Amnesty International says eight-year jail sentences for Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal make a ‘mockery of justice’ The conviction of two Americans held in Iran for spying and illegally crossing the border has been condemned by a human rights group. Amnesty International said the eight-year jail sentences for Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, both 29, made a “mockery of justice” and were designed to be used as “a bargaining chip to allow Iran to obtain unspecified concessions from the US government”. A court sentenced the two men to three years each for illegally entering Iran and further five years each for espionage, it emerged over the weekend. “The conduct of this trial has quite simply made a mockery of justice. There does not appear to be any substance to the allegations that Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal are spies,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty’s Middle East director. He described the trial as “deeply flawed” and said there was no evidence known to have been presented to suggest the pair were conducting espionage in Iran. “They have already spent over two years waiting for justice. The Iranian authorities should take act now and release these two men now without further delay,” added Smart. Iranian security forces arrested Bauer and Fattal, along with their friend Sarah Shourd, in July 2009, after they walked across an unmarked border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan. Their conviction came as a surprise to their families, who were expecting them to be released. Shourd, 33, who got engaged to Bauer while in jail, was released last September on health grounds and after paying $500,000 (£324,000) bail. Supporters of the three Americans say they unwittingly crossed the unmarked border while hiking but Iran accused them of spying. It is unclear whether the three were captured in Iranian territory or whether Iranian forces went into Iraq to arrest them. After their trials ended last month behind closed doors, officials from Iran’s foreign ministry signalled that the two would be freed on the eve of Ramadan. The contrast between the trial’s outcome and official promises highlights a growing rift between the judiciary, whose head is appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government. Some analysts believe Shourd was released after an intervention from the president’s chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. The long sentences given to Bauer and Fattal can also be interpreted as a tit-for-tat response to the US state department’s assessment, announced last week, that Iran remained the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism. In reaction to the handling of the trial, some conservative websites sympathetic to the regime in Tehran have mentioned the case of Shahrzad Mir Gholikhan, an Iranian woman in jail in the US on charges of attempting to smuggle night-vision goggles to Iran, which suggests that Iranian officials might be pursuing her release in exchange for those of the Americans. According to Iran’s Irna state news, the intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, said on Sunday that Bauer and Fattal “entered the country with prior planning of spying”. The lawyer for the two men, Masoud Shafiee, told an Iranian radio station that spying charges against his clients were “baseless” and that he would lodge appeals against the sentences. Iran United States Amnesty International Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …NYT’s Davey Condescends to GOP Govs, Insists Bipartisanship Calls Are Phony
August 22, 2011 No CommentA Monday New York Times story by Monica Davey, “ After Months of Rancor, 2 Governors Alter Tones ,” portrayed two first term Republican governors in the Midwest as on the defensive, even though both have emerged relatively unscathed in the face of fierce liberal opposition. Davey focused mostly on Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, though
Continue reading …NYT’s Davey Condescends to GOP Govs, Insists Bipartisanship Calls Are Phony
August 22, 2011 No CommentA Monday New York Times story by Monica Davey, “ After Months of Rancor, 2 Governors Alter Tones ,” portrayed two first term Republican governors in the Midwest as on the defensive, even though both have emerged relatively unscathed in the face of fierce liberal opposition. Davey focused mostly on Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, though
Continue reading …NYT’s Davey Condescends to GOP Govs, Insists Bipartisanship Calls Are Phony
August 22, 2011 No CommentA Monday New York Times story by Monica Davey, “ After Months of Rancor, 2 Governors Alter Tones ,” portrayed two first term Republican governors in the Midwest as on the defensive, even though both have emerged relatively unscathed in the face of fierce liberal opposition. Davey focused mostly on Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, though
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Kate Winslet and children among 20 guests forced to flee fire on Necker island Oscar-winning actor Kate Winslet and her children escaped unhurt after a fire ripped through Sir Richard Branson’s luxury home in the Caribbean. Other guests who fled the fire at the Great House on Necker island included Branson’s 90-year-old mother, Eve, and his 29-year-old daughter, Holly. “Around 20 people were in the house and they all managed to get out and they are all fine,” said Branson, who was staying in another property 100 yards away with his wife, Joan, and son, Sam, 25. Branson, 60, bought Necker island in the early 1980s and began building the eight-bedroom Great House in 1982. He said: “We had a bad tropical storm with winds up to 90mph. A big lightning storm came around 4am and hit the house. My son Sam rushed to the house and helped get everyone out. The main house is destroyed and the fire is not yet completely out. My office was based in the house and I have lost thousands of photographs, which is very sad.” He added: “It’s very much the Dunkirk spirit here. We want to rebuild the house as soon as we can. We have a wonderful staff here and we want them to stay in work. We’ll all stay here for the time being. There’s a lot of damage and we won’t be able to stick it back together again right away. It was a beautiful house.” Winslet, 35, who won an Oscar for her role in the 2008 movie The Reader, has a daughter, Mia, 10, from her first marriage to Jim Threapleton, and a son, Joe, seven, by second husband, the director Sam Mendes, from whom she is separated. Richard Branson Kate Winslet guardian.co.uk
