Protest organised by hundreds of disabled people’s groups to culminate with lobby of MPs Thousands of disabled people and their families and supporters will converge on Westminster this week to protest against government cuts and their impact on key benefits such as the disability living allowance and the employment and support allowance . Afterwards they will lobby MPs as the welfare reform bill reaches a critical stage in the House of Commons. Wednesday’s protest, dubbed the Hardest Hit march, is being coordinated by hundreds of disabled people’s organisations and charities and groups including Scope , Leonard Cheshire Disability , Mencap , the RNIB and Sense . Organisers say that disabled people will be hit disproportionately hard by the cuts, which, they estimate, could result in families losing £9bn of support over the next four years. Jaspal Dhani, chief executive of the United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council , said the cuts would have an adverse effect on disabled people’s rights and their ability to live independently. “We believe that disabled people stand to lose most from these cuts,” he said. “We hope to show both the government and the community at large just how fearful disabled people are about the impact the cuts will have. It’s about taking direct action because it seems government ministers are simply not listening.” Dhani said the cuts would result in disabled people being institutionalised and treated unfairly as local authorities try to save money by cutting funding to the bodies that support them. Rebecca Rennison, co-chair of the Disability Benefits Consortium ‘s policy group, agreed that disabled people were likely to feel the cuts far more keenly than the rest of the population. “They’re experiencing the same cuts as everyone else and then experiencing additional ones, so it’s cuts on top of cuts,” she said. “The disability living allowance (DLA) is vital to people’s independence. They are taking away the mobility component that pays for things like taxis and allows people to get out of their homes. The impact will be devastating and people are saying enough’s enough. That’s why people from all over the country are coming to London to make their views known.” The rally will begin on Victoria Embankment on Wednesday morning and move to Westminster. Protesters will then lobby MPs in Westminster Hall and Methodist Central Hall. between 13.30 and 17.30. Disability Welfare London Karen McVeigh Sam Jones guardian.co.uk
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Secret talks reveal Greece is unable to meet obligations under last year’s €110bn eurozone rescue package The eurozone’s first ever bailout of a debt-laden member country is failing and will need to be renegotiated exactly a year after the €110bn (£96bn) rescue package was agreed for Greece. Following secret talks in Luxembourg on Friday between Athens and some of the key EU players, it emerged that Greece will not be able to meet the terms of last year’s rescue and is hoping to ask the eurozone for more funds. As Britain made clear it did not want to offer any more support for Greece as part of an EU package or a bilateral loan, investors remain unconvinced of the ability of Athens to sustain its €340bn debt load. Signalling that Athens will struggle to finance itself on the bond markets by next year – which was part of the deal struck with the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund – the Greek finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, said: “We will either go out to markets or use the recent decision by the EU that allows the European fund to buy Greek bonds. “The markets continue to disbelieve in our country.” His trip to Luxembourg had been kept so quiet in Athens that only the prime minister, George Papandreou, knew about the discussions, which were led by Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister and president of the group uniting the 17 countries using the single currency. Juncker confirmed that the Greek bailout would need to be renegotiated amid alarmist reports that the country was contemplating reintroducing the drachma. After the talks – attended by the finance ministers of Germany, France, Italy and Spain as well as Olli Rehn, European monetary affairs commissioner – Juncker said the Greek package needed a “readjustment”. Haggling over a new Greek deal is set to dominate the weeks ahead. EU finance ministers will debate the topic next week and the Germans, in particular, are digging in their heels. The chancellor, George Osborne, made clear that Britain felt it had done enough to support Greece. He told the Andrew Marr Show: “We certainly don’t want to be part of any bailout of Greece, a second bailout. There are some very difficult questions that Greece has to address now because the whole assumption when the eurozone put together a rescue package last year was that Greece could come back into the market next year and borrow. The market is quite sceptical about that happening, and I suspect a lot of my time over the next few weeks is going to be with other European finance ministers and others talking about how we try and help the Greeks get through this situation.” Britain provided a bilateral loan to Ireland last year, but Osborne said: “I can’t see us ever writing a cheque directly from the British taxpayer to the Greeks or the Portuguese or indeed anyone else. Ireland was a special case.” Over the weekend, tensions mounted in Ireland after the Irish Central Bank governor was accused of contributing to Ireland’s financial crisis by woefully “miscalculating” the extent of losses in the country’s banks. The attack on Patrick Honohan came amid reports that the IMF-European Union and European Central Bank troika had agreed a behind-the-scenes interest rate cut in Ireland’s €85bn bailout which could save the country £400m a year. Experts from the troika are arriving in Athens amid heightened urgency over the handling of the crisis. The Greek government had hoped