Superstar DJs dedicate track to victims of German festival tragedy, with proceeds going to those injured and the families of those who died

Some of the world's top DJs have announced a new collaboration dedicated to the victims of this year's Love Parade tragedy. Paul Oakenfold, Armin van Buuren and Paul van Dyk have recorded a new song, Remember Love, with proceeds going to those affected by the stampede in Duisburg, Germany.

"I think this is the first time this has ever been done in the dance scene, to give back, to help people," Oakenfold said. "In many other music genres, artists come together, like Live Aid and after the Haiti disaster. We should do something [too]." The project began with Oakenfold, who wrote the song's basic structure and then spent the past month co-producing with Van Buuren and Van Dyk. "I thought it was a good idea to have England, Holland and Germany coming together," he said. "Love Parade [represented] a big part of the essence of the dance movement."

Twenty-one people died and dozens were injured after panic broke out at this year's Love Parade festival inGermany. Hundreds of people stampeded toward an entrance tunnel when police began turning festivalgoers away. Organisers have announced that the annual event, which began as a Berlin peace march in 1989, will not take place again.

"In its last years outside Berlin, the vibe of the Love Parade was a far cry from its original spirit," said Van Dyk, who has performed several times at the festival. "With Remember Love, we want to recapture the essence of Love Parade and try to assist those who suffered."

The single will go on sale on 11 September, initially available exclusively on Beatport. According to Oakenfold, Remember Love offers his signature "melodicism", Van Buuren's "emotion and movement" and "the energy and uplifting touch that no one does better than Paul van Dyk". Proceeds will go to the Association of Non-statutory Welfare in North Rhine-Westphalia Germany, which launched a campaign to benefit the families and victims affected by the July 24 tragedy.

• Dance music
• Electronic music
• Festivals
• Germany

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The author and well-known advocate of atheism, who is suffering from cancer, has asked that people refrain from 'troubling deaf heaven' over his plight

Author and vociferous atheist Christopher Hitchens, who was diagnosed with cancer this summer, has appealed to his religious fans and friends not to "trouble deaf heaven" with their "bootless cries" for his recovery.

Writing in October's issue of Vanity Fair, Hitchens revealed that, since he announced in June that he was undergoing chemotherapy on his oesophagus, he has been inundated with thousands of offers of prayers for his health and salvation, from all kinds of religious persuasions. "Devotional websites consecrated special space to the question," said Hitchens. September 20 has been designated "Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day", and he has even found a website inviting people to put money on whether he will renounce his atheism and embrace religion by a certain date, "or continue to affirm unbelief and take the hellish consequences".

"What if I pulled through and the pious faction contentedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating," he wrote. "I don't mean to be churlish about any kind intentions, but when September 20 comes, please do not trouble deaf heaven with your bootless cries. Unless, of course, it makes you feel better."

After advocating atheism in his 2007 book God is not Great: The Case Against Religion, Hitchens also pointed out that if he abandoned the principles he has held throughout his life "in the hope of gaining favour at the last minute", it would be something of a "hucksterish choice". "The god who would reward cowardice and dishonesty and punish irreconcilable doubt is among the many gods in which (whom?) I do not believe," he wrote.

Hitchens has also been the recipient of less generous responses from the religious, he said, highlighting one website contribution which asked readers: "Who else feels Christopher Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic] was God's revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him? ... He's going to writhe in agony and pain and wither away to nothing and then die a horrible agonising death, and THEN comes the real fun, when he's sent to HELLFIRE forever to be tortured and set afire."

But, asked Hitchens, "why not a thunderbolt for yours truly, or something similarly awe-inspiring? The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former 'lifestyle' would suggest that I got," he wrote, also musing on the question of why, if "god awards the appropriate cancers", infants contract leukemia and devout people die young and in pain, while "Bertrand Russell and Voltaire, by contrast, remained spry until the end, as many psychopathic criminals and tyrants have also done".

He assured his "Christian correspondent" that his "so far uncancerous throat" is not "at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed ... And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it's hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be 'me'. (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumours or fabrications.)"

• Christopher Hitchens
• Atheism

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Ministers rule out immediate talks with Basque seperatist group, saying it is regrouping after arrests of senior members

Spain's socialist government today ruled out negotations with the armed Basque separatist group Eta, claiming the organisation had announced a ceasefire yesterday purely because it was too weak to carry out terrorist attacks.

"Eta kills in order to impose itself, so that means one cannot dialogue," the interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said this morning. "Eta has stopped because it cannot do anything ... and also in order to rebuild itself."

The government declined to comment officially yesterday, but this morning was busily repeating the message that it did not believe in Eta's ceasefire.

"The Eta terrorist group is very weakened," said the transport minister, José Blanco. The government was only interested, he said, in "a definitive laying down of arms and end to violence".

The momentary excitement caused by yesterday's video message from Eta had almost entirely dissipated today — though some radical separatists in the Basque country welcomed what they called a "unilateral, unconditional and indefinite" ceasefire.

