Activists describe massacre in central city of Hama after armoured units break through barricades to crush protests Syria’s uprising faced one of its defining moments when President Bashar al-Assad followed in his father’s footsteps and sent in tanks to crush protests in the central city of Hama, killing up to 100 people and triggering a new wave of international outrage. The National Organisation for Human Rights said in total 136 people had been killed in Hama and three other towns. Activists described a massacre after armoured units ended a month-long siege to smash through makeshift barricades around the city just after dawn on the eve of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. International media are still largely banned from Syria but citizen journalists ensured that the scale and brutality of the crackdown was visible to the outside world. Video clips posed on YouTube showed unarmed civilians taking cover from shelling and heavy machinegun fire as hospitals struggled to cope with 200 casualties by mid-morning . Bodies lay scattered on the streets, residents reported. “They started shooting with heavy machine guns at civilians, at the young men protecting the barricades,” Omar Halabi, a local activist, told the Guardian. Syria, with a population of 23 million, is experiencing the bloodiest days yet of the Arab spring, which began with the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Assad, once hailed as a modernising reformist, has ruled since 2000. The government said “armed gangs” with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades were vandalising public and private property in Hama, attacking police stations, erecting barricades and burning tyres. Hama, known as a conservative stronghold of the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, has a special resonance in Syria as the scene of a notorious massacre in 1982 when the Ba’ath regime crushed an Islamist uprising that challenged the rule of the president’s father, Hafez. At least 10,000 were killed then. Sunday’s crackdown involved troops and security agents accompanied by busloads of irregular militiamen known as Shabiha (Ghosts) who belong to the same Alawite minority as the Assad family. The official Sana news agency said two security force personnel were killed in Hama and three during unrest in Deir Ezzor, on the eastern border with Iraq, where government armoured units continued an assault over the weekend. Violence was also reported from Deraa in the south and in parts of Damascus. Hama residents told Reuters that army snipers had climbed on to the roofs of the state-owned electricity company and the main prison, while tank shells were falling at the rate of four a minute in and around the north of the city. Electricity and water supplies to the main neighbourhoods had been cut, a tactic used regularly by the Syrian military when storming towns to crush protests. Halabi described people walking towards tanks armed only with wooden bats, steel bars or stones. “It’s a massacre. They want to break Hama before the month of Ramadan,” an eyewitness who identified himself as Ahmed, told the Associated Press by telephone. Al-Arabiya TV reported that some soldiers had refused to fire on protesters and had joined them. But unlike Libya, Syria has not yet experienced any high-level defections from the military. Film clips showed bloodied corpses in hospital mortuaries, clouds of smoke, the sound of explosions and gunfire, and demonstrators chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great). Britain condemned the “appalling” onslaught, long anticipated by the Syrian opposition. “Such action against civilians who have been protesting peacefully in large numbers in the city for a number of weeks has no justification,” said William Hague, the foreign secretary. Speaking to the BBC from Damascus, a spokesman for the US embassy described “full-on warfare by the Syrian government on its own people … That’s the armed gang that is striking terror into the hearts of the people”. The US ambassador has been told he cannot leave the city after enraging the government by paying a high-profile visit to Hama last month. President Barack Obama said he was “appalled” by the brutality of the Syrian government and described reports from Hama as “horrifying”. Precise casualty figures were unclear but they rose throughout the day. The local co-ordination committee, which organises and monitors anti-government protests, said it had the names of 49 civilians who had died in the onslaught on Hama. By nightfall the numbers were nudging 100 for Hama alone. Hama has been a focus of anti-regime protests since early June, when security forces shot dead at least 70 people. Since then it has fallen out of government control, with protesters holding the streets and government forces ringing the city and conducting overnight raids. But apart from ritual condemnation, the latest bloodletting looks unlikely to trigger any significant international response, given the sharp divisions among the veto-wielding five permanent members of the UN security council. Limited sanctions on key officials imposed by the US and EU have been shrugged off by the regime. “It is incredible to consider that since March the Syrian regime has slaughtered over 1,500 people, arrested thousands, tortured people to death, and yet the UN security council has yet to issue a resolution,” said Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding. “Russia, China and other countries such as Brazil should have to explain their appalling positions.” An activist group, Avaaz, said last week Syrian forces had killed 1,634 people in the course of their crackdown during four-and-a-half months of protest, while at least 2,918 had disappeared. A further 26,000 had been arrested, many of whom were beaten and tortured, and 12,617 remained in detention, it said. Syria Middle East Protest Arab and Middle East unrest Bashar Al-Assad Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Danny Alexander: ‘I want to be able to say I did the things I thought were right’