that the announcement of a mid-term fiscal plan, whose centrepiece is a €50bn privatisation program, would help assuage the criticism of the socialist government’s recent performance in implementing a draconian programme of fiscal consolidation. The normally cool Papaconstantinou appeared uncharacteristically glum after the meeting where sources said Greece had used the occasion to press ahead with its request that eurozone member states soften the terms of the agreement reached on the bailout loans by further extending repayment deadlines. Adding to the ever growing sense of a government under siege Papandreou slammed critics at the weekend saying: “I call upon everyone in Greece and abroad, and especially in the EU, to leave Greece alone to do its job in peace.” European debt crisis Greece European banks European Union Ireland bailout Ireland Financial crisis Global recession Banking European Central Bank Europe Europe Ian Traynor Helena Smith Nicholas Watt Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …For Mother’s Day, how about we do something to reduce the 350,000 deaths of mothers during childbirth each year, suggests Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times . Congress has the power to help, but it would involve one of the big Republican taboos—”family planning.” He cites a UN…
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Iman al-Obeidi has reportedly been given refuge in Tunis after escaping with help of defecting military officer Iman al-Obeidi, the Libyan woman who claimed she was raped by Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers, has reportedly fled to Tunisia with the help of a defecting military officer. Obeidi, who drew worldwide attention when she burst into a Tripoli hotel to describe to foreign journalists her alleged ordeal at the hands of 15 men, has been given refuge in Tunis by western officials. Obeidi told CNN she had entered Tunisia with a refugee document and was considering her next move. She claimed her court case against the soldiers – who she said had seized her at a checkpoint near Tripoli – had barely progressed. After passing numerous checkpoints disguised in a veil that hid her face except one eye, Obeidi passed the Dehebi crossing on Thursday without trouble. Obeidi’s story of being brutalised by 15 drunken men over two days – some of whom she claims were close to Gaddafi’s inner circle – has become a rallying call for revolution. Her ordeal has been seized upon by members of the revolutionary council in Benghazi. She was dragged away from reporters at the Rixos hotel on 26 March after she started angrily detailing her alleged attack. Government officials promptly labelled Obeidi a prostitute and suggested she may have been a provocateur sent by rebels from eastern Libya, from where part of her family reportedly hails. It is rare in Libyan society for a woman to go public with a claim of rape, which is widely seen as dishonouring the victim and her family, rather than the attacker. Obeidi was initially jailed, but was freed under an order from Gaddafi’s son Saadi, and had since been with her family in Tripoli. The vicious standoff between Gaddafi loyalists in west Libya and western-backed rebels in the east shows little sign of ending. Nato jets have been largely absent from the skies since Wednesday. Several regime targets were hit over the weekend in the western mountains, where rebels maintain their only anti-government foothold in the west of the country. In Tripoli, some queues for fuel stretch for several miles. Bread too is in drastically short supply with bakers fled to their native Egypt when fighting erupted in mid-February yet to return. The economic siege of the capital is clearly taking a toll, with many stores in the old city remaining closed and almost all construction sites having ground to a halt. Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
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Fighting broke out over false rumours that a Christian woman was being prevented from converting to Islam Egypt’s transitional government moved quickly to defuse tensions after Muslim-Christian clashes in Cairo left 12 dead and cast a cloud over hopes for peaceful post-revolutionary change. Angry demonstrations erupted in the capital after a Coptic church in the Imbaba neighbourhood was burned down on Saturday night. Military police separated opposing camps at one protest reminiscent of the dramatic events that overthrew the regime in February. Fighting broke out over rumours, which turned out to be false, that a Christian woman was being held inside a church and prevented from converting to Islam. Essam Sharaf, prime minister of the military-backed government, postponed a visit to the Gulf to convene an emergency cabinet session, and announced compensation payments for the dead and nearly 200 injured as well as strict implementation of tough new laws banning gatherings outside places of worship. The government, sensitive to mounting alarm about deteriorating security since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in February, also rushed to announce that all 190 people arrested would be tried in military courts. The justice minister, Abdel-Aziz al-Gindi, pledged to “strike with an iron hand all those who seek to tamper with the nation’s security”. Imbaba, a poor neighbourhood in the north-west of Cairo, was quiet but tense as night fell. The main al-Wahda street was blocked by armoured cars and patrolling soldiers – trusted far more than the police, who were discredited during the revolution. Witness described how several hundred Muslims massed outside St Mina church demanding the woman be surrendered. Gunfire was heard and stones and petrol bombs were thrown before the army and emergency services were able to bring the situation under control. A second church was burned down. Copts, who marched last night to the state TV station, called for national unity but blocked roads and raised tensions. Egyptian media described the Imbaba