Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko meet evacuees in Asahi city, where 13 people died in the earthquake and tsunami Japan’s emperor has made his first trip to the disaster zone since last month’s earthquake and tsunami. Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited two evacuation shelters in Asahi city, near the Pacific coast. They knelt on mats and spoke quietly with evacuees, who bowed deeply. Some wiped tears from their eyes. Thirteen people died in the city and 3,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. The emperor and empress plan additional visits to other tsunami-affected areas in coming weeks. More than 26,000 people are believed to have died in the disaster. About 11,250 bodies have been recovered so far. Nearly 140,000 people are still living in shelters after losing their homes or being advised to evacuate because of concerns about radiation leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Officials have insisted the situation at the crippled plant is improving, but a series of mishaps and aftershocks of the 9.0-magnitude quake have impeded work in clearing debris and restoring disabled cooling systems. The setbacks have angered and frustrated residents. “I’m physically and mentally worn out,” said Yoshihisa Kato, a 66-year-old noodle shop owner in Kawamata, about 28 miles north-west of the plant. “I’ve been going to funerals almost every day because many elderly people in my neighbourhood have died due to shocks and exhaustion,” said Kato, whose business has dried up as residents have fled the area. Japan this week raised the severity level of the nuclear crisis, putting it on a par with Chernobyl, although the radioactivity emitted is one-tenth of that in the 1986 disaster. Japan disaster Japan guardian.co.uk
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• Anger at executive pay deals in wake of gulf disaster • Protest includes fishing boat owners and climate activists • Follow Andrew Clark ( @clarkaw ) on Twitter for latest updates BP executives faced angry protesters as shareholders prepared to vote at its annual meeting in London, which is taking place a few days before the first anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Fishermen and women from the Gulf coast affected by the spill, some of whom had bought BP shares to allow them to attend the annual meeting, joined climate change activists and artists protesting against the oil company. Institutional investors, angry at what they claim are excessive executive pay deals , urged shareholders to vote against the remuneration package. As BP’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, described a year of “unprecedented crisis” and remembered the families of the 11 who died in the explosion, protesters spoke of their lost livelihoods. “I am coming to articulate the anger of thousands of Gulf coast residents whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed while the BP board continues to prosper,” said Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation fisherwoman from Texas, one of several who bought shares in BP in order to attend the meeting at the ExCeL centre. She was ejected from the conference centre lobby, having covered her face with a dark syrup intended to resemble oil. “This is the only thing they understand,” she said. The explosion last April caused a spill that polluted fishing areas and fouled hundreds of miles of beaches. Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association, said he planned to tackle the company over its compensation process, claiming many oystermen have been denied payments or given insufficient payouts. “We’ve not been made whole: our fishing grounds have been depleted, our oysters are dead and we’re not receiving the funds we need to support and sustain ourselves,” Encalade said. “We’re seeing money going everywhere but at ground zero. We’re the communities at ground zero – the first to be put out of work and we’re going to be the last to be able to go back to work and sustain ourselves.” Tracy Kuhns and Mike Roberts from Grande Isle in Louisiana own a shrimping boat. They have not fished since the spill. They are reluctant to go out when the season starts next month because they are not sure it is safe, even though most of the waters have been declared open. Kuhns, executive director of Louisiana Bayoukeeper, which works to protect the Gulf habitat, said: “The oil is still there – it’s just sunk to the bottom.” Roberts added: “Opening the fishing grounds was just a way for BP to limit their liability.” The couple put in a compensation claim for $100,000 (£60,000), based on typical earnings for a poor season, but received only $6,000 from BP. They worked for BP on its clean-up programme, but that lasted only three months, so money is tight. Roberts said that even if fishing resumed, “the market is ruined because no one thinks it’s safe. People have common sense.” BP shareholders have been urged to vote against the company’s remuneration report by Pirc, the corporate governance watchdog, over “excessive” payouts to outgoing executives. Tony Hayward, BP’s former chief executive, who got £1m compensation for loss of office, has share awards yet to vest worth as much as £8m. Glass Lewis, a large US shareholder advisory firm, is also urging a vote against BP’s report and accounts. The Association of British Insurers (ABI), which does not issue voting advice, warned investors of possible concerns about BP’s discretionary use of share-based bonus awards. The ABI has issued an “amber top” alert to fellow institutional investors, warning them to examine the issues surrounding bonuses of more than £100,000 awarded to two of BP’s top executives – its finance director Byron Grote and downstream chief Iain Conn. Critics view the payments as inappropriate in the wake of the environmentally catastrophic oil spill. BP argues that the executives met targets in their particular roles and that neither played any part in its offshore exploration division. Members of first nation tribes in Alberta, northern Canada, where BP is developing its oil sands projects, also staged a demonstration. Melina Laboucan-Massimo, from the Lubicon first nation, said that her father, a hunter, has started to find tumours inside animals he had killed. She blames the use of natural gas by BP in its “in-situ” projects, where steam is used to extract oil from the sands, for polluting the air and water. Laboucan-Massimo accused BP of not explaining to shareholders the full environmental impact of these projects. BP Oil Oil and gas companies Tony Hayward Carl-Henric Svanberg Executive pay and bonuses Energy industry BP oil spill Pollution Oil spills Oil Tim Webb Karen McVeigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Great Speech, But The Devil’s In The Details. Why Deep Budget Cuts When Economy Is At Its Weakest?
