Cove star stages protest over Japanese dolphin hunt

Ric O'Barry, who appeared in the Oscar-winning film, delivers petition signed by 1.7 million people to US embassy in Tokyo

The star of an Oscar-winning film about dolphin hunting in Japan delivered a petition to the country's US embassy calling for an end to the practice.

Ric O'Barry, 70 – who appeared in The Cove and trained dolphins for 1960s TV show Flipper – was flanked by police and dozens of supporters carrying banners. The petition was signed by 1.7 million people from 151 countries.

O'Barry had hoped to deliver it to the Japanese fisheries agency but cancelled the plan after threats from a nationalist group with a history of violence. The Cove, which won this year's Oscar for best documentary, shows fishermen from the town of Taiji who scare dolphins into a cove before killing them slowly by piercing them repeatedly.

O'Barry said: "I'm not losing hope. Our voice is being heard in Taiji."

The annual hunt in the town began on Wednesday, but boats came back empty. The government allows the hunting of around 20,000 dolphins a year and argues that killing them is no different from breeding cows and pigs for slaughter. Most Japanese have never eaten dolphin meat and, even in Taiji, it is not consumed regularly.

• United States
• Japan
• Wildlife
• Marine life

Thaksin Shinawatra resurfaces in South Africa

In attempt to scotch rumours of ill health, fugitive Thai prime minister has photo released of him 'visiting Nelson Mandela'

Emerging from weeks of silence, the former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has appeared in Africa, where he said he was dealing in diamonds and visiting Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela.

A photograph of his meeting with the former South African president was released in Thailand by his lawyer in an apparent move to quash rumours that the fugitive was ill – and to advertise that he was rubbing shoulders with VIPs abroad.

"I travel all the time. Currently, I'm in Africa for diamond mining," Thaksin told the Thai Rath newspaper, adding that rumours of his failing health were lies. He said the photograph of him with Mandela was taken last Friday.

A spokesman for the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg did not return several calls seeking comment.

Thaksin, who was ousted in a military coup in 2006, has been accused of funding the anti-government Red Shirt protests in April and May. Protesters occupied Bangkok's main shopping district, forcing the closure of shopping malls and hotels , in an attempt to unseat the government and possibly bring Thaksin back to power. Sporadic violence and a crackdown by the military left 91 people dead and 1,400 wounded.

The tycoon-turned-politician, who remains popular among his rural poor power base, was convicted on conflict of interest charges in 2008 and fled the country. Thailand revoked his passports but Thaksin has acquired at least two new ones from Nicaragua and Montenegro.

He is believed to be living in Dubai. He has spent much of the past four years roaming the globe in search of business deals. He visited South Africa previously to inspect diamond mines and has travelled to Liberia, Uganda and Swaziland for investments in diamonds and gold. He has posted photographs of meetings with leaders on trips to Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea and the Maldives.

Normally active on Twitter, Thaksin's last posts came on 25 July, the day before his 61st birthday, when he called for political reconciliation in Thailand. Since then he has kept a low profile.

In the interview with Thai Rath, he complained about a Thai supreme court ruling in February that approved the seizure of $1.4bn (£910m) of his assets over his abuse of power while in office.

"More than half of my assets have been robbed from me, so I have to earn them back again to look after my kids," he said of his three adult children. In a list of Thailand's wealthiest people published this week, Forbes magazine put Thaksin at 23 with a net worth of $390m.

• Thailand
• South Africa
• Nelson Mandela

Jewish director Julian Schnabel brings Palestine to Venice

Director talks of 'responsibility' to tell story of Middle East conflict in film Miral, told through eyes of two Palestinian women

The American artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel said he felt a "responsibility" as a Jew to tell the story of Palestine when he opened his new movie at the Venice film festival.

Schnabel's film Miral, competing with 22 others for the Golden Lion award, brought a note of seriousness to an event that sometimes veers towards the frothier side of culture.

