The Guardian
US jobless figures better than feared
About 54,000 jobs lost, far fewer than the 100,000 expected, easing fears of a second US recession
Fears that the world's largest economy is spiralling back into recession eased today as US unemployment data came in stronger than expected.
Global stock markets rallied in relief as the US government said employers shed almost half as many jobs as markets had been expecting last month. The picture in previous months was also brighter than first thought.
Non-farm payrolls showed a drop of 54,000 jobs in August. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast on average a decline of 100,000 jobs.
While for stock markets the data brought some respite after a slew of weaker-than-expected economic indicators in recent weeks, economists are still cautious about the outlook.
"Double dip fears will dissipate on the back of this result, though we suspect that the US labour market is not out of the woods yet. Employment growth is still insufficient to stabilise the unemployment rate," said Rob Carnell at ING Financial Markets.
The unemployment rate nudged higher to 9.6% from 9.5% in July as the size of the workforce increased.
But overall the data was more positive than expecte, with July revised to show a fall of 54,000 jobs, a stronger outcome than the 131,000 drop previously reported. June was revised too.
The private sector, regarded as a key barometer of the economic outlook, added 67,000 jobs, above the 41,000 forecast.
Following the data, the FTSE 100 extended gains. It is up by more than 1% on the day at 5438, while stock market futures point to a strong rise when Wall Street opens.
The figures will come as a relief to president Barack Obama who has faced criticism that the US recovery has so far largely been a jobless one.
Still, the payrolls data marked the third monthly drop in jobs.
As in the UK, many workers in the US continue to struggle to find full-time work. The number of peeople employed part time involuntarily rose by 331,000 over the month to 8.9 million.
With the economy still not adding any jobs, many analysts expect the US Federal Reserve to step in with extra support for the recovery in the form of quantitative easing - a way of pumping electronic money into the economy.
"One swallow does not make a summer and looking behind these figures slow growth is still the order of the day. This does not change anything and does not alter our expectations of further quantitative easing in the future as the US veers back towards recession," said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at World First.
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Veteran Liberal MP Cyril Smith dies
Key party figure of the 1970s and 80s passes away aged 82
The veteran Liberal politician Sir Cyril Smith died today aged 82.
Smith served as the Liberal and later Liberal Democrat MP for Rochdale from 1972 until retiring in 1992.
He became one of his party's heavyweight political figures in the 1970s and 80s – his famously rotund stature and his larger-than-life personality made him a distinctive character in British politics.
A spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in Rochdale, the town where he was born and raised, confirmed his death this morning.
The former MP was made an MBE for his public services in 1966 and was knighted in 1988.
A lifelong bachelor who reportedly weighed 29 stone at one point, he was often a thorn in the side of his party's leadership.
Famously outspoken and blunt, Smith once described parliament as "the longest running farce in the West End" and never made it to the leadership of his party.
During a political career spanning decades he changed parties three times and in 1976 suggested the formation of a completely new centre party.
From humble beginnings in Rochdale he won a scholarship to Rochdale grammar school for boys, honing his debating skills at the local Unitarian church.
Elected to parliament in 1972 in a landslide victory over Labour in his home town, he began a resolutely independent career at Westminster.
He became party spokesman on employment and chief whip but rejected calls for him to stand as the party leader.
He finally retired from Westminster in 1992.
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Police crash drink-drive suspect's car
Two officers investigated after impounded Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution is written off
Two police officers face investigation after they stopped a suspected drink-driver, then wrote off his sports car by crashing through a garden wall.
The high-powered Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution was driven across a grass verge, then across the garden of one luxury home and through the neighbouring garden's fence before ending up on its side.
Both officers were found inside the vehicle. One suffered minor injuries and the other was severely shaken.
They had stopped the car for driving erratically at around 2.15am today on Hale Road in Hale, Cheshire. The 23-year-old driver was arrested on suspicion of drink-driving and his car was impounded.
Police policy is to wait for a recovery vehicle to take away the car. The collision is now being investigated by officers from Greater Manchester Police's (GMP) professional standards unit. Both officers have been suspended from driving duties with immediate effect.
Chief Superintendent Mark Roberts from GMP, said: "I can assure the local community that this incident will be rigorously investigated.
"Thankfully, no members of the public were injured. I would like to apologise to residents if this incident has caused any problems or inconvenience."
The suspected drink-driver remains in custody.
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MI6 man jailed over secrets for sale
Daniel Houghton, 25, offered sensitive information to Dutch agents for £2m
An MI6 worker has been given a 12-month jail sentence after attempting to sell intelligence to the Netherlands.
Daniel Houghton, 25, offered sensitive information to Dutch agents for £2m, the Old Bailey heard today.
The software engineer had pleaded guilty to two offences under the Official Secrets Act at an earlier hearing, after arranging to meet the agents at a London hotel.
Houghton had offered to hand over sensitive computer files containing information about intelligence collection and MI6 staff lists.
The agents initially thought Houghton's approach was a hoax, but later tipped off their UK counterparts. Houghton was arrested after arranging a meeting at a London hotel in March this year.
"The effect on the SIS [Secret Intelligence Service] credibility and the morale of its officers of this kind of act of betrayal is a serious matter," said Mr Justice Bean, as he passed the sentence.
The judge said he did not know whether it was true, as Houghton claimed, that he was hearing voices that told him to do it but said he was a "strange young man".
Houghton was sentenced to a year in prison but will be released almost immediately as he has already served half the term while on remand.
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Cricket watchdog denies failures over betting scandal
Comments came as cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were being questioned by police
The head of the International Cricket Council's anti-corruption unit denied today that the ICC was failing to identify corruption within the sport, as the three Pakistan cricketers at the centre of an alleged betting scam were being questioned by police.
Speaking for the first time since the allegations surfaced, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the former Northern Ireland police chief who was appointed chair of the cricket governing body's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) three months ago, said match-fixing was "not a contagion that's widespread throughout cricket".
"If these charges are proven, I congratulate the News of the World," Flanagan said. "They were brought to light in ways the ICC can't engage in; ways the ICC would not like to engage in.
"There are many instances where ACSU activity has prevented these type of actions occurring. I refute this represents a failing of the ACSU. On the contrary, I have been impressed with what my investigators have done."
Flanagan said ICC investigators had worked closely with Metropolitan police officers, who had shared material with them. He confirmed the ICC had laid several charges against Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, all related to last week's Lord's test, but would not give any further details of the charges.
The three players are being interviewed by the Metropolitan police for the second time since allegations surfaced that they had agreed to bowl no-balls in specific overs of last week's fourth Test at Lord's, in return for money.
They were initially questioned last weekend when the News of the World broke the story and had their mobile phones seized by the police.
The ICC's decision to suspend them was criticised today by the Pakistan high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, who said there was no reason for the ICC to suspend the players, given that they had already voluntarily withdrawn from the Pakistan squad.
He said ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat went to see him at 5.30pm yesterday and indicated that the players would not face charges from the sports' governing body. However, he appeared to change his mind after a phone call from the ICC president, Sharad Pawar.
"The ICC's just trying to play to the public gallery," Hasan told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
The charges were announced after officials from the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) spent the afternoon at Scotland Yard viewing evidence and seeking a police go-ahead.
Hasan said: "They [the ICC] have done the wrong thing. When there is a live police inquiry, this takes precedence over both the ICC, civil or regulatory investigation and indeed any internal disciplinary investigation.
"To take action now is, of course, unhelpful, premature and unnecessary considering the players had already voluntarily withdrawn from playing."
Sitting alongside Flanagan at the ICC press conference, Lorgat rejected Hasan's suggestion that he had led him to believe the ICC would not be taking action against the players prior to conclusion of the police investigation.
"The very reason I went to see him was to put him on notice [of the charges]," said Lorgat.
Hasan claimed yesterday that the players had been "set up" by the News of the World. Asked if they had been framed, he answered "yes", and suggested the newspaper's video evidence could have been filmed after the contentious no-balls had been bowled.