April 14, 2011 No CommentObama’s speech was uplifting, so far as the rhetoric goes. He really drew a line in the sand between Democrats and Republicans in his talk at GWU. Here’s what Greg Sargent wrote: There’s no ignoring the fact that such stirring rhetoric jars against Obama’s recent deal with Republicans to continue the tax cuts for the rich, and some will be understandably wary of his stated moral conviction about them. But the President did draw a sharp line — one that will be hard to climb down from — on the coming fight over whether to let them expire: “I refuse to renew them again.” On entitlements, it’s true that Obama repeated the formulation — disliked on the left — that we will reform entitlements without “slashing” benefits for future generations, which leaves the door open to mere “cuts.” But Obama did draw a hard line on defending Medicare’s core mission, and crucially, he did so while reiterating the speech’s larger message, which was that the Democratic version of the social contract is inviolable. “I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other in this society,” he said. “We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations.” We cannot know right now whether the steadfastness of Obama’s rhetoric in defending core liberal and Democratic ideals will be matched by equal resoluteness in practice when the battles heat up and the temptation to make deals and jettison core priorities intensifies. But Obama did tell us in clear and unequivocal moral terms what he thinks it means to be a Democrat, and those who have been waiting for him to do so should be quite satisfied by what they heard. A less optimistic take from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Because the Obama plan relies on budget cuts for two-thirds of its deficit reduction measures, it goes dangerously far in two areas. It calls for $360 billion in cuts in mandatory programs other than Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The large budget-cut target for this part of the budget risks leading to substantial cuts in core programs for low-income Americans, our most vulnerable people . To the President’s credit, his plan states that “reforms to mandatory programs should protect and strengthen the safety net for low-income families and other vulnerable Americans.” And the Bowles-Simpson plan enunciates the same basic principle. But to achieve $360 billion in savings in this part of the budget without cutting programs for low-income families and thereby increasing poverty and hardship w ill require very tough choices that entail confronting powerful special-interest lobbyists to a degree that neither party has proved capable of doing in the past. Another significant concern stems from the President’s proposal to limit the annual growth in Medicare costs per beneficiary to the per capita rate of growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plus only 0.5 percentage points and to require automatic cuts in Medicare if this target would otherwise be exceeded. This goal is laudable. But it may be unrealistic. Historically, Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen about 2 percentage points per year faster than GDP growth per capita. The health reform law will launch a series of demonstrations, pilots, and research projects to find effective ways to slow health care cost growth without reducing the quality of care or access to care. But we don’t know yet how much or how quickly we can lower health care cost growth, especially since the principal driver in cost growth is medical advances that improve health and save and prolong lives but add significant costs. Finally, the President’s plan calls for a mechanism to trigger automatic reductions in programs and tax expenditures if the debt would exceed certain benchmarks (measured as a share of GDP). The goal of stabilizing the debt as a share of GDP is precisely the right one. But all triggers like this that have been designed in the past have suffered from a fatal flaw — they required the deepest budget cuts when the economy was weakest and the smallest cuts when it was strongest — the opposite of what sound economic policy entails. The President’s plan calls for the trigger to “include a mechanism to ensure that it does not exacerbate an economic downturn.” No one has succeeded until now in producing a mechanism that meets this test, and it remains unclear whether it can be done. This new proposal bears some similarities to the trigger in the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law, which was not successful and which Congress ultimately repealed. To be sure, the President’s plan represents an important step forward in the debate. But it should be recognized that this plan is a rather conservative one, significantly to the right of the Rivlin-Domenici plan . While we worry about some particular elements of the President’s plan, we worry much more that the deficit-reduction process that’s now starting could produce an outcome that is well to the right of the already centrist-to-moderately-conservative Obama proposal, by reducing its modest revenue increases and cutting more deeply into effective programs that are vital to millions of Americans .