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William Harrington attacks agencies for being paid by banks and companies they are supposed to rate objectively A former credit-ratings agency executive has launched a stinging attack on the powerful organisations that can damage countries’ economies and wreak havoc in the markets with the stroke of a pen. William Harrington, a former senior president at Moody’s, claims the organisation’s senior management interfere with analysts’ independent assessments. Ratings agencies have attracted international opprobrium after Standard & Poor’s, another of the three big agencies alongside Moody’s and Fitch, stripped the United States of its gold-standard AAA rating. Harrington, who worked at Moody’s for 11 years until he resigned last year, said ratings agencies suffer from a conflict of interest because they are paid by the banks and companies they are supposed to rate objectively. “This salient conflict of interest permeates all levels of employment, from entry-level analyst to the chairman and chief executive officer of Moody’s corporation,” Harrington said in a filing to the US financial regulator the securities and exchange commission (SEC), which is considering new rules to reform the agencies. Harrington claims that Moody’s uses a long-standing culture of “intimidation and harassment” to persuade its analysts to ensure ratings match those wanted by the company’s clients. He says Moody’s compliance department “actively harasses analysts viewed as ‘troublesome’ ” and said management “rewarded lenient voting”. “The goal of management is to mould analysts into pliable corporate citizens who cast their committee votes in line with the unchanging corporate credo of maximising earnings of the largely captive franchise,” he said in the 78-page filing submitted earlier this month. Moody’s, and other credit-rating agencies, were placed at the heart of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis because they over-rated complex financial products that were based on largely worthless mortgages. Because the agencies gave good ratings to products called collateralised debt obligations (CDO), banks bought risky debts that they would normally have steered clear of. “In the experience of the contributor, the committees that issued opinions on CDOs from 2005 to the middle of 2006 degenerated increasingly into ‘talking shops’,” said Harrington, who worked in the department that rated many such products. “In these instances, members felt free to discuss the negative aspects of the CDO but also felt pressure by management to overlook these aspects when voting.” The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has identified rating agencies as one of the “key culprits” of the financial crisis. “They were the party that performed the alchemy that converted the securities from F-rated to A-rated. The banks could not have done what they did without the complicity of the rating agencies.” Internal S&P emails from 2006 appear to show that the agency was well aware of the risks of rating CDOs. “Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters. :o),” one S&P employee said in an email which was presented as evidence during a US government investigation into the financial crisis last year. Another email warned that “this is like another banking crisis potentially looming!!” The US department of justice was last week reported to have begun an investigation into whether S&P incorrectly rated the complex mortgage products. Harrington warned that the SEC’s proposed changes to the regulation of ratings agencies would do little to improve the situation and could make it easier for agencies to pressure their staff. Moody’s did not respond to requests for comment. Ratings agencies Banking Financial crisis Global recession Rupert Neate guardian.co.uk
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Japanese government will admit for first time that radiation levels will be too high to allow many evacuees to return home Residents who lived close to the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant are to be told their homes may be uninhabitable for decades, according to Japanese media reports. The Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, is expected to visit the area at the weekend to tell evacuees they will not be able to return to their homes, even if the operation to stabilise the plant’s stricken reactors by January is successful. Kan’s announcement will be the first time officials have publicly recognised that radiation damage to areas near the plant could make them too dangerous to live in for at least a generation, effectively meaning that some residents will never return to them. A Japanese government source is quoted in local media as saying the area could be off-limits for “several decades”. New data has revealed unsafe levels of radiation outside the 12-mile exclusion zone, increasing the likeliness that entire towns will remain unfit for habitation. The exclusion zone was imposed after a series of hydrogen explosions at the plant following the earthquake and