The News of the World said it "refuses to respond to such ludicrous allegations". The newspaper is understood to be preparing further revelations for this Sunday.
Mazhar Majeed, the 35-year-old middleman the News of the World alleges was at the heart of the betting sting, was arrested on Sunday and released on bail. Separately, he was also arrested as part of an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs into money laundering through Croydon Athletic, the non-league football club he owns.
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The role of the restaurant reviewer
Does the points system add anything to reviews? Our new restaurant critic wants to hear from you
This Saturday I'm beginning a stint as the Guardian's restaurant critic - a tough assignment, as we can all agree, but somebody's got to do it. The job is one I've done before, for the Observer between 1992 and 1995. In fact, I was the Observer's first restaurant critic; before that they'd had a food editor, the redoubtable Paul Levy, but not a restaurant critic per se. Today it would seem actively odd for a national broadsheet not to have a restaurant critic, if only for the readers to jeer at and disagree with - which, in itself is a sign of how the general interest in food throughout Britain has continued to grow.
Quite a few things about the job have changed over a decade and a half, and this is one of them, the ability to talk directly to readers on a blog and have them talk directly back. The internet makes writing about restaurants easier and more interesting in quite a few ways, one of the main ones being to do with the mundane business of checking what's on the menu. Back in the day, I used to spend a significant amount of time just copying out the menu, trying not to get caught as I frantically scribbled notes in the book on my lap, which is a great way of looking as if you've come down with a bad case of pubic crabs. Once I'd done that, I would do the rest of my note-taking in the loo, once at half-time and once at the end of the meal. That's another thing which is easier these days, since you can type notes into your phone with impunity and no one thinks you're a restaurant critic, they just think you're yet another plonker who can't keep off his mobile even in the middle of dinner.
One thing which has changed and which I'm not at all sure about is the business of giving restaurants scores. I didn't used to do this at the Observer and Jay Rayner still doesn't, but the Guardian likes to. The trouble with scores, I think, is that:
1. They can be misleadingly authoritative. In my view, a review should be like talking to a friend who's just asked you, 'what was it like'? You're giving a verdict on an experience, not trying for a definitive last judgment. Points look more final and more conclusive than they can ever be. The Michelin guide, which desperately tries to look authoritative, in my view is a disaster area and actively does more harm than good.
2. What are you marking? Jonathan Meades in the Times used to say that 'marks are for cooking'. That has the virtue of complete clarity, but it does mean that a really fantastic restaurant where the food is straightforward and you always have a great time will be marked down compared to the fancy place where you wait for hours, the staff are snooty, you have to ask for everything three times, but the cooking is brilliant. I think there needs to be a balance between the cooking bit of the score and the rest of the experience: about 60/40, say.
The counter-argument can be summed up simply: readers like scores. So my question is, do you? And how do you think they should be awarded?
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G20 pathologist suspended
Disciplinary panel suspends pathologist, who carried out first post-mortem examination on Ian Tomlinson, for three months
The pathologist who carried out the first postmortem on newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, who died at the G20 protests, was today suspended from the medical register for three months.
A General Medical Council disciplinary panel previously ruled that Dr Freddy Patel acted in a way that amounted to misconduct in two earlier postmortems, meaning his fitness to practise was impaired. The panel also ruled that Patel had displayed deficient professional performance in a third examination.
Patel's period of suspension will start in 28 days to allow him to complete reports on cases he has already started. He will not be able to undertake any new postmortems.
He has already been suspended from the Home Office register of forensic pathologists after questions were asked about the autopsy carried out on the body of 47-year-old Tomlinson, who died in London in April last year.
The panel had already concluded that Patel was "irresponsible" and failed to meet professional standards during his examinations of the bodies of a five-year-old girl in 2002, a four-week-old baby in 2003 and a woman who died in 2005.
Patel, 63, behaved irresponsibly, failed to meet standards expected of a Home Office pathologist, and acted in a way liable to bring the profession into disrepute when he changed the woman's cause of death in 2005, the panel found.
He carried out a postmortem on 5 January 2005, and decided she had died due to a blood clot in the coronary arteries.
A month later, after a second examination by another pathologist, he prepared an addendum to his report, changing the cause of death to a brain haemorrhage in line with the new findings.
Patel told an inquest into the woman's death he had changed the primary cause of death "to satisfy the family".
The panel chairman, Richard Davies, said the pathologist's assumption that, as the death was not suspicious, the change made no difference from the coroner's viewpoint and merely allowed an inquest to proceed was not an adequate explanation.
In the GMC ruling, Davies said Patel's "acts and omissions were very serious" and amounted to misconduct.
He said pathologists "must not set aside their professional judgment for any of the parties involved during or after a postmortem examination for reasons of expediency or anything else".
Patel's failure to note the weights of individual organs examined, as is recommended by Royal College of Pathologists' guidance, showed deficient professional performance.
Patel was also found to be guilty of misconduct in a postmortem on the four-week-old baby in August 2003.
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Who's judging whom in Venice?
The Italian press is giving Quentin Tarantino a hard time with 'conflict-of-interest' questions and the Lido looks like a construction site, but nothing can dampen the festival spirit
This year's Venice film festival has begun on rather a disconcerting note: the colossal construction project on the Lido, building a new addition to the Palazzo Del Cinema, is far from complete – to the dismay of festivalgoers who hoped that it might be ready in time for the beginning of this year's event. No such luck. So the red carpet premieres are happening next door to a huge, unsightly, screened-off building site, with everything but "No hard hat, no work" signs and men with jeans sliding down their buttocks asking for a cup of tea.
And what makes it even more piquant is that more building work is taking place just up the road. The Hotel Des Bains, famously the location for Visconti's Death in Venice – and from whose elegant precincts Dirk Bogarde would totter forth to gaze upon young male loveliness on the hotel's private beach – is to close. It will be reinvented as luxury apartments, reportedly part of the city's plan to reinvent the Lido as a glitzy resort to compete with the French Riviera, a plan that can only work if the standard of retail therapy is seriously improved. At the moment, it's notable for tobacconists, supermarkets and cafes – which is why, incidentally, the Lido is so much liked by people who come to Venice and appreciate its laid-back charm. Every day , I walk to the festival centre from my hotel along the Via Lepanto, and every day I am struck by its quiet beauty and the fact that it looks like a real place where real people live and work.
Jury president, Quentin Tarantino, has been greeted mischievously by the Italian press with "conflict-of-interest" questions about his links to directors whose work is showing at the Venice film festival.
Robert Rodriguez is presenting his outrageous cod B-movie schlocker Machete, which grew out of a mock trailer appearing in the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse double bill. The film is, in fact, scheduled out of competition, and so Tarantino is not in a position to award it any prizes, but Sofia Coppola, whom the papers have not hesitated to announce as his ex-girlfriend (they dated briefly), has a film in competition: Somewhere, starring Stephen Dorff.
Tarantino remarked: "I hope that my integrity speaks for itself. There are many directors that I know well. The fear, however, is that the friendship will get in the way and they will not come to be appreciated for their real value. I do not have these qualms. It doesn't matter who made a film."
The festival certainly made a sexy start with Darren Aronofsky's madly over-the-top psychosexual thriller Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman as a troubled ballerina, and Tran Anh Hung's Norwegian Wood, based on the Haruki Murakami novel, has been much admired.
The consensus so far is that this is a lively festival with, on paper, a strong competition list. A prominent voice in the coverage, incidentally, is industry bible Variety, which provides a daily festival paper. It is widely read here, and in Jordan Mintzer's review of Bertrand Blier's movie The Clink of Ice, this journal displayed its legendary, if somewhat eccentric propensity for snappy links, wacky wordplay and using the movie's theme metaphorically to discuss its commercial prospects. The Clink of Ice is a black comedy about a man suffering from terminal cancer, which Mintzer summarised: "Wide-scale French rollout should metastasize into good overseas biz following the pic's international bow in Venice."
Hmm. Let's hope any second opinions about the subject matter don't put the box office numbers into remission, and that the chemotherapy of indifference doesn't shrink the tumour of profit.