Continue reading …Open Thread: Budget Deal to Reduce Deficit by Paltry $352 Million This Year
April 14, 2011 No CommentThe House is slated to vote today on the budget deal struck by the president, Rep. John Boehner, and Sen. Harry Reid, but the Associated Press released an analysys Wednesday that shows that the nearly $8 billion in budget cuts the deal brokered will be almost entirely offset by increases in defense spending. The Congressional Budget Office estimate shows that compared with current spending rates the spending bill due for a House vote Thursday would pare just $352 million from the deficit through Sept. 30. About $8 billion in cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid are offset by nearly equal increases in defense spending… A separate CBO analysis provided to lawmakers but not released publicly says that $5.7 billion in savings claimed by cutting bonuses to states enrolling more children and reducing the amount of money available to subsidize health care cooperatives authorized under the new health care law won’t produce a dime of actual savings. CBO believes they are simply cuts to spending authority that is unlikely to be used anyway. But those cuts to mandatory benefit programs, while producing no deficit savings, can be claimed under budget rules to pay for spending increases elsewhere in the legislation. All told, $17.8 million in such savings is claimed but just a tiny portion of it would actually reduce the deficit . Emphasis added, of course. In light of these new facts, conservative commentators who had previously supported the deal, such as the Washington Examiner's Phillip Klein and the folks at National Review Online , have withdrawn their support. What are your thoughts on the developments?
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For a unique take on the world of fashion, sign up to the Guardian’s fashion email and get all the latest news delivered straight to your inbox Follow us on Twitter or befriend us on Facebook FASHION DILEMMA Is Carine Roitfeld the straightest-talking woman in fashion? Fashion Statement is a little taken aback this week. Yes, there has been plenty of your run-of-the-mill wackiness (Lady Gaga is being controlled by Alexander McQueen’s ghost , Lady Gaga is wearing Star Trek-inspired facial prosthetics and, well, insert your own bizarre royal wedding rumour here, because FS point-blank refuses to read any more stories about it), but in among the eye-rolling came a rather refreshing interview in Spiegel with Carine Roitfeld, late of French Vogue. Not only does Roitfeld reveal that – shockingly! – she wears flat shoes occasionally, but also that she thinks designer clothes can be (gasp!) hideously overpriced and that she DOESN’T CHANGE HER HANDBAG EVERY SEASON. We know! Astonishing, no? FS is also particularly taken with the quality of the interview questions. Sample: Spiegel: Does this world of vanity, in which fortunes are spent on trivial things, corrupt people? Roitfeld: The fashion industry certainly has its obscene sides. The cost of a coat can be obscene … Of course, it’s not like we’re working in a hospital; we don’t save lives every month. We just make decisions about skirt lengths, about an inch more or an inch less. That’s all. Wow. You’d never get that kind of reality check from Karl Lagerfeld, who is more inclined to equate fashion to a hybrid of brain surgery, rocket science and a major world religion. But wait! There’s more: Spiegel: Did that [the inability of fashion to save lives] ever seem pointless to you? Roitfeld: For 10 years, it was a hell of a lot of fun. But, toward the end, it unfortunately got less and less fun … The atmosphere [at shows] isn’t as electric as it once was, and they now have about as much charm as a medical conference. Next time FS goes to a fashion show, we are totally wearing scrubs (shh, pedants in the back, we know you wouldn’t actually wear scrubs to a conference – stop missing the point, spoilsports). If Roitfeld has decreed a similarity, that’s grounds for a whole new trend in our book. Bring out the pale blue pyjamas, STAT! NEWSFLASH! Fashion Statement has taken the plunge and joined Facebook. Come and like us at facebook.com/guardianfashionstatement . Or just come and point out our terrible geography (Brentwood, Brentford … what’s the difference, eh?), factual inaccuracies and spelling mistakes. Go on, you know you love a bit of pedantry. QUOTE OF THE WEEK I believe in making the best of myself … I’ve also had radiotherapy sessions to keep cellulite at bay. A 27-year-old contributor discusses her anti-ageing strategy in this month’s Marie Claire. Perhaps FS is just happily ignorant of the latest trends