Brockholes nature reserve opens by M6, offering weary travellers a break among bird hides and a floating visitor centre A green service station has opened beside one of the UK’s busiest motorways, offering a bird hide and floating “eco village” alongside tea and cake. The £10m project is located in a nature reserve flanked by the M6 at Preston, Lancashire, and is making a pitch for travellers “who don’t know the difference between a reed bed and an unmade bed”, as well as nature lovers. Housed in flooded gravel pits at Brockholes, it features one of the few floating buildings in the UK, a cluster of shingled, high-roofed structures inspired by houses in south-east Asia and the wetlands of southern Iraq. Offerings not usually available on motorway stop-offs include lavatories flushed with lake water and the curious cry of the water rail. “It sounds like someone being strangled,” says a cheerful caption beside a press-button display which fills the reception area with the water rail’s squawks , the piping of sedge warblers or skylark song. “We think there’s real potential here to re-engage people with nature,” says Lindsey Poole of Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside Wildlife Trust , which raised an unprecedented £10m for the project. “Our research found that too many people are almost scared of nature reserves, thinking they’re only for specialists. “We had more than 5,000 people at our opening weekend over Easter and the message was: it doesn’t matter a jot if you don’t know your Canada goose from your whimbrel. This is a place to enjoy, have a break and have fun.” The floating island, essential for a flood plain regularly inundated by the nearby River Ribble, is at least half made-up of shopping and eating places, with floor-to-ceiling views over the former sand and gravel quarries. Budget forecasts estimate that the “village” will be self-sustaining, with architect Adam Khan drawing on high roof spaces and floods of natural light to cut down on power bills. Successfully floated just before Easter, when the quarry was reflooded, the 400-tonne concrete pontoons can rise by up to four metres. The island has two drawbridges which are raised at night and it will eventually be surrounded by a fringe of reeds, bulrushes and other water plants. Named after badger colonies historically associated with the soft, sandy soil, Brockholes is less than four miles from the centre of Preston, as well as drawing potentially on the streams of north-south traffic on the M6 and other nearby motorways to Blackpool and the mid-Lancashire towns. The site was spotted back in 1992 by the trust’s chief executive, Anne Selby, and chair, Ted Jackson, when it was a working quarry, providing aggregate for the motorway network from which the floating village now hopes to profit. “To start with, we were thinking in terms of a straightforward nature reserve to join the 45 or so which we administer,” says Poole. “But the fact that the motorway runs right past the site gave us the confidence to go for something much bigger. “Our whole purpose is to protect the natural world for the future, but to do that, we need to involve as many people as possible. Here they all were, but rushing past.” The trust has 18,500 members and 800 active volunteers, of whom 100 are being deployed to Brockholes. The centre is free but with a £1 charge for an hour’s parking and is working with the nearby Tickle Trout services which offer more conventional services, such as fuel. Both are just off the M6′s junction 31 with the A59 at Preston. Travel and transport Green building Wildlife Birds Road transport United Kingdom Martin Wainwright guardian.co.uk
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The Metropolitan police’s crackdown on student protesters seems part of a wider attempt to suppress legitimate dissent In what can only be described as a
Continue reading …Civilians were slaughtered by Sri Lankan government forces and Tamil Tigers alike in the bloody final phase of the island nation’s civil war, according to a hard-hitting report from a United Nations panel. The report accuses the Sri Lankan military of urging civilians in the separatist north to gather in…
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US president says in TV statement he is puzzled at how questions over his place of birth have persisted The White House has released Barack Obama’s full birth certificate in an effort to finally put to rest what Obama called “carnival barkers” making the matter a distraction from the serious issues facing the US. In a televised statement, Obama said he had been “puzzled” at how questions over his place of birth had persisted since his election in 2008, declaring: “We do not have time for this kind of silliness.” “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Obama said. Donald Trump, the real estate dealer and television personality reportedly weighing a run for the Republican presidential nomination, immediately took credit for Obama’s announcement. “Today I’m very proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else was able to accomplish,” Trump told journalists at an airport in New Hampshire, after repeatedly raising the subject in recent interviews. Trump has claimed to have investigators in Hawaii researching Obama’s birth, although he has not given any details and a CNN investigation failed to find evidence of anyone working