tsunami in March. The government had planned to lift the evacuation order and allow 80,000 people back into their homes inside the exclusion zone once the reactors had been brought under control. Several thousand others living in random hotspots outside the zone have also had to relocate. However, in a report issued over the weekend the science ministry projected that radiation accumulated over one year at 22 of 50 tested sites inside the exclusion zone would easily exceed 100 millisieverts, five times higher than the safe level advised by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. “We can’t rule out the possibility that there will be some areas where it will be hard for residents to return to their homes for a long time,” said Yukio Edano, chief cabinet secretaryand face of the government during the disaster. “We are very sorry.” Edano refused to say which areas were on the no-go list or how long they would remain uninhabitable, adding that a decision would be made after more radiation tests have been conducted. The government has yet to decide how to compensate the tens of thousands of residents and business owners who will be forced to start new lives elsewhere. The state has hinted that it may buy or rent land from residents in unsafe areas, although it has not ruled out trying to decontaminate them. Futaba and Okuma, towns less than two miles from the Fukushima plant, are expected to be among those on the blacklist. The annual cumulative radiation dose in one district of Okuma was estimated at 508 millisieverts, which experts believe is high enough to increase the risk of cancer. More than 300 households from the two towns will be allowed to return briefly to their homes next week to collect belongings. It will be the first time residents have visited their homes since the meltdown. The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, is working to bring the three crippled reactors and four overheating spent fuel pools to a safe state known as “cold shutdown” by mid-January. Last week the company estimated that leaks from all three reactors had dropped significantly over the past month. But signs of progress at the plant have been tempered by widespread contamination of soil, trees, roads and farmland. Experts say that while health risks can be lowered by measures including the removal of layers of topsoil, vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and children should avoid even minimal exposure. “Any exposure would pose a health risk, no matter how small,” Hiroaki Koide, a radiation specialist at Kyoto University, told Associated Press. “There is no dose that we should call safe.” Any government admission that residents will not be able to return to their homes will be closely monitored in Japan. Suspicions persist that the authorities privately acknowledged this situation several months ago. In April, Kenichi Matsumoto, a senior adviser to the cabinet, quoted Kan as saying that people would not be able to live near the plant for “10 to 20 years”. Matsumoto later claimed to have made the remark himself. Japan disaster Japan Nuclear power Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
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Hundreds of demonstrators in Homs defy government whitewash of brutal crackdown on five-month uprising The Syrian government’s attempts to whitewash evidence of a brutal crackdown on the country’s five-month uprising appeared to backfire on Monday after a visiting UN humanitarian delegation was met by protesters waving SOS signs. Hundreds of demonstrators in Homs, which has had tanks on the streets and snipers on the roofs for weeks, surrounded the UN car in the central New Clock square, shouting for the overthrow of the regime and holding up the signs, according to video footage and local residents. Crowds there and in several other cities have been emboldened by signs of an imminent victory for the rebels in Libya after six months of a Nato-backed offensive against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Syrian messages of congratulations and messages to president Bashar al-Assad that he will be next have been circulating online. A woman in Homs said: “Libya has given us encouragement. But the international community needs to know what has been happening here. What is being reported only scratches the surface.” The jubilation at the Libyan rebels’ gains eclipsed a televised interview with a defiant Assad on Sunday in which he threatened “intolerable” consequences for the international community if it intervenes in Syria and suggested force would continue to be used against an “increasingly militant” opposition. With the success of the Nato offensive in Libya, questions of similar action in Syria have inevitably been raised. But the appetite among protesters or in the international community for military action in Syria, which has links to numerous flashpoint conflicts in the region, is almost nonexistent. Syria’s state news agency Sana said that Assad formed a committee to approve the formation of rivals to the ruling Ba’ath party in the runup to parliamentary elections early next year. Human rights groups say more than 2,000 people have been killed in the crackdown since mid-March, with thousands detained and tortured. Two people were shot dead in Homs after security forces opened fire on the crowds who had poured out to meet the UN team, residents said, while two people were shot dead overnight on Sunday in Hama. The UN, which has been focusing on human rights infringements after its security council was unable to agree on a resolution, will demand that Syria allow a team to assess whether crimes against humanity have been committed, an official said after a special session on Monday. Another UN official told the Guardian that the government had stuck to its promise to allow the delegation unfettered access to the country but residents from Homs said the mission missed a key neighbourhood of Khaldiyeh where the crackdown has been severe. Nonetheless a western diplomat said it was “turning into an anti-government roadshow with the whole thing backfiring on the Syrians”. The diplomat said people had flocked to the UN team to show the delegation signs of torture during a visit to Douma and Moadimiyeh. Nour Ali is the pseudonym of a journalist based in Damascus Syria Bashar Al-Assad Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Nour Ali guardian.co.uk