Peter Bradshawguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Asil Nadir trial pushed back to 2011
• Fugitive tycoon returns to UK after 17 years
• Q&A: Asil Nadir trial
• How Polly Peck collapsed
• Profile: Asil Nadir
Asil Nadir, the fugitive business tycoon, has failed in his bid for a speedy trial after a judge said he must wait until October 2011 before he can contest charges of fraud resulting from the collapse of his Polly Peck empire.
Nadir, 69, also failed in his bid to limit his curfew and avoid electronic tagging while he stays in London waiting for the trial.
He looked relaxed in the dock at the Old Bailey after he arrived in a convoy of Mercedes and Jaguar cars outside the court and police watched over his arrival in a helicopter.
The Serious Fraud Office wants time to compile evidence against Nadir, who fled Britain in 1993, including tracing witnesses who gave statements ahead of the original trial.
He was remanded on conditional bail to another hearing on 15 October. His trial date was provisionally set at October, next year.
Polly Peck collapsed in 1991 with debts of £1.3bn amid claims of accounting irregularities and fraud.
Nadir was granted bail on 30 July on condition he return to the UK from the Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus which had no extradition agreement with Britain.
He flew back to England last week and is renting a house in Mayfair with his 26-year-old wife Nur.
The Serious Fraud Office pursued the case until Nadir, who founded the company, fled the UK in 1993 after he voiced fears that he would not receive a fair trial.
The trial is expected to cost at least £4m.
Legal experts have voiced fears that the trial could collapse once it becomes evident that too much time has elapsed since Polly Peck went bust. They have also warned that crucial documents may have been lost and that key personnel involved in the company may either have died or be unable to remember important events.
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Leonardo da Vinci, master of war
Da Vinci's study of two soldiers, at the Royal Academy this autumn, captures battlefield trauma as ferociously as Don McCullin
War is coming to London. A drawing that shows us the reality of battle reflected in an old warrior's eyes will be shown this autumn at the Royal Academy, and it brings with it the despair, sorrow and numbness of a lifetime of violence.
The drawing is by Leonardo da Vinci. When he drew this compelling head, flanked by a second grimacing profile, in about 1504 he was in his early fifties and had spent much of his life working with soldiers and men of war. When he was about 30, the painter left his native Tuscany and went to Milan, where he applied for a job at the court of Ludovico Sforza, not as an artist but a "master of war". His surviving notebooks show that he did indeed design a staggering variety of bizarre and cruel weapons in Milan, including missiles, machine guns and an armoured car. Then at the start of the 16th century he set off on his travels again, and in 1502 became a military engineer to the terrifying warrior Cesare Borgia.
Those experiences are distilled in the bleak eyes, the despairing scream and the leathery skin – superbly created using soft grey shade – of Leonardo's bitter survivor. He has death in his eyes. What has he seen? What has he done? We see in this portrait the faces and the inner beings of mercenary soldiers Leonardo knew, fighting their battles for power and money. The drawing has a nightmare quality reminiscent of Shakespeare's Macbeth, as the weary soldier screams as he glimpses the evil of his life.
Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of military psychology is astonishingly modern. It speaks to our age of war as truthfully as it spoke to his own. It is fascinating to compare the mask of rage he draws so acutely with the shell-shocked face of a soldier photographed by Don McCullin in Vietnam.Both faces distress us because we are made to imagine what they have seen. In these faces damaged by battle the vast horror of war is suggested more profoundly than in a hundred gory pictures. War destroyed minds then, and it destroys them now, but Leonardo looks into its abyss and keeps a steady drawing hand.
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Smuggler caught with 95 snakes
A man has pleaded guilty after his bag containing snakes broke open on a luggage belt at Kuala Lumpur International airport
A Malaysian man has pleaded guilty to wildlife smuggling after his bag bursting with 95 live boa constrictors broke open on a luggage conveyer belt at Kuala Lumpur International airport, an official said.
Keng Liang "Anson" Wong, 52, who was previously convicted of wildlife trafficking in the United States, was charged on Wednesday in a district court for exporting the endangered boas without a permit, said Shamsuddin Osman, an official with Malaysia's wildlife department. The offence carries a penalty of up to seven years in prison and a fine, Shamsuddin said.
Wong was arrested on 26 August after airport authorities found the boa constrictors, together with a few other snakes and a turtle, when his bag broke open on a luggage conveyor belt. Wong was transiting from Malaysia's northern Penang state to Indonesia's capital Jakarta.
The court will reconvene Monday pending Wong's appointment of a lawyer, Shamsuddin said.
He said the criminal charges involve the boas only, because the other animals are not listed as endangered. All of the animals are alive and under the care of wildlife officials, Shamsuddin said.
A decade ago, Wong was sentenced to almost six years in prison in the US for running an animal-smuggling ring that prosecutors said imported and sold more than 300 protected reptiles native to Asia and Africa from 1996 until Wong's arrest in Mexico in 1998.
Activists say the illegal wildlife trade used to flourish in Malaysia until the country recently stepped up efforts to crack down on it. In July, parliament passed a new law to punish poachers and smugglers more severely, but the act has not yet taken effect.
Also on 26 August, customs officers at Bangkok airport in Thailand discovered a drugged tiger cub in a check-in bag filled with stuffed animal toys. An x-ray revealed the animal's beating heart inside the oversized luggage of a 31-year-old Thai woman who was due to board a plane to Iran.
In February, a report found that countries across south-east Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China – posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.
More than 35 million animals were legally exported from the region over the past decade, official figures show, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally. Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About 1 million birds and 400,000 mammals were traded, along with 18 million pieces of coral. The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term – "empty forest syndrome" – to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.
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Dan Brown tops 'least wanted' chart
For the second year running, the bestselling author's books are the most-donated to the charity shop chain
Dan Brown has hung on to the dubious honour of being the author whose books readers most want to get rid of, topping the list of writers most-donated to Oxfam shops for the second year running.
The bestselling American author, whose latest cryptographic thriller The Lost Symbol – filled with such gems as "Is there life after death? Do humans have souls? Incredibly, Katherine had answered all of these questions and more" – was published last autumn, is joined on Oxfam's most-donated line-up by the likes of John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell and Alexander McCall Smith.
The rants of Jeremy Clarkson, meanwhile, have made the Top Gear presenter the first non-fiction writer to enter the charity's top 10 of authors most likely to be donated to its 686 shops: either his readers are notably generous, or unwilling to keep his titles on their shelves once read.
"Although we do have books given to us which people have had on their shelves for years – classic literature and collectible items – we also have books which are very current," said Sarah Farquhar, Oxfam's head of retail operations. "Jeremy Clarkson is someone people want to read about – he's one of those love/hate figures. When people read him they pass him on – books don't depreciate in value because they've been read."
Ian Rankin crept into the most-donated list just behind Brown, but the Scottish crime novelist is unlikely to be too downcast by his readers' propensity to give his books away: his novels about the exploits of detective John Rebus have also made him the charity's bestselling author for the second year in a row, followed by new entries Stieg Larsson and JK Rowling.
"It's great to be Oxfam's most purchased author for the second year in a row - and I'm really pleased that readers are donating my books to Oxfam, too," said Rankin. "The terrible scenes from Pakistan and wmoest Africa on our TV screens at the moment make it clear how vital the work of organisations such as Oxfam is, and I'm really glad that my books are going some way to help with this."
But Farquhar said that although book sales at the charity were up by around 6% this summer compared with last, the quantity of books being donated to shops had fallen by around 15% over the same period.
"We are struggling with donations. Generally we do find in times of austerity that people don't have quite so much to give," she said. "It's our biggest problem. We're not struggling for people to sell to, but shops are saying they could do with more product. We are consistently hearing that the volume of books donated is down."
Pointing to the fact that the average selling price for a book in an Oxfam shop is £1.60 – the sale of four books would be enough to provide six health check-ups in India – Farquhar urged people to keep on giving. "We need to encourage people to continue to donate to us," she said. "We really value their donations."