Miral is told mainly through the eyes of two Palestinian women, covering 40 years of history from the birth of the state of Israel in 1948 to the failed Oslo peace accord of 1993. Its message is that education is the only hope to bringing any kind of resolution to the conflict.

Yesterday Schnabel said he felt a responsibility to bring the story to the big screen. "Coming from my background, as an American Jewish person whose mother was president of Hadassah [the Women's Zionist Organisation of America] in 1948, I figured I was a pretty good person to try to tell the story of the other side."

Schnabel has admitted not knowing much about the Palestinian people until he read the semi-autobiographical book by Rula Jebreal on which the film is based. "I felt it was my responsibility to confront this issue because, maybe, I've spent most of my life receding from my responsibility as a Jewish person."

He said there was an urgency to his film. "This conflict has to end. Every time a child dies on each side — there's no reason for it."

Miral tells the story of the Dar al-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem, which was set up by a rich socialite called Hind Husseini in 1948 after she came across 55 orphans in the street. Within six months she had a school for 2,000 children.

The film shows how one of the orphans, Miral, is forced to grow up fast when she falls in love with a Palestinian activist. Miral is played by Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto, and while there have been eyebrows raised at the Indian actor's casting as a Palestinian, Pinto bears an uncanny resemblance to Jebreal, on whom the character of Miral is based. Vanessa Redgrave and Willem Dafoe have small cameo roles.

Schnabel said the values that were instilled in him by his mother were the same as the ones instilled in Jebreal by Hind Husseini. "One of the reasons why I made this film is that it was so obvious to me that there are more similarities between these people than differences."

The debut of Miral was well-timed, coming on the day the US president, Barack Obama, opened a new round of Middle East peace talks.

Meanwhile, Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been forbidden by the authorities from attending the premiere of his new short film Accordion. He was arrested last year and imprisoned for making a film looking at the Iranian elections, but had planned to attend.

• Israel
• Middle East
• Venice film festival
• Festivals
• Palestinian territories

Tibetan nomads struggle as grasslands disappear from the roof of the world

Scientists say desertification of the mountain grasslands of the Tibetan plateau is accelerating climate change

Like generations of Tibetan nomads before him, Phuntsok Dorje makes a living raising yaks and other livestock on the vast alpine grasslands that provide a thatch on the roof of the world.

But in recent years the vegetation around his home, the Tibetan plateau, has been destroyed by rising temperatures, excess livestock and plagues of insects and rodents.

The high-altitude meadows are rarely mentioned in discussions of global warming, but the changes to this ground have a profound impact on Tibetan politics and the world's ecological security.

For Phuntsok Dorje, the issue is more down to earth. He is used to dramatically shifting cloudscapes above his head, but it is the changes below his feet that make him uneasy.

"The grass used to be up to here," Phuntsok says, indicating a point on his leg a little below the knee. "Twenty years ago, we had to scythe it down. But now, well, you can see for yourself. It's so short it looks like moss."

The green prairie that used to surround his tent has become a brown desert. All that is left of the grasslands here are yellowing blotches on a stony surface riddled with rodent holes.

It is the same across much of this plateau, which encompasses an area a third of the size of the US.

Desertification

Scientists say the desertification of the mountain grasslands is accelerating climate change. Without its thatch the roof of the world is less able to absorb moisture and more likely to radiate heat.

Partly because of this the Tibetan mountains have warmed two to three times faster than the global average; the permafrost and glaciers of the "Third Pole" are melting.

To make matters worse, the towering Kunlun, Himalayan and Karakorum ranges that surround the plateau act as a chimney for water vapour – which has a stronger greenhouse gas effect than carbon dioxide – to be convected high into the stratosphere. Mixed with pollution, dust and black carbon (soot) from India and elsewhere, this spreads a brown cloud across swaths of the Eurasian landmass. When permafrost melts it can also release methane, another powerful greenhouse gas. Xiao Ziniu, the director general of the Beijing climate centre, says Tibet's climate is the most sensitive in Asia and influences the globe.

