With just three days left before the royal wedding, the inevitable complaints of guest list snubs are coming to the surface. News came out over the weekend that the last two British prime ministers weren’t invited, and now the New York Times notes that some of Princess Diana’s close friends…
Continue reading …Why do liberals support Planned Parenthood? Pat Robertson thinks he knows. Right Wing Watch points to a recent episode of The 700 Club in which Robertson explained to co-host Terry Meeuwsen that the left is just trying to put straight women and lesbians “on a level playing field.” After all,…
Continue reading …Daniel Loeb used to be one of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters, but these days he’s raising huge piles of money for Republicans. Why? Well the president appears to have hurt his feelings, the Wall Street Journal observes. “I am sure, if we are really nice and stay quiet, everything will…
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Manchester United look assured of their place in a Champions League final for the third time in four seasons. The sheer superiority shown here would make victory for Schalke seem impossible in the return at Old Trafford, let alone by a two-goal margin. As second-half scorers, Ryan Giggs and Wayne Rooney epitomised most of all the knowhow built up in this group. It is also true that they can be glad to have been presented with Schalke. Better to have Barcelona and Real Madrid tearing at one another this week while United savour their own work. United, indeed, could conserve energy next week that will be required for the Premier League run-in. Schalke had intermittent attacks, but the technical superiority and experience in the visiting ranks were not to be denied. United are now thoroughly acquainted with the advanced stages of the competition. It was Schalke who froze, or simply found themselves outmatched. Goals had been relatively hard to come by for United of late, but opportunities were not lacking here. Converting them was the tricky business in those opening 45 minutes. Schalke were crestfallen that their centre-half Benedikt Höwedes had not overcome an abdominal strain to take part, but the insistence of United would have exposed any weakness severely. If United seemed entirely assured it owed much to familiarity with these nights and their demands. The starting line-up varied by just one name from the selection for the victory at Chelsea in the quarter-final. Even that adjustment could be deemed invisible since the Da Silva brothers are identical twins. It was Fabio who made the side here, at right-back. The identity of United’s defenders was not a topic for urgent discussion when the side enjoyed such command that the presence in the opposition ranks of a striker as admired as Raúl González almost passed unnoticed. The Schalke support had their eyes and hopes pinned on the goalkeeper Manuel Neuer. They applauded him as he left the pitch at the interval, despite the disgruntlement over his expected move to Bayern Munich in the summer. There was oddity in seeing the centre-half Nemanja Vidic stay upfield and deliver a cross from which Giggs tested Neuer from a corner. The hungriest United figure was Javier Hernández. His eagerness to score entailed excellent movement and Schalke, for instance, were left appealing without cause when Park Ji-sung put him clear in the 14th minute. The angle was tight, however, and Neuer dealt with it. There is an enigmatic trait to Schalke, even if it was emphatic performances that startled a continent when they dispatched the holders Internazionale 7-3 on aggregate. Despite that dazzling show they are still settling down under the new coach Ralf Rangnick. In addition, the true nature of their line-up and strengths are open to debate. Once the effort has been made to set aside the drubbing of Inter, it is possible to recognise Schalke as a capable side who are fairly balanced. In the group phase the opposition scored against them three times, but two of those were consolation goals in defeats. In the knockout phase, however, they had failed to keep a clean sheet in all four matches that preceded this one. Even so, Sir Alex Ferguson may not have been faking it when he expressed some unease about Schalke. The triumph over Bayern Munich in the 1999 European Cup final has been followed by troubled encounters for United with German teams. This is neither coincidence nor curse. The Bundesliga culture may differ from the manic and materialistic climate of the Premier League, but it is still potent. Perhaps it was spirit that kept them going in the first half, when a range of chances ended with a marginally miscalculated attempt or a response from Neuer. The goalkeeper, in different moments, had even denied a header and a shot by Giggs, who was nominally a holding midfielder. United may have lacked a goal in those 45 minutes, but the craving seemed only to have intensified when the game resumed. The action had barely restarted, when his cross allowed Michael Carrick a header that Neuer reached. Within moments, Giggs himself sent a raking effort beyond the far past. It would be the persistent Welshman who put his side into the lead after 67 minutes. He was released by an excellent reverse pass from Rooney and slipped home the finish with ease. Two minutes later Rooney himself extended the advantage by capitalising alertly after a run by Hernández. Anti-climax had become inevitable for the hosts. This is a large stadium in the Ruhr, an area with the type of industrial history that often gives rise to a populace besotted with football. The people in the ground wanted to register their presence as a force, but mostly had to make a noise out of the pride that the heritage creates. The Champions League had all but ended for them. Champions League Schalke Manchester United Kevin McCarra guardian.co.uk
