Violence erupts in Lilongwe and Blantyre as army and police try to halt anti-government demonstrations Riots have broken out in several cities in Malawi after police and the army tried to disperse protesters demanding the resignation of President Bingu wa Mutharika, whom they accuse of ignoring civil liberties and weakening the economy. In the capital, Lilongwe, witnesses said smoke was billowing into the sky as demonstrators burnt cars, offices and shops belonging to politicians from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Troops were deployed in the normally sleepy commercial capital, Blantyre, and police fired teargas at marchers who had gathered outside the stock exchange. “The earlier injunction has been withdrawn and we’re proceeding on the planned route of the demonstration but sadly we’re being smoked by teargas,” said Gift Makhwawa, president of the Malawi Law Society. A police spokesman, Willie Mwaluka, said security forces were on high alert to curb the unprecedented wave of unrest in the landlocked former British colony. “We’re assessing the situation as it unfolds. Right now I don’t have any confirmed figures of arrests, and extent of property damage,” he said. Marchers in the northern city of Mzuzu ransacked the DPP’s offices in a rare show of defiance against Mutharika, a former World Bank economist who was first elected in 2004 and who has presided over six years of aid-funded economic growth. His ratings faded this year when he became embroiled in a diplomatic row with Britain, Malawi’s biggest donor, over a leaked embassy cable that referred to him as “autocratic and intolerant of criticism”. After the expulsion of its ambassador to Lilongwe, Britain kicked out Malawi’s representative in London and suspended aid worth $550m (£341m) over the next four years. The freeze has left a hole in the budget of a country that has historically relied on aid for 40% of its revenues. Despite mounting commercial pressure on the currency and repeated calls from the likes of International Monetary Fund for a devaluation, Mutharika has vowed to stand firm. “We are not off-track. It is the IMF which is off-track in Malawi,” he said in a lecture broadcast on state media on Wednesday. “When other developed countries are receiving bailouts, what we get in Malawi are demands to devalue our currency.” Malawi Africa Protest guardian.co.uk
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TV, radio and internet campaigns paint glowing picture of president Bashar al-Assad and stir up sectarian tensions Brute force has been the main weapon of the Syrian regime as it has sought to crush growing protests, killing at least 1,500 people and torturing hundreds more. But Syrians have also been besieged by relentless propaganda. In a week that has seen at least 40 die and escalating violence in Homs, the country’s third largest city, state radio and private stations owned by regime cronies have been blaring out songs exalting Bashar al-Assad as “Abu Hafez”, suggesting his son Hafez could succeed him, or anointing him president for “all eternity”. Baseball caps, T-shirts and flags adorned with the president’s face are sold around Damascus. Billboards show him surrounded by pink hearts – in stark contrast to the sterner, more militarised pictures of his father, Hafez, the former president. Television programmes show residents shopping and driving, portraying calm and order while regime supporters chant that they would shed blood for their leader. Within weeks of the outbreak of unrest in March, posters went up around Syria warning of fitna , an Arabic word for division that has sectarian connotations. But as Assad’s use of force has failed to crush the protests, now in their fifth month, propaganda has become a key element of regime efforts to rally support. “The propaganda is relentless,” said one businessman. “The regime has hijacked the idea of national identity and is pushing divisions.” Official rhetoric is sectarian and blames foreign and Islamist armed miscreants for the violence. In contrast, the protesters have been keen to portray Syrians as united and peaceful. Such crude misinformation can be surprisingly effective in a country where there is no independent media, reporting is difficult and news comes mainly from witnesses and amateur film footage. The regime and its opponents have become increasingly polarised, raising the spectre of clashes of the type activists say are happening in Homs, where sectarian tensions are rising amid claims that gangs from the minority Alawi sect, to which the Assads belong, have been deliberately provoked by the regime to attack protesters. Christians and Druze have also been drawn to the cause through state propaganda. Early in the unrest protesters carried crosses and shouted anti-sectarian slogans: “Muslims, Christians, Alawis are all one.” But when a sit-in was held in Homs in April the regime framed it as Salafis (extreme fundamentalists) taking over the city. State TV aired staged accounts of “armed terrorists” admitting receiving cash from foreigners and showing caches of weapons and money in mosques. Imams report being told what to say