July 31, 2011 No Comment
The Lib Dems’ rising star on why the budget cuts pain is necessary, why power-sharing with Labour never happened and why he won’t distance himself from Nick Clegg Danny Alexander was a cradle Liberal Democrat. “My grandfather was a Liberal councillor,” he tells me, “and when I was about three months old my mother says she caught him rocking me in my pram, saying: ‘Repeat after me, I am a member of the Liberal party.’” His grandfather, now 93, denies the tale, but it helps make sense of a life that seems to have been lived for politics. In his 20s, when most young men are exploring life’s pleasures, Alexander was campaigning for Britain to join the euro. He briefly did PR for the Cairngorms national park, but in 2005 won the Highlands constituency around Inverness for the Lib Dems, was catapulted into the cabinet when the coalition government came to power last year, and is now chief secretary to the Treasury, charged with overseeing £81bn of budget cuts. My interview with Alexander is unusual. It takes place immediately before and after dinner in the lounge of
Continue reading …Two single-engine float planes collided as they flew near an Alaskan lake and one crashed and burned, killing the four people aboard, authorities said. The second plane, a Cessna 206 with only the pilot aboard, was able to return to Anchorage International Airport and make an emergency landing despite significant…
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Following 500,000-strong petition against woodland sell-off, group targets proposed method of tackling bovine TB A campaign group which helped force the government into an embarrassing U-turn over plans to sell off forests has set its sights on stopping a planned cull of badgers. The government announced earlier this month that it would press ahead with issuing licences to shoot the wild animals in an effort to eradicate bovine tuberculosis from cattle herds, a disease which is costing farmers millions of pounds. The move has attracted criticism from animal rights groups and others after it was reported that the government’s own advisers warned it may not be effective. Now the campaign group 38 Degrees , which got 532,000 people to sign its Save Our Forests petition to derail the coalition’s woodland sell-off earlier this year, has joined those fighting the cull. The group questions whether a cull is the most effective way of tackling the spread of bovine TB, with 87% of members polled saying they should oppose it. More than 13,000 people have signed a petition in the last few days. Writing on the group’s blog, campaigner Marie Campbell wrote: “Some of us believe killing badgers would be wrong under any circumstances. Some of us believe that if the science really proved that shooting badgers could make a real dent in the cow TB problem, it would be a tragic necessity. “But 87% of us agree on this: the government’s current plans to shoot England’s badgers simply don’t stack up. The government’s own scientific advisers warn that it won’t solve the problem of TB in cattle, and could even make it worse.” The environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, who shouldered much of the blame for the U-turn over forests, launched the badger cull on 19 July, saying bovine TB would cost farmers in England alone £1bn over the next decade if action was not taken. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) claims that nearly 25,000 cattle were slaughtered in England in 2010 because of the disease, costing the country £90m. It is especially a problem for farmers in the west and south-west of England, with Defra claiming 23% of cattle farms in these areas were unable to move stock off their premises at some point in 2010 due to being affected by the disease. There is a vaccine that could be used to halt its spread but Spelman said there were “serious practical difficulties” with it. “This terrible disease is getting worse, and we’ve got to deal with the devastating impact it has on farmers and rural communities. There’s also the effect on the farming economy and taxpayers,” she said. “We cannot go on like this. Many farmers are desperate and feel unable to control the disease in their herds. And we know that unless we tackle the disease in badgers we will never be able to eradicate it in cattle. “We are working hard to develop a cattle vaccine and an oral badger vaccine, but a usable and approved cattle vaccine and oral badger vaccine are much further away than we thought and we can’t say with any certainty if and when they will be ready. We simply can’t afford to keep waiting.” An early day motion opposing the cull and asking Spelman to rethink the plans, tabled by Newport West Labour MP Paul Flynn in March, has so far been signed by 82 MPs. The majority are Labour and Liberal Democrats, with Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) the sole Conservative MP to sign it. Badgers Wildlife Rural affairs guardian.co.uk