Grassland degradation is evident along the twisting mountain road from Yushu to Xining, which passes through the Three Rivers national park, the source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. Along some stretches the landscape is so barren it looks more like the Gobi desert than an alpine meadow.

Phuntsok Dorje is among the last of the nomads scratching a living in one of the worst affected areas. "There used to be five families on this plain. Now we are the only one left and there is not enough grass even for us," he says. "It's getting drier and drier and there are more and more rats every year."

Until about 10 years ago the nearest town, Maduo, used to be the richest in Qinghai province thanks to herding, fishing and mining, but residents say their economy has dried up along with the nearby wetlands.

"This all used to be a lake. There wasn't a road here then. Even a Jeep couldn't have made it through," said a Tibetan guide, Dalang Jiri, as we drove through the area. By one estimate, 70% of the former rangeland is now desert.

"Maduo is now very poor. There is no way to make a living," said a Tibetan teacher who gave only one name, Angang. "The mines have closed and grasslands are destroyed. People just depend on the money they get from the government. They just sit on the kang [a raised, heated, floor] and wait for the next payment."

Many of the local people are former herders moved off the land under a controversial "ecological migration" scheme launched in 2003. The government in Beijing is in the advanced stages of relocating between 50% and 80% of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau. According to state media, this programme aims to restore the grasslands, prevent overgrazing and improve living standards.

The Tibetan government-in-exile says the scheme does little for the environment and is aimed at clearing the land for mineral extraction and moving potential supporters of the Dalai Lama into urban areas where they can be more easily controlled.

Qinghai is dotted with resettlement centres, many on the way to becoming ghettos. Nomads are paid an annual allowance – of 3,000 yuan (about £300) to 8,000 yuan per household – to give up herding for 10 years and be provided with housing. As in some native American reservations in the US and Canada, they have trouble finding jobs. Many end up either unemployed or recycling rubbish or collecting dung.

Some feel cheated. "If I could go back to herding, I would. But the land has been taken by the state and the livestock has been sold off so we are stuck here. It's hopeless," said Shang Lashi, a resident at a resettlement centre in Yushu. "We were promised jobs. But there is no work. We live on the 3,000 yuan a year allowance, but the officials deduct money from that for the housing, which was supposed to be free."

Their situation was made worse by the earthquake that struck Yushu earlier this year, killing hundreds. People were crushed when their new concrete homes collapsed, a risk they would not have faced in their itinerant life on the grasslands. Many are once again living under canvas – in disaster relief tents and without land or cattle.

In a sign of the sensitivity of the subject, the authorities declined to officially answer the Guardian's questions. Privately, officials said resettlement and other efforts to restore the grassland, including fencing off the worst areas, were worthwhile.

"The situation has improved slightly in the past five years. We are working on seven areas, planting trees and trying to restore the ecosystem around closed gold mines," said one environmental officer. The problem would not be solved in the short term. "This area is particularly fragile. Once the grasslands are destroyed, they rarely come back. It is very difficult to grow grass at high altitude."

The programme's effectiveness is questioned by others, including Wang Yongchen, founder of the Green Earth Volunteers NGO and a regular visitor to the plateau for 10 years. "Overgrazing was considered a possible cause of the grassland degradation, but things haven't improved since the herds were enclosed and the nomads moved. I think climate change and mining have had a bigger impact."

Assessing the programme is complicated by political tensions. In the past year, three prominent Tibetan environmental campaigners have been arrested after exposing corruption and flaws in wildlife conservation on the plateau.

Infestation

Another activist, who declined to give his name, said it was difficult to comment. "The situation is complicated. Some areas of grassland are getting better. Others are worse. There are so many factors involved."

A growing population of pika, gerbils, mice and other rodents is also blamed for degradation of the land because they burrow into the soil and eat grass roots.