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Harpal Kumar believes ‘explosion’ in understanding of the disease could revolutionise treatment and reduce cost of drugs The head of the UK’s leading cancer charity has said understanding of the disease is advancing “exponentially”, as potentially groundbreaking trials to genetically test tumours of 9,000 newly diagnosed patients begin. Describing a “golden era” of research, Harpal Kumar, the chief executive of Cancer Research UK , said there has been “an explosion in our understanding of what cancer is, why it happens, why it doesn’t happen in some people and why it moves around the body”. The trials backed by the Department of Health and Cancer Research are being launched next month in seven hospitals across Britain. Scientists believe the results could revolutionise cancer treatments. They will aim to find out which existing drugs the cancers are susceptible to. They will also potentially pave the way for discoveries of new medicines that are personalised or targeted to the genetic makeup of an individual’s cancer and therefore far more effective. The two-year project is intended to lead to a full roll-out of genetic testing of tumours across the NHS. The government has given its backing to increased genetic testing as part of the national cancer plan, which Cancer Research believes will bring about a significant change in the way cancers are treated. Kumar said: “I’m not trying to present a utopian view that we know everything, because we don’t. But our knowledge is growing exponentially. We are learning vast amounts more as months go by. “It is not hyperbolic to say that this is the future of treatment. This is the future of medicine. This will not just be true in cancer but across medicine more generally.” Most medicines work in some people but not others. In some diseases, such as cancer, they work in only a relatively small proportion of patients. “People have known for years that we give treatment and it is only going to work for 20% of people and we are now on the cusp of finding out what is going on,” said Kumar. Just as each individual’s DNA is different, so is that of cancer tumours. In the trial beginning next month, tumour samples from patients with one of the commonest cancers – breast, bowel, lung, prostate, melanoma and ovarian – will be subjected to a series of tests. Some of these tests – for instance, the test for the HER2 enzyme in breast cancer which indicates that anti-tumour drug Herceptin will work – are already in regular use, but others are not. The trial will test the feasibility of introducing a low-cost panel of genetic tests for all cancer patients. But it will also accumulate an important database for researchers, by following what happens to the patients. The genetic makeup of the cancer influences not only which drugs will work, but how effective surgery and radiotherapy will be. It is also possible, says Kumar, that researchers will find that old or discarded drugs will work on certain patients, long after they were shelved because they had little impact on large populations. “The likelihood is that we have many of the tools already but we don’t know how to use them properly,” Kumar said. “We have lots of great drugs and know they work with lots of people, but not with other people. “There are also lots of drugs undoubtedly that have never made it to market because we couldn’t figure out which patients to use them for.” If pharmaceutical companies would not investigate them, he said, academics would. “Patents expire and molecules become available to everyone,” Kumar added. “This also applies to radiotherapy. It works for some people and not others. The real future will be figuring out which.” New cancer drugs come with huge price tags and can be rejected from the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) as too expensive for the benefit they offer. But targeting drugs to specific sub-groups, Kumar said, could bring the price down. “The problem at the moment is that it takes $1bn [£600m] to get a drug to market and 15 years or more. That is the justification for the pharmaceutical industry charging high prices. “If on the other hand by the time you get to phase 2 you know exactly which patients it is going to work on, you only put those patients through and instead of 10% you get an 80% response rate. “You get a licence on the basis of the data and don’t have to go to phase 3 [a trial involving thousands of people]. That saves vast sums of money and years of development. What that does to the business model is it means you can justify charging lower prices because it cost a lot less in the first place. “If we get this right, it changes the entire dynamics of the business model of the pharmaceutical industry.” Cancer Drugs Cancer NHS Health Sarah Boseley guardian.co.uk