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Private Eye editor criticises ‘Kafkaesque’ anonymised court order preventing mention of legal proceedings Challenging the superinjunction obtained by Andrew Marr to suppress reports of the BBC presenter’s extramarital affair cost tens of thousands of pounds and took several years, the editor of Private Eye has said. Ian Hislop was celebrating a legal victory after the easing of the restrictive terms of a “Kafkaesque” injunction taken out by Marr, one that prevented even the mention of any legal proceedings. But Hislop said he deplored the expense of fighting to have it done. The decision by Marr to allow the terms of the gagging order to be relaxed, which came after the threat of legal action by Hislop, is the latest twist in the row over the proliferation of superinjunctions and anonymised court orders. The development of privacy protection through successive celebrity cases has provoked anxiety about the powers wielded by courts to prevent claimants being identified. “The Marr case was the most absurd possible,” Hislop told the Guardian. “The story [about allegedly fathering a child during an affair] wasn’t even true. It headed into Kafkaesque territory. Tens of thousands of pounds have been spent [challenging] this order. We went to his lawyers and said we were going to court and after a lot of bargaining … he said we could vary it again. “How are we meant to know about these superinjunctions if we don’t even get sent them? It’s bonkers. Our problem [in challenging them] is that we need to concentrate the few resources we have on the cases we think might be important.” Marr, the BBC’s former political editor, won a high court order in January 2008 to silence the media following an extramarital affair eight years ago with a national newspaper journalist. She had a child, but Marr is not the father. On Tuesday’s BBC Today programme, Hislop accused Marr of hypocrisy. “As a leading BBC interviewer who is asking politicians about failures in judgment, failures in their private lives, inconsistencies, it was pretty rank of him to have an injunction while working as an active journalist,” Hislop said. Meanwhile, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Marr – married to Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley – said he felt “uneasy” about the order. “I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists,” he said. “Am I embarrassed by it? Yes.” But he added: “I still believe there was, under those circumstances, no public interest in it.” He acknowledged, however, that injunctions now seemed to be “running out of control”. Last week the prime minister intervened in the superinjunction debate, warning that judges were establishing far-reaching precedents in suppressing the identification of individuals through their interpretation of article eight of the European convention on human rights, which guarantees “the right to respect for private and family life”. David Cameron said: “The judges are creating a sort of privacy law, whereas what ought to happen in a parliamentary democracy is parliament … should decide how much protection do we want … so I am a little uneasy about what is happening.” Chastened by adverse publicity in the wake of the Trafigura case – where a superinjunction was obtained restricting reporting of a draft confidential report about a toxic waste incident in west Africa – the courts appear to have modified their methods. Fewer long-term superinjunctions – those that forbid reporting of even the order’s existence – have been granted in recent months. Instead, the judicial pattern has switched to short-term superinjunctions, allowing papers to be served, at which point it becomes an order in which only some details are anonymised. Precisely how many orders have been granted is unknown. Best estimates suggest that there are between 20 and 30 currently in force; there may have been as few as five correctly described as “superinjunctions” over the same period. In an attempt to provided a more informed platform for public debate, the Ministry of Justice has said it will provide figures. “The MoJ’s chief statistician is currently examining the issue of how reliable data on the number of injunctions issued by the courts might be collated in the future,” it said. A legal review of the use of superinjunctions to suppress media reporting, conducted by the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, will publish its findings next month. It is expected to recommend procedural changes to the way the courts handle such cases rather than changes to the law. Will Richmond-Coggan, a solicitor advocate with the law firm Pitmans who specialises in applying for injunctions, said there may have been “hundreds” of superinjunctions in commercial cases that did not involve Premier League footballers or celebrity infidelities. “The broader professional public are unaware of cases involving freezing or seizing assets,” he said. “There are commercial sensitivities where even the fact that a firm has obtained an injunction would be damaging.” Index on Censorship welcomed Marr’s decision to abandon the superinjunction. John Kampfner, its chief executive, said: “While there may be exceptional circumstances in which injunctions may be necessary, we are seeing gagging orders being used to hide the wealthy from embarrassment and even commercial damage. We are in danger of creating a secret network of secret rich man’s justice.” Andrew Marr Superinjunctions Private Eye David Cameron Trafigura Newspapers & magazines Magazines Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Nicolas Cage’s drunken rant in New Orleans got him arrested—but the drama may not end there. He could face a child abuse investigation, too, reports TMZ . A witness says Cage pulled his 5-year-old son to the ground while arguing with his wife that night, according to a police report…