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Doctors deny private health insurer’s claim that many knee arthroscopies performed on Bupa patients are unnecessary Britain’s largest private health insurer is embroiled in a severe row with some of the country’s top surgeons after accusing them of performing operations that earn them £600 a time on patients without a good medical reason. Bupa, which insures 3 million Britons, claims orthopaedic surgeons have carried out unnecessary knee arthroscopies on some of their clients. The company alleges that unnamed specialist surgeons have defied standard clinical practice and official advice by subjecting some patients to the procedure. Bupa members are more than twice as likely as NHS patients to have the operation, while some surgeons are three times more likely than others to recommend that patients they examine undergo it, the firm claims. But surgeons’ leaders have responded by alleging that Bupa is damaging their reputations with an unjustified “slur”, undermining patients’ trust in their doctor, and trying to save money by denying people in pain an operation needed to restore their quality of life. Dr Annabel Bentley , the medical director of Bupa’s UK health and wellbeing division, has sparked a major dispute by drawing attention to what she says are big differences in NHS and private patients’ chances of having the operation. In a letter to the British Orthopaedic Association (BOA), which represents surgeons who perform joint operations, she wrote: “We have concerns about current clinical practice in knee arthroscopy because the rate of surgery performed on our insured members is substantially higher than the NHS rate. We have also identified specific cases among Bupa members by some consultants where treatment does not appear to be in line with published evidence-based guidelines.” Speaking to the Guardian, Bentley claimed: “We found the rate of knee arthroscopy in our members is more than double the rate in NHS patients [and that] some surgeons are three times more likely than others to perform a knee arthroscopy on our members.” While some variation may be due to clinical reasons, these big differences in treatment rates are unexplained, she added. Surgeons’ organisations have criticised Bentley for making such claims without referring doctors Bupa believes are over-operating to the General Medical Council for misconduct, or publishing the evidence it says it has of the unjustifiably wide variation. The BOA, British Association for Surgery of the Knee (Bask) and the Federation of Independent Practitioner Organisations (Fipo) are opposed to a new pre-surgery check Bupa has introduced in a bid to reduce unnecessary knee arthroscopies. Bupa wants all surgeons to fill in a form giving details of the clinical indications for surgery before it approves payment. In a letter to the Bupa’s board, the three organisations voiced “concern at what we believe is a threat to clinical governance, patient care and consultant independence” because “this new approval process for surgery involves non-medical Bupa staff checking a surgeon’s decision against undisclosed guidelines”. The BOA has urged the 4,000 surgeons it represents to boycott the forms, which, it says, undermine surgeons’ clinical judgment. While some are completing them, others are refusing to do so, and some are being threatened with what the BOA’s president, Peter Kay, describes as “blacklisting” – no longer being allowed to treat Bupa patients. The letter calls Bupa’s actions “indefensible”. It says: “At the heart of what is presented to us as a funding or cost control measure it is alleged by the doctors in the Bupa health and wellbeing division that some surgeons are carrying out inappropriate surgery. However, no specific evidence of this has been provided.” It also says Bupa subscribers will cancel their policies if they are denied the chance to use the surgeon who examined them. Bentley denied Bupa’s move was intended to save money. “We want to ensure we pay for best practice, not poor practice,” she said. Health insurers are under pressure as the number of policyholders has dropped sharply in the past two years as a result of the financial squeeze. Fergus Craig, the commercial director of AXA PPP, another big health insurer, indicated recently that it believes some surgeons are over-treating for personal gain. He said: “The rate of intervention in some areas [of medical practice] is higher than it is in others. This concerns me. There is a clear incentive for consultants to do things that may be of marginal medical benefit and significant benefit in terms of bolstering their income.” Bentley said “it’s a possibility” that some surgeons are performing unnecessary operations. The big difference in treatment rates may be due to some under-treating