When the husband of John Ensign’s mistress decided to email a Fox News anchor a request to discuss the affair, Rick Santorum found out—and warned the former Nevada GOP senator, a Senate ethics committee probe finds. Doug Hampton forwarded his email to Fox’s Megyn Kelly to Santorum, asking for…
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Labour calls for austerity programme to be eased as eurozone giants report rapid growth Fresh fears have been raised about the health of Britain’s moribund economy after the twin giants of the eurozone – Germany and France – posted rapid growth in the first three months of the year. Prompting fresh calls from Labour for an easing of the government’s austerity programme, figures showed that Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, expanded by 1.5% between January and March and has recovered all the ground lost in the global slump of 2008-9. France grew by an unexpectedly strong 1%. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said the data was in sharp contrast to the UK, where the economy has gone sideways over the past six months and where national output is still 4% lower than before the recession. A weather-affected 0.5% drop in gross domestic product in the final three months of 2010 was followed by a similar bounce back in early 2011. Balls said the UK’s growth record was the third weakest in the European Union, with only Greece and Portugal – both in deep financial crisis – doing worse. “These figures expose how, since George Osborne’s spending review and VAT rise, Britain’s economy has gone from the fast lane to the slow lane,” Balls said. “As our economy has flatlined, countries like France, Belgium, the Netherlands and even Spain have overtaken us while Germany is powering ahead. “We’ve gone from the top end of the economic growth league table to being stuck at the bottom just above Greece and Portugal. These figures show the huge risks George Osborne is taking.” The Treasury said the government was being forced to tackle the problems inherited from Labour. “It’s good news that our biggest export markets are growing. It also underlines how much further into the danger zone the UK was 12 months ago. The government is having to deal with a deficit four times bigger than Germany’s,” a spokesman said. “Our housing bust was second only to Spain’s. But despite this, UK homeowners and small businesses are benefiting from the same low interest rates as in Germany and France. That’s because the world has confidence in the tough decisions the government is taking.” Analysts said that Germany, which is enjoying an investment boom as well as exporting heavily to China, was entering a new “wirtschaftswunder” – miracle economy – not seen in the decades after the second world war. Using one of Osborne’s favourite quotes, a Treasury source said: “Germany shows what you can do if you fix the roof while the sun is shining.” ING’s Carsten Brzeski, of ING, a Dutch banking, insurance and asset management group, said: “By now, even the last sceptics should have come to the conclusion that the German recovery is more than just a ‘statistical effect’. In fact, with its sound fundamentals, the economy is heading towards a second wirtschaftswunder.” Financial markets were also surprised by the performance of France, which has been less successful than Germany in seizing the export opportunities provided by fast-growing economies such as China. With some of the smaller monetary union nations such as Austria and the Netherlands also posting strong growth, the eurozone overall expanded by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2011. Howard Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, said: “This is almost certainly as good as it gets for the eurozone and growth seems likely to moderate over the coming months. Nevertheless, there now looks a very decent chance that eurozone GDP growth will reach 2% in 2011 for the first time since 2007. “And the GDP growth rate of 0.8% quarter-on-quarter makes the UK’s 0.5% expansion look even more paltry.” Economic policy Europe Germany France Ed Balls Labour Economic growth (GDP) Economics Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
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Retribution granted to woman who had acid thrown in her face by man she refused to marry In a literal application of the sharia law of an eye for an eye, Iran is ready for the first time to blind a man with acid, after he was found guilty of doing the same to a woman who refused to marry him. Majid Movahedi, 30, is scheduled to be rendered unconscious in Tehran’s judiciary hospital at noon on Saturday while Ameneh Bahrami, his victim, drops acid in both his eyes, her lawyer said. Bahrami who had asked for an eye for an eye retribution in the court, was disfigured and blinded by Movahedi in 2004 when he threw a jar of acid in her face while she was returning home from work. “He was holding a red container in his hand. He looked into my eyes for a second and threw the contents of the red container into my face,” she told the court in 2008. According to Iranian media, Bahrami’s lawyer, Ali Sarafi, has said: “A very good sentence has been given and an appropriate method has been adopted so that the convict will be blinded by few drops of acids in eyes after he is rendered unconscious.” In a highly publicised dossier in November 2008, a criminal court in Tehran ordered qisas (retribution) on Movahedi after he admitted throwing acid at Bahrami, and entitled her to blind him with acid. He was also required to pay compensation to the victim. Bahrami refused to accept the “blood money” and told the court: “Inflict the same life on him that he inflicted on me.” Iranian officials have endorsed the the sentence in the hope of halting an increase in the rate of acid attacks. But human rights activists have warned against an “inhumane” sentence. The British Foreign