Oxfam is the third-biggest bookseller in the UK, and Europe's biggest high street retailer of second-hand books.
The most donated authors to Oxfam shops are (with last year's position in brackets):
1. Dan Brown (1)
2. Ian Rankin (3)
3. Patricia Cornwell (9)
4. Alexander McCall Smith (New entry)
5. John Grisham (2)
6. Danielle Steel (4)
7. JK Rowling (7)
8. Jeremy Clarkson (New entry)
9. Maeve Binchy (New entry)
10. Bill Bryson (New entry)
The Oxfam shop bestseller list (with last year's position in brackets):
1. Ian Rankin (1)
2. Stieg Larsson (New entry)
3. JK Rowling (New entry)
4. Stephenie Meyer (4)
5. John Grisham (New entry)
6. Patricia Cornwell (New entry)
7. James Patterson (9)
8. Terry Pratchett (5)
9. Kate Atkinson (New entry)
10. Dan Brown (2)
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BBC defends impartiality over cuts
Mark Thompson photographed with memo revealing Andy Coulson's 'concern' that BBC gives context to cuts coverage
The BBC has been forced to defend its impartiality after Mark Thompson, the director general, was photographed yesterday going into a meeting in Downing Street to discuss a season of TV and radio programmes about the government's spending cuts.
Thompson was photographed carrying an internal email from Helen Boaden, the BBC News director, saying that she had had lunch with Andy Coulson, the coalition government's director of communications, at which he had expressed concern "that we give context to our Spending Review Season".
Boaden's email went on to provide Thompson with briefing notes on the season – which begins next week across BBC TV, radio and online services – for his Downing Street meeting yesterday. The subject line of the email was "Briefing for Steve Hilton meeting". Hilton is David Cameron's director of strategy.
She said she had responded to Coulson's concerns about context by saying "that's what we always try to do ... inform the public about the whys and wherefores".
In the email, which was CCed to Mark Byford, the BBC deputy director general and head of journalism, Boaden also defended the corporation's spending cuts coverage over the summer, saying it had "mostly been driven by news lines".
Boaden cited examples including the billionaire retail mogul Sir Philip Green's appointment to head an external review of the government's spending cuts and the Institute for Fiscal Studies report claiming the poorest would be hardest hit by the measures.
"The director general has made it repeatedly clear that the impartiality of the BBC is paramount," a BBC spokesman said.
"The director general in his role as editor-in-chief discussed the possible participation of a number of members of the government in the BBC's coverage of the spending review this autumn. The BBC has regular meetings with both government and opposition parties. Both he and colleagues will also be talking to all the main political parties on this issue."
However, Thompson's PR gaffe prompted unease within BBC News, where correspondents and programme editors face regular pressure from all the main parties over their political coverage.
One senior BBC insider said: "What the fuck's he doing going in to see Hilton anyway? Management and editorial should be completely separate."
The BBC will also be keen to avoid any appearance that it is soft-pedalling on its coverage of the government in the build up to next year's negotiations about a new licence fee deal.
The Labour MP Michael Dugher told the Daily Mail: "The political independence of the BBC should be absolutely sacrosanct and it is very odd that the director general is going into Downing Street for this kind of meeting. The BBC is within its rights to publicise the cuts to public spending in whatever way it sees fit."
Thompson said in an interview with the New Statesman earlier this week that the BBC had become "increasingly tough-minded about the concept of impartiality" since the Hutton report in early 2004.
"If you wanted to criticise us you would say we are becoming increasingly tough-minded about the concept of impartiality. In a sense we are becoming more explicit," he said. "That is a post-Hutton change in the organisation. Impartiality is going up and up the agenda."
He also defended the BBC against accusations that it had given Cameron an easy ride in opposition.
"It's easier to cover opposition politics when you've got an opposition with a clear leadership and clear agenda. We are doing our best to cover the Labour leadership competition, but, in a way, normal politics will only resume in the autumn [when there is a new opposition leader]," he added.
The Spending Review - Making It Clear begins next week and runs through to a government announcement on the next phase of the cost cutting process on 20 October.
Newsnight and Radio 4's Today programme will be running special features on the spending review, while the BBC political editor, Nick Robinson, is travelling around the country to find out what are the key issues affecting voters.
Next Thursday BBC1 will be broadcasting 12 simultaneous regional The Spending Review - Making It Clear debates across England. Jeremy Vine will be hosting the London debate.
The debates will feature local politicians, public sector workers business leaders and members of the public.
In BBC blogpost published late yesterday, Byford said: "This kind of comprehensive programming, providing real public service is what the BBC is here to do and we will continue to follow the story throughout the autumn. We hope it will help our audiences understand the full context of the spending review and what it may mean for them."
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UK's extradition pacts to be assessed
Home Office to announce review of arrangements with US and EU after rows over McKinnon and Ubani cases
The Home Office is to announce a review of extradition arrangements, including those with the US and EU countries following high-profile rows over the way they are operating.
The main impetus has been the row with Washington over the Gary McKinnon affair, in which the 43-year-old has been accused of hacking into US computer systems.
But the review will also look at the operation of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). Serious questions have been raised about its working after a dispute between British and German police and prosecutors over a criminal investigation into the accidental killing of a 70-year-old patient in the UK by the Nigerian-born German doctor Daniel Ubani.
The Home Office announcement is expected "imminently" and will place Labour's 2003 Extradition Act under the microscope after just seven years.
David Cameron raised McKinnon's case with Barack Obama in July and said the government, in discussions with the US ambassador here, had raised the possibility of "some of the (sentence), if there is a prison sentence, being served in a British prison".
At the time, the prime minister recognised that McKinnon, who faces extradition and up to 60 years in jail, was accused of a "very important and significant crime" but hoped to find a solution. He was more critical when in opposition, saying there was a clear argument to be made that McKinnon should answer questions in a British court.
Critics have argued that the extradition arrangement with the US means British citizens are not given the same legal protection as Americans. If the US wants to extradite a Briton then it need only outline the alleged offence, the punishment oulined by law, and give an accurate description of the suspect. But British authorities have to prove an individual under suspicion has probably committed a crime.
In the Ubani case, the Home Office said the German authorities acted legally in the way they refused to extradite Ubani, who was being investigated by British police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for a possible manslaughter charge.
It said: "Dr Ubani was convicted in Germany so the EAW was refused on the basis of the double jeopardy safeguard. This provides a mandatory ground for the refusal of the EAW where the person has been finally judged in a member state for the same acts."
A Home Office spokesman said: "The government has committed to reviewing its extradition arrangements, including the operation of the EAW. We will not pre-empt the findings of the review."
Investigations last year by the Guardian and the sons of David Gray, the Cambridgeshire man given a 10-fold overdose of a painkiller by Ubani in February 2008, uncovered serious questions about the case.
One son, Stuart Gray, a GP, said the EAW appeared "to give all German nationals diplomatic immunity from prosecution in the UK".
The CPS then told the Guardian that "at no stage" during a 14-month British inquiry into the incident did German authorities indicate they intended to investigate or prosecute.
But prosecutors in Germany said: "We never communicated with prosecutors in the UK that we were taking action over Ubani as we were not required to do so; neither is this normal practice. The case was dealt with in writing – Ubani never had to appear before a court – because he had signalled his willingness to accept the court's verdict in advance. In other words, Ubani came to us, not us to him."
When British officials finally suspected Ubani was being prosecuted in his own country, "all informal attempts to obtain information quickly" failed, the CPS said. It did not formally learn of his prosecution and conviction for negligent killing until May last year, weeks after the event and after the Guardian published a story about Gray's death the year before. Ubani was given a suspended prison sentence for negligent killing.
Another of Gray's sons, Rory, who works in Germany as a satellite engineer, said today: "During the last two and a half years we have been subjected to all manner of hypocrisy and deceit from all sorts of people and organisations. But these statements from the Home Office are truly stomach churning."
In February this year, a coroner ruled that Gray had been killed unlawfully. But Ubani, though now barred from working as doctor in the UK is still practising in Germany. Only last week, a regional doctors' chamber in Germany was allowed to investigate his fitness to practise there.