Continue reading …You had to see this one coming: Law & Order: LA is filming a “ripped from the headlines” episode that echoes the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Filming started yesterday on an episode involving a female state senator who is gunned down in public, Entertainment Weekly reports. A rep for the show…
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Disclosure of formerly secret number exposes Met to complaint it breached agreement to warn potential victims The Metropolitan police has admitted that during the first four years of the phone-hacking affair it warned only 36 people they may have been targeted by the News of the World’s private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Scotland Yard’s latest inquiry, which was launched in January, is believed to be contacting up to 4,000 people whose names and personal details were found in Mulcaire’s possession during the original police investigation in 2006. The disclosure of the number – which Scotland Yard had previously insisted on keeping secret – exposes the Met to the complaint that it breached an agreement with the director of public prosecutions that it would warn all “potential victims” in the affair. It will also revive criticism that it has consistently played down the scale of criminal activity commissioned by the News of the World. Scotland Yard has previously repeatedly refused to disclose the number of victims it had warned, rejecting applications under the Freedom of Information Act on the grounds that releasing it would necessarily disclose the identities of those warned, and that this would breach their privacy. However, in a sharp change of policy, the Met’s acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, volunteered that during the 2006 inquiry police had warned 28 people they may have been victims; and that after the Guardian revived the affair in July 2009 they warned eight more. In a letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, Yates – who was responsible for dealing with the hacking affair for nearly 20 months – gave no explanation for the failure to inform more than 36 potential victims. He said: “I have accepted that more could and should have been done in relation to those who may have been potential victims.” The new inquiry, which is not being overseen by Yates, is known to have approached scores of politicians, police officers, actors, sports personalities and others who had previously been unaware that the Met held evidence to suggest their voicemail messages may have been intercepted by Mulcaire. Many are now suing News International, which owns the News of the World. Some are also seeking a judicial review of the Met’s actions. Yates’s disclosure appears to contradict evidence he gave to the media select committee in February last year. On that occasion he said that where there was evidence that “interception was or may have been attempted by Mulcaire, the Met police has been diligent and taken all proper steps to ensure those individuals have been informed.” In September he told the home affairs select committee that Met policy was “out of a spirit of abundance of caution to make sure that we were ensuring that those who may have been hacked were contacted by us”. In his letter to Whittingdale, Yates also confirmed that during a brief investigation last autumn, police interviewed a total of four people under caution. Yates did not name them, but they included Sean Hoare, the former News of the World journalist who told the New York Times that he had been actively encouraged to hack voicemail by his editor, Andy Coulson, who went on to become the prime minister’s media adviser and who has always denied all knowledge of illegal activity. When Yates’s officers cautioned Hoare that anything he said might be used in evidence against him, he declined to answer questions. The Yates letter also disclosed more details of his social contacts with senior editors from News International. He acknowledges that he had dinner with the News of the World editor Colin Myler at the Ivy, one of London’s most exclusive restaurants; that he had two dinners with the editor of the Sunday Times; and a further dinner with the editor and crime editor of the News of the World four months after he had decided in July 2009 that there was no basis to reopen an investigation into the paper. Yates reveals in his letter that he failed to disclose a meeting with Neil Wallis, who was deputy editor at the paper at the time of the original hacking inquiry and left in August 2009 after six years in the job. He described a meeting with Wallis earlier this year as a “private engagement” and said “relevant senior officers” at Scotland Yard “have been made aware that Mr Wallis and I know each other”. Whittingdale has now written to Yates again asking him who at the Met was informed about his relationship with Wallis and when. The investigation into phone-hacking, which is being led by the deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, has resulted in the arrest of three News of the World executives, including two who are still employed by the paper, this month. All of them were released without charge. Separately, the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told MPs on the Home