but others over-treating, she said. She said she did not know if individual surgeons were doing too many operations in order to make money, but “had a duty to act when we see this issue, and we see this issue with knee arthroscopy”. Bask’s president, Professor Tim Wilton , said patients denied their choice of specialist knee surgeon were being offered alternative surgeons with expertise in back, shoulder or feet operations, a development which could affect patients’ welfare. But Bentley added that Bupa was simply repeating an exercise it did several years ago when, on examining high rates of hysterectomy among its patients, it found some women were having a healthy womb removed by surgeons. Patient who paid Alison Twigley, a consultant anaesthetist, was denied her chosen surgeon for a knee operation in June when Bupa refused to fund it because he refused to fill in a form that surgeons claim undermines their clinical judgment. She still used the surgeon but paid for the operation herself. “I hurt my left knee last December after dragging a heavy new table around when I had a new kitchen put in. Bupa paid for an MRI scan , which showed that I’d torn my cartilage. “My knee swelled up due to fluid on it. It was fairly stiff, I had some pain and I couldn’t flex it much. I went on a skiing holiday but couldn’t ski or do much physical exercise to keep fit as I usually do. “I was very reluctant to have an operation. I wanted to see if the knee would mend on its own. But Prof Tim Briggs, one of the country’s leading orthopaedic surgeons, told me it would probably need something doing to it surgically. “In April I agreed to have an arthroscopy and have the cartilage trimmed as the knee was obviously getting no better. “But in late May the Spire hospital in Bushey in Hertfordshire where I was due to have the operation on 17 June contacted me to say there was a problem with my Bupa insurance. “Bupa told me it couldn’t fund the operation because Prof Briggs hadn’t signed their its special new form giving the grounds for the arthroscopy. I challenged them but they were adamant. “Prof Briggs told me he hadn’t signed it because it was undermining his professional judgment. “He said: ‘Why should an insurance company decide whether a patient had or didn’t have an arthroscopy?’ “I agreed with him. It’s wrong for insurance company employees to judge whether a consultant orthopaedic surgeon should be doing one operation or another because they won’t have the clinical judgment. They must be trying to save money. “When I spoke to Bupa it said: ‘There’s no reason to have it done with Prof Briggs. We’ll give you the name of a surgeon who is happy to sign the form.’ “That really incensed me. I said I wanted a surgeon I trusted and knew would do a good job. I ended up paying for the operation myself. “I thought Bupa’s action was breach of contract. What’s the point of being insured with somebody if when you need something done it won’t pay for it? “I was paying them it £127 a month. But I’ve now cancelled my policy, so I will get the cost of the operation back that way.” Briggs confirmed that Twigley had wanted to see him and only him. “I refused to sign the Bupa form as a matter of principle,” he said. “Bupa’s new policy is limiting people’s choice of surgeon because a lot of consultants are refusing to sign these forms.” Health NHS Health insurance Insurance Healthcare industry Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Danny Alexander: Lord Lamont is ‘in cloud cuckoo land’ with call for 50p tax rate cut
July 31, 2011 No Comment
Lib Dem Treasury minister joins Vince Cable in attacking Tories’ proposed tax cuts for the rich as coalition tensions show The former chancellor Lord Lamont and other Conservatives calling for the scrapping of the 50p top rate of tax are living in “cloud cuckoo land”, the Liberal Democrat Treasury minister Danny Alexander has said. In a fresh sign of tensions between the coalition parties, Alexander and his Lib Dem colleague Vince Cable, the business secretary, said it would be wrong to focus tax cuts on the rich while the British economy is struggling to grow. “The idea that we’re going to somehow shift our focus to the wealthiest in the country at a time when everyone’s under pressure is just in cloud cuckoo land,” the chief secretary to the Treasury told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1. Cable told the Independent on Sunday: “It would be politically inconceivable for government to take some of the tax pressure off high earners at a time when people on low pay are suffering public sector pay restraint and cuts in real incomes because of high commodity prices.” Their remarks came as Lamont, who employed David Cameron as a Treasury special adviser during Black Wednesday in 1992, called for the 50p top tax rate to be scrapped because it makes Britain uncompetitive. In an echo of Boris Johnson, Lamont wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: “Lower taxes are important. Our taxes are uncompetitive and too high compared with other European countries. The 50% higher rate of income tax is probably one tax which could be abolished without any effect on revenue.” Those views are held widely in the Conservative party. Johnson told the Daily Telegraph last week that abolishing the 