Zoologists say this highlights how ecosystems can quickly move out of balance. Rodent numbers have increased dramatically in 10 years because their natural predators – hawks, eagles and leopards – have been hunted close to extinction. Belatedly, the authorities are trying to protect wildlife and attract birds of prey by erecting steel vantage points to replace felled trees.

There is widespread agreement that this climatically important region needs more study.

"People have not paid enough attention to the Tibetan plateau. They call it the Third Pole but actually it is more important than the Arctic or Antarctic because it is closer to human communities. This area needs a great deal more research," said Yang Yong, a Chinese explorer and environmental activist. "The changes to glaciers and grasslands are very fast. The desertification of the grassland is a very evident phenomenon on the plateau. It's a reaction by a sensitive ecosystem that will precede similar reactions elsewhere."

Phuntsok Dorje is unlikely to take part in any study. But he's seen enough to be pessimistic about the future. "The weather is changing. It used to rain a lot in the summer and snow in the winter. There was a strong contrast between the seasons, but not now. It's getting drier year after year. If it carries on like this I have no idea what I will do."

Additional reporting by Cui Zheng

• Climate change
• Conservation
• Tibet
• China

Immigration: the case for executive orders | Stewart J Lawrence

Such is the political hysteria over 'illegal aliens' that legislative reform is paralysed. Only President Obama can break the logjam

A month after a federal judge struck down most of Arizona's tough new immigration law, the White House campaign to stigmatise the GOP as the party of bigotry and intolerance has backfired. Rather than rally independents, it's further polarised white swing voters against the Democrats.

And its real purpose – to galvanise disaffected Latino voters – hasn't borne fruit either. It's time for Obama to change course.
 
With Republicans still hostile to comprehensive immigration reform, Democrats prefer to punt on immigration until after the mid-terms. But with the GOP surging fast, that's likely to delay further progress until after the 2012 elections – and perhaps even longer.
 
America, already convulsed by nativism on a scale not seen since the 1920s, can't afford to wait that long. And neither can the president's restive Latino base. We need to act now.
 
As the nation's chief executive, Obama has the power to institute policy action on immigration that does not require a formal vote by congress. It's not a power he should use lightly, but it's there, and current circumstances warrant its use. There are two areas of executive action on immigration that the president should consider.
 
First, in deference to those seeking a legalisation program, Obama should issue an executive order to temporarily suspend the deportation of certain classes of illegal aliens. "Deferred enforced departure", or DED, as it's known, wouldn't give aliens green cards, but it would protect them from deportation for a set period. It could also serve as a prelude to full-scale legalisation, if congress so chooses.
 
Two obvious candidates for DED are the children of illegal aliens who migrated when they were still minors, and the illegal alien spouses of US soldiers in uniform. Their numbers are less than 9% of the total illegal alien population. Many in both groups have lived in the US for years.
 
The GOP has labeled DED and other similar options an "executive amnesty". It accuses Obama of threatening an end-run around congress. But it doesn't – and shouldn't – apply to all 11 million illegals. And aliens who qualify don't necessarily have the right to stay in the US permanently; it's only a temporary, but sustained, reprieve.
 
Ironically, a handful of defence hawks – including vocal "amnesty" opponents like representatives Mike Pence (Republican, Indiana) and Sam Johnson (Republican, Texas) – have already pressed Obama to grant DED to military spouses. But they still view illegal alien minors – about 800,000, currently – as simply "law-breakers".
 
Senators Richard Durbin (Democrat, Illinois) and Richard Lugar (Republican, Indiana) have co-sponsored the so-called Dream Act to allow these minors to get green cards right away. To qualify, they would have to go to college or enlist in the US military. The Pentagon, in search of fresh recruits, strongly supports this bill. But the bulk of the GOP isn't budging – and probably won't, unless pushed.
 