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London to Stavanger by road
Ferries have ceased from Britain to Scandinavia, but Debbie Lawson takes an alternative slow route north on a camping road trip along Norway's stunning south coast
When the last direct ferry between Britain and Norway set sail in 2008, severing a historic maritime link between the two countries, it also called time on Norway's popular Newcastle booze cruise, and forced holidaymakers into the air. But for those who still hanker after the romance of slow travel – and the convenience of arriving in one of the most expensive countries in Europe with a car full of beer and provisions from one of the cheapest – there is another way.
Lured by the image of pristine sandy beaches backed by forest and nature reserves, we set off from London to the south coast of Norway by car: a round trip of 1,390 miles by road, plus sea crossings. Having our own wheels meant we could take as much camping gear as we liked; Norway's accommodation costs are notoriously high, but its campsites and log cabins are cheap and plentiful – and in the best locations. The trip would start on an overnight ferry to the Hook of Holland, followed by a leisurely jaunt to the German border, a frantic dash up the autobahn to Denmark and finally, at the tip of continental Europe, a short ferry ride across the Skagerrak strait to the southernmost point of Norway. On the way back we'd treat ourselves to a luxurious overnight sea crossing from Esbjerg (half-way down Denmark) to Harwich, only two hours' drive from home. In the process we would take six ferries, stay in some of northern Europe's most dramatically situated campsites and make use of Scandinavia's highly recommended breakdown and recovery services.
The summer season in Norway is short and intense, and the southern coast, which enjoys the country's longest hours of sunshine, is a popular holiday destination among Norwegians, though little known to outsiders. Most foreign visitors head straight for the fjords to the north, passing over some spectacular coastal scenery, where clear sparkling water laps the shores of deserted boulder-strewn beaches dotted with crooked pine and spruce trees, shaped and worn by glaciation and the harsh winter winds.
"Expect to see a pair of BMW headlights up your arse all the way through Germany," I was warned. This turned out to be no exaggeration. But by comparison, the roads of southern Norway are a gentle cruise. Single-lane motorways with a top speed of 80kmph are flanked by gentle mountain slopes and small wooden lakeside houses. The comfortable Color Line ferry makes the three-hour crossing from Hirtshals in Denmark to Norway 11 times a day in summer, depositing travellers in the seaside resort of Kristiansand. In the onboard duty-free shop, along with bottles of vodka and gin, passengers can buy joints of ham and large chicken portions from big freezer compartments – a sign if ever there was one that your pound isn't going to go far when you reach dry land. From Kristiansand you can drive east towards Oslo or west to Stavanger. It's not an easy decision: you could spend a whole fortnight just campsite-hopping along the stunning coast between here and the capital.
We do just that and head north-east. At Hove Camping, one of the many sites along this coast – Norway's very own riviera – the dilapidated caravans and tents parked under the trees on the island of Tromoy, just off the mainland, are surrounded by sea, weird windswept copses and wild flowers. Knackered old mobile homes come alive in August, when city dwellers decamp here from Oslo, dusting off their barbecues and reacquainting themselves with old friends, some of whom have been coming here for 20 years despite long ago emigrating to Spain and Portugal. Most of the campsites hire out huts – cosy wooden chalets offering basic accommodation for up to six people, with cooking facilities and flowery curtains, an outside standpipe and a deck where you can sit and watch the nuthatches while enjoying the Danish beer you bought on the way.
Hove is known among music lovers for its festival, held each June, where 10,000 people gather to hear bands such as Florence and the Machine, Muse and Vampire Weekend belting out their songs in an old military encampment next to the nature reserve. Festivals seem to be a way of life here, especially in July and August. There are horse festivals, Viking festivals, even accordion festivals. At Arendal, a few miles up the coast, there's a slow food festival. Unni Ramsvatn, one of the originators of the slow food movement in Norway, runs Bjellandstrand Gard, a bakery and restaurant set in a rose garden and small orchard on the north-east side of Tromoy, just up from Hove Camping. Built on foundations laid by occupying German forces during the second world war, this former farm building turned watering hole is a labour of love for Unni and her husband, Jon, who serve up healthy salmon and couscous salads, bread from their wood-fired oven and vast slices of cake to weekend visitors. "It was almost impossible to buy a cup of coffee before on this island," says Jon.
In Arendal, there is no shortage of coffee shops. The old town, with its whitewashed wooden houses and harbourside boutiques, also has a fish market and restaurant and, according to Monica at the tourist office there, a very nice boat trip to the island of Merdo, where you can camp for up to two days. In fact that was exactly where we were headed before a mechanical fault brought us to an unscheduled stop. Still, there are worse places to break down than coastal Norway – especially if you have your own onboard stocks and a mobile phone. After a few running repairs we waved the empty tow truck off and headed back west along the coast to Mandal, the other side of Kristiansand, taking in the famous towns of Grimstad, home to the Ibsen museum, and Lillesand – a tidy little waterside settlement not unlike Henley on Thames, with cobbled streets, white picket fences and carefully trimmed lawns stretching right down to the sea.
Mandal is famous for Sjosanden beach: 800m of perfect sand at the edge of Furulunden Nature Park. There's a handful of campsites near Mandal, but the beachside Sjosanden Holiday Centre is hard to beat. Roe deer graze among the tents, and the accommodation ranges from wooden cabins to a small "motel" arranged around a flower-filled courtyard. It has a whiff of the holiday camp about it, but the low-key Scandinavian architecture ensures that the site remains in keeping with its natural setting. We explored some of the paths into the surrounding woods on foot and by bikes hired from the tourist office, then took the long, twisty road to Lindesnes Fyr, a red and white cast iron lighthouse built on the site of the first lighthouse beacon in Norway, at its remote and windswept southernmost point. In the rugged grounds, the small cafe prides itself on its rhubarb muffins, made using fruit from the lighthouse garden.
Local skipper Magnus Midling-Jenssen's boat-hire business offers visitors a great way to take in the local sights, including an old herring factory, the Spangereid Canal and rows of 17th-century houses in the historic coastal village of Svinor. Magnus is the archetypal salty old seadog. Full of stories and local lore, he operates his empire from a little yellow hut – "my crisis centre" – next to the house he built on the edge of the land. The water is heaving with salmon and cod, he says, and for about £20 a day you get world-class fishing.
Leaving the beach behind, we took the old winding coastal road – the famous Highway 44 – towards Stavanger, passing through countryside of dazzling green, by farms and lighthouses and cows grazing in boulder fields right next to the sea. A string of interesting villages along the coast include otherworldly Brusand, which has its own international art gallery, Nordisk Kunst Plattform. Just an hour to the north of Stavanger are mountains and the start of the fjords. Campers are spoilt for choice here, and a network of ferries whisks you and your car into the undulating countryside, and forests of giant fir trees where moose roam – though the only one you're likely to see is the one on the ubiquitous bumper sticker.
Stavanger itself feels like a city that has everything but is small enough to fit into the palm of your hand. Vast cruise ships fill the horizon and around every corner is something to explore: quirky shops and cafes, smart seafood restaurants, a stately old town and museums celebrating the city's glorious past as herring capital and centre of the oil industry. As we surveyed this prosperous scene from a harbourside bar, a group of Norwegian financiers pointed out that when the sea border was drawn between the UK and Norway, it clipped the oil fields. A smidgen the other way and all this could have been ours.
Getting thereFERRIES
Harwich to the Hook of Holland: Crossings from £61 single for a car and two adults. Cabins start from £11pp on day crossings or £18.50pp overnight (two-berth cabins, based on two sharing); stenaline.co.uk.
Esbjerg to Harwich: crossings from £232 for a car and two adults, including ensuite cabin; dfdsseaways.co.uk.
Hirtshals to Kristiansand: economy car packages from £45 one way; colorline.com.
CAMPING
Hove Camping, Tromoy; hovecamping.no, +47 37 08 54 79. Tents NOK 180 (£19) per night plus electricity, caravans Nok 210 per night plus electricity, four-bed cabins from NOK 400 per night.