on Trump’s behalf. Hawaii’s registrar certified the new photocopy of the document provided to the White House on Monday. It states that Barack Hussein Obama II was born at 7.24pm on 4 August 1961 at the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu city. The certificate is signed by the delivery doctor, Obama’s mother and the district registrar. His mother, then 18, signed her name (Stanley) Ann Dunham Obama. The birth certificate records the president’s father as Barack Hussein Obama, age 25, born in Kenya, and lists his occupation as student and “race of father” as African. Obama’s mother is recorded as “Caucasian” under race, and as born in Wichita, Kansas. The White House also released a letter from the president requesting two certified copies of his original certificate of live birth. Also released was a letter from Loretta Fuddy, Hawaii’s director of health, approving the request. In a further statement, the White House said Obama had requested Hawaii’s state department of health to make an exception to allow the legal release of the certificate, and that it granted an exemption in part “because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting”. The decision to release the so-called long form certificate may end the convoluted conspiracy theories advanced by a small group who believed Obama was secretly born outside the United States – most likely in Kenya, his father’s home country – and smuggled back into the country. In an effort to quell the rumours the Obama campaign released a copy of his short-form birth certificate before the 2008 presidential election. But the rumours persisted, and a recent Gallup poll published by USA Today found that nearly one in four Americans think Obama was probably or definitely born in another country, while 20% said they didn’t know. Only 38% of Americans polled said Obama was definitely born in the US. Barack Obama Obama administration United States US politics Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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Boys aged 14 to 17 arrested in London over fire that shut and damaged motorway Police have arrested five teenage boys in connection with a fire in a scrap metal yard beneath the M1 in north London which forced the closure of the motorway for several days. The boys, aged between 14 and 17, were arrested on Wednesday morning in Barnet and Harrow, London, the Metropolitan police said. They were being questioned about the fire that severely damaged the raised section of the M1 on 15 April and about two other fires at the nearby Moat Mount Open Space between 14 and 16 April. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Roycroft said: “Although we are pursuing a number of active leads into these fires we would still ask that anyone who has any information about these crimes contact Barnet police.” The fire at the Apex Metal Recycling yard, close to Scratchwood Services, closed a seven-mile section of the motorway throughout the following weekend. Engineers, who initially battled to prevent the entire elevated roadway from collapsing, propped up the section with 200 tonnes of steel. The motorway partly reopened in both directions the following Monday. It was another three days before that part of the M1, between junctions one and four, was fully open again. The road could be closed again for permanent repairs. Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, has asked the Highways Agency and Network Rail to assess the scale of the threat posed by businesses located near main rail routes and motorways. Crime Peter Walker guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The latest of more than 30 suicides at France Telecom site set himself ablaze in a company parking lot, reports the BBC . The victim, 57, was the father of four and had been repeatedly transferred at the company where he worked for some 30 years. “The whole staff is completely…
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MPs call for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be impeached after his refusal to back Khamenei’s judgment A rift is emerging between Iran’s president and its supreme leader, prompting several members of the parliament to call for the impeachment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has not been seen in public for days. Ahmadinejad has refused to appear at the presidential palace since Friday in what is being seen as a reaction to Ayatollah Khamenei’s reinstating of a minister he initially “asked to resign”. Under pressure from Ahmadinejad the intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, a close ally of the supreme leader, stepped down on 17 April but was reinstated when Khamenei asked him in a letter to stay. The president has not publicly shown his support for that decision and on Wednesday he refused for the second time to chair a cabinet meeting in which Moslehi was present. Ahmadinejad also reportedly cancelled an official visit to the holy city of Qom prompting reactions among conservatives that “the president was sulking”. Under Iran’s constitution, the president is in charge of appointing cabinet ministers who will hold the ministerial office after the approval of the parliament but an unwritten law requires all officials to abide by the supreme leader. Iran’s opposition has speculated that Khamenei is worried about the increasing power of Ahmadinejad and