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Former presidential candidate in line to rejoin race if – as expected – New York sexual assault charges are dropped French Socialists are paving the way for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to return to politics if – as expected – charges of sexual assault against him in New York are dropped on Tuesday, leaving him free to fly home. Leading members of the Socialist party said a political comeback could be “envisaged” if the 62-year-old former head of the IMF wished to take part in next year’s presidential campaign. Strauss-Kahn was widely tipped to become the next president of France before he was arrested and charged with attacking a maid in a New York hotel four months ago. Over the weekend, lawyers for Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, said she had been summoned to a meeting with prosecutors in New York ahead of a court hearing on Tuesday. Diallo’s lawyers said they were expecting prosecutors to tell her they were dropping the case. Although DSK, as he is known in France, missed the July deadline for taking part in the Socialist party’s election to select a candidate, the man who replaced him as favourite – François Hollande – opened the door on Monday for his return to politics. Speaking on French radio, Hollande said Strauss-Kahn’s return to politics “could be envisaged”. He told France-Inter Radio: “Whatever has been said, a man with the abilities of Dominique Strauss-Kahn can be useful to his country in the months and years to come.” . Asked whether Strauss-Kahn could take part in the Socialist primaries, he replied: “That depends on him.” Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a friend of DSK, said it was too early to say what Strauss-Kahn would do. “It’s possible the charges will be suspended and Dominique Strauss-Kahn will be cleared,” he said. “This will be justice, because I believe he is innocent of the facts of which he is accused. “If he is cleared, let him reconstruct himself after the injustice that has been done to him.” Asked if Strauss-Kahn could hypothetically ask for the July deadline for candidates to be set aside and stand in the primaries, a party spokesman said: “It’s complicated.” He added: “He would need the agreement of all six candidates. It’s a very hypothetical situation.” Several party heavyweights, including Cambadélis and Pierre Moscovici, had previously suggested the deadline for candidates to declare should be delayed to allow DSK a chance to stand if cleared. Just as Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in May threw the French left into a state of shock and chaos, so his eventual return will almost certainly sow doubt and confusion when the Socialists gather for their annual party conference in the seaside resort of La Rochelle on Friday. Many of DSK’s closest supporters have since thrown their weight behind one of the six declared primary candidates. Hollande’s closest rival is Martine Aubry, who had concluded a secret agreement not to run against Strauss-Kahn for the party nomination before his arrest. The word most used in French newspapers and magazines on Monday was “blanchi”, which literally translates as whitened. As if to emphasise the point, Strauss-Kahn was pictured on the front page of France Soir wearing a whiter-than-white summer T-shirt. The newspaper referred to his “nightmare summer”, adding that DSK “intends to leave the United States with his head held high”. Strauss-Kahn’s biographer, Michel Taubmann – who is in regular contact with him – told France Soir: “He doesn’t want to rejoice too quickly. But for the first time we’ve spoken about other things than the case.” Even if he is set free, Strauss-Kahn is still facing a possible investigation in France where journalist and writer Tristane Banon, 32, has accused him of attempted rape . She claims he jumped on her and behaved like a “rutting chimpanzee” when she went to interview him in February 2003. A preliminary inquiry is being carried out by the prosecutor’s office to see if there is a case to answer. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have denied the claims and described the allegation as “fantasy”. Concentrating on the New York allegation, France Soir added: “The former presidential favourite is beginning to anticipate his return to home and, one day, to political life.” However, Jérôme Sainte-Marie, deputy director of the Paris-based opinion pollsters CSA, said the French may not be so willing to welcome him back with open arms. He told the Guardian: “Anything can happen, but I think there’s little chance he will be able to return to high level politics. It will be hard to turn back the clock.” According to CSA polls, before 13 May Strauss-Kahn was in a strong position to win next May’s presidential election against Nicolas Sarkozy. His popularity in the country stood at 50%, with 30-35% of those asked saying they would vote for him in the first round of the presidential election and 60-65% saying they would vote for him in the second round, giving him a clear victory. His popularity fell to 26% in June but rallied to 32% in July when doubts about the credibility of his accuser led to him being released from house arrest. His figures then dropped to a new low of 25% this month. There was little difference in the opinions of men and women. Sainte-Marie said: “The fact that 25% of people still have a good opinion of him after all we have learned is surprising, but he was enormously popular to start with. “The moral aspect of this doesn’t matter very much at all. French people don’t care about the sex or sentimental lives of their politicians – what does matter is a lack of credibility, a lack of seriousness, particularly at a time of financial storms.” Sainte-Marie said the French had “learned too much” about DSK, who before the incident in the Sofitel in New York had a reputation as a “chaud lapin” (hot bunny) and womaniser. “French people want someone reliable as president, and however brilliant he is they are not prepared to accept someone who cannot control himself or who puts his personal appetite before affairs of state,” Sainte-Marie said. Dominique Strauss-Kahn France Europe United States Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
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