Sjosanden Holiday Centre, 4504 Mandal; sjosanden-feriesenter.no, +47 38 26 10 94. Tents NOK 110 per night, caravan NOK 170; motel NOK 700 for doubles/twins in summer, cabins NOK 1,200 in summer (sleeping up to six).
FURTHER INFORMATION
Bjellandstrand Gard: Bjelland, 4818 Færevik (near Arendal); +47 37 09 44 49, visitnorway.com. Lunch buffet of local homemade food for £14 per person.
Lindesnes Fyr: 4521 Spangereid; +47 38 25 54 20, lindesnesfyr.no. Entry fee: £4.50 per adult, children under 12 go free.
Magnus Midling-Jenssen has holiday houses and apartments for rental in the Mandal and Lindesnes area as well as boat trips and sea fishing; norges-ferie.no, +47 38 25 60 88.
Nordisk Kunst Plattform is at Brusand Togstasjon (train station); nkplattform.no
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Leo Hickman
Why is human well-being improving globally when our environmental woes appear to be worsening all the time?
We hear lots of concerned chatter these days – not least, here on this site - about peak oil, peak water, deforestation, resource depletion and the like, but a popular riposte offered by those doubting such concerns is something commonly referred to as the "Environmentalist's Paradox".
The argument goes thus: "Why, despite resource depletion and the degradation of ecosystems, is average human well-being improving globally?"
People such as Matt Ridley, author of the Rational Optimist, argue that environmentalists are needlessly downbeat about humanity's prospects. After all, we are a resourceful, adaptable, highly intelligent species more than capable of riding out any current concerns (if only we would de-shackle ourselves from free-market constraints).
As a counterpoint, we have the likes of Jared Diamond, author of Collapse, arguing that we should heed the lessons provided by failed civilisations of the past who extinguished themselves by over-exploiting their available natural resources.
The latest edition of the journal BioScience includes a fascinating paper which examines just this paradox. (hat tip: Scientific American.) "Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox" (the PDF is available here free until it disappears behind a paywall in a month's time), co-authored by a team of scientists led by Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne of McGill University, lays out in detail the conflicting indices which underpin the paradox. The editorial introducing the article sets the scene:
Studies including the influential Millennium Ecosystem Assessment have concluded that the capacity of ecosystems to produce many ecosystem services is now low. Depletion of ecosystem services is expected to mean fewer benefits to humans, thus decreasing human well-being. Yet the composite Human Development Index, a widely used metric that incorporates measures of literacy, life expectancy, and income, has improved markedly since the mid-1970s in both rich and poor nations. The index correlates strongly with other measures of prosperousness. Some measures of personal security buck the upward trend, but the overall improvement in well-being cannot, it seems, be denied. Does this paradox mean that concern about ecosystem services is overblown?
The authors then present four hypotheses that might help to explain the environmentalist's paradox. Here is their summary:
1. Critical dimensions of human well-being have not been captured adequately, and human well-being is actually declining. Measures of well-being that suggest it has increased are wrong or incomplete.
2. Provisioning ecosystem services, such as food production, are most significant for human well-being; therefore, if food production per capita increases, human well-being will also increase, regardless of declines in other services.
3. Technology and social innovation have decoupled human well-being from the state of ecosystems to the extent that human well-being is now less dependent on ecosystem services.
4. There is a time lag after ecosystem service degradation before human well-being is negatively affected. Loss of human well-being caused by current declines in services has therefore not yet occurred to a measurable extent.
The authors effectively dismiss the first hypothesis, arguing that there is a large body of evidence to support the notion that human wellbeing is, on average, improving. As might be expected, the authors support the second hypothesis. With the third, they conclude that the available evidence suggests that the "decoupling" argument can't be supported.
But perhaps the most intriguing hypothesis – for me, at least – is the fourth. Can the environmentalist's paradox be explained away by the fact that there is a time lag between when we degrade our finite natural resources and when our well-being begins to be negatively affected? If so, what is this period of time likely to be? And will the transitional descent - when/if it finally begins - be slow or rapid? The answers to these questions will surely be key to working out who will ultimately prove to be correct out of the Diamonds or the Ridleys of this world.
When I think about this time lag I can't help but be reminded of the set-piece scene from the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit cartoon, The Wrong Trousers. Gromit, Wallace's canny dog, finds himself having to lay track as fast as he can in front of himself to ensure the toy train he's riding on remains in hot pursuit of the jewel-thief penguin escaping with a diamond. (Go to 1:28 on this video.) Using this as a metaphor, can humans keep laying the train track in front of them fast enough to avoid a nasty derailment? Can we keep perpetually delaying our fall and decline? The authors of the paper seem to be suggesting that our chances of doing so are diminishing all the time as the world becomes increasingly globalised:
There is growing evidence of approaching resource collapses in certain regions of the world, but less is known about how system- or service-specific collapses may interact with one other and result in major impacts on global human well-being. Local or regional collapses may lead to cascading problems associated with forced human migration and resource competition, which could have global-scale effects on human well-being. Alternatively, market forces and trade rules could cause rapid destabilization in resource markets, leading to outcomes such as the multiple food, oil, and financial crises of 2008, which took the world by surprise. The global financial crisis of 2008 also demonstrates the connectivity of the global economy, and the capacity of globalized systems to undergo abrupt and surprising declines. Whether human well-being will suffer at the global scale will depend on how humans adapt to ecosystem degradation and its associated collapses over the next few decades…
Highly adaptable human societies have at times successfully staved off the effects of environmental degradation by importing ecosystem services from other regions, enhancing the supply of ecosystem services in some areas, exporting negative impacts to other locations, and making more efficient use of ecosystem services.
However, evidence suggests that future adaptation will be different and probably more difficult, as resources near depletion at the global scale. Previously available options for migration and translocations of resource use are increasingly constrained by the scope of human use of the biosphere.
As you might expect with any academic paper, there are the necessary caveats and calls for further research. As Timothy M. Beardsley, BioScience's editor in chief, says in his editorial:
"The authors' conclusions are limited by the geographically aggregated nature of their data, and BioScience will publish commentary on aspects of their analysis in a future issue. Yet the article clearly strengthens the case for research that integrates human well-being, agriculture, technology, and time lags affecting ecosystem services."
Agreed: it's certainly a subject that I for one would welcome much more nuanced, detailed research and discussion.
Leo Hickmanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Prescott wants phone-hacking review
Former deputy prime minister says police refused to tell him whether his phone was hacked by News of the World journalists
John Prescott today called for a judicial review of the conduct of the Metropolitan police force in relation to the allegations of phone hacking against the News of the World.
The former deputy prime minister was speaking after the paper confirmed it had suspended a journalist while it investigates new allegations of the unlawful interception of voicemail.
The police have come under pressure after the New York Times quoted unnamed detectives alleging they had cut short their investigation because of their close relationship with the News of the World.
Prescott said the police had repeatedly refused to tell him whether his phone was hacked by News of the World journalists after a Guardian investigation revealed his name was on a list of public figures belonging to Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator jailed for stealing secrets from mobile phone voice messages.
"The only way the truth can come out … is to have it properly investigated and really have a judicial review, that's the least that is needed," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Prescott said the police had told him they would let him know by 10 September whether they were prepared to give him the information he is demanding.
"If they fail to give us the information which is certainly available but has to be given to us, I will seek a judicial review," he said.
The former deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, is also seeking a judicial review of the Met's alleged failure to tell him that his name had been found on Mulcaire's list. Prescott claimed the police investigated allegations that members of the royal family's phones had been hacked, which led to the imprisonment of the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, but failed to properly examine the allegations relating to the other people on the list.
"As the American paper is pointing out, they just refused to take further action," he said.
Prescott denied that he was politically motivated by the alleged involvement of the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson. Coulson has denied claims in the New York Times report that he freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques when he was editing the paper and "actively encouraged" a named reporter to engage in illegal interception of voicemail messages. "I just don't believe what the Met tells me and I certainly don't believe what the Murdoch press are saying," said Prescott.
