John Boehner does not want to use Osama bin Laden’s death as an excuse to end the war in Afghanistan or change the US relationship with Pakistan. “At this moment in time, we should reengage and strengthen our relationship with Pakistan, not walk away from it,” he said on Face…
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Security forces are investigating if the killings are connected to the death of the brother of an alleged drug trafficker At least 27 people have been killed in a massacre in northern Guatemala, with most of the victims beheaded. The killings of the 25 men and two women took place in the town of Caserio La Bomba, near the border with Mexico, after it came under attack by 200 raiders. “This is the worst massacre we have seen in modern times,” police spokesman Donald Gonzalez told Reuters. Security forces are investigating whether the attack in the province of Peten is related to the killing of Haroldo Leon, the brother of alleged Guatemalan drug trafficker Juan Jose “Juancho” Leon, the Associated Press reported. Leon was killed in 2008 in an ambush that Guatemalan authorities blame on Mexico’s Zetas drug cartel, which has increasingly wrested control of the drug trade beyond its own borders. In February, the Guatemalan government lifted a two-month-long state of siege that it had declared in Guatemala’s Alta Verapaz province, which neighbours Peten, during which troops were deployed to quell drug-related violence. The state of siege gave the army emergency powers including permission to detain suspects without warrants and resulted in the arrest of at least 20 suspected members of the Zetas gang. The Zetas, a group of ex-soldiers, began as hit men for Mexico’s Gulf drug cartel before breaking off on their own and quickly becoming one of Mexico’s most violent gangs. They are notorious for their brutality, having pioneered the now-widespread practice of beheading rivals and officials, and have extended their reign of terror into Central America The Zetas began controlling cocaine trafficking in the Alta Verapaz region in 2008 after killing Leon. Guatemala’s northern border is an active drug transfer point for cocaine moving north towards from South America in the direction of the US. Guatemala Drugs trade Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk
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• Prime minister to claim in speech that Conservatives are defenders of the health service • Baroness Williams demands sacking of No 10 adviser Mark Britnell over privatisation remarks David Cameron is to insist that there will be few compromises on the controversial NHS bill while claiming Conservatives are defenders of the health service. Wresting the issue from his health secretary, Andrew Lansley, the prime minister’s speech in west London on Monday will aim to get his party back to where it was in opposition when the Conservatives claimed they could be trusted not to dismantle the NHS if they formed a government. Alluding to his young son Ivan’s dependence on the NHS before his death, Cameron will return to a familiar formulation: “It’s the most important thing to my family. That’s why, over four years ago, I got up on a platform like this and said that you could sum up my priorities in just three letters, N-H-S.” On Saturday, Professor Steve Field, the senior doctor appointed by Cameron to review the government’s health plans, described them as unworkable and “destabilising” . Field is in charge of Cameron’s NHS future forum, set up last month to manage the “listening exercise” to stem public disquiet about their reforms and coalition opposition. Field told the Guardian he rejected Lansley’s plan to compel hospitals to compete for patients and income and felt NHS regulator Monitor should promote cooperation rather than being used to referee competition between providers. Faced with a constant drumbeat of criticism, the prime minister will attempt to reassure critics that his government can tread a fine line between safeguarding and reforming the NHS. His speech closely resembles one given by Ed Miliband last month when the Labour leader said he opposed the government’s reorganisation principles but accepted that the rising costs of healthcare required some kind of reform. Cameron is due to say: “Sticking with the status quo and hoping we can get by with a bit more money is simply not an option. If we stay as we are, the NHS will need £130bn a year by 2015, meaning a potential funding gap of £20bn. The question is, what are we going to do about that: Ignore it? No – because we’d see a crisis of funding in the NHS, overcrowded wards and fewer treatments. Borrow more so we can chuck more money at it? No – because we can’t afford to. Ask people to start paying at the point of delivery for it? No – because the NHS must always be free to those who need it. “There’s only one option we’ve got – and that is to change and modernise the NHS… to make it more efficient and more effective and, above all, more focused on prevention, on health, not just sickness. We save the NHS by changing it.” Cameron will defiantly stick to the reorganisation his government has initiated and appears to back GP consortiums. “Last year, the health select committee said ‘primary care trust commissioning is widely regarded as the weakest link in the English NHS’, citing their ‘lack of clinical knowledge’ in particular. This is what top-down control is doing to our NHS – and I believe it should change. Then there’s the inflexibility of the NHS – and this is what frustrates so many patients, and indeed nurses and doctors.” The Lib Dem peer Lady Williams is calling on Cameron to dismiss his senior adviser Mark Britnell after he told a conference that the NHS could be improved by charging patients and could be transformed into a “state insurance provider, not a state deliverer” of care. His unguarded comments were made in October but only reported this week . Britnell, appointed to a “kitchen cabinet” advising Cameron on reforming the NHS, told executives from the private sector that future reforms would show “no mercy” to the NHS and offer a “big opportunity” to the for-profit sector. No
Continue reading …Last weekend, the Afghan intelligence service paraded five young boys—some not yet adolescents—in front of reporters and photographers to send a clear message: “The Taliban are recruiting children in their ranks and using them to carry out suicide attacks in Afghanistan,” a spokesman said. One 9-year-old says his…
Continue reading …In life, Richard Holbrooke was loyal to the Obama administration, but since his December death, his widow and friends have decided that it is important people know the true opinions of this special envoy to the Af-Pak region, writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times —including what Holbrooke saw…