Office urged Iran to halt the sentence. “The attack on Ameneh Bahrami in 2004 was a horrific crime,” a spokesman said. “However, we are deeply concerned by reports that Majid Movahedi’s sentence of being blinded by having acid dripped into his eyes may be carried out. “The FCO calls on the Iranian authorities to commute this inhumane punishment to an appropriate sentence in line with Iran’s international obligations and to cease the practice of corporal punishment for crimes.” Iranian media have reported that Movahedi will be blinded in both eyes but Bahrami, in an interview in 2009, said that the man would be blinded only in one eye because “each man is worth two women” under Iranian law. “The person who did this deserves to go through the same suffering. Only this way will he understand my pain … my intention is to ask for the application of the law not just for revenge but also so that no other woman will have to go through this. It is to set an example,” Bahrami was quoted by the Spanish newspaper ABC as saying. Bahrami, who has an electronics degree and worked in a medical engineering company before the attack, moved to Spain with the help of the Iranian government where she has undergone a series of unsuccessful operations. She briefly recovered half vision in her right eye in 2007 but an infection blinded her again. Bahrami has recently published a book in Germany, Eye for an Eye, based on her personal life and her suffering since she was blinded. In recent months, human rights organisations have expressed alarm over the unprecedented increase of capital punishment in Iran, which last year executed more people than any other country apart from China. Iran Middle East Human rights Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A spokeswomen for the National Zoo who is seven months pregnant and will be laid off as of June 4 because of budget cuts confronted President Barack Obama at a town hall meeting yesterday. “I’m scared about what my future holds,” Karin Gallo said. “I definitely need a job. And,…
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Ethiopian man tells UN refugee agency two military vessels refused to rescue boatload of migrants, many of whom died The crew of a naval vessel took photographs of African migrants begging for help from a broken-down boat adrift on the Mediterranean but refused to offer any assistance, a survivor told the UN refugee agency. The account, given to the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) by an Ethiopian survivor now in a Tunisian camp, confirms a Guardian report on Sunday and adds new details that make clear western military forces off the Libyan coast were well aware of the plight of the migrants they failed to help. “We passed by a military big boat,” one of the survivors, an ethnic Oromo, told a UNHCR official. “We wanted to go with them as it looked safer than staying in our boat, but they refused [to allow us to board] their boat. We also saw a military helicopter flying above us. “A second helicopter flew above us and threw biscuits and water at us. Then we passed by a second military boat, but they did not rescue us – they just took pictures of us from their boat.” The refugees’ boat set off from Libya on 25 March carrying 50 men, 20 women and two small children. When the boat washed up back on the Libyan coast only 11 were left alive after 15 days at sea without food or drinkable water. A woman survivor died on the beach and the remaining 10 men were arrested by the Libyan authorities and put in jail, where another of the men died. “People were dying every day on board, from dehydration, sun stroke, hunger,” the Ethiopian survivor told the UNHCR. “When some of us realised others were about to die, we were trying to pay more attention to them, to comfort them. We were keeping the bodies one or two days, hoping to reach a coast and give them a proper burial and prayers, but also sometimes we did not know if they were really dead or just in a coma. After two days and no coast in view, we had to throw the bodies overboard as they were starting to smell bad.” Nato repeated its denial that warships under its command were involved. A spokesman said there were two reports from Nato ships about migrant boats in distress in the week in question, and both were offered help. Nato also said a Romanian ship under alliance command helped another boatload of 150 migrants on Thursday night, fixing their engine, mending a leak and providing food. Nato said the defective boat in this latest incident was “allegedly provided by Libyan military officials and crewed by three Syrians”. There have been allegations that the regime in Tripoli has been using migrants as a propaganda weapon , deliberately allowing them to leave in unseaworthy vessels. The US, France, Germany and Spain all have warships off the Libyan coast that are not formally taking part in Nato operations there. None has admitted being involved in the incident described by the survivors. Melissa Fleming, the UNHCR spokeswoman, said: “We are hugely concerned that boats are encountering other boats in distress at sea but are doing nothing. There is a legal obligation to carry out rescue at sea.” According to the account given to the UNHCR, the Oromo survivor was one of three Ethiopian men on the boat. They had paid smugglers $800 (£495) to make the sea voyage to Europe, although the migrants were expected to operate the boat on their own. They had to pay a further $900, provided by Ethiopian friends, to get out of the Libyan prison, from where they crossed the border into Tunisia. According to the UNHCR, a total of 12,505 migrants have arrived in Italy from Libya since March. There have been 130 arrivals in Malta. At least 800 – possibly many more – are believed to have drowned making the crossing. Refugees Libya Middle East Africa Julian Borger guardian.co.uk