in cosmetic surgery, but seriously? Radiotherapy? For cellulite? At 27? Is this NORMAL? FASHIONISTA OF THE WEEK FS does love an Alexis Bledel spot. Possibly because we have an unhealthy obsession with Gilmore Girls, want to marry Luke and live in a diner; possibly because we have a little bit of a girl crush on her (does she EVER age?); and possibly because of her amazing blue eyes. Whatever the reason, she is very pretty and looks wonderful in Oscar de la Renta. Then again, she’d probably look wonderful in a bin bag – some girls get all luck. FASHION GRAVEYARD Jennifer Lopez goes to Mexico, fights snake, beats snake, becomes queen of the snakes. OUT AND ABOUT If you’ve noticed Fashion Statement walking with a slight limp (OK, hobbling like a 90-year-old) then we can now reveal all. FS has been on a fitness bootcamp at the Sofitel St James in London, run by a Technogym trainer. The tough bit? An hour in St James Park (hardly an ordeal in the sunshine, to be honest) being thoroughly put through your paces. The reward? Hanging out in the fabulous Sofitel spa afterwards, having a treatment or three. Available to hotel guests and visitors, prices start at £80, or £105 for the Luxury Bootcamp (which includes a 30-minute treatment). Did we mention the spa is gorgeous? FS is considering living there. So SPA by Sofitel, 0207 747 2204. More info on Technogym at technogym.co.uk Like knickers? Live in Norwich? Good news for you, Norwich knickerbockers. Emiliana will be holding knicker-making workshops at Makepiece. The first runs on Tuesday 26 April from 1.30-4pm. Learn to make, take home and – naturally – wear your own pair of smalls using only a domestic sewing machine and simple T-shirt style fabrics. More info at emilianaunderwear.wordpress.com This week’s prize for the sole press release not to contain reference to the royal wedding goes to takethetrain.co.uk . Planning a shopping trip, or visiting terribly fashionable friends? The site allows you to book train tickets without any ads or booking fees – and you can get a free music download while you are at it. And they have a frog mascot called Ferdinand. Please, however, refrain from making any kissing frogs/princes jokes, thank you. We are a royalty-free zone. takethetrain.co.uk SHOPPING NEWS Got rather a lot of spare cash? Can FS have it? Oops no, sorry, we mean here is a purchase for a worthy cause that may interest you. Jane Birkin is auctioning her original Birkin handbag on eBay, with all proceeds going to support relief efforts in Japan. Current bid status? $6,000. Get bidding, cash-rich readers! ebay.co.uk Wondering what to wear for your Sofitel luxury bootcamp? Pay a visit (virtual or real) to Suka Sport. A new boutique specialising in innovative and unknown brands, you’ll find cool high-tech products and kit from around the world. There’s also a yoga studio with daily classes. sukasport.com OFFCUTS Despite an iffy reputation, double-breasted jackets are mounting a comeback, says Simon Chilvers . What should the aspiring author wear? Hadley Freeman has the answer. The best colour-block clothes on the high street for men, chosen by the Observer’s fashion team. For all the latest fashion news, visit guardian.co.uk/fashion . News to tell us? Email kate.carter@guardian.co.uk . Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Fashion Fashion designers Kate Carter guardian.co.uk
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Nearly 3,000 documents in Whitman’s handwriting cast light on his experience as a government clerk A “huge trove” of documents written by Walt Whitman while the American poet worked for the government as a clerk has been unearthed by a scholar. Kenneth Price, a professor of American literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-director of the Whitman archive, uncovered the thousands of documents at the National Archives vault in Washington DC. “I can remember getting glazed as I went over page after page, seeing no handwriting that looked like Whitman’s,” said Price. “And then suddenly I turned a page and there it was: unmistakably Whitman’s handwriting.” The papers – almost 3,000 of them – have now been conclusively identified as Whitman’s for the first time. They were written while the author of Leaves of Grass was employed as a government clerk between 1865 and 1874. He worked mainly as a scribe and copyist, drafting correspondence, copying letters written by others and researching a variety of issues. Topics covered by the documents range from charges of treason to war crimes, the rise of the Ku Klux Clan and whether smallpox was used as a weapon during the civil war. Price believes the discovery of the letters will “shed most light” on