Analysts gave little credence to the idea that the ceasefire might mark the end of four decades of violence that have claimed more than 800 lives. They said the group had been forced to stop planning attacks six month ago after a series of arrests left it leaderless and disorganised.

"The statement aims to give political meaning to a strategic rest decreed by Eta's leaders six months ago in order to reorganise internally to cope with police pressure," wrote Florencio Domínguez, an Eta expert, in La Vanguardia newspaper.

Dominguez pointed to the arrest in February of Ibon Gojeaskoetxea, a senior Eta commander, as the key moment. That arrest was hailed as the fifth time in two years that police had detained the person directly in charge of Eta's handful of remaining armed units.

At the same time, police had prevented new units from being formed in several parts of Spain, and discovered Eta's latest bombmaking laboratory and had dismantled its new bases in Portugal — the country where it hoped to move the support infrastructure that had historically been based in France.

The killing in March of a French police officer, who discovered members of the gang trying to steal cars at a showroom near Paris, was the result of a panicked attempt to escape arrest and came despite the decision to stop carrying out attacks, according to Rogelio Alonso of Madrid's Rey Juan Carlos University.

"Eta is selling smoke," he said. "Even during their ceasefires, they continue to kill."

The immediate result of that killing , in any case, had been to increase the intensity of French police pressure on the group.

Observers saw the ceasefire statement – read out by a masked woman – as a response to pressure from former leaders of the banned Batasuna party, who have been urging Eta to call a permanent ceasefire so that the party can be legalised once more.

But the announcement fell short of meeting the demands of the Batasuna leaders, with Eta failing to indicate whether its ceasefire was permanent or temporary.

A group of spokesmen for the radical Basque separatist movement that is close to Eta nevertheless hailed the ceasefire as "a valuable contribution to the construction of peace and the consolidation of democratic process".

Attempts by radical separatists to guide Eta towards abandoning violence were being "sabotaged" by the government, columnist Ramón Sola claimed in the Basque language newspaper Gara.

"The announcement that there will be no attacks provides a secure zone where the socialist government can resolve an armed conflict that has outlasted two different regimes and dozens of governments," he said, referring to the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco and the democratic governments elected after his death in 1975.

• ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna)
• Global terrorism
• Spain

AP - New Zealand's prime minister warned Monday that the country's economic recovery will be hurt by the weekend's powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake that smashed buildings and wrecked roads and rail lines in the city of Christchurch.

AP - The Spanish government on Monday rejected a new ceasefire announcement by the separatist group ETA and ruled out negotiations on an independent Basque homeland, saying the militants have been decimated by arrests and are desperate to regroup and rearm.

Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki have each been sentenced to one year in prison after intercepting a box of whale meat

Two anti-whaling activists were today found guilty of theft and trespass while attempting to expose embezzlement in Japan's heavily subsidised whaling industry.

Greenpeace members Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki were each sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years. Prosecutors had sought 18-month terms for the "Tokyo Two".

Sato and Suzuki intercepted a 23kg (50lb) box of whale meat at a delivery depot in the northern city of Aomori in 2008, claiming it had been stolen by a member of the country's whaling crew.

The meat, worth about 60,000 yen, was part of a much larger quantity habitually taken from the Nisshin Maru, the fleet's mother ship, and sold for personal profit, they said.

"This sentence is totally disproportionate and completely undeserved," Suzuki said after the ruling at Aomori district court. "We set out to reveal the truth about the government's whaling programme, but instead have been punished, while those behind the misuse of public money walk free."

The Institute of Cetacean Research, a quasi-governmental body that organises the annual hunts, insists that members of the crew traditionally take home small amounts of meat as gifts for their families after spending months at sea.

The International Whaling Commission permits Japan to kill about 950 whales a year for "scientific research," despite a 1986 ban on commercial whaling. The meat from the culls is sold on the open market in Japan.

Suzuki, 43, and Sato, 33 who were alerted to embezzlement by a member of the whaling crew, took their findings to the authorities in May 2008 after a three-month Greenpeace investigation into the whistleblower's claims.

Some whalers would take home between five and 10 boxes of whale meat, which fetches about 20,000 yen a kilo when sold legally, the whistleblower, known only as "Kujira-san" (Mr Whale), told the Guardian in an interview.

Prosecutors decided not to pursue the case and instead arrested the activists. They were held for 23 days without charge, during which they were interrogated while strapped to chairs and compared them to members of Aum Supreme Truth, the doomsday cult that carried out the fatal gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

"In the international court of public opinion, Junichi and Toru were acquitted a long time ago," Kumi Naidoo, director of Greenpeace International, told reporters in Aomori. "Their actions were not of a criminal nature, they were acting in the public interest and to expose the mass theft of Japanese taxpayers' money.

"We appeal to the Japanese government to launch an independent commission of inquiry to explore the initial allegations made by Junichi and Toru."

• Whaling
• Animals
• Conservation
• Wildlife
• Marine life
• Greenpeace
• Activism
• Japan

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