Soldiers’ uniforms turn purple, vegetation magenta … the infrared film used by photographer Richard Mosse forces us to see the conflicts of Congo in different ways
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Soldiers’ uniforms turn purple, vegetation magenta … the infrared film used by photographer Richard Mosse forces us to see the conflicts of Congo in different ways
Continue reading …
Soldiers’ uniforms turn purple, vegetation magenta … the infrared film used by photographer Richard Mosse forces us to see the conflicts of Congo in different ways
Continue reading …Soldiers’ uniforms turn purple, vegetation magenta … the infrared film used by photographer Richard Mosse forces us to see the conflicts of Congo in different ways
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Actor who made his name playing bad boy Kenickie in Grease was taken off life support after remaining in coma for two weeks Jeff Conaway, the actor who made his name playing bad boy Kenickie in the movie Grease and as struggling actor Bobby Wheeler in the sitcom Taxi has died at the age of 60. Conaway had been hospitalised two weeks ago after he was found in a coma in his Los Angeles home. He never regained consciousness. The actor’s manager, Phil Brock, said he died early today, surrounded by his sisters, nieces and nephews, shortly after being taken off life support. Conaway had been suffering from pneumonia and sepis and was recovering from a recent surgery to ease back pain. He had also struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. Reports said his weakened state, compounded by the effects of long-term drug abuse, had inhibited his chances of recovery. Conaway first found fame alongside John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in the 1978 musical film Grease. He was also known for playing Bobby Wheeler, a struggling actor making ends meet as a cab driver, on the hit sitcom Taxi between 1978 and 1981. “We lost someone that we loved,” Brock said. “We tried to guide him through his struggles. We know that right now, someone in heaven is getting a hickey from Kenickie.” Conaway’s struggle with addiction were documented in 2008 when he appeared on the US reality television series Celebrity Rehab. Last month, Travolta offered to pay for the troubled actor to go back to rehab, an offer Conaway never took up. “My heartfelt thoughts are with his family and loved ones at this very difficult time,” Travolta said in a statement. Brock earlier this month said Conaway had overcome a rough childhood to succeed as an actor, but suffered from self-destructive tendencies. “When he was seven years old, his grandmother let him taste the moonshine she made in her bathtub; when he was 10 and a child actor, his dad took all his money and ran away,” he told Reuters. “Later, Jeff had the world in his hand and would find ways to destroy it.” Conaway is the second personality featured on Celebrity Rehab – a long-running show on the VH1 cable network that follows stars as they are treated for drug an alcohol addiction – to die this year. Mike Starr, the former bassist of grunge band Alice in Chains was found dead in March after a suspected drug overdose. The show’s presenter, Dr Drew Pinsky, wrote about Conaway’s death on Twitter , saying he was “saddened to report [Conaway] has succumbed to his addiction. There was no evidence of an intentional overdose”. United States Barry Neild guardian.co.uk
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PM launches passionate defence of Britain’s commitment to international aid and calls on other leaders to fulfil their pledges David Cameron made a scathing attack on his fellow leaders over aid to Africa at the end of their G8 summit, saying they were seen by the public as a bunch of men in suits, more interested in a good lunch than keeping their promises to the world’s poorest. He also issued a broadside against readers of the Daily Mail, reminding them that Britain’s aid budget was intended to save the lives of women in childbirth and to spare people in Africa from malaria. In a polemic issued midway through his G8 press conference at Deauville in France, he even argued it would have been better for Afghanistan if a fraction of the money now spent there by the UK military had earlier instead been spent on aid. His emotional defence of his spending priorities was made in response to a Daily Mail article (below, right) which had claimed that a report showing Britain spends more on aid than its G8 partners, was damning. The prime minister has been under growing pressure from Conservative backbenchers, as well as the defence secretary, Liam Fox, to reduce the growing aid budget in face of the recession, but clearly believes he will not shift on his promise to raise it to reach the target of 0.7% of British GDP by 2015. In a passionate defence of his stance, he said: “I think what people back home think about these summits is that a bunch of people in suits get together, make some promises, particularly to the world’s poorest; then they go in and have a big lunch, and forget about the promises. I am not prepared to do that. These are things that matter.” He recalled that he had thought it right that the world’s politicians at the G8 summit in 2005 made public pledges to help the world’s poorest. But he pointed out that they failed to match those promises of a $50bn increase in aid, falling short by $19bn in real terms, a point he had insisted was in the communique. His officials said that twice in private G8 sessions he raised the inability of world leaders to match their promises; the chief culprits are Germany and Italy. He went on: “If we are going to get across to the poorest people in the world that we care about their plight, and we want them to join one world with the rest of us, then we have got to make promises and keep promises. Of