As a stopgap, Obama has already sent word to the department of homeland security not to target illegal aliens guilty of only minor crimes. But with so much GOP hostility, he's been reluctant to protect specific classes of illegal aliens, like the Dream kids. It's time to take that step now.
 
Presidents in both parties – Ronald Reagan, no less than Bill Clinton – have previously extended DED or "temporary protected" status to large classes of illegal aliens, including Central American and Liberian asylum-seekers. Arguably, these quasi-refugees faced danger back home, had they been deported. But everyone knows this was largely a fiction in the Central American case. It simply made sense, politically, to grant them a temporary stay.
 
It's important, however, that Obama couple any concession of this kind with continued efforts to tighten immigration enforcement. The president, under GOP pressure, has already signed a bill to beef up border enforcement. Now, on his own initiative, he should take similar action at the workplace – to deter illegal hiring.
 
How? By ordering that "E-Verify", the workplace verification system that's currently in restricted use, be extended nationwide and made mandatory for all employers. A dozen states, including Arizona, have already mandated use of E-Verify. And congressional Republicans, as well as Blue Dog Democrats, are among its staunchest supporters. They'd be hardpressed to oppose the president for taking up their cause.
 
Executive action is risky. But it's far less risky, politically, than convening a "lame-duck" session of congress, as some Democrats like senate majority leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada) now propose, to try to ram through the Dream Act or other broader immigration measures, much as they did with healthcare reform.
 
Most outgoing Democrats aren't going to play ball, especially if they have to vote to expand enforcement. And even those who survive the mid-terms still have to face the voters in 2012. Supporting legalisation in a GOP-controlled congress could well cost them their seats.
 
As president, Obama is uniquely placed to step in and exercise Solomon-like leadership on behalf of Democrats and Republicans alike. Recent polls show that a majority of voters – including a majority of GOP voters – support expanded enforcement coupled with some kind of legalisation.
 
At a time when the public discourse on immigration is degenerating into near-hysteria, and congress remains paralysed, even-handed executive action can point the country forward. It sends a powerful signal to voters that the president still has the courage to stick his neck out, even when a nervous and recalcitrant congress, including members of his own party, won't.
 
The entire country – Democrats, Republicans and independents alike – would stand up and cheer.

• US immigration
• US politics
• US midterm elections 2010
• United States
• Barack Obama
• Obama administration
• US Congress
• US domestic policy

Immigration: the case for executive orders | Stewart J Lawrence

Such is the political hysteria over 'illegal aliens' that legislative reform is paralysed. Only President Obama can break the logjam

A month after a federal judge struck down most of Arizona's tough new immigration law, the White House campaign to stigmatise the GOP as the party of bigotry and intolerance has backfired. Rather than rally independents, it's further polarised white swing voters against the Democrats.

And its real purpose – to galvanise disaffected Latino voters – hasn't borne fruit either. It's time for Obama to change course.
 
With Republicans still hostile to comprehensive immigration reform, Democrats prefer to punt on immigration until after the mid-terms. But with the GOP surging fast, that's likely to delay further progress until after the 2012 elections – and perhaps even longer.
 
America, already convulsed by nativism on a scale not seen since the 1920s, can't afford to wait that long. And neither can the president's restive Latino base. We need to act now.
 
As the nation's chief executive, Obama has the power to institute policy action on immigration that does not require a formal vote by congress. It's not a power he should use lightly, but it's there, and current circumstances warrant its use. There are two areas of executive action on immigration that the president should consider.
 
First, in deference to those seeking a legalisation program, Obama should issue an executive order to temporarily suspend the deportation of certain classes of illegal aliens. "Deferred enforced departure", or DED, as it's known, wouldn't give aliens green cards, but it would protect them from deportation for a set period. It could also serve as a prelude to full-scale legalisation, if congress so chooses.
 