Affairs select committee on Tuesday that the law on phone-hacking is confusing and in urgent need of clarification. ends Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines News of the World News International National newspapers Newspapers Metropolitan police Police Nick Davies James Robinson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Disclosure of formerly secret number exposes Met to complaint it breached agreement to warn potential victims The Metropolitan police has admitted that during the first four years of the phone-hacking affair it warned only 36 people they may have been targeted by the News of the World’s private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. Scotland Yard’s latest inquiry, which was launched in January, is believed to be contacting up to 4,000 people whose names and personal details were found in Mulcaire’s possession during the original police investigation in 2006. The disclosure of the number – which Scotland Yard had previously insisted on keeping secret – exposes the Met to the complaint that it breached an agreement with the director of public prosecutions that it would warn all “potential victims” in the affair. It will also revive criticism that it has consistently played down the scale of criminal activity commissioned by the News of the World. Scotland Yard has previously repeatedly refused to disclose the number of victims it had warned, rejecting applications under the Freedom of Information Act on the grounds that releasing it would necessarily disclose the identities of those warned, and that this would breach their privacy. However, in a sharp change of policy, the Met’s acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, volunteered that during the 2006 inquiry police had warned 28 people they may have been victims; and that after the Guardian revived the affair in July 2009 they warned eight more. In a letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, Yates – who was responsible for dealing with the hacking affair for nearly 20 months – gave no explanation for the failure to inform more than 36 potential victims. He said: “I have accepted that more could and should have been done in relation to those who may have been potential victims.” The new inquiry, which is not being overseen by Yates, is known to have approached scores of politicians, police officers, actors, sports personalities and others who had previously been unaware that the Met held evidence to suggest their voicemail messages may have been intercepted by Mulcaire. Many are now suing News International, which owns the News of the World. Some are also seeking a judicial review of the Met’s actions. Yates’s disclosure appears to contradict evidence he gave to the media select committee in February last year. On that occasion he said that where there was evidence that “interception was or may have been attempted by Mulcaire, the Met police has been diligent and taken all proper steps to ensure those individuals have been informed.” In September he told the home affairs select committee that Met policy was “out of a spirit of abundance of caution to make sure that we were ensuring that those who may have been hacked were contacted by us”. In his letter to Whittingdale, Yates also confirmed that during a brief investigation last autumn, police interviewed a total of four people under caution. Yates did not name them, but they included Sean Hoare, the former News of the World journalist who told the New York Times that he had been actively encouraged to hack voicemail by his editor, Andy Coulson, who went on to become the prime minister’s media adviser and who has always denied all knowledge of illegal activity. When Yates’s officers cautioned Hoare that anything he said might be used in evidence against him, he declined to answer questions. The Yates letter also disclosed more details of his social contacts with senior editors from News International. He acknowledges that he had dinner with the News of the World editor Colin Myler at the Ivy, one of London’s most exclusive restaurants; that he had two dinners with the editor of the Sunday Times; and a further dinner with the editor and crime editor of the News of the World four months after he had decided in July 2009 that there was no basis to reopen an investigation into the paper. Yates reveals in his letter that he failed to disclose a meeting with Neil Wallis, who was deputy editor at the paper at the time of the original hacking inquiry and left in August 2009 after six years in the job. He described a meeting with Wallis earlier this year as a “private engagement” and said “relevant senior officers” at Scotland Yard “have been made aware that Mr Wallis and I know each other”. Whittingdale has now written to Yates again asking him who at the Met was informed about his relationship with Wallis and when. The investigation into phone-hacking, which is being led by the deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers, has resulted in the arrest of three News of the World executives, including two who are still employed by the paper, this month. All of them were released without charge. Separately, the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham told MPs on the Home Affairs select committee on Tuesday that the law on phone-hacking is confusing and in urgent need of clarification. ends Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines News of the World News International National newspapers Newspapers Metropolitan police Police Nick Davies James Robinson guardian.co.uk