course it is difficult when we are having to make difficult decisions at home, but I don’t think 0.7 % of our gross national income is too high a price to pay for trying to save lives.” He then directly addressed Daily Mail readers: “If you are not convinced it is not right to vaccinate children against diarrhoea, to try and stop preventable diseases, and to try and save mothers in childbirth, if that does not do it for you, what about this argument? “That these countries that are broken, like Somalia and Afghanistan, if we don’t invest in them before they get like that, we end up with the problems; we end up paying the price with the terrorism, the crime and the mass migration, and the environmental devastation. “If we [had] spent a fraction of what we are paying now in Afghanistan on military equipment, into that country as aid and development when it had a chance perhaps of finding its own future, would that have not been a better decision? I know this is a controversial argument, but it’s an argument that can be won.” He went on: “Most people in this country want Britain to stand for something in the world, and to be something in the world and to punch above our weight. That did not just require military and diplomats, but also having a substantial aid budget to help at times of hurricanes, tsunamis or earthquakes. “I remember as a young politician watching the 2005 Gleneagles summit, and that Live 8 concert [events at 10 G8 locations and broadcast worldwide], and thinking it was right those world leaders made their pledges so publicly. I think when you make a promise to the poorest people in the world, you should keep it. And I am proud that Britain is doing that.” Development G8 David Cameron G8 Aid Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …When the government bailed out Chrysler and GM, it freed them from most of their prior legal obligations—including billions owed to the victims of crashes involving defective cars, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though the automakers agreed to continue to be liable for new lawsuits stemming from old vehicle…
Continue reading …Saudi Arabia is moving to firm up alliances with Sunni nations in a bid to limit Iran’s influence and stem the tide of revolts in the Arab world. It has asked several countries across the Middle East and Asia, including Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, to join an informal alliance that…
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Guardian exclusive: Soldier held over US intelligence leak was known to be mentally fragile and unsuited to army life The American soldier at the centre of the WikiLeaks revelations was so mentally fragile before his deployment to Iraq that he wet himself, threw chairs around, shouted at his commanding officers and was regularly brought in for psychiatric evaluations, according to an investigative film produced by the Guardian . Bradley Manning, who was detained a year ago on Sunday in connection with the biggest security leak in US military history, was a “mess of a child” who should never have been put through a tour of duty in Iraq, according to an officer from the Fort Leonard Wood military base in Missouri, where Manning trained in 2007. The officer’s words reinforce a leaked confidential military report that reveals that other senior officers thought he was unfit to go to Iraq. “He was harassed so much that he once pissed in his sweatpants,” the officer said. “I escorted Manning a couple of times to his ‘psych’ evaluations after his outbursts. They never should have trapped him in and recycled him in [to Iraq]. Never. Not that mess of a child I saw with my own two eyes. No one has mentioned the army’s failure here – and the discharge unit who agreed to send him out there,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified because of the hostility towards Manning in the military. “I live in an area where I would be persecuted if I said anything against the army or helped Manning,” the officer said. Despite several violent outbursts and a diagnosis of adjustment disorder, a condition that meant he was showing difficulty adjusting to military life, Manning was eventually sent to Iraq, where it is alleged he illegally downloaded thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents and passed them on to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. In Iraq, Manning retained his security clearance to work as an intelligence specialist. Two months after his arrival, the bolt was removed from his rifle because he was thought to be a danger, his lawyer, David Coombs, has confirmed. A Guardian investigation focusing on soldiers who worked with Manning in Iraq has also discovered there was virtually no computer and intelligence security at Manning’s station in Iraq, Forward Operating Base Hammer. According to eyewitnesses, the security was so lax that many of the 300 soldiers on the base had access to the computer room where Manning worked, and passwords to access the intelligence computers were stuck on “sticky notes” on the laptop screens. Rank and file soldiers would watch grisly “kill mission” footage as a kind of entertainment on computers with access to the sensitive network of US diplomatic and military communications known as SIPRNet. Jacob Sullivan, 28, of Phoenix, Arizona, a former chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist, was stationed at FOB Hammer in Manning’s unit. “A lot of different people worked from that building and in pretty much every room there was a SIPRNet computer attached to a private soldier or a specialist,” Sullivan said “On the computers that I saw there was a [sticky label] either on the computer or next to the computer with the information to log on. I was never given permission to log on so I never used it but there were a lot of people who did.” He