News International chief to face Commons committee, but Rupert Murdoch and James ‘not available’ for 19 July hearing Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, urged all three senior executives to “do the decent thing” and face MPs. “If they have any shred of sense of responsibility or accountability for their position of power then they should come and explain themselves to the select committee,” said Clegg. Rupert Murdoch wrote a letter to the committee, declining to give evidence in person to the evidence -giving session on 19 July. “Unfortunately, I am not available to attend the session you have planned next Tuesday,” he wrote. “However, I am fully prepared to give evidence to the forthcoming judge-led public inquiry and I will be taking steps to notify those conducting the inquiry of my willingness to do so. Having done this, I would be happy to discuss with you how best to give evidence to your committee.” His son James wrote a separate letter in which he said would not be available to attend the session planned for July 19, but would be “pleased” to give evidence to the committee on either the 10 or 11 August. “Naturally, if neither of these proves suitable I would be willing to consider any alternative dates you suggest,” he wrote. Only Brooks, a British citizen, bowed to pressure from parliament to take responsibility by attending the parliamentary committee to account for events that took place under her watch. In a letter confirming her attendance, she wrote: “As you are well aware, the Metropolitan police investigation into illegal voicemail interception continues and we are fully cooperating with that. Aspects of the work to which your committee may wish to refer are likely to be relevant to that investigation. Indeed, the police have already asked us specifically to provide information about those matters.” She went on: “I understand that various select committees have approached the police over time in relation to this and other cases. The police’s position has been to co-operate where this did not directly impact on the investigation in question. In those cases where it did potentially impact, the police have historically declined to comment at that stage. Our understanding is that this approach has not been challenged. Given that we are in the midst of an investigation, and we do not want to prejudice it, I hope you will understand why we feel it would not be appropriate to respond to such questions at present in order to be consistent with [the] police’s approach, and that as a result this may prevent me from discussing these matters in detail.” Rebekah Brooks Phone hacking Rupert Murdoch James Murdoch News International Nick Clegg Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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Russia reveals plan for capital to absorb woodland and holiday towns but critics warn of impending environmental disaster Russian officials have announced plans to more than double Moscow’s territory in a bid to alleviate the city’s crippling traffic and overcrowding, but critics worry the move could prove to be an environmental fiasco and leave thousands displaced. The plan to increase Moscow’s size from the current 264,000 acres to 620,000 acres was given initial approval on Monday by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, in a meeting with the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, and Boris Gromov, governor of the surrounding Moscow region. The plan will see Moscow expanding to the south and south-west, taking in forestland, small communities and dachas or summerhouses. It foresees much of the heart of Moscow – its government offices and big businesses – moving to the new neighbourhood, forever changing the spirit of the city’s historic centre. The first to move are due to be the offices of the prime minister and cabinet, as well as the presidential administration, Sobyanin said in a meeting with the editors of Russia’s leading newspapers this week. Russian officials are looking at a 20-year timeline to complete the city’s growth. They have yet to announce a budget for the venture. The move is Moscow’s boldest attempt yet to deal with the notorious bottlenecks that often bring movement in the city to a standstill. It is part of Medvedev’s vision to turn Moscow into a global financial centre as the country seeks to attract investment and boost its international standing. He first floated the expansion idea during a speech to foreign investors during an international forum in St Petersburg last month. The plan, published on the Moscow city government website , says the city’s southern and south-western outskirts were chosen in part because they comprise “a relatively weakly urbanised sector of the Moscow region,” counting some 250,000 people. Alexei Yaroshenko, of Greenpeace Russia, said he believed the number was much higher. It also does not include those who maintain dachas in the region. “We don’t know the exact borders yet,” Yaroshenko said. “If it is moved this way or that, hundreds of thousands of people will be added.” The concern comes from precedent – locals in and around the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the site of the Winter Olympics, have protested over forced relocation as the government takes