in sermons, while a so-called “electronic army” has mounted an online campaign to fill Twitter with pro-regime messages. But at the same time the regime has also sought to portray Assad as a reformer – with a westernised wife to boot – who is adored by his people. Only a small minority of Syrians believe this narrative, which is contradicted by satellite channels such as al-Jazeera and material on the net. But Assad undoubtedly retains some support. “People choose to close their minds,” said one young professional in the capital. “This is due to fear, but also to brainwashing and the strong idea of authority in our society.” Children are taught to exalt Assad and his father, while schoolbooks describe Syria as one of the most powerful nations on the planet. Pictures of the ruling family hang in every shop and building while many places such as sports grounds are named after members of the family, including Assad’s younger brother Basil, who was being groomed for the presidency when he died in a car crash in 1994. During Assad’s first speech after the unrest began, one MP shouted: “The Arab world is too small for you, dear leader, you should rule the world!” But propaganda can backfire. “It is all lies, lies,” protested a trader in Damascus’s old city, who just two months ago was blaming the unrest on Salafis. The battle is not all one-sided. Activists had to become media-savvy to counteract the regime’s domination of domestic media. They have had success – some say too much – in finding the ear of international outlets and have been accused at points of distorting information too. A report by the International Crisis Group last week accused activists of playing down reports of sectarian tensions. “Unfortunately the propaganda could become a reality if this situation goes on too long,” warns a veteran dissident. Nour Ali is a pseudonym for a journalist in Damascus Syria Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Bashar Al-Assad guardian.co.uk
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• Unemployment rate rose most sharply in regions • South-east and London spared worst of job losses Workers in the manufacturing heartland of the West Midlands faced the sharpest increase in unemployment during the recession, while London and the south-east were cushioned from the worst of the job cuts. The unemployment rate in the West Midlands shot up from a pre-recession trough of 4.5%, to 10.6% by mid-2009, according to a new analysis by the Office for National Statistics – an increase of 6.1
Continue reading …Some good news from Japan: The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant is stabilized and a cold shutdown should be achieved within six months. Even so, Tokyo Electric Power Co. warns that final cleanup—which will involve encasing the plant in concrete—could take more than 10 years. Engineers have recently…
Continue reading …Serbia has arrested the last of its indicted war criminals, Goran Hadzic. Hadzic, president of the de facto government of Serb territories that broke away in former Yugoslavia, was in hiding for seven years. With his arrest, all 161 people indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for alleged war crimes…
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Schools can still offer range of courses but only results in most rigorous qualifications will count under government plans Thousands of vocational qualifications which do not offer pupils a chance to go on to further study after 16 are due to be stripped out of school league tables, the government has announced. Qualifications such as an NVQ level 2 in hairdressing, which is worth the equivalent of six GCSEs, and an OCR level 2 national certificate in travel and tourism – worth four GCSEs – are likely to be ditched. But ministers are expected to allow graded music exams to count as the equivalent of a GCSE from 2014. Music exams are currently given the same value as part of a GCSE. Schools will still have the freedom to offer a range of courses but only results in the most rigorous qualifications will boost their position in league tables. Ministers are proposing that qualifications should count only if they have been taught for at least two years and have good levels of take-up among students. Pupils must also be offered “good progression” into post-16 courses rather than a limited number of occupational areas. The qualifications must also have a substantial proportion of external assessment. More than 4,800 qualifications currently count towards school results whether or not they include external assessment. Only two non-GCSEs will be allowed to count towards the existing five A* to C GCSE benchmark of success, the government says. The number of “equivalent” qualifications taken in schools up to 16 has boomed in recent years from 15,000 in 2004 to 575,000 in 2010. The proposed changes follow a review of vocational education carried out by Professor Alison Wolf, a public policy expert. She argues that pupils need to acquire “broad skills” to enable them to thrive over a lifetime of change. Wolf said: “In recent years schools have been under enormous pressure to pile up