He also criticised the Press Complaints Commission chair, Lady Buscombe, for not mentioning the fresh allegation of phone hacking when she spoke in a debate in the House of Lords shortly before parliament went into recess.
Prescott published a statement today saying: "The New York Times piece makes some very serious allegations not only against Rupert Murdoch's News Group but also the Metropolitan police's handling of the original case into phone hacking at the News of the World.
"It's vital that the Met comes clean and reveals who and how many people were targeted by this rogue newspaper.
"Justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. We need to know the full truth.
"That's why if the Metropolitan police fail to hand over the evidence relevant to my case, I will formally apply for a judicial review of their investigation."
- News of the World phone-hacking scandal
- Newspapers & magazines
- Newspapers
- News of the World
- National newspapers
- John Prescott
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US hurricane sparks evacuation call
Warnings issued from North Carolina to Nova Scotia as storm nears landfall on east coast
Hurricane Earl pounded eastern North Carolina with heavy rains and strong winds early today, after tens of thousands of people were told to evacuate nearby islands.
Hundreds of thousands more were warned to prepare for severe weather across the north-eastern coast. The hurricane came within about 85 miles of the shore, but early signs suggested the ocean surge was not as severe as predicted.
More states along the coast declared emergencies last night as shelters were prepared. Residents as far north as New England were told to expect fallen power lines and trees over the Labour Day holiday weekend.
Despite signs that the hurricane's force was weakening and its centre would miss much of the US mainland, families from North Carolina to Delaware were advised to put disaster plans into practice. These included evacuating exposed islands and boats. Warnings were also issued for parts of Nova Scotia in Canada.
Those living on other parts of the heavily populated coast, including popular holiday areas around Cape Cod and Nantucket Island, were told to prepare similar plans. Those in New York's Long Island, Connecticut and Maine were told Earl may only be a tropical storm by the time it reached them.
The warnings from the National Hurricane Centre in Miami came as forecasters hoped the main force of the hurricane, which caused havoc in the north-east Caribbean earlier this week, would remain offshore as it hit cooler waters. They believed it would then curve away from mid-Atlantic states such as New Jersey.
"The storm won't be as strong, but they spread out as they go north and the rain will be spreading from New England," said the centre's director, Bill Read.
State governors in Massachusetts and Rhode Island followed declarations of emergency by their counterparts in North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. On Wednesday, Barack Obama authorised federal co-ordination of disaster measures.
North Carolina shut down ferry services between islands and the mainland. Boats were pulled from the water around Boston, and lobstermen in Maine set their traps out in deeper water to protect them.
Last night, the winds had slowed to 105mph (hurricane category two) from 140mph (category four strength, one short of the most powerful category five) earlier in the day. But forecasters warned that it remained powerful, with hurricane-force winds of 74mph or more extending 70 miles from its centre and tropical storm-force winds of at least 35mph reaching more than 200 miles out.
It was not clear how many residents and tourists had heeded the warning to evacuate islands off North Carolina. But Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Craig Fugate said people should not wait for the next forecast. "This is a day of action. Conditions are going to deteriorate rapidly," he said.
Hundreds of residents on the Outer Banks, a 200-mile string of islands off North Carolina, seemed ready to stay at home behind their boarded-up windows, even though officials warned of a storm surge and said it could be three days before they received any help. When hurricane Isabel carved a 2,000ft-wide channel through the islands in 2003, it took crews two months to fill the breach and rebuild the only road to the mainland.
Officials warned that once the winds picked up, police, firefighters and paramedics would probably not answer emergency calls.
"Once this storm comes in and becomes serious, once it's at its worst point, we are not going to put any emergency worker in harm's way," said North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue.
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Bargain netbooks bite back at Apple
There are bargains to be had for netbook shoppers on a budget, says Marc Lockley
Last week's article regarding the Apple MacBook sparked a fiery debate about affordability and the usual battle between Apple and PCs. This week we are balancing the books, looking at a few netbooks which are a fraction of the cost of the Apple product.
Netbooks are a great alternative for the budget-conscious student who wants to do their work but not miss out on portability, affordability, sociability and surfability.
As there are a number of choices in this category, please feel free to add your own preferences or price updates below. For the sake of too much repetition the following all come with 1GB of RAM.
Less than £200Student Computers are selling the Samsung N110 Netbook for £189 with a 250GB hard drive, Windows 7 starter pack and eight hours of battery life. They also offer an Asus Eee PC 1000H that has an 80GB hard drive and a two-year warranty for £182.13.
The Compaq Mini 110c-1010SA comes with a 160GB hard drive and a 1.6GHZ processor speed and runs on Windows XP and costs £198.99 with BT and Dabs.com. This netbook won the best budget laptop in a recent Reevoo survey of 1,000 students.
Meanwhile, the Acer Aspire One D250 AOD250-OBb netbook is best priced at £199 with Oyyy.co.uk. It comes with a 160GB hard drive and a 1.6GHz processor.
More than £200The Acer Aspire One 533 with an Intel Atom N455 processor, 250GB hard drive and Windows 7 has eight hours battery life and costs £279.99 at Amazon and Argos, although the latter includes free Norton internet security until 28 September. However PC World are offering £50 off your old laptop/netbook thereby reducing it to £229.99.
If you are signing up to a mobile broadband deal you can get the Acer Aspire One 521 (160GB hard drive, Windows 7) for free with PC World, but the mobile deal with Vodafone will cost you £600 over two years.
Amazon are selling the new Asus 1005PE with an Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz processor and a huge 11-hour battery life and Windows 7 for £254.99.
Play.com lead the field for the Samsung N210 at £269.99, which has a battery life of up to 11 hours, Windows 7 and a 250GB hard drive with the Atom N450 processor.
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'It's OK to embarrass yourself'
With one band Nick Cave has a carefully built musical legacy. With his other, he can visit his 'lower self' and make chaotic noise. Alexis Petridis meets Grinderman
You would be hard-pushed to call the video for Grinderman's new single Heathen Child anything other than striking. On one level, that's far from surprising. The director is John Hillcoat, best known for his harrowing adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. His most recent collaboration with Nick Cave was the multiple award-winning 2005 film The Proposition, and that was pretty striking, too: the kind of film you watch through your fingers, a feast of blood and brutality set in 19th-century Australia. Then there's the racket Cave makes with Grinderman, which seems to have more in common with the nihilistic violence of his early 80s band the Birthday Party than the stately, beautifully wrought ballads that populate his most recent albums with the Bad Seeds. Like Grinderman's previous singles, Get It On and No Pussy Blues, Heathen Child is a scouring, ferocious din built around Cave's rudimentary explorations of the guitar, an instrument he only took up a couple of months before the band recorded their 2007 debut album ("What do you mean, have I become more adept?" he deadpans. "What, you're saying I wasn't adept before? Would you ask Jimi Hendrix that question on his second album?"). Under the circumstances, it seems fairly easy to predict the kind of visual accompaniment Cave and Hillcoat might have dreamed up.
But, as swiftly becomes apparent when Cave calls up the video on his laptop, striking comes in many forms. It opens with a beautiful girl submerged in a bath of milk, before Cave and his fellow Grindermen – Jim Sclavunos, Martyn Casey and Warren Ellis, Bad Seeds all – appear. They seem to be dressed as Roman centurions, their plumed galeae and thigh-length tunics accessorised, in Cave's case at least, with a pair of leopardskin underpants.
"We're actually sort of Olympian deities, loosely modelled on the God of War," corrects Sclavunos. "He was an aggressively, arbitrarily violent god."
"There was a miscommunication with the costume department," nods Cave, a little ruefully. "And we ended up looking like gay Roman footsoldiers." He brightens a bit. "Still, we've got the legs for it."