over prime real estate in the region. Five years ago residents of Butovo, a village on the outskirts of southern Moscow, had a face off with authorities for weeks as they attempted to fight the razing of houses to make way for construction. Residents of Khimki, in northern Moscow, continue to battle controversial plans to build a road through their forest. “They don’t care at all about the people,” Yaroshenko said. “The officials decide and then start to build and what people think makes no difference to them.” He worried that the lush forestland in the region would be the first affected, since it is federal property. Yet even critics like Yaroshenko admit something has to be done. Moscow’s population has grown by 200,000 a year since 2002, he noted, citing census results. Aside from the potential effects on residents and the forests that line Moscow’s southern outskirts, Yaroshenko worries that the expansion – which city officials say will add housing for 2 million Muscovites and more than 1m jobs – will only increase Moscow’s dominance over the country. While preliminary results from a 2010 census showed that the overall population of the country decreased by 1.2%, Moscow’s population increased from 10.4 million to 11.5 million. “The country is emptying and Moscow is growing,” he said. “All resources are going to Moscow – first money and then people follow.” Russia Miriam Elder guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …MSNBC’s Alter: No Jobs from Bush’s ‘Massive Tax Cuts,’ Tea Partiers Would Support Obama Budget
July 14, 2011 No Comment
West Sussex residents report buildings shaking for few seconds in 3.9 magnitude earthquake An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.9 has struck in the middle of the Channel. Residents in parts of West Sussex reported buildings shaking for a few seconds at around 8am on Thursday. The British Geological Survey said the quake had a depth of 10km and its epicentre was south of Portsmouth, Hampshire. Official measurements showed it happened at 7.59am BST. Sussex police, the Solent coastguard and West Sussex fire and rescue service said they had not been called out to any incidents related to the quake. David Kerridge, from the British Geological Survey, said the earthquake was the largest in the area since a magnitude 4.5 quake in 1734. “Historically, there have been two other significant events nearby – a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in 1878 and a magnitude 4.3 earthquake in 1750,” he said. “In the UK, we experience an earthquake of this magnitude approximately every two years.” Several residents in Worthing, West Sussex, are reported to have felt the earthquake. The British Geological Survey is running an online questionnaire to collect information from members of the public. guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …West Sussex residents report buildings shaking for few seconds in 3.9 magnitude earthquake An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.9 has struck in the middle of the Channel. Residents in parts of West Sussex reported buildings shaking for a few seconds at around 8am on Thursday. The British Geological Survey said the quake had a depth of 10km and its epicentre was south of Portsmouth, Hampshire. Official measurements showed it happened at 7.59am BST. Sussex police, the Solent coastguard and West Sussex fire and rescue service said they had not been called out to any incidents related to the quake. David Kerridge, from the British Geological Survey, said the earthquake was the largest in the area since a magnitude 4.5 quake in 1734. “Historically, there have been two other significant events nearby – a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in 1878 and a magnitude 4.3 earthquake in 1750,” he said. “In the UK, we experience an earthquake of this magnitude approximately every two years.” Several residents in Worthing, West Sussex, are reported to have felt the earthquake. The British Geological Survey is running an online questionnaire to collect information from members of the public. guardian.co.uk
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Killing of eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky has shocked Orthodox Jewish community in New York An eight-year-old boy who got lost while walking home alone was killed and dismembered by a stranger he had asked for directions. His remains were found stuffed in a rubbish bin and the man’s refrigerator, police said on Wednesday. The gruesome killing of Leiby Kletzky has shocked the Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in part because it is one of the safest sections of New York and because the man under arrest is an Orthodox Jew. A day-and-a-half search for the boy ended with the discovery of his severed feet inside a freezer at the home of a man who had been spotted with the child on a surveillance video, police said. The rest of the remains were in bins in another neighbourhood. “It is every parent’s worst nightmare,” said police commissioner Raymond Kelly. The 35-year-old suspect, Levi Aron, had implicated himself in the killing, he said. Police said there was no evidence the boy was sexually assaulted, but they would not otherwise shed any light on a motive except to say Aron told them he “panicked” when he saw photos of the missing boy on fliers distributed in the neighbourhood. Police are looking into whether Aron has a history of mental illness. Aron was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder. The medical examiner’s office said it was still investigating how the boy was killed. Meanwhile, thousands gathered around a Borough synagogue for the boy’s funeral service, with speakers broadcasting over a loudspeaker. They spoke and chanted in Yiddish and Hebrew, stressing the community’s resilience and unity after what one called an unnatural death. Many of the mothers who gathered outside the Kletzky family home on Wednesday said the streets were normally safe enough for a child to walk home alone. Adel Erps, like other neighbours, expressed shock the suspect was Jewish. “It hurts so much more,” she said. Aron’s family was Orthodox but not Hasidic. When detectives arrived at his apartment at about 2.40am local time, they asked him where the boy was, and he nodded toward the kitchen, Kelly said. Detectives saw blood on the freezer door and opened it to discover the feet inside, wrapped in plastic bags. A cutting board and three bloody carving knives were in the refrigerator and a plastic rubbish sack with bloody towels was found nearby. Aron told police where to find the rest of the body. It was in pieces, wrapped in plastic bags, inside a red suitcase that had been placed into a rubbish bin in another part of Brooklyn, Kelly said. Police and volunteers had been looking since late Monday afternoon for Leiby, who disappeared while on his way to meet his mother on a street corner seven blocks from his day camp. It was the first time he was allowed to walk the route alone. His parents had taken him on a practice run on Friday. The break in the case came when investigators watched a grainy video that showed the boy, wearing his backpack, getting into a car with a man outside a dentist’s office. Leiby was last seen wearing dark pants and a short-sleeved shirt and yarmulke. Police said the boy had evidently missed a turn and got lost. Detectives tracked the dentist down to his home in New Jersey, and he remembered someone coming to pay a bill. Police identified Aron using records from the office, and 40 minutes later he was arrested. Kelly said it was “totally random” that Aron grabbed the boy and, aside from a summons for urinating in public, he had no criminal record. He had lived in New York most of his life and worked as a clerk at a hardware supply store around the corner from his home, authorities said. New York United States guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Killing of eight-year-old Leiby Kletzky has shocked Orthodox Jewish community in New York An eight-year-old boy who got lost while walking home alone was killed and dismembered by a stranger he had asked for directions. His remains were found stuffed in a rubbish bin and the man’s refrigerator, police said on Wednesday. The gruesome killing of Leiby Kletzky has shocked the Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in part because it is one of the safest sections of New York and because the man under arrest is an Orthodox Jew. A day-and-a-half search for the boy ended with the discovery of his severed feet inside a freezer at the home of a man who had been spotted with the child on a surveillance video, police said. The rest of the remains were in bins in another neighbourhood. “It is every parent’s worst nightmare,” said police commissioner Raymond Kelly. The 35-year-old suspect, Levi Aron, had implicated himself in the killing, he said. Police said there was no evidence the boy was sexually assaulted, but they would not otherwise shed any light on a motive except to say Aron told them he “panicked” when he saw photos of the missing boy on fliers distributed in the neighbourhood. Police are looking into whether Aron has a history of mental illness. Aron was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder. The medical examiner’s office said it was still investigating how the boy was killed. Meanwhile, thousands gathered around a Borough synagogue for the boy’s funeral service, with speakers broadcasting over a loudspeaker. They spoke and chanted in Yiddish and Hebrew, stressing the community’s resilience and unity after what one called an unnatural death. Many of the mothers who gathered outside the Kletzky family home on Wednesday said the streets were normally safe enough for a child to walk home alone. Adel Erps, like other neighbours, expressed shock the suspect was Jewish. “It hurts so much more,” she said. Aron’s family was Orthodox but not Hasidic. When detectives arrived at his apartment at about 2.40am local time, they asked him where the boy was, and he nodded toward the kitchen, Kelly said. Detectives saw blood on the freezer door and opened it to discover the feet inside, wrapped in plastic bags. A cutting board and three bloody carving knives were in the refrigerator and a plastic rubbish sack with bloody towels was found nearby. Aron told police where to find the rest of the body. It was in pieces, wrapped in plastic bags, inside a red suitcase that had been placed into a rubbish bin in another part of Brooklyn, Kelly said. Police and volunteers had been looking since late Monday afternoon for