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Rachel Cowles ‘was scared and in tears’ after turning down lift from man said to be Levi Bellfield A schoolgirl whom double murderer Levi Bellfield allegedly tried to entice into his car the day before Milly Dowler disappeared told a court the incident left her scared and in tears. Rachel Cowles, now 21, was 11 and bore an “uncanny resemblance” to Milly when a man in a red car, claiming to be a new neighbour, offered her a lift as she walked home from school. She refused and the car drove off after a police car passed in the opposite direction, the Old Bailey was told. When she got home she looked but could not see the car parked outside any neighbouring houses. After her mother phoned police, she burst into tears as she spoke to a police operator. “I felt scared. I suddenly realised the enormity of what had happened,” she told the jury. Rachel, who was wearing school uniform and had her hair in a ponytail, was walking home from school alone in Shepperton – three miles from where Milly vanished in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, the next day. Milly’s unclothed body was found 25 miles away in Yateley Heath Wood, Hampshire, six months later. Bellfield, 43, a former club doorman, formerly of West Drayton, west London, denies the kidnap and murder of Milly, aged 13, on 21 March 2002, and the attempted abduction of Rachel the previous day. Recalling the incident nine years ago, Rachel Cowles said a red car pulled alongside her around 3.30pm that day. The passenger window was wound down and the driver leaned towards her. “I remember him saying, ‘Hello, I’ve just moved in next door; would you like a lift home?’
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Internet users suspect government is interfering with method they have been using to tunnel under the ‘Great Firewall’ Chinese internet users suspect that their government is interfering with the method they have been using to tunnel under the “Great Firewall” to prevent them connecting with the outside world. Sites such as search engine Google and news site MSN have become difficult to access, they say. And a number of universities and businesses have begun warning their users not to try to evade the firewall. Since 6 May, a number of users says that internet connections via China Telecom, the largest telephone company, and China Unicom have become “unstable”, with intermittent access when trying to access sites in foreign countries using a “virtual private network” (VPN) – a preferred method of evading the blocks put up by China’s censors to external sites. Even Apple’s app store has been put off-limits by the new blocks, according to reports. The disruption has mainly affected corporate connections such as universities while home connections that use standard broadband systems have been unaffected, according to the prominent Chinese technology blogger William Long . Normally traffic flowing over VPN connections is secure because it is encrypted, meaning that the Chinese authorities were unable to detect what content was flowing back and forth over it. A VPN connection from a location inside China to a site outside China would effectively give the same access as if the user were outside China. Sites including Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China; by using a VPN linked to an outside “proxy” which acts a conduit for links to other sites, a China-based internet user could access either site directly from their computer without the authorities being able to monitor them. But this month that appears to have changed. According to Global Voices Advocacy , a pressure group that defends free speech online, the disruption follows new systems put in place in the “Great Firewall” – in fact monitoring software on the routers that direct internet traffic within and across China’s borders. The new software appears to be able to detect large amounts of connections being made to overseas internet locations. The problem has become so bad that some universities and businesses have told their users not to try to use VPNs, and only to visit “work-related” sites; to do otherwise could lead to “trouble” for the company and the users involved. China’s approach to internet connectivity has been a bone of contention between it and the international community for years. Google dithered over the fact that it would have to censor its search results in order to function inside the country; in January 2010 it withdrew from China’s mainland over allegations of state-sponsored hacking of its Gmail service . The US secretary of state Hilary Clinton has criticised the use of the Great Firewall, and earlier this week the US said it would provide $30m of funding to break web censorship in repressive regimes, and added that China had a “deplorable” human rights record and that it was a “fool’s errand” to try to hold off democratic changes such as those sweeping the Middle East. Internet China Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A man and a woman have been busted in the shotgun murder of MTV producer Gabriel Ben-Meir, 30, outside his Los Angeles home earlier this week. Another man killed a week earlier has also been linked to the pair. Ben-Meir’s wallet was missing when police examined his body, raising speculation…
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Ira Cohen, who died last month at the age of 76, is renowned for his Mylar Chamber images, in which he photographed Jimi Hendrix and others in his New York loft apartment. Here we take a look at his life’s work
Continue reading …Get down and dirty and hail the SlutWalks. That’s the advice from über feminist Germaine Greer. The global SlutWalks —organized to protest a Toronto cop’s comments that women should stop dressing like sluts if they want to avoid rape—definitely feature people “taking liberties,” notes Greer. “That’s where liberation begins….
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