Two obvious candidates for DED are the children of illegal aliens who migrated when they were still minors, and the illegal alien spouses of US soldiers in uniform. Their numbers are less than 9% of the total illegal alien population. Many in both groups have lived in the US for years.
 
The GOP has labeled DED and other similar options an "executive amnesty". It accuses Obama of threatening an end-run around congress. But it doesn't – and shouldn't – apply to all 11 million illegals. And aliens who qualify don't necessarily have the right to stay in the US permanently; it's only a temporary, but sustained, reprieve.
 
Ironically, a handful of defence hawks – including vocal "amnesty" opponents like representatives Mike Pence (Republican, Indiana) and Sam Johnson (Republican, Texas) – have already pressed Obama to grant DED to military spouses. But they still view illegal alien minors – about 800,000, currently – as simply "law-breakers".
 
Senators Richard Durbin (Democrat, Illinois) and Richard Lugar (Republican, Indiana) have co-sponsored the so-called Dream Act to allow these minors to get green cards right away. To qualify, they would have to go to college or enlist in the US military. The Pentagon, in search of fresh recruits, strongly supports this bill. But the bulk of the GOP isn't budging – and probably won't, unless pushed.
 
As a stopgap, Obama has already sent word to the department of homeland security not to target illegal aliens guilty of only minor crimes. But with so much GOP hostility, he's been reluctant to protect specific classes of illegal aliens, like the Dream kids. It's time to take that step now.
 
Presidents in both parties – Ronald Reagan, no less than Bill Clinton – have previously extended DED or "temporary protected" status to large classes of illegal aliens, including Central American and Liberian asylum-seekers. Arguably, these quasi-refugees faced danger back home, had they been deported. But everyone knows this was largely a fiction in the Central American case. It simply made sense, politically, to grant them a temporary stay.
 
It's important, however, that Obama couple any concession of this kind with continued efforts to tighten immigration enforcement. The president, under GOP pressure, has already signed a bill to beef up border enforcement. Now, on his own initiative, he should take similar action at the workplace – to deter illegal hiring.
 
How? By ordering that "E-Verify", the workplace verification system that's currently in restricted use, be extended nationwide and made mandatory for all employers. A dozen states, including Arizona, have already mandated use of E-Verify. And congressional Republicans, as well as Blue Dog Democrats, are among its staunchest supporters. They'd be hardpressed to oppose the president for taking up their cause.
 
Executive action is risky. But it's far less risky, politically, than convening a "lame-duck" session of congress, as some Democrats like senate majority leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada) now propose, to try to ram through the Dream Act or other broader immigration measures, much as they did with healthcare reform.
 
Most outgoing Democrats aren't going to play ball, especially if they have to vote to expand enforcement. And even those who survive the mid-terms still have to face the voters in 2012. Supporting legalisation in a GOP-controlled congress could well cost them their seats.
 
As president, Obama is uniquely placed to step in and exercise Solomon-like leadership on behalf of Democrats and Republicans alike. Recent polls show that a majority of voters – including a majority of GOP voters – support expanded enforcement coupled with some kind of legalisation.
 
At a time when the public discourse on immigration is degenerating into near-hysteria, and congress remains paralysed, even-handed executive action can point the country forward. It sends a powerful signal to voters that the president still has the courage to stick his neck out, even when a nervous and recalcitrant congress, including members of his own party, won't.
 
The entire country – Democrats, Republicans and independents alike – would stand up and cheer.

• US immigration
• US politics
• US midterm elections 2010
• United States
• Barack Obama
• Obama administration
• US Congress
• US domestic policy

Read more [Guardian America]

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change must keep its eye on the ball | Myles Allen

Instead of producing reports 3,000 pages long, the IPCC should focus only on the key questions that everyone is interested in

If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn't exist, would we need to invent it? Many people find it helpful to have a single point of reference on the big, global questions that everyone is interested in: can we detect human influence on climate, how large are changes expected to be in future, what are the main impacts likely to be and what can (not should) be done about it? These are questions on which the level of scientific consensus is far higher than most non-scientists believe, so an institution like the IPCC clearly has a role to play to assess and communicate the extent – and limits – of that consensus.