attackers as Salafis – fundamentalist Muslims who want the imposition of sharia law. The Salafis, often with links to Saudi Arabia, are seen as having become more visible because internal security is less repressive now than before the revolution. It is also widely believed that elements of the Mubarak regime are encouraging them. “It’s the previous regime that is responsible for this,” one distraught resident told reporters. “We demand that the higher military council punish all those responsible for this crime,” said George Ishaq, a pro-democracy activist. “This is a crime – not sectarian strife.” The incident was condemned by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main Islamist grouping. “We should crack down on that violence and not let those people ruin what we achieved in the January revolution,” said a spokesman, Essam el-Erian. “The Imbaba incident clearly shows that there are some people who are still working behind the scenes to ignite sectarian strife in Egypt.” Erian echoed popular feeling in suggesting that attacks may have been encouraged by members of the now disbanded National Democratic Party, which ruled Egypt during the Mubarak era. Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog and a presidential hopeful, called for “urgent measures … to combat religious extremism and intolerance before Egypt slides into the dark ages”. Salafis demonstrated in front of the US embassy in Cairo last week after the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Last month 13 people died in similar Muslim-Coptic clashes in another Cairo neighbourhood. Copts make up about 10% of Egypt’s 80 million people. Over the weekend, democracy activists held a conference to discuss the future of the revolution in advance of landmark parliamentary elections planned for September. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the event, saying that the priority was to change the constitution for the post-Mubarak era. Egypt Middle East Islam Religion Christianity Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Osama bin Laden’s youngest wife, who was injured last week in the raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader, was a “very good overall person,” from a large, respected Yemeni family, a relative tells CNN . “The family had no extremist views, even though they came from a conservative background.” The marriage…
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The title is Manchester United’s in all but name. A further point against Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park or Blackpool at home will make them champions of England for the 19th time, so eclipsing Liverpool’s record. It is, however, Chelsea who are the contemporary rivals and it will gladden Old Trafford that Carlo Ancelotti’s team is to be trophy-less after taking the Double last season. Chelsea awakened some interest when trimming United’s 2-0 lead, but there was no concerted challenge against a much superior side. The opposition had harmed them immediately. With 37 seconds gone, Park Ji-sung sent Javier Hernández through for the opener. The visitors’ durability had vanished and United struck again after 23 minutes. Ryan Giggs took a short corner, had the ball returned to him and sent in a deep cross that was headed in by a loosely marked Nemanja Vidic. The acrimony associated with this fixture came later, with the referee Howard Webb showing tolerance when, for instance, declining to show a yellow card to the Chelsea centre-half David Luiz, who was substituted at the interval after looking vulnerable under pressure. It was a raw sort of day, with Wayne Rooney alleged to have gesticulated at visiting fans, but Chelsea felt the sting of this occasion most of all. The pursuit of United had been in vain. Any question about the outcome virtually ended with the Vidic goal, although Frank Lampard did score after Branislav Ivanovic had knocked a cross by the substitute Ramires into his path with 68 minutes gone. Sir Alex Ferguson’s side can now begin to focus on a Champions League final against Barcelona. While that will be a challenge of a higher order, United are entitled to pause and relish their work on the domestic scene. Their points total will be 82 at most, but United have exercised as much control as circumstances demanded. Edwin van der Sar did make good saves, but it never looked likely that Chelsea would completely repair the grave damage done at the outset. The form of Ancelotti’s squad had been outstanding of late, but that was still a prolonged and unavailing effort to compensate for previous lapses. Ultimately, the superiority of United has been demonstrated. The lead could well have been greater, but an unmarked Hernández headed high from Antonio Valencia’s cross in the 86th minute. Premier League Manchester United Chelsea Kevin McCarra guardian.co.uk
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Chretien rescued after seven weeks surviving on trail mix and creek water – but search for her husband, Albert, continues A Canadian woman whose van got stuck in canyon territory in Nevada has been found alive after surviving for seven weeks on water and tiny amounts of trail mix. Rita Chretien, 56, is being treated in hospital in Twin Falls, Idaho after she was discovered by hunters taking advantage of the first good weather in Nevada following an extreme winter. She had lost 30 pounds in weight but is likely to make a full recovery. The search now turns to her husband, Albert, 59, who she last saw on 22 March. After their vehicle got stuck in the mud, he set off on his own on foot armed with only a GPS unit in an attempt to find help, and has not been seen since. The couple set off from their home in Penticton, British Columbia, close to the US border, on 19 March and drove south en route to a trade fair in Las Vegas. Their son, Raymond, who has spoken to his mother, told the Oregonian newspaper that they decided to take a scenic route along back roads. But their 2000 Chevrolet Astro van got stuck in mud