Whitman’s work Democratic Vistas, published in 1871, in which the American author discusses the theory of democracy, criticising America for its “mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry”, which he felt hid a “dry and flat Sahara” of the soul. “The documents are in his handwriting so they passed through his mind, they passed through his fingertips,” said Price. “They bear somebody else’s signature but it’s in Whitman’s handwriting. Is Whitman responsible for zero percent of that intellectual content or was he working collaboratively with the person who is the supposed author of the document?” Price believes no serious biographer will be able to tackle the subject of Whitman in the future “without going through these documents and asking himself or herself what was the effect of all this material on Whitman’s thinking and outlook”. “This was an age of high hopes but also big problems, and Walt Whitman was there in the thick of it,” he said. “It was when Whitman came to Washington that he began to look for ways to earn a little bit of money, and eventually he got hired as a clerk in government offices. It’s in the records of the attorney general’s offices that I found this huge trove of Whitman documents – we’re close to 3,000 documents now.” Whitman took the clerking job at the attorney general’s office after he was fired from a similar position at the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior by new secretary of the interior James Harlan, who, keen to dismiss employees of questionable “moral character”, saw the working copy of Leaves of Grass which the poet kept in his desk and was “appalled”, according to the Whitman archive . Walt Whitman Poetry Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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• Horsemen’s Group boycott behind runner exodus • First instance of a walkover for four years Leicester will host a one-horse race on Saturday as the result of a protest over prize money. The Bet Totepool at totesport.com Handidcap, switched to the last ‘race’ on the card, is British racing’s first walkover in more than four years. The Horsemen’s Group, which represents racehorse owners, trainers, jockeys, stable staff and thoroughbred breeders, started its prize money boycotts at the beginning of the new Flat turf season last month with members being urged to boycott any race which fell below the prize money tariff set by the group. Harry Dunlop, Andrew Balding and Ralph Beckett were the only rainers to make entries for the race, but Balding and Beckett pulled their horses out at the final declaration stage this morning. Earlier this week, Dunlop had described the prize money for the race as “terrible and wrong”. This morning, his mood had not changed. “It’s a very difficult situation as there are actually five races on the card that are under tariff, but there were just three entries in our race and that changed the situation,” he said. “I discussed it with some of the other trainers and we thought the best way to do it would be to run one horse so Leicester would have to put up some prize money. Obviously it doesn’t look very good for Leicester that they’ve got one runner in a race but I’m afraid prize money needs to come up. I’ve never seen a walkover in Flat racing before and I think Leicester need to wake up and smell the coffee. They will not want it to happen again in the future.” The total prize fund of £6,000 falls some way below the recommended prize money levels set out in the Horsemen’s Group tariff. George Primarolo, spokesman for Totesport, who sponsor the entire seven-race card at Leicester, said: “It’s obviously disappointing that a walkover has come in a race that we are sponsoring, but whilst the Tote’s contribution to racing is secure, other commercial race sponsors might not be impressed if it happened in a race they were backing.” Leicester’s clerk of the course Jimmy Stevenson was left saddened by the situation. “It’s disappointing, but it was sort of inevitable after we got the entries,” said Stevenson. “The horse just have to go down to the furlong marker and come back in front of the judge. It’s unfortunate, but there’s not a lot we can do.” The last walkover to take place under Rules in Britain was over jumps at Exeter in 2007, when Ballyfoy claimed victory after the two other runners were declared non-runners. Horse racing Will Hayler guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Halperin: MSM Would Savage GOP President Calling Opponents’ Budget Un-American Like Obama Did
April 14, 2011 No Comment
Mark Halperin . . . on a roll! Yesterday, we noted that the MSNBC analyst was surprisingly respectful to Donald Trump.