league-table points. When any qualification under the sun can contribute these, the pernicious effects are obvious. We need a single list of good qualifications, which all have the same key structural characteristics, but cover a wide range of content. They need to be stretching, standardised, and to fit easily into a typical pupil’s programme and into a school’s overall timetable.” The government confirmed on Wednesday that the makeup of the English baccalaureate will stay the same for the next set of league tables, which will be published in January based on this year’s results. Pupils’ results will count towards the EBacc if they achieve a C or better at GCSE in English, maths, geography or history, the sciences and a modern or ancient language. Brian Gates, chair of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales, accused the government of undermining religious education by not including it. He said: “The rigorous study of ethics, faiths and beliefs allows those selecting GCSE RE to develop strong written and verbal skills, as well as to gain a factual knowledge of the world we live in. It is a travesty that as we face challenges of cohesion and a weakening of our collective identity, the very subject that can make sense of it all has been deemed less academically viable than geography and history.” Vocational education Education policy School tables Further education Schools Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Schools can still offer range of courses but only results in most rigorous qualifications will count under government plans Thousands of vocational qualifications which do not offer pupils a chance to go on to further study after 16 are due to be stripped out of school league tables, the government has announced. Qualifications such as an NVQ level 2 in hairdressing, which is worth the equivalent of six GCSEs, and an OCR level 2 national certificate in travel and tourism – worth four GCSEs – are likely to be ditched. But ministers are expected to allow graded music exams to count as the equivalent of a GCSE from 2014. Music exams are currently given the same value as part of a GCSE. Schools will still have the freedom to offer a range of courses but only results in the most rigorous qualifications will boost their position in league tables. Ministers are proposing that qualifications should count only if they have been taught for at least two years and have good levels of take-up among students. Pupils must also be offered “good progression” into post-16 courses rather than a limited number of occupational areas. The qualifications must also have a substantial proportion of external assessment. More than 4,800 qualifications currently count towards school results whether or not they include external assessment. Only two non-GCSEs will be allowed to count towards the existing five A* to C GCSE benchmark of success, the government says. The number of “equivalent” qualifications taken in schools up to 16 has boomed in recent years from 15,000 in 2004 to 575,000 in 2010. The proposed changes follow a review of vocational education carried out by Professor Alison Wolf, a public policy expert. She argues that pupils need to acquire “broad skills” to enable them to thrive over a lifetime of change. Wolf said: “In recent years schools have been under enormous pressure to pile up league-table points. When any qualification under the sun can contribute these, the pernicious effects are obvious. We need a single list of good qualifications, which all have the same key structural characteristics, but cover a wide range of content. They need to be stretching, standardised, and to fit easily into a typical pupil’s programme and into a school’s overall timetable.” The government confirmed on Wednesday that the makeup of the English baccalaureate will stay the same for the next set of league tables, which will be published in January based on this year’s results. Pupils’ results will count towards the EBacc if they achieve a C or better at GCSE in English, maths, geography or history, the sciences and a modern or ancient language. Brian Gates, chair of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales, accused the government of undermining religious education by not including it. He said: “The rigorous study of ethics, faiths and beliefs allows those selecting GCSE RE to develop strong written and verbal skills, as well as to gain a factual knowledge of the world we live in. It is a travesty that as we face challenges of cohesion and a weakening of our collective identity, the very subject that can make sense of it all has been deemed less academically viable than geography and history.” Vocational education Education policy School tables Further education Schools Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