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Sarkozy and Berlusconi want passport-free travel within the EU suspended as north African migrants flee north France and Italy have thrown down the gauntlet over Europe’s system of passport-free travel, saying a crisis of immigration sparked by the Arab spring was calling into question the borderless regime enjoyed by more than 400 million people in 25 countries. Challenging one of the biggest achievements of European integration of recent decades, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi also launched a joint effort to stem immigration and demanded European deportation pacts with the countries of revolutionary north Africa to send new arrivals packing. The French president and the Italian prime minister, at a summit in Rome, opted to pile the pressure on Brussels and the governments of the other 25 EU states, demanding an “in-depth revision” of European law regulating the passport-free travel that takes in almost all of the EU with the exception of Britain and Ireland. Prompted by the influx to Italy of almost 30,000 immigrants, mainly from Tunisia, in recent months, the two leaders warned that the upheavals in north Africa “could swiftly become an out-and-out crisis capable of undermining the trust our fellow citizens place in the free circulation within the Schengen area”. The passport-free travel system known as the Schengen regime was agreed by a handful of countries in 1985 and put into practice in 1995. Since then it has been embraced by 22 EU countries as well as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland, but spurned by Britain and Ireland. It is widely seen, along with the euro single currency, as Europe’s signature unification project of recent decades. But like the euro, fighting its biggest crisis over the past year, the Schengen regime is being tested amid mounting populism and the renationalisation of politics across the EU. In other setbacks to borderless Europe, Germany, France and other countries have been blocking the admission of Bulgaria and Romania to Schengen in recent months, while the arrival of thousands of Middle Eastern migrants in Greece has fed exasperation with Athens’s inability to control the EU’s southern border. The Franco-Italian move, following weeks of bad-tempered exchanges between Paris and Rome over how to deal with the Tunisian influx, is the biggest threat yet to the Schengen regime. “For the treaty to stay alive, it must be reformed,” Sarkozy said. Berlusconi added: “We both believe that in exceptional circumstances there should be variations to the Schengen treaty.” They sent a joint letter to the European commission and European council chiefs, José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, urging proposals from Brussels and agreement on a new system at an EU summit of government heads in June. The commission said it was drawing up new proposals, tinkering with the current system, to be unveiled next week. But it has resisted, with the support of most EU governments, intense Italian pressure to label the arrivals from north Africa an emergency. Under European law the border-free regime can be suspended only for reasons of national security, routinely invoked in recent years by member states hosting major international sporting events such as the World Cup or the European football championships, where individual countries contend with a huge, one-off influx of foreigners. Sarkozy and Berlusconi insisted the rules be changed to allow more restrictions on freedom of travel. A new deal was “indispensable”, they said. The June summit should “examine the possibility of temporarily re-establishing internal frontier controls in case of exceptional difficulty in the management of the [EU's] common external frontiers”. This, however, would clearly not be in the interests of Italy, which fears an end to the hostilities in Libya could spark an even bigger exodus. In that event, the letter said, the EU should provide “mechanisms of specific solidarity” including the distribution of immigrants among member states. This will prove extremely divisive and will be rejected by countries such as Germany and Sweden, which have much higher numbers of asylum seekers than Italy, less restrictive immigration policies, and little sympathy for Italy’s plight. The concerted Franco-Italian initiative also called for accords between the EU and north African countries on repatriating immigrants, a policy certain to spark outrage among human rights groups, the refugee lobby, and more liberal EU governments. Promising strong support for the democratic revolutions sweeping the Maghreb and the Middle East, Sarkozy and Berlusconi added: “In exchange we have the right to expect from our partner countries a commitment to a rapid and efficacious co-operation with the European Union and its member states in fighting illegal immigration.” Tuesday’s move followed weeks of feuding between Rome and Paris over the Tunisian exodus. Furious at the failure of other EU countries to “share the burden”, the Italians granted visas to the immigrants enabling them to move elsewhere in the EU. The Germans and the Austrians complained. The Belgians accused Rome of “cheating” on the Schengen rulebook. The French government promptly closed a part of the border with Italy briefly, re-erecting passport controls to halt trains. But Berlusconi and Sarkozy, seeking to curry favour with the strong far-right constituencies in both countries, sought to bury their differences by urging the rest of Europe to buy into their anti-immigration agenda. European Union Arab and Middle East unrest Immigration and asylum Libya Egypt Tunisia Middle East John Hooper Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
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