50p rate would be “a signal that London is open for business”. George Osborne said in his budget in March that he believes the 50p rate would inflict “lasting damage” on the economy if it became permanent. The chancellor has instructed HM Revenue and Customs to assess how much revenue it generates. But the chancellor added that it would be wrong to scrap the 50p rate when those on lower incomes are being asked to make sacrifices. This prompted speculation that the 50p rate will be scrapped in April 2013 when a two-year pay freeze for public sector workers is due to come to an end. Cable warned the government would have to offer a balanced package if it scraps the 50p rate. “We will look at it [the 50p rate], but it will have to be balanced by something that’s really strong in terms of tax fairness,” he told the IoS. Alexander was scathing about the Lamont proposal, which was not included in the coalition agreement. He told the BBC: “We set out in the coalition agreement – and it’s something that we as Liberal Democrats pushed very hard for – that the government’s first priority in tax reductions would be tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes; those very families who are working hard to try and make ends meet. “Anyone who thinks that we’re going to shift our priority to reducing the tax burden for the wealthiest has got another think coming. That cannot be the right priority for a country at this time. “We’re going through very difficult circumstances. We’ve got real financial pressures on people and we’re going to stick to our priority that says tax reductions that we can push through will be aimed at those on low and middle incomes first.” Cable also made clear that he remains attached to his idea of imposing a so-called “mansion tax” on properties worth more than £2m. “Mansions can’t run away to Switzerland,” he said. Danny Alexander Vince Cable Tax and spending Economic policy Boris Johnson George Osborne Income tax Tax Economic growth (GDP) Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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Despite cautious optimism from both sides the US could still default on its debts, risking economic chaos around the world A last-gasp compromise began to take shape in Congress on Sunday night aimed at ending the US debt deadlock that has threatened to throw the US and world economy into chaos. But, with time fast running out, Congress may have left it too late to meet the Tuesday deadline set by the Treasury for raising the debt ceiling above its current $14.3tn limit. The US Treasury had said that if the ceiling was not lifted by Tuesday, America would no longer have the cash needed to pay all its bills and faced the prospect of defaulting for the first time in its history. The White House hinted on Sunday that the deadline could be extended for a few days to allow Congress to get legislation through. The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said he was “cautiously optimistic” of a deal, a view echoed by his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell. McConnell, interviewed on Sunday morning, said: “We are very close. We had a good day yesterday. Both the president and vice-president called me … and they understand we have to come together.” The White House and Congressional leaders were anxious to get a compromise deal under way, fearful that uncertainty could lead to huge market falls on Monday . Market experts warned that even if a deal was struck, the world’s largest economy was likely to be stripped of its triple A debt rating by Standard & Poor’s. The head of the world’s largest bond investor – Mohamed El-Erian of Pimco – told US broadcaster ABC: “Things that need to happen are not happening fast enough. If S&P sticks to what it said, it will downgrade.” Economists agreed. Julian Jessop, chief international economist at Capital Economics, said: “It looks like they will get a deal done to lift the debt ceiling but it looks like none of the numbers are going to reassure the debt rating agencies. I’m pretty sure America will lose its triple A rating.” Such a move is likely to prompt a big jump in the cost of borrowing for the US. In the first of a series of votes on Sunday, the Senate voted on a mainly technical issue to try to end debate on the subject, but the Republicans blocked it. Republicans in the Senate then went into a session of their own to discuss the details of the deal before voting on the package. The deal will raise the country’s $14.3tn debt ceiling by about $3tn. Raising the debt ceiling is normally a routine issue but the Republican members of Congress, especially a hard core allied to the Tea Party movement, have used it over the last month to hold the White House hostage. The Republicans received their reward on Sunday when they won concessions that could see the increase in the debt ceiling matched by an equivalent $3tn of cuts in the federal budget over the next decade. The Senate vote marks the start the end of a saga that has left Washington paralysed for weeks. But the Senate bill still has to go to the Republican-controlled House, which will be more problematic. The bill is likely to pass the House with the support of a combination of mainstream Republicans and Democrats. But there is a hard core