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Arrest of Milosevic puppet accused over massacre of hospital patients after Vukovar siege clears obstacle to Serbia joining EU The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal crowned 18 years of operations on Wednesday with the capture of the last of 161 suspects from the wars of the 1990s when Goran Hadzic, a leader of the Serbian insurgency in Croatia, was arrested by the Serbian authorities. The arrest, two months after Belgrade captured genocide suspect General Ratko Mladic and dispatched him for trial in The Hague, marked a turning point for Serbia in seeking to put a blood-soaked, criminalised past behind it and join the European mainstream. The arrest was also a big moment for the UN tribunal in The Hague. Every one of the 161 main war crimes suspects indicted for atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo has now been apprehended and tried or is awaiting trial. “This is a precedent of enduring significance, not only for this tribunal, but also for international criminal justice more generally,” said Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. “A milestone in the tribunal’s history,” added Judge O-Gon Kwon, the acting head of the temporary court established in 1993 at the height of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Hadzic, a former warehouse worker from Slavonia, a region in east Croatia, was a political leader of the Serbian rebellion in 1991, armed and sponsored by Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Belgrade. He led ethnic pogroms and armed insurrection against Zagreb, after Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia in June 1991, resulting in partition of the country and the Serbian seizure of a quarter of the territory during the war. Hadzic was president of the self-styled breakaway Serbian republic in Croatia for almost two years in 1992-93. He was indicted seven years ago and faces 14 counts of crimes against humanity and violating the laws of war for “persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; extermination; murder; imprisonment; torture; inhumane acts; deportation; inhumane acts (forcible transfers)”, according to the charge sheet. A puppet of the Milosevic regime, Hadzic was a local leader of the campaign to expel Croats from a third of Croatia and annex the territory to a “Greater Serbia” also including half of Bosnia. The campaign ended in disaster, although today’s leader of the Serbian half of Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, regularly threatens to break away and destroy the country 16 years after the war ended. Helped by the then Serbian government, Hadzic went into hiding when indicted by the tribunal in 2004. Detectives from The Hague tracked him to his house in Novi Sad, north of Belgrade, but the authorities failed to seize him. He was arrested in the hills of northern Serbia where he was rumoured to enjoy the shelter of an Orthodox monastery. The most notorious of his alleged crimes concerns the murders of some 250 hospital patients in Vukovar, on Croatia’s Danube river border with Serbia in November 1991. The Serbs laid siege to the town for three months, shelling it to rubble. When Vukovar fell, the patients were taken to a pig farm and murdered in what acquired infamy as the Ovcara massacre. “Justice is slow, but achievable,” said the Croatian president, Ivo Josipovic, after the arrest of Hadzic, who had worked in Vukovar before the war. A more obscure figure than Mladic or Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader being tried in The Hague, Hadzic was the last of that troika whom Serbia needed to capture and extradite to secure a future as a democracy and eventual accession to the European Union. EU and Nato leaders applauded the government of President Boris Tadic in Belgrade for delivering the last of the suspected war criminals. “This is a further important step for Serbia in realising its European perspective. We salute the determination and commitment of Serbia’s leadership in this effort,” said an EU statement. “The really really major obstacles are gone,” an EU official added. The arrest and imminent transfer to The Hague improves Serbia’s chances of getting a go-ahead in October or November to start negotiations to join the EU. Croatia has just completed that six-year task. War criminals apart, Serbia’s EU prospects will hinge even more greatly on settling its dispute with Kosovo, the Albanian-majority province which declared independence in 2008, but which Belgrade refuses to recognise and pledges never to give up. The first negotiations between the two sides, mediated by the EU, opened earlier this year. After a promising start, they have just broken down. Robert Cooper, the EU official in charge, postponed a session scheduled on Wednesday until September. Diplomats in Brussels said the talks on energy, telecommunications, and cross-border trade broke down because the Serbs would not agree to new customs stamps on Kosovo exports. “It became clear there was no chance. It’s not moving anywhere,” said an EU official. More ominously, Tadic has revived talk of partitioning Kosovo, alarming the British, European and US governments. “One should not marvel at the idea regarding the division of Kosovo since it has been present in the Serbian public for a while,” Tadic said in May, prompting a furious Kosovo response. “On Monday, Tadic proposes Kosovo’s partition, on Tuesday he talks about exchange of territories, on