Leiby, who disappeared while on his way to meet his mother on a street corner seven blocks from his day camp. It was the first time he was allowed to walk the route alone. His parents had taken him on a practice run on Friday. The break in the case came when investigators watched a grainy video that showed the boy, wearing his backpack, getting into a car with a man outside a dentist’s office. Leiby was last seen wearing dark pants and a short-sleeved shirt and yarmulke. Police said the boy had evidently missed a turn and got lost. Detectives tracked the dentist down to his home in New Jersey, and he remembered someone coming to pay a bill. Police identified Aron using records from the office, and 40 minutes later he was arrested. Kelly said it was “totally random” that Aron grabbed the boy and, aside from a summons for urinating in public, he had no criminal record. He had lived in New York most of his life and worked as a clerk at a hardware supply store around the corner from his home, authorities said. New York United States guardian.co.uk
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Government tries to fight accusations it is clueless over terrorism after co-ordinated explosions in city leave 18 dead Cities across India are on high alert as the government came under mounting criticism for its repeated failures to detect terrorist attacks, following the blitz on Mumbai in which 18 people were killed. As a steady monsoon drizzle swept Mumbai, the casualty figure from the three bomb explosions on Wednesday was revised downwards by the home minister, P Chidambaram, on a visit to the affected districts. “The discovery of the severed head takes the number of killed to 18 (reduced from the earlier official figure of 21 dead), while the number of injured stands at 131,” Chidambaram said. “It appears that ammonium nitrate was used in the bombs, with a timer mechanism. The three blasts occurred within 10 minutes of each other, which shows it was a co-ordinated terrorist attack.” He added that of the 131 injured, 26 have been discharged from hospital, 82 are in a stable medical condition, while 23 are critical. As yet, no known terrorist organisation – Indian cities have been attacked in recent years by both Muslim and Hindu terrorists – has taken responsibility for the blasts, but security experts believe the prime suspect in the latest outrage is the radical Muslim group, the Indian Mujahideen (IM). But despite the IM remaining active for the last nine years following the Feb 2002 anti-Muslim violence in teh state of Gujarat, both intelligence agencies and local police are struggling to eliminate the threat. Defending the security agencies, Chidambaram told reporters that “if there was no intelligence on a particular incident it doesn’t mean a failure of intelligence.” But he failed to clarify his logic. He also insisted that CCTV cameras have been installed in Mumbai, even though the state home department has still to clear a Jan 2009 city police proposal for a 5,000-camera electronic surveillance network. Only the traffic police have CCTV cameras at road junctions. Maharashtra’s chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan, also maintained that CCTV cameras had “got a lot of useful footage” of the attacks, but explained away the failure to upgrade the system by saying: “Mumbai wants quick progress … but procurement (of equipment) is a difficult process.” Even the ruling Congress party leader, Rahul Gandhi, joined the official chorus and declared that “99% of terror attacks have been stopped” by the authorities. The newspapers however carried long lists of terror strikes in Mumbai and other cities during the last decade, including several that remain unsolved. “It is very difficult to stop every single terror attack,” Gandhi added. “We’ve improved in leaps and bounds, but terrorism is something that is also increasing in leaps and bounds.” Many businesses at the gold, diamond and jewellery centres in Mumbai that were hit by the blasts remained closed on Thursday, but a few traders and workers who were around expressed anger and frustration at the fact that Mumbai had again become a target for terrorists. “Terrorist attacks on Mumbai have become an annual event, the city has become an easy target, as the government cannot do anything,” a businessman in Zaveri Bazaar said on a TV news channel. “So we’ve no choice but to keep working.” Even as politicians resorted to tired clichés about the “resilience of the people of Mumbai”, a young man at the third bomb site in Dadar spoke of the ordinary man’s helplessness. He said: “The relatives of the injured and dead are faced with one kind of tension today, whereas others like me have another kind of tension – the daily tension of filling our stomach. Inflation has gone out of hand, so we’ve to work in order to survive.” But a lot of the anger was directed against the politicians, some of whom made ritual and pointless tours of the bomb sites meant as photo ops. Meanwhile, relatives of the dead stood patiently outside the city coroner’s office in the monsoon rain hoping to collect the bodies of their loved ones. India Global terrorism Maseeh Rahman guardian.co.uk