especially his chief-of-staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei . Khamenei is believed to be particularly concerned about two key positions in the cabinet, the ministry of foreign affairs and the intelligence ministry, where he traditionally has influence. Ahmadinejad’s administration is also accused of losing billions of dollars of Iran’s oil revenues in recent years. Last December, Ahmadinejad sacked Manouchehr Mottaki without consulting Khamenei while the former foreign minister was in middle of an official visit to Africa. Mottaki was replaced by Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of the country’s atomic energy agency. After the dismissal of Mottaki, Ahmadinejad’s assertion of control over Iran’s foreign policy became clear. By attempting to dismiss Moslehi, some analysts believe that Ahmadinejad is entering a new phase of extending his control over key positions in the run-up to the March 2012 parliamentary election. Ahmadinejad enjoyed the full support of the supreme leader when Khamenei backed him in the disputed presidential elections in 2009. Independent commentators believe that Khamenei has realised “his mistake” by supporting a president who is seeking to surpass him. Since the first signs of split emerged, several members of the Iranian parliament have called on Ahmadinejad to publicly support Khamenei’s decision over Moslehi, a request he has so far declined. Some prominent figures in the powerful revolutionary guards have also asked the president to comply with the supreme leader. On Tuesday, Parliament News, a website run by Iranian MPs reported that “the plan to impeach Ahmadinejad has begun” in the parliament, with 12 MPs asking for him to be summoned before them. Conservatives believe that the increasing tension between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei stems from the growing influence of Mashaei, who is being groomed by Ahmadinejad as his possible successor. Mashaei, whose daughter married Ahmadinejad’s son, has become the most controversial figure in Iran, provoking harsh criticism from conservatives by favouring a greater cultural openness and opposing greater clerical involvement in the regime. Mashaei, who champions a nationalist narrative of Iran’s history, was himself forced to step down as Iran’s first vice-president in July 2009 when Khamenei intervened in an unprecedented move and said in a letter that “the regime’s expediency” required Mashaei to go. Ahmadinejad, to the surprise of many, then appointed Mashaei as his chief-of-staff instead. Khamenei has tried to play down his confrontation with Ahmadinejad in recent days. In an official visit to the southern province of Fars last Saturday, he praised the achievements made by Ahmadinejad’s government and told the crowd he only intervenes in the government’s affairs when he feels that “the expediency is ignored”. He added: “I won’t allow as long as I’m alive, an iota of deviation of this massive movement of the nation.” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Iran Middle East Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
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Apple says it has never tracked the locations of iPhones and iPads, but admits a software fault means data is still sent to the company Apple has admitted that a bug in its software has allowed iPhones and iPads to collect data related to their location even when users turn off permission to collect it – but says it will soon remedy this oversight. The admission follows a storm of controversy after the Guardian’s exclusive revelation last week that the devices stored a file containing details from which a user’s movements could be reconstructed . In a statement on its website , the company says that: “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans ever to do so.” It says that the file discovered by researchers and described in the Guardian is not used for tracking of the phone or its owner. “The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and [mobile network] cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than 100 miles away from the iPhone.” It adds: “We plan to cease backing up this cache in a software update coming soon.” That will cut the amount of data stored from as much as a year’s worth of location information to just seven days, the company says. That is likely to be roughly comparable with the store used on Android phones, which record the past 50 cell towers and 200 Wi-Fi networks that the phone has “seen”. That data is uploaded to Apple in an “encrypted and anonymous” form, it says. It admits that a software fault means that if users turn off Location Services – which should prevent the upload – the data is still sent. “It shouldn’t. This is a bug, which we plan to fix shortly,” the company says. Future versions of the file will be encrypted on the phone. That will allay fears that law enforcement and security services could copy the file and analyse it without a valid warrant. Apple accepts some of the blame for the concern over the revelations, which have seen it threatened with lawsuits and put under focus from US lawmakers and potentially by European governments . “Providing mobile users with fast and accurate location information while preserving their security and privacy has raised some very complex technical issues which are hard to communicate in a soundbite. Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date,” the company says in its statement. The data is stored because it helps the iPhone to calculate its location, Apple says. “Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.” Apple also insists that it cannot identify individuals from the data because the data about networks and Wi-Fi – which is reported to the company’s servers – is anonymised and encrypted. The Guardian approached Apple ahead of publication last week of its article detailing the findings by the researchers, but the company declined to comment at the time. Repeated requests for comment received no response until now. Since then Apple has found itself under fire, with the US Democratic senator Al Franken writing directly to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs demanding to know why the phones retained the data, and attempts to file a class action lawsuit against the company. Jobs himself was curtly emphatic in an email earlier this week in which he insisted “we don’t track anyone” and that “the info circulating around is false”. Apple iPhone iPad Data protection Wi-Fi Smartphones Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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Regime in Libya trains civilians in use of AK-47s in attempt to build resistance to Nato and eastern rebels Muammar Gaddafi is arming Libyan 17-year-olds to build a “home front” against Nato military intervention and the possibility of rebels from the east of the country reaching largely loyalist towns and cities in the west. As part of the drive towards an unofficial civilian army, the government is releasing thousands of AK-47 assault rifles into communities and is organising classes in the use of weapons. At a women’s training centre in the town of Sbia, 30 miles south of Tripoli, young women crowded round a trestle table as a soldier wearing camouflage fatigues and thick red lipstick demonstrated how to field-strip and reassemble the guns. Officials said the minimum age for weapons training was 17, although the centre was crowded with girls as young as seven who were schooled in loyalist chants and waving portraits of Gaddafi. Salmeen Faroun, 18, said she had come to the training school because, “I want to defend my country from the crusader enemy.” She said she had never fired a gun before, but “now I have a goal”. Asked if she was frightened at the idea of taking part in a gun battle, she said: “No. I have the right to kill, to fight against Nato and the rats [opposition rebels].” Against the background noise of bullets being fired into the air, Ebtihaj Enbess, 17, said she had also come to the centre to learn how to defend her country. “We are nothing without Gaddafi. I am not scared.” Their instructor, regular soldier Zohrah Mohamed, 35, said she was proud to be training women to defend their country. Gaddafi “did a lot of things for women”, she said, without elaboration. The training had started about a month ago, she said. Asked if it was acceptable to train children to use weapons, she said: “All the Libyan people must be armed.” Most Libyan families own guns, which are normally stored in town depots. But since the anti-Gaddafi uprisings began, in mid-February, the authorities have opened the arms dumps. Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told reporters last week up to 1m weapons were being distributed . At a men’s training centre nearby, little instruction appeared to be under way, but almost all the several hundred adult men present were carrying AK-47s, and many were firing into the air. Muhammad Mabruk, 65, said all Libyans over the age of 17 should be armed and ready to fight to defend their country. “I am waiting for anyone coming from Nato. I have my gun and I will shoot him,” he said. A Nato missile had struck a field nearby recently, according to locals. “I don’t believe Nato is protecting civilians,” said Mabruk. Journalists were taken to the training centres on a government-organised trip, accompanied by minders. A team of UN investigators arrived in Tripoli on Wednesday to examine allegations of human rights violations by Gaddafi’s forces. The three-member commission of inquiry said it would press for access to prisons, hospitals and areas of the country where abuses were suspected to be taking place. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk
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Egyptian-brokered deal paves way towards resolution of four-year rift between West Bank and Gaza Palestinian officials from the rival Fatah and Hamas movements say they have reached an initial agreement on ending a four-year rift that has left them with rival governments in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The officials say the plan calls for the formation of a single caretaker government in the coming days, and preparations to hold presidential and legislative elections a year from now. The agreement was reached through Egyptian mediation, they say. They spoke on condition of anonymity before a formal announcement in Cairo. Despite the agreement, key questions remain about who will control the rival security forces. Disagreements over security control erupted into the June 2007 civil war, in which Hamas seized control of Gaza. Palestinian territories Hamas Fatah Gaza Egypt Israel Middle East guardian.co.uk
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