Where the IPCC has gone wrong, in my view, is mission-creep. Everyone is emphasising that "there were bound to be a couple of mistakes in the 3,000 pages" of the IPCC 4th Assessment, but no one is asking why there were 3,000 pages in the first place. The IPCC started out as a simple assessment of the literature when there wasn't much climate literature to assess. As the volume of the literature has exploded, the IPCC has tried to keep pace, with ever larger reports and teams of authors. Most readers of IPCC reports don't have 10 times as many questions about climate as they had in 1990, so why do they need reports that are almost 10 times as long? The reason is that the IPCC has allowed itself to be bullied into trying to address all the questions about climate change that someone might ask, rather than confining itself to the questions that everyone is asking.

Governments are exploiting the IPCC to get climate assessments done on the cheap – authors and editors are not paid – and the scientific community is falling for it hook, line and sinker. Using an intergovernmental panel to tell the government of the Netherlands how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, or even the governments of India, China and Nepal how fast Himalayan glaciers are receding, is a bit like asking the US 101st Airborne Division to build primary schools in Afghanistan. It works, but it is not the most efficient way of doing things, and the impact of mistakes is massively magnified.

If an Afghan contractor breaks a child's foot, that's a tragedy, but a local one: if the digger is being driven by a US paratrooper, the poor kid becomes a poster child for al-Qaida. If the "2035 for 2350" mistake had been made in a regional assessment commissioned by Himalayan governments, perhaps using methods and standards of assessment endorsed by the IPCC, users of the regional assessment might have been mildly irritated, but that is all. I haven't heard of any Indian, Nepalese or Chinese hydrologists claiming to have based any decisions on the 2035 figure: they would look pretty silly if they had done, since the number was clearly wrong and contradicted elsewhere.

The only reason the 2035 mistake mattered was that it gave some journalists an excuse to talk about "the catalogue of errors in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report", failing to tell their listeners, readers and viewers that none of these errors had any impact whatsoever on the assessment's headline conclusions.

If we are going to produce regular international assessments of the climate issue, reviewed with the rigour the InterAcademy Council rightly called for this week, then they cannot be 3,000 pages long and address every aspect of climate change that is of interest, however pressing, to some government department somewhere in the world. Instead, we need reports a few hundred pages long covering the issue as a whole and addressing only the key questions that everyone is interested in. This is hardly a revolutionary idea: it is simply going back to what was done in 1990.

A key part of the IPCC's remit should be to recommend methods and standards for regional assessments. We clearly need different countries to interpret the phrase "impact of climate change" in similar ways. But undertaking these regional assessments should be up to regional governments. If the government of India wants help from the scientific community in assessing the impact of climate change on India, then we should provide it, but the IPCC has no business to do the assessment for them. The IPCC could still conduct regional assessments as special reports commissioned by interested governments, provided these are clearly separate from the regular global assessment, so no one can claim that a single mistake contaminates the whole batch.

Clearly, none of this is relevant to the 5th Assessment due to be published in 2013-2014: too much work has been done to make major changes at this stage, with author teams already in place. It will be thousands of pages long and will contain a couple ("catalogue") of errors that will be gleefully pointed out sometime in 2015. But now is the time to start thinking about what happens afterwards. We don't need to keep doing this to ourselves.

• Dr Myles Allen is head of the Climate Dynamics group at Oxford University's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics department.

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Climate change
• United Nations
• Global climate talks

Google, Skype targeted in India security crackdown (AP)

AP - India has widened its security crackdown, asking all companies that provide encrypted communications — not just BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion — to install servers in the country to make it easier for the government to obtain users' data. That would likely affect digital giants like Google and Skype.