on a logging road in north-east Nevada. The remote area has no mobile phone coverage. “I don’t believe they were prepared for winter weather. They don’t go camping,” Raymond said. Left on her own in the van, Rita survived on water from a nearby creek, and trail mix which she ate sparingly over the 49 days before she was discovered. She was severely malnourished when she was found by hunters on all-terrain vehicles and was unable to keep down the food they gave her. When she first talked to her son she said she was sorry for the worry she had put the family through. “She felt extremely bad for us all. She was extremely apologetic,” Raymond said. When the couple first went missing, a search was launched in Oregon with the help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but it was hampered by heavy snow and the rugged terrain, and was called off two weeks ago. Raymond said the family was amazed to hear of his mother’s survival. “We’re stunned. We haven’t fully digested it. This is a miracle.” Rescue efforts are being stepped up for Albert, for whom hope is slim. Raymond said his mother was not optimistic about finding her husband: “He didn’t have shelter. It’s her belief that he didn’t make it.” Canada Nevada United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
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Practice used to ‘check marital status’ of Asian migrants more widely administered than first thought, Home Office files show Ministers are facing demands for an official apology to at least 80 Asian women who were subjected to “virginity tests” by immigration staff when they tried to come to Britain in the late 1970s. The demands follow the disclosure of confidential Home Office files that show that intimate examinations – used to “check the marital status” of Indian and Pakistani women coming to Britain to marry – were on a far wider scale than was previously known. The practice was banned in February 1979 after the Guardian exclusively reported that a 35-year-old Indian woman teacher was examined by a male doctor when she arrived at Heathrow to test whether she was a genuine wife-to-be who had not borne children and was still a virgin. The Home Office initially denied that any internal examination had taken place. The woman told the Guardian’s then social services correspondent, Melanie Phillips, that she only signed a form consenting to a “gynaecological examination, that may be vaginal if necessary” because she was frightened she would otherwise be sent back to India. “A man doctor came in. I asked to be seen by a lady doctor but they said ‘no’,” she told Phillips. “He was wearing rubber gloves and took some medicine out of a tube and put it on some cotton and inserted it into me. He said he was deciding whether I was pregnant now or had been pregnant before. I said that he could see that without doing anything to me, but he said there was no need to get shy. “I have been feeling very bad mentally ever since. I was very embarrassed and upset. I had never had a gynaecological examination before.” The recently released Home Office files report the doctor’s version of the examination: “Penetration of about half an inch made it apparent that she had an intact hymen and no other internal examination was made … The only time she was bare chested was for the X-ray examination… The doctor told the immigration officer verbally that the lady had not had children and she was then given conditional leave to enter for three months as a fiancee.” But the file also reveals that after the incident became public the Home Office offered the woman £500 to ensure she did not sue. The payment, offered through her solicitors, was to be “in recognition of the distress she had been caused” but she also had to agree “not to initiate any proceedings against the Home Office”. It was stressed that the payment was not “compensation”, which would have implied that immigration staff had acted improperly, and the then home secretary, Merlyn Rees, while expressing his “deep regret” carefully, did not make an official apology to her. In the face of an immediate storm of protest from the Indian government and elsewhere over such a “humiliating and obscene” practice, the then Labour government confirmed that the incident had taken place but insisted there had only been two other cases in the previous seven years. But the internal Home Office files dug out of the National Archives in London by two Australian legal academics and seen by the Guardian, show that the practice was far more widespread, especially at British high commission offices in India and Pakistan. Despite denials by ministers, including in a personal message from James Callaghan to the then Indian prime minister, the papers show that British entry clearance officers in what was then called Bombay, New Delhi and Islamabad all “sought medical opinion on the marital status of some female applicants”. In private, senior Foreign Office officials reported 73 cases in New Delhi and a further nine in Bombay over the previous three years. The Australian academics, Marinella Marmo and Evan Smith of Flinders University law school, Adelaide, said the use of gynaecological examinations on migrant women from the Indian subcontinent in the 1970s was one of the gravest abuses of discretionary powers in British immigration history: “A proper apology that acknowledged ‘virginity testing’ was not an isolated incident was never issued,” they said. The demand for an apology was backed by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which was involved in the original 1979 case. Hina Majid, the JCWI’s legal policy director, said: “This represents yet another shameful chapter in the ignominious history of British immigration control. “It is deeply regrettable that no apology has ever been rendered to those women who underwent this degrading and discriminatory practice. “Whilst this is a practice of the past, it is demonstrative of a wider, and indeed ongoing tendency to sideline women in immigration