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Police investigate reports of illegal vodka distilling after Lincolnshire blast kills five men Police are investigating whether an industrial unit where five men were killed in an explosion in Lincolnshire was being used to brew illegal alcohol. Firefighters found five men at the property after an explosion shortly before 7.30pm on Wednesday in the Broadfield Lane estate in Boston, a sixth man was taken to hospital suffering from severe burns. Local reports suggested the industrial unit was being made to produce alcohol, but police said was only one line of inquiry. Investigators were keeping an “open mind and following up all relevant lines of inquiry”, said a police spokeswoman. “There has been all sorts of rumours along those lines,” she said. “It is far too early for us to speculate.” Inquiries were ongoing and would involved a “full forensic examination of the unit” and finger-tip searches of the cordoned-off unit to establish what was inside, she added. Following the explosion on the industrial estate, including a collection of light industrial outlets including a mechanic’s workshop and a vehicle wrecking yard, firefighters had to cut their way into the small unit after intense heat from the explosion had melted the doors. A car outside the unit was also incinerated. The bodies of the five dead men were discovered inside the industrial unit. The sixth man was taken to Boston Pilgrim hospital with serious injuries, before being transferred to the Queen’s medical centre in Nottingham. Steve Moore, area manager from Lincolnshire fire and rescue service, described the incident as one of the worst he had seen in his 28-year career. “When the first crews attended they were faced with a really serious fire and a casualty who was outside the building suffering from burns,” he said. “Their initial reaction was to treat the casualty. The incoming crew then started to fight the fire.” He added: “It was a really hot, intense fire. As far as the crews I have spoken to, its the single greatest loss of life in fire in their experience.” Ian Nuttall, 42, who lives 200 yards from the scene, said he noticed a commotion and smoke coming from the “lock-up” at about 7.30pm. “There was a rumour going round that it was some Polish nationals who have been brewing their own vodka which is a bit of a problem around here at the moment,” he said. Earlier this year, raids by HM Revenue and Customs, police and Lincolnshire trading standards seized goods including fake vodka from six international stores in the town. HMRC said forensic testing of the counterfeit alcohol, seized in March, showed it contained chemicals unsafe for public consumption. At least one store has lost its alcohol licence, while another has been suspended from selling alcohol. Boston East councillor Mike Gilbert said: “I’m very anxious to find out exactly what’s happened. It’s a lot of people dead and a great tragedy.” Alexandra Topping guardian.co.uk
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British Crime Survey reports increase in domestic burglaries in England and Wales There has been a 14% rise in domestic burglaries and a 6% rise in violent crime in the past year, according to the annual crime figures for 2010/11 . However, overall crime levels have remained flat or continued on a downward trend, with police crime figures showing a 4% fall and the more authoritative British Crime Survey indicating a 1% rise in overall crime levels. The Home Office said they indicate the remarkable reduction in the crime rate in England and Wales recorded in recent years is slowing down. But Home Office statisticians said that despite predictions of crime rises linked to the recession and rising unemployment, there was no consistent evidence of “upward pressure” on crimes involving property as a result of the difficult economic conditions. They said, however, that a 4% rise in the theft of unattended mobile phones and purses in the “other theft” category could be an early sign that larger increases were on the way. The official statisticians also said the 14% rise in domestic burglaries reported by the British Crime Survey over 2010/11 was out of line with the trend for the past five years. They said it should be seen in the context of the burglary rate for the previous year, 2009/10, being the lowest for nearly 30 years. Police crime figures reported a 3% fall in burglaries across England and Wales. The rest of the crime figures, published on Thursday, show continuing falls across other crime categories, including a remarkable 9% fall in vandalism as measured by the BCS and a 13% fall in criminal damage and 9% drop in car crime on the police figures. The murder rate in England and Wales rose from 618 to 642 homicides in 2010/11, which included the 12 victims of the Cumbria shootings in June 2010. Sexual offences as recorded by the police rose by 1%. Overall, the BCS estimated there were 9.6m crimes in 2010/11 compared with 9.5m the year before. Police recorded 4.2m offences, a 4% fall compared with 4.3m the previous year and its lowest level since 2002. The police detection rate – meaning that a suspect has been identified and interviewed and there is sufficient evidence to bring a charge – remained at 28%. Crime Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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