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With barely 500 days to the Paralympics, an effort to change perceptions of disability will feature able-bodied children playing blind football and seated volleyball On Sunday, there will be 500 days to go until the Paralympics opening ceremony. If that fact has passed you by then you’re probably not alone. Most press mentions of the Paralympics, which begin on 27 August a fortnight after the Olympics closing ceremony, have of late related to its part in the damaging, byzantine row between Games organisers and the British Olympic Association . The BOA’s insistence that the Paralympics be considered separately from the Olympics for accounting purposes did little to promote the idea that the two events should be considered as part of an integrated whole. There is both danger and opportunity in the fact that the Paralympics follow hard on the heels of a home Olympics. The danger is that it will have an after-the-Lord-Mayor’s-show feel, with the nation spent after putting so much energy and emotion into the Olympics. The opportunity lies in the fact that the Paralympics, for which 2m tickets will go on sale, can harness all the momentum of the Olympics and present an unrivalled opportunity. As is obligatory, a host of legacy aspirations have been loaded on to the Paralympics beyond their hoped-for impact on sport. To mark the 1,000 days to go mark, the then Olympics secretary, Tessa Jowell, announced that a sixth “legacy promise” would be added to those made in Singapore – to use the Games to deliver a major shift in the way society perceives disability. It vowed to “change the lives” of 10m disabled people by “increasing participation in sport and physical activity; improving business, transport and employment opportunities; and changing attitudes and perceptions of disabled people in society”. I recall speaking about the pledges on a crackly phone line from the World Cup draw in Cape Town to Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, who above anyone else is synonymous in the public mind with Paralympic success. She was encouraged they were being made but equally determined that government be held to account on them. At best, there is mixed evidence of any progress since. At Lee Valley athletics centre earlier this week, Lord Coe, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and Ellie Simmonds – one of the handful of Paralympic stars recognisable to the general sporting public – gathered with the obligatory gaggle of schoolchildren to launch an effort to change their perceptions of Paralympic sport. Sainsbury’s – breaking with tradition by solely concentrating on sponsoring the Paralympics (a clever deal that may well deliver more bang for its buck) – is launching a drive to get 1 million schoolchildren (able-bodied and disabled) playing Paralympic sport . The idea is that all children will get an idea of how challenging sitting volleyball or blind football can be in sporting terms and therefore feel a connection with elite Paralympic athletes. Fine in theory, but will it work in practice? Coe, unsurprisingly, is firmly in the camp of those who believe the Paralympics will be a huge success and mark a pivotal moment. Unruffled by the fact that not a single one of the schoolchildren present knew who he was, he talks a good game. He speaks with justification about the “proprietorial pride” Britain feels in the Paralympics, deriving from their birth at Stoke Mandeville and Team GB’s historical success. He passionately argues that Locog has always viewed the two events as an integrated whole, but also acknowledges that there needs to be specific focus on bringing Paralympic sport and its athletes to wider attention. There seems to be a natural tension between the British Paralympic Association – currently without a chief executive after Phil Lane stepped down suddenly earlier this year – and some of those looking to take the event to a wider audience. Channel 4 and Sainsbury’s inevitably alight on the backstories of some of the athletes while the impression is that the BPA would rather focus solely on the sport. All of those involved are edging towards a mutually beneficial way forward that will need to coalesce around the point at which tickets go on sale later this year. Some will go to the Paralympics because they have genuinely engaged with the sports and the athletes, others will no doubt go for the experience and to see the 2012 venues. Locog, the BPA, Channel 4, Sainsbury’s and all the other sponsors, the media and the government must find a way to reach out to both. For Channel 4 too, which took a gamble in outbidding the BBC for the rights , there are big risks as well as sizeable rewards on offer. Coe, for one, is typically bullish. “This is our time, this is our moment. Of all the things we are doing, this is the one that can make the difference,” he says. Time will tell. Paralympics 2012 Olympic Games 2012 Sebastian Coe J Sainsbury Owen Gibson guardian.co.uk