policy making. Whilst in 2011 we may no longer be virginity testing South Asian brides, the sad reality is that many migrant women continue to be denied equal treatment, and the full enjoyment of their human rights,” she said. A UK Border Agency spokesman said: “These practices occurred 30 years ago and were clearly wrong. This government’s immigration policies reflect the UK’s legal responsibilities and respect immigrants’ human rights.” Immigration and asylum Newspapers India Pakistan Guardian Media Group Newspapers & magazines Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Barack Obama raises pressure on Pakistan to investigate whether its people were involved in helping Bin Laden hide Barack Obama has ratcheted up the pressure on Pakistan, demanding that the Pakistani government investigates whether its own people were involved in a network to support Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad hideout. The US president’s comments are his most direct yet on the subject of Pakistan’s possible complicity with terrorism. He told the CBS show 60 Minutes that Bin Laden must have had “some sort of support network” inside the country. “We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, outside of government, and that’s something we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” he said. Obama’s words add to a sustained verbal attack by the US administration on the Pakistani government in the wake of the raid on the al-Qaida leader’s lair in the middle of a busy garrison town that is home to three regiments, a military academy and thousands of soldiers. Last week the CIA director, Leon Panetta, told Congress that Pakistan had been “either involved or incompetent”. Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, said on ABC’s This Week that there was no evidence Pakistan had foreknowledge of Bin Laden’s presence. But he said the al-Qaida chief “was living, and we now know operating, in a town 35 miles away from Islamabad, a military town. So questions are being raised quite aggressively in Pakistan.” Donilon said the US would remain “cool and calm”. But he added: “They need to do an investigation.” One objective of the intensifying pressure on Pakistan is to ensure its co-operation with the CIA and other US investigators into the treasure trove of documents found inside Bin Laden’s compound. Most of the materials – amounting to the single largest cache of information ever taken from a senior terrorist, equivalent in size to a small college library, officials say – were taken away by the US navy seals and are now being pored over by federal anti-terrorism investigators. But a substantial number of documents were left behind and are now held by Pakistani officials, who are also holding in custody the non-combatants found in the compound, including Bin Laden’s three wives and several children. The US now wants access to the wives to be able to question them. The mounting pressure from Washington puts the Pakistani government in an awkward position. On the one hand, the fact Bin Laden was holed up for so long in the middle of the country is a huge embarrassment, but so too is the unannounced US raid inside its sovereign territory. That conflict is reflected in the position of the army chief, General Ashfaz Kayani, who has announced he is leading an investigation into what happened. He has warned the US not to try another stealth mission inside the country. Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, Hussain Haqqani, promised “heads would roll” once the Kayani investigation was completed. “If someone is complicit, there will be zero tolerance for that,” he told This Week. “If any member of the Pakistan government, military or intelligence service knew were Osama bin Laden was we would have taken action. Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan was not to Pakistan’s advantage.” Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, is due to make a statement to parliament tomorrow, his first formal comments on the Bin Laden issue. Senior opposition figures have called for his resignation over the affair. Until now most western criticism has been directed at Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies. Some US officials have insinuated that the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) helped to harbour Bin Laden. Now the ISI is hitting back with judicious media leaks. In a move bound to infuriate the US, several Pakistani television stations on Friday named the CIA station chief in Islamabad as Mark Carlton. The stations said he had been given a verbal roasting by the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha. The naming is sensitive because the previous CIA chief in Islamabad quit his position in December over security worries after being named in a court case and in the national media. Some US officials blamed the ISI for the leak. The Pakistani government has introduced curbs on international media in Abbottabad, ordering television stations to cease broadcasting and some reporters to leave town. On Saturday night the television regulator, Pemra, ordered nine international channels – including the BBC, CNN and Fox – to stop “illegal” broadcasts. It suggested the channels could not broadcast from Abbottabad or anywhere in Pakistan without obtaining a licence, a previously unknown requirement. Officials contacted several British, Australian and American journalists, instructing them to leave Abbottabad because their visas did not permit them to stay. The government also took measures to stop more journalists entering Pakistan. At diplomatic missions in London and New Delhi, Pakistani officials said there was a temporary hold on media visas. The measures appear to be part of a concerted government effort to stem a tide of critical media coverage over Bin Laden. Osama bin Laden al-Qaida Pakistan US foreign policy Obama administration United States Ed Pilkington Declan Walsh Saeed Shah guardian.co.uk
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