Wednesday he suggests creating mono-ethnic states in the Balkans,” said Enver Hoxhai, the Kosovo foreign minister, last month. “The borders of the Balkans are established and stable and the issues of sovereignty and territory are closed.” Last week in Croatia William Burns, the US under-secretary of state, sent a strong signal to Tadic. “Serbia faces unique challenges in joining the EU. Serbia needs to find a way to come to terms with the reality of Kosovo,” he said. “There is simply no possible way for borders in this region to be redrawn along ethnically clean lines. Any rhetoric calling for the partition of Kosovo will not advance Serbia’s strategic goal of European integration.” On Monday, David Lidington, the minister for Europe, said: “The frontiers in the Balkans have been drawn and there is no going back on Kosovo’s independence. Regional co-operation must be addressed in the context of an accession process for Serbia and a full European perspective for Kosovo.” Serbia War crimes Croatia European Union Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
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Arrest of Milosevic puppet accused over massacre of hospital patients after Vukovar siege clears obstacle to Serbia joining EU The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal crowned 18 years of operations on Wednesday with the capture of the last of 161 suspects from the wars of the 1990s when Goran Hadzic, a leader of the Serbian insurgency in Croatia, was arrested by the Serbian authorities. The arrest, two months after Belgrade captured genocide suspect General Ratko Mladic and dispatched him for trial in The Hague, marked a turning point for Serbia in seeking to put a blood-soaked, criminalised past behind it and join the European mainstream. The arrest was also a big moment for the UN tribunal in The Hague. Every one of the 161 main war crimes suspects indicted for atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo has now been apprehended and tried or is awaiting trial. “This is a precedent of enduring significance, not only for this tribunal, but also for international criminal justice more generally,” said Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. “A milestone in the tribunal’s history,” added Judge O-Gon Kwon, the acting head of the temporary court established in 1993 at the height of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Hadzic, a former warehouse worker from Slavonia, a region in east Croatia, was a political leader of the Serbian rebellion in 1991, armed and sponsored by Slobodan Milosevic’s regime in Belgrade. He led ethnic pogroms and armed insurrection against Zagreb, after Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia in June 1991, resulting in partition of the country and the Serbian seizure of a quarter of the territory during the war. Hadzic was president of the self-styled breakaway Serbian republic in Croatia for almost two years in 1992-93. He was indicted seven years ago and faces 14 counts of crimes against humanity and violating the laws of war for “persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; extermination; murder; imprisonment; torture; inhumane acts; deportation; inhumane acts (forcible transfers)”, according to the charge sheet. A puppet of the Milosevic regime, Hadzic was a local leader of the campaign to expel Croats from a third of Croatia and annex the territory to a “Greater Serbia” also including half of Bosnia. The campaign ended in disaster, although today’s leader of the Serbian half of Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, regularly threatens to break away and destroy the country 16 years after the war ended. Helped by the then Serbian government, Hadzic went into hiding when indicted by the tribunal in 2004. Detectives from The Hague tracked him to his house in Novi Sad, north of Belgrade, but the authorities failed to seize him. He was arrested in the hills of northern Serbia where he was rumoured to enjoy the shelter of an Orthodox monastery. The most notorious of his alleged crimes concerns the murders of some 250 hospital patients in Vukovar, on Croatia’s Danube river border with Serbia in November 1991. The Serbs laid siege to the town for three months, shelling it to rubble. When Vukovar fell, the patients were taken to a pig farm and murdered in what acquired infamy as the Ovcara massacre. “Justice is slow, but achievable,” said the Croatian president, Ivo Josipovic, after the arrest of Hadzic, who had worked in Vukovar before the war. A more obscure figure than Mladic or Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader being tried in The Hague, Hadzic was the last of that troika whom Serbia needed to capture and extradite to secure a future as a democracy and eventual accession to the European Union. EU and Nato leaders applauded the government of President Boris Tadic in Belgrade for delivering the last of the suspected war criminals. “This is a further important step for Serbia in realising its European perspective. We salute the determination and commitment of Serbia’s leadership in this effort,” said an EU statement. “The really