"I think if you keep watching the video, and you witness the supernatural powers we exhibit, then it will become clear how godlike we truly are," suggest Sclavunos, as the kind of very low-rent death-ray special effect you used to get on Tom Baker-era Doctor Who episodes shoots from the eyes of his onscreen counterpart. Later he does a slow-motion hip-swinging dance that reveals Cave drew the long straw when it came to underwear in the video: beneath his tunic, Sclavunos appears to be wearing some kind of posing pouch. As his buttocks fill the screen, the pair dissolve into laughter.
The video is, they claim, all part of the concept surrounding the second Grinderman album, the prosaically titled Grinderman 2, which arrives complete with an accompanying book of illustrations by a German artist who contacted Cave after making a video for the Bad Seeds song Moonland as part of her finals: "I got her to illustrate the whole record, so that we could work out a kind of overarching narrative that ran from one song to the next." What exactly that overarching narrative might be remains a moot point, at least today: "You have to buy the fuckin' record and work it out," snaps Cave, when the subject is broached.
Grinderman's debut served up the sound of what Cave described as "a mammoth midlife crisis" in a sleeve that featured a photograph of a monkey apparently masturbating ("Just for the record," Cave clarifies, "it's not wanking, it's holding on to its genital area, terrified"). The songs were fixated on sex and ageing and masculinity in crisis: Cave depicted himself sucking his gut in and offering to do DIY in doomed attempts to attract female attention: this from a man who in his youth was wont to write songs in which he dealt with recalcitrant females by stabbing them in the head. There's some more of the same on Grinderman 2: "My baby calls me the Loch Ness monster," growls Cave, "two humps and then I'm gone." He says Grinderman's method of songwriting – improvising everything, including lyrics – tends to bring out his lower self: "You can't write that stuff down on a piece of paper. I can't sit in my office and write it down, because when you're writing, you're working from the mind and your mind is telling you: 'Don't write that down, don't go there, it's not a good idea, it's not worth the grief.'" But like the sound of the album, the lyrics also seem more dense and strange, less prosaic than its predecessor. "From the get-go, there were images cropping up in the ad-lib lyrics that Nick was coming up with," says Sclavunos. "There were various hairy beasts. Wolfmen. There were threads. There is a consistent atmosphere of oppressive, hallucinatory evil, an anxious undercurrent. It's got its peaks and valleys, but it permeates everything."
Cave chuckles. "This is Jim's third day of interviews," he shrugs.
In person, Cave and Sclavunos make a great double act. Cave speaks with that rising Australian inflection that makes every statement sound like a question, which shouldn't be surprising, but somehow is. Sclavunos's voice is a low, dolorous rumble that emerges from within a beard you would describe as vast if it wasn't next to that of Warren Ellis, a man whose tonsorial arrangements beggar belief. Similarly, Sclavunos's sharp brown suit pales a little when placed next to Cave, who today sports a scarlet shirt open to mid-chest and a spectacular variety of medallions. They are both infectiously enthusiastic about Grinderman, whose existence Cave credits with revitalising the Bad Seeds. "It just had a kind of cataclysmic effect, you know? It just turned things upside down. For me, sonically, there was just too much going on in the Bad Seeds. There's a sound that's really unique to them, this kind of monstrous sound, and there's nothing I like more than going onstage with them and having this monstrous kind of thing about me, but something had happened where it felt really difficult to make a record like The Boatman's Call again, where you could go in and say, all right, this is basically piano and drums and bass, everybody sit back. It felt like every time I took a song into the Bad Seeds, everyone piled in on it. In the Bad Seeds," he smiles, "you play a song, and everyone's grabbing a fuckin' maraca, y'know?"
Both are extremely funny, which comes as a relief. Cave, in particular, trails a reputation for prickly relations with the press that's perhaps a little out of date – yes, he did once write a song called Scum in which he colourfully decried Mat Snow, then of the NME, as "a miserable shitwringing turd who reminded me of some evil gnome" and yes, he did once punch a journalist in the middle of an interview, but that stuff all happened decades ago, at the height of his heroin-sozzled dissolution. Judging by his more recent cuttings, Cave takes umbrage at journalists depicting him as a former hellraiser now living a life of domestic contentment with his family in Hove, but there's no doubt his life is more settled than it once was. You could argue that it's virtually impossible to imagine how Cave's life could be any less settled than it once was, but, nevertheless, his current arrangement seems to suit him. At 52, his productivity is torrential: by contrast, even Sclavunos – who balances the Bad Seeds and Grinderman with his own band, the Vanity Set, and a burgeoning career as a producer for, among others, the Horrors and the Jim Jones Revue – is taking it easy.
When, in the wake of The Proposition's success, Variety magazine named Cave one of 10 screenwriters to watch, he claimed: "The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood … It's a waste of fucking time and I have a lot to do." Indeed, last year alone, as well as working on another film with Hillcoat, the Brighton-set Death of a Ladies' Man, he produced two film scores, a second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro – which garnered both good reviews and a nomination for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction awards – and narrated an animated film called The Cat Piano. And 26 years after they formed, the Bad Seeds are in the midst of a startling artistic purple patch: their last two albums, the double Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus and 2008's astonishing Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! are probably the best Cave has ever put his name to. He says he produces records so quickly his label doesn't know what to do with them: "Daniel Miller from Mute had a quiet talk to me to say, 'Pull your fuckin' head in and stop doing so much stuff. You've become a marketing nightmare.' I took some time off." He laughs. "Well, a weekend. It becomes a problem, how to pace all the stuff."
The critical acclaim that seems to come as standard with the latterday Bad Seeds' career is a long way from the polarising effect both Cave and Sclavunos's early bands had on listeners: while Cave seemed to spend as much time with the Birthday Party punching the front row as he did singing, Sclavunos was doggedly thumping a solitary snare drum in Lydia Lunch's screeching no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. You get the feeling that both of them miss at least some of the chaos they once provoked, hence Grinderman. "There's a comfortability with the Bad Seeds that Grinderman disrupts," says Cave. "That's what's chaotic about Grinderman. I get very different responses to it from my very close friends, from my colleagues, people I work with. Some love it, some are baffled by it. Some are like flat-out, 'What the fuck are you doing?' which is exciting to me. There's a pressure with the Bad Seeds that I don't feel in Grinderman. Within the Bad Seeds there is a sense of duty for me to the band's legacy. I don't want to put out a whole load of shitty records with the Bad Seeds. There's a kind of open rule within Grinderman that it's OK to embarrass yourself, to go to places that could be potentially disastrous."
"We've tried flute solos," interjects Sclavunos. "Drum solos. All sorts of dubious territory."
"No one's going to come down on you for it," Cave says. "It's out there in those regions that interesting things are found, but it's creatively dangerous to go there. We go into the studio with nothing at all. No lyrics, none of that, no chord charts. The only thing I had for the first record was an empty notebook with the words No Pussy Blues written on one page. This time I didn't even have that. We play for five days, then we listen to this morass of … bullshit that we've played, and suddenly these great bits of music emerge."
"There's no disrespect to the Bad Seeds," Sclavunos says. "It's more like we want the disruption. I think sometimes the public starts thinking along the lines of, 'Oh, we've got their number,' and they start compartmentalising you. We do make an effort with every Bad Seeds record to do something new, to challenge ourselves. Grinderman helps that along. We want the public to be as on the edge of their seats as we put ourselves."
"People seem to be more concerned about what the Bad Seeds is and what Grinderman is than we are," Cave sighs. "We understand it's confusing. We don't understand what's going on with it all. Life's too short to worry about it." There's a pause. "There was definitely a feeling on this record that we wanted to get back to something that had a really malign feel to it, and take great pleasure in it."
Why?
"It's just more natural," he says, and returns his attentions to his laptop screen, where Jim Sclavunos's buttocks have been replaced by the diverting sight of Nick Cave, middle-aged man of letters, recent recipient of an honorary doctorate from Dundee University for his "visionary songs, stories, books films and poetry", dressed as a Roman centurion, firing an unconvincing death-ray special effect out of his bum.
Grinderman 2 is released on Mute on 13 September. They play the Garage, London, on 23 September, then touring.
Alexis Petridisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