Continue reading …Brace yourself: This is yet another depressing housing story. A yearlong Washington Post investigation reveals that the country’s largest federal housing construction program for the poor has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on “stalled or abandoned” projects and failed to hold “derelict developers” accountable. The Post counts some 700…
Continue reading …In November, he had 120 Guinness World Records; now this 56-year-old health food store manager from Queens, NY, has 121. Life’s Little Mysteries takes a look at Ashrita Furman, the man who holds the most Guinness records and had his latest verified on Friday. That feat? “Most lemons caught blindfolded…
Continue reading …The uprising in Syria has been marked by bloody, terrifying suppression, with thousands of arbitrary arrests and even government snipers on rooftops. The Washington Post looks at the situation in the center of the unrest—the town of Daraa—as told by those who are fleeing it. One 13-year-old boy…
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In an exclusive interview with the Guardian the cosmologist shares his thoughts on death, M-theory, human purpose and our chance existence A belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us is a “fairy story” for people afraid of death, Stephen Hawking has said. In a dismissal that underlines his firm rejection of religious comforts, Britain’s most eminent scientist said there was nothing beyond the moment when the brain flickers for the final time. Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at the age of 21, shares his thoughts on death, human purpose and our chance existence in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today. The incurable illness was expected to kill Hawking within a few years of its symptoms arising, an outlook that turned the young scientist to Wagner, but ultimately led him to enjoy life more, he has said, despite the cloud hanging over his future. “I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first,” he said. “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he added. Hawking’s latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserts there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an “elementary fallacy” of logic. The 69-year-old physicist fell seriously ill after a lecture tour in the US in 2009 and was taken to Addenbrookes Hospital in an episode that sparked grave concerns for his health. He has since returned to his Cambridge department as director of research. The physicist’s remarks draw a stark line between the use of God as a metaphor and the belief in an omniscient creator whose hands guide the workings of the cosmos. In his bestselling 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking drew on the device so beloved of Einstein, when he described what it would mean for scientists to develop a “theory of everything” – a set of equations that described every particle and force in the entire universe. “It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God,” he wrote. The book sold a reported 9 million copies and propelled the physicist to instant stardom. His fame has led to guest roles in The Simpsons, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Red Dwarf. One of his greatest achievements in physics is a theory that describes how black holes emit radiation. In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: “We should seek the greatest value of our action.” In answering another, he wrote of the beauty of science, such as the exquisite double helix of DNA in biology, or the fundamental equations of physics. Hawking responded to questions posed by the Guardian and a reader ahead of a lecture tomorrow at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London, in which he will address the question: “Why are we here?” In the talk, he will argue that tiny quantum fluctuations in the very early universe became the seeds from which galaxies, stars, and ultimately human life, emerged. “Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in,” he said. Hawking suggests that with modern space-based instruments, such as the European Space Agency’s Planck mission, it may be possible to spot ancient fingerprints in the light left over from the earliest moments of the universe and work out how our own place in space came to be. His talk will focus on M-theory, a broad mathematical framework that encompasses string theory, which is regarded by many physicists as the best hope yet of developing a theory of everything. M-theory demands a universe with 11 dimensions, including a dimension of time and the three familiar spatial dimensions. The rest are curled up too small for us to see. Evidence in support of M-theory might also come from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva. One possibility predicted by M-theory is supersymmetry, an idea that says fundamental particles have heavy – and as yet undiscovered – twins, with curious names such as selectrons and squarks. Confirmation of supersymmetry would be a shot in the arm for M-theory and help physicists explain how each forces at work in the universe arose from one super-force at the dawn of time. Another potential discovery at the LHC, that of the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to give mass to elementary particles, might be less welcome to Hawking, who has a long-standing bet that the long-sought entity will never be found at the laboratory. Hawking will join other speakers at the London event, including the chancellor, George Osborne, and the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Science, truth and beauty: Hawking’s answers What is the value in knowing “Why are we here?” The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract. We need to use the effective theory of Darwinian natural selection of those societies most likely to survive. We assign them higher value. You’ve said there is no reason to invoke God to light the blue touchpaper. Is our existence all down to luck? Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in. So here we are. What should we do? We should seek the greatest value of our action. You had a health scare and spent time in hospital in 2009. What, if anything, do you fear about death? I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first. I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark. What are the things you find most beautiful in science? Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology, and the fundamental equations of physics.” Stephen Hawking Religion Ian Sample guardian.co.uk
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