent interviews. Trump has claimed to have investigators in Hawaii researching Obama’s birth, although he has not given any details and a CNN investigation failed to find evidence of anyone working on Trump’s behalf. Hawaii’s registrar certified the new photocopy of the document provided to the White House on Monday. It states that Barack Hussein Obama II was born at 7.24pm on 4 August 1961 at the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu city. The certificate is signed by the delivery doctor, Obama’s mother and the district registrar. His mother, then 18, signed her name (Stanley) Ann Dunham Obama. The birth certificate records the president’s father as Barack Hussein Obama, age 25, born in Kenya, and lists his occupation as student and “race of father” as African. Obama’s mother is recorded as “Caucasian” under race, and as born in Wichita, Kansas. The White House also released a letter from the president requesting two certified copies of his original certificate of live birth. Also released was a letter from Loretta Fuddy, Hawaii’s director of health, approving the request. In a further statement, the White House said Obama had requested Hawaii’s state department of health to make an exception to allow the legal release of the certificate, and that it granted an exemption in part “because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting”. The decision to release the so-called long form certificate may end the convoluted conspiracy theories advanced by a small group who believed Obama was secretly born outside the United States – most likely in Kenya, his father’s home country – and smuggled back into the country. In an effort to quell the rumours the Obama campaign released a copy of his short-form birth certificate before the 2008 presidential election. But the rumours persisted, and a recent Gallup poll published by USA Today found that nearly one in four Americans think Obama was probably or definitely born in another country, while 20% said they didn’t know. Only 38% of Americans polled said Obama was definitely born in the US. Barack Obama Obama administration United States US politics Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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Boys aged 14 to 17 arrested in London over fire that shut and damaged motorway Police have arrested five teenage boys in connection with a fire in a scrap metal yard beneath the M1 in north London which forced the closure of the motorway for several days. The boys, aged between 14 and 17, were arrested on Wednesday morning in Barnet and Harrow, London, the Metropolitan police said. They were being questioned about the fire that severely damaged the raised section of the M1 on 15 April and about two other fires at the nearby Moat Mount Open Space between 14 and 16 April. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Roycroft said: “Although we are pursuing a number of active leads into these fires we would still ask that anyone who has any information about these crimes contact Barnet police.” The fire at the Apex Metal Recycling yard, close to Scratchwood Services, closed a seven-mile section of the motorway throughout the following weekend. Engineers, who initially battled to prevent the entire elevated roadway from collapsing, propped up the section with 200 tonnes of steel. The motorway partly reopened in both directions the following Monday. It was another three days before that part of the M1, between junctions one and four, was fully open again. The road could be closed again for permanent repairs. Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, has asked the Highways Agency and Network Rail to assess the scale of the threat posed by businesses located near main rail routes and motorways. Crime Peter Walker guardian.co.uk
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MPs call for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be impeached after his refusal to back Khamenei’s judgment A rift is emerging between Iran’s president and its supreme leader, prompting several members of the parliament to call for the impeachment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has not been seen in public for days. Ahmadinejad has refused to appear at the presidential palace since Friday in what is being seen as a reaction to Ayatollah Khamenei’s reinstating of a minister he initially “asked to resign”. Under pressure from Ahmadinejad the intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, a close ally of the supreme leader, stepped down on 17 April but was reinstated when Khamenei asked him in a letter to stay. The president has not publicly shown his support for that decision and on Wednesday he refused for the second time to chair a cabinet meeting in which Moslehi was present. Ahmadinejad also reportedly cancelled an official visit to the holy city of Qom prompting reactions among conservatives that “the president was sulking”. Under Iran’s constitution, the president is in charge of appointing cabinet ministers who will hold the ministerial office after the approval of the parliament but an unwritten law requires all officials to abide by the supreme leader. Iran’s opposition has speculated that Khamenei is worried about the increasing power of Ahmadinejad and especially his chief-of-staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei . Khamenei is believed to be particularly concerned about two key positions in the cabinet, the ministry of foreign affairs and the intelligence ministry, where he traditionally has influence. Ahmadinejad’s administration is also accused of losing billions of dollars of Iran’s oil revenues in recent years. Last December, Ahmadinejad sacked Manouchehr Mottaki without consulting Khamenei while the former foreign minister was in middle of an official visit to Africa. Mottaki was replaced by Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of the country’s atomic energy agency. After the dismissal of Mottaki, Ahmadinejad’s assertion of control over Iran’s foreign policy became clear. By attempting to dismiss Moslehi, some analysts believe that Ahmadinejad is entering a new phase of extending his control over key positions in the run-up to the March 2012 parliamentary election. Ahmadinejad enjoyed the full support of the supreme leader when Khamenei backed him in the disputed presidential elections in 2009. Independent commentators believe that Khamenei has realised “his mistake” by supporting a president who is seeking to surpass him. Since the first signs of split emerged, several members of the Iranian parliament have called on Ahmadinejad to publicly support Khamenei’s decision over Moslehi, a request he has so far declined. Some prominent figures in the powerful revolutionary guards have also asked the president to comply with the supreme leader. On Tuesday, Parliament News, a website run by Iranian MPs reported that “the plan to impeach Ahmadinejad has begun” in the parliament, with 12 MPs asking for him to be summoned before them. Conservatives believe that the increasing tension between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei stems from the growing influence of Mashaei, who is being groomed by Ahmadinejad as his possible successor. Mashaei, whose daughter married Ahmadinejad’s son, has become the most controversial figure in Iran, provoking harsh criticism from conservatives by favouring a greater cultural openness and opposing greater clerical involvement in the regime. Mashaei, who champions a nationalist narrative of Iran’s history, was himself forced to step down as Iran’s first vice-president in July 2009 when Khamenei intervened in an unprecedented move and said in a letter that “the regime’s expediency” required Mashaei to go. Ahmadinejad, to the surprise of many, then appointed Mashaei as his chief-of-staff instead. Khamenei has tried to play down his confrontation with Ahmadinejad in recent days. In an official visit to the southern province of Fars last Saturday, he praised the achievements made by Ahmadinejad’s government and told the crowd he only intervenes in the government’s affairs when he feels that “the expediency is ignored”. He added: “I won’t allow as long as I’m alive, an iota of deviation of this massive movement of the nation.” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Iran Middle East Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
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