of Republicans in the House, about 20-50, allied to the Tea Party movement, some of whom vowed on Sunday night to vote against it, and some Democrats who feel Obama has conceded too much. David Plouffe, a White House adviser, told ABC it was not clear if there would be enough House Republicans to get a deal through. The deal is mainly a victory for Republicans whose mission has been to cut America’s huge federal spending budget and undermine Barack Obama in his bid for re-election next year. Leftwingers in the Democratic party will be dismayed over the spending cuts and that Obama has failed to force the Republicans to agree to tax rises. The crisis has already hurt Obama, with a poll carried last week showing his approval ratings drop from 45% to 40%. But the Republicans may be hurt too by their association with the Tea Party movement. America’s financial reputation has suffered as well, particularly over the last week, and even though a debt ceiling rise is now on the cards, the country could still see its credit rating being downgraded. The deal emerged late on Saturday after fractious public exchanges earlier in the day between Republicans and Democrats that highlighted the gap between the two sides. The Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, in a feisty speech on Saturday accused Republican Speaker John Boehner of having gone over to the “dark side” in courting hardcore Republicans allied to the Tea Party movement. But late on Saturday night, after a series of negotiations involving Obama, vice-president Joe Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner and Pelosi, they reached an agreement on the broad principles of a deal. The Senate deal could see the debt limit rise by $1tn this week and a further $1.8tn next year, though the White House refused to confirm the figures. US politics United States Republicans Democrats Tea Party movement US economy Economics Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The Syrian army raided cities across the country before dawn today, killing at least 62 people—most of them in the flashpoint city of Hama where a barrage of shelling and gunfire left bodies scattered in the streets, activists and residents said. The government is escalating its crackdown ahead of…
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Internet browser passes Firefox, with speed and a nationwide advertising campaign credited for the rise in popularity Google’s Chrome is Britain’s second most popular browser, a sign of the internet giant’s increasing grip on the UK search market. Three years after launch, Chrome last month captured 22% of UK users and marginally overtook Mozilla’s Firefox browser, according to the web metrics firm Statcounter. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is losing market share to Chrome but remains the most popular browser for UK users with 45% – although it has a head start by being pre-installed on almost all computers sold in Britain. Apple’s Safari is UK number four, with a 9% share. Google’s rise in the browser market is in part down to nationwide advertising – Chrome is the first Google product advertised on British TV – but is largely attributed to its speed. Lars Bak, the Google engineer responsible for Chrome, said the goal had never been to attract a huge user base, but to energise a dormant browser market: “Speed is a fundamental part of it, but it’s also about the minimal design and the way it handles security. If you as a user try [to load] a webpage and it feels snappy, it’s really hard to go back [to another browser]. It has shown that people spend more time interacting with the web.” Unlike most of Google’s talent based at its Mountain View headquarters in California, Bak works from a converted farmhouse in the Danish countryside two hours from Copenhagen. He has become obsessed with speed, and despite numerous tests that show Chrome outstrips all rivals , he thinks it could be much faster. “You should never be happy with [existing] speed,” he said. “Of course it gets harder to make substantial gains, but it’s all healthy competition. From the beginning we wanted everybody to be fast, and now all browsers are fast. I’m absolutely flabbergasted [by the improvements made by rival browsers].” Chrome is the number three worldwide, with a 20.65% market share according to Statcounter. But analysts expect it to edge ahead of Firefox, which has dipped steadily since January. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has also fallen heavily, to 43%, with warnings about security vulnerabilities. Google last month announced its Chromebook laptop, based on its browser and seen as another ambitious attack on Microsoft; it will be made by Samsung and Acer, companies that previously made computers running Microsoft’s software. Unlike most computers, the Chromebook has almost no capacity to store and hosts most data online in a “cloud”. Bak said: “The Chromebook is really important because it tries to simplify the machine – it is basically no maintenance, which means you can cut the price. If all you are doing is using a browser it’s a fantastic tool.” Chrome Internet Web browsers Google Firefox Internet Explorer Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
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