added: “If you saw a laptop with a red wire coming out of it, you knew it was a SIPRNet. I would be there by myself and the laptops [would] be sitting there with passwords. Everyone would write their passwords down on sticky notes and set it by their computer. [There] wasn’t a lot of security going on so no wonder something like this transpired.” Manning is facing multiple charges of downloading and passing on sensitive information. No one else at the base has been charged. Manning denies all the charges. If convicted he could face up to 55 years in jail. The US Defence Security Service is also investigating why Manning, who had been sent for psychiatric counselling before he was deployed to Iraq, was not screened more fully before he was allowed to work in intelligence. Eyewitness accounts by soldiers who served with him there and friends in the US who spoke to the Guardian paint a picture of an increasingly unstable and at times violent man. One soldier who served with him describes him “blowing up and punching this chick in the face”. Additional reporting by Daniel Fisher Bradley Manning WikiLeaks US military United States Maggie O’Kane Chavala Madlena Guy Grandjean guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Guardian exclusive: Soldier held over US intelligence leak was known to be mentally fragile and unsuited to army life The American soldier at the centre of the WikiLeaks revelations was so mentally fragile before his deployment to Iraq that he wet himself, threw chairs around, shouted at his commanding officers and was regularly brought in for psychiatric evaluations, according to an investigative film produced by the Guardian . Bradley Manning, who was detained a year ago on Sunday in connection with the biggest security leak in US military history, was a “mess of a child” who should never have been put through a tour of duty in Iraq, according to an officer from the Fort Leonard Wood military base in Missouri, where Manning trained in 2007. The officer’s words reinforce a leaked confidential military report that reveals that other senior officers thought he was unfit to go to Iraq. “He was harassed so much that he once pissed in his sweatpants,” the officer said. “I escorted Manning a couple of times to his ‘psych’ evaluations after his outbursts. They never should have trapped him in and recycled him in [to Iraq]. Never. Not that mess of a child I saw with my own two eyes. No one has mentioned the army’s failure here – and the discharge unit who agreed to send him out there,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified because of the hostility towards Manning in the military. “I live in an area where I would be persecuted if I said anything against the army or helped Manning,” the officer said. Despite several violent outbursts and a diagnosis of adjustment disorder, a condition that meant he was showing difficulty adjusting to military life, Manning was eventually sent to Iraq, where it is alleged he illegally downloaded thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents and passed them on to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. In Iraq, Manning retained his security clearance to work as an intelligence specialist. Two months after his arrival, the bolt was removed from his rifle because he was thought to be a danger, his lawyer, David Coombs, has confirmed. A Guardian investigation focusing on soldiers who worked with Manning in Iraq has also discovered there was virtually no computer and intelligence security at Manning’s station in Iraq, Forward Operating Base Hammer. According to eyewitnesses, the security was so lax that many of the 300 soldiers on the base had access to the computer room where Manning worked, and passwords to access the intelligence computers were stuck on “sticky notes” on the laptop screens. Rank and file soldiers would watch grisly “kill mission” footage as a kind of entertainment on computers with access to the sensitive network of US diplomatic and military communications known as SIPRNet. Jacob Sullivan, 28, of Phoenix, Arizona, a former chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist, was stationed at FOB Hammer in Manning’s unit. “A lot of different people worked from that building and in pretty much every room there was a SIPRNet computer attached to a private soldier or a specialist,” Sullivan said “On the computers that I saw there was a [sticky label] either on the computer or next to the computer with the information to log on. I was never given permission to log on so I never used it but there were a lot of people who did.” He added: “If you saw a laptop with a red wire coming out of it, you knew it was a SIPRNet. I would be there by myself and the laptops [would] be sitting there with passwords. Everyone would write their passwords down on sticky notes and set it by their computer. [There] wasn’t a lot of security going on so no wonder something like this transpired.” Manning is facing multiple charges of downloading and passing on sensitive information. No one else at the base has been charged. Manning denies all the charges. If convicted he could face up to 55 years in jail. The US Defence Security Service is also investigating why Manning, who had been sent for psychiatric counselling before he was deployed to Iraq, was not screened more fully before he was allowed to work in intelligence. Eyewitness accounts by soldiers who served with him there and friends in the US who spoke to the Guardian paint a picture of an increasingly unstable and at times violent man. One soldier who served with him describes him “blowing up and punching this chick in the face”. Additional reporting by Daniel Fisher Bradley Manning WikiLeaks US military United States Maggie O’Kane Chavala Madlena Guy Grandjean guardian.co.uk
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