really major obstacles are gone,” an EU official added. The arrest and imminent transfer to The Hague improves Serbia’s chances of getting a go-ahead in October or November to start negotiations to join the EU. Croatia has just completed that six-year task. War criminals apart, Serbia’s EU prospects will hinge even more greatly on settling its dispute with Kosovo, the Albanian-majority province which declared independence in 2008, but which Belgrade refuses to recognise and pledges never to give up. The first negotiations between the two sides, mediated by the EU, opened earlier this year. After a promising start, they have just broken down. Robert Cooper, the EU official in charge, postponed a session scheduled on Wednesday until September. Diplomats in Brussels said the talks on energy, telecommunications, and cross-border trade broke down because the Serbs would not agree to new customs stamps on Kosovo exports. “It became clear there was no chance. It’s not moving anywhere,” said an EU official. More ominously, Tadic has revived talk of partitioning Kosovo, alarming the British, European and US governments. “One should not marvel at the idea regarding the division of Kosovo since it has been present in the Serbian public for a while,” Tadic said in May, prompting a furious Kosovo response. “On Monday, Tadic proposes Kosovo’s partition, on Tuesday he talks about exchange of territories, on Wednesday he suggests creating mono-ethnic states in the Balkans,” said Enver Hoxhai, the Kosovo foreign minister, last month. “The borders of the Balkans are established and stable and the issues of sovereignty and territory are closed.” Last week in Croatia William Burns, the US under-secretary of state, sent a strong signal to Tadic. “Serbia faces unique challenges in joining the EU. Serbia needs to find a way to come to terms with the reality of Kosovo,” he said. “There is simply no possible way for borders in this region to be redrawn along ethnically clean lines. Any rhetoric calling for the partition of Kosovo will not advance Serbia’s strategic goal of European integration.” On Monday, David Lidington, the minister for Europe, said: “The frontiers in the Balkans have been drawn and there is no going back on Kosovo’s independence. Regional co-operation must be addressed in the context of an accession process for Serbia and a full European perspective for Kosovo.” Serbia War crimes Croatia European Union Europe Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …McDonald’s makes 2012 Olympics pledge to create the biggest and busiest Big Mac diner
July 20, 2011 No Comment
Fast-food firm plans to break its record and build the world’s largest McDonald’s at the Games site in Stratford, east London It might not quite have been what Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he coined the “faster, higher, stronger” motto of the modern Olympics. But the world’s largest fast-food chain is using the Games in London next year as a pretext to break its own records; it has announced plans to open the world’s biggest, and busiest, McDonald’s restaurant on the Stratford site. Metres from where famous athletes will strain every sinew to win their medals, up to 1,500 people will be able to dine in the biggest McDonald’s yet built. The two-storey, 3,000 sq-metre, diner will be one of four McDonald’s restaurants built in and near the Olympics park in east London. There will be two public eateries, one in the athlete’s village, one in the media centre. The firm insists there is no discrepancy between the Games’ ideals and its plans to serve 1.75m of its meals during the 29 days of the Olympics and Paralympics. The food chain’s UK chief executive, Jill McDonald, said: “To be involved in the greatest sporting event on earth is hugely exciting … We want everyone who visits our Olympics park restaurants to have the best possible customer experience, and are confident that the look and feel of these cutting-edge designs will provide that environment.” McDonald’s is a long-standing sponsor of the Olympics and the World Cup, with its exclusive deals ensuring it is the only branded restaurant on site. But its presence is bound to attract protests from those who feel the Games should not be so closely associated with potentially unhealthy food brands. The London organising committee will say that it relies on its own domestic sponsors, who have raised £700m, and the International Olympic Committee’s 11 backers, to find two-thirds of its £2bn Games budget. The organisers promise a wide range of food available at the Olympics park, including from local suppliers. But it will all have to be unbranded, with only official sponsors afforded the right to have their names on the food they sell. McDonald’s is expected to use the Games to try to highlight its “corporate social responsibility”. It has been involved in the recruitment of 70,000 Games volunteers and has pledged re-use of the furniture, refrigeration plants and other equipment in its other UK restaurants after the Olympics. McDonald’s Food & drink industry Olympic Games 2012 Owen Gibson guardian.co.uk
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