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Officials in Doha confirm Qatar has been secretly supplying French-made missiles to Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi Qatar is secretly supplying anti-tank weapons to the Libyan rebels as part of its strategy of working to overthrow the Gaddafi regime, it has emerged. Officials in Doha confirmed that the Gulf state’s military had been shipping French-made Milan missiles to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem, made clear on Wednesday that UN resolutions on Libya permitted the supply of “defensive weapons” to opposition forces struggling to fight Libyan armour. Qatari government officials were tight-lipped about the deliveries, which are being organised by the joint chiefs of staff and probably made by sea. “We need to send the Libyans equipment so they can defend themselves and get on with their lives,” one senior source said. “These are civilians who have had to become fighters because of the situation.” Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, and colleagues from the 21-nation Libya contact group endorsed Qatar’s position. Hague insisted the UK would supply only non-lethal equipment. France’s view is similar but both countries – which are leading Nato air strikes in Libya – accept that arming the rebels is legal. Gaddafi’s government has repeatedly complained that the Qataris are supplying the rebels. Khaled Kayim, Libya’s deputy foreign minister, claimed on Wednesday that about 20 Qatari specialists were already in Benghazi. Rebel spokesmen have said they are in talks with “friendly” countries, including Qatar and France, to obtain weapons. Arms deliveries are consistent with Qatar’s overall policy. The emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, is the only Arab leader to recognise the interim national council in Benghazi. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are the only Arab states to participate in Nato-led military operations in Libya, although the Arab League supports the no-fly zone. Sheikh Hamad was in Washington on Thursday for talks with Barack Obama that were expected to include the Libyan situation. Mustafa Alani, of the Gulf Institute for Security Studies, said the shoulder-launched weapons were a significant addition to the rebel arsenal because Nato aircraft could not target Libyan armour in built-up areas without risking collateral damage. Helicopters could do so but there is evident reluctance to deploy them. “These missiles need minimum training. It’s aim and shoot,” Alani said. “They are effective especially against the old generation of Soviet-made T72 tanks.” Journalists in eastern Libya last week reported seeing rebels armed with Milan missiles for the first time. Qatar’s armed forces are themselves equipped with the Milan but Alani said the weapon could have been bought by the Qataris directly from France for delivery to the Libyans. Qatar is tiny but immensely wealthy thanks to its vast oil and gas reserves, and pursues a famously independent foreign policy that allows it to maintain good relations with Iran while hosting key US military bases, as well as discreet links with Israel and its Palestinian Islamist enemy Hamas. Al-Jazeera satellite TV, based in Doha, is hugely influential. It is also assisting a rebel satellite TV operation broadcasting from Doha and providing other support for Libyan opposition groups. It has agreed to market crude oil produced from eastern Libyan fields no longer under Gaddafi’s control. This week Qatar’s state-owned marketing company delivered four shipments of oil products to Benghazi. Libya Qatar Muammar Gaddafi Middle East Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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