Pakistan cricketers innocent of spot-fixing, says high commissioner

Top Pakistani diplomat claims Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, who have been dropped from tour, were set up

The Pakistani high commissioner said today he believed the three cricketers under investigation for spot-fixing were "set up", after talking to them in London about the allegations.

Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, who will take no further part in the tour of England, had been summoned to explain themselves to commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan, and the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Ijaz Butt.

After the meeting, Hasan read out a statement saying the men maintained their innocence but had requested their own removal from the remaining matches because of the "mental torture" they had faced. He said he believed in their innocence.

Later, he went further, questioning the veracity of the News of the World video that forms the basis for the accusations.

He said it was not clear "whether they [the videos] were taken before the match" and suggested they might have been recorded after the no-balls had been bowled.

Asked twice whether he believed the three players had been "set up" he replied "yes" both times. In a statement, the News of the World described the set-up allegations as "ludicrous".

In his statement this morning, Hasan said: "They [the three players] mentioned that they are entirely innocent in the whole episode and shall defend their innocence as such.

"They further maintain that, on account of the mental torture which has deeply affected them, they are not in the right frame of mind to play the remaining matches.

"Therefore they have requested the Pakistan Cricket Board not to consider them for the remaining matches."

While speaking, Hasan was persistently asked by Pakistani journalists, who believe the team is the victim of a conspiracy: "What about India?"

The three players were met by a media scrum as they arrived at the high commission this morning in four-wheel drives with blacked-out windows, and required a police escort to the building.

The Pakistani team manager, Yawar Saeed, said earlier that the players would miss all the remaining matches of the tour. Replacements will be called up for the five-match one-day series against England but not for the two Twenty20 matches.

The players' removal from the squad will come as a relief for the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which will be hoping the move takes the pressure off the rest of the tour and stems any protests by fans.

Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman and chairman of the ICC's Pakistan taskforce, welcomed the announcement that the players would play no further part and said he hoped the remaining matches would be played in a competitive spirit.

"I look forward to working with Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, and Ijaz Butt, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, and everyone involved in Pakistani cricket in taking forward cricket in Pakistan so that a proper plan exists for the whole of Pakistani cricket," he said.

The focus will now return to the ICC investigation, although officials will not be interviewing the players until they get the go-ahead from the police. That is likely to be tomorrow at the earliest, which is when the police are next due to question the players.

Ever since the allegations broke, Pakistani officials have maintained that the players would not be removed from the team until wrongdoing had been proved. Hasan denied today that they had come under any pressure from either the ICC or the ECB to pull them out of the tour.

• Pakistan cricket betting scandal
• Pakistan cricket team
• Cricket
• Pakistan

Homeless Candid Camera | Pem Charnley

A reporter decided to give beggars prepaid credit cards in order to analyse their honesty. How condescending

Any piece of journalism that focuses attention on the hardships facing those on the streets is to be commended. Insights into why people end up being homeless often leave the reader with an uncomfortable feeling – a mixture of relief (it isn't me), epiphany (the root cause of homelessness rarely is addiction or the person's fault), coupled with a reminder that yes, we really do still live in societies where homelessness continues to exist.

Rarely, however, does that sense of discomfort stem from some undercover journalist prodding around in a bid to ascertain street-level morals, in what comes dangerously close to being entrapment. I am referring of course to Jim Rankin's piece in the Toronto Star, which is currently receiving a fair bit of attention after going viral. If highlighting homelessness is to come at a cost, in this case it came as prepaid credit cards given to beggars in order to analyse their spending habits.

I think we can all concur that this is a rather tasteless piece of exploitative journalism. Let's dangle the card and see what happens, all in the name of investigative reporting, eh? I for one would refuse to draw any conclusions, or resort to armchair psychology in a bid to analyse the honesty of those without a roof.

Of course, my own past naturally informs the way I would respond to the piece. And yes, there are positives to be gleaned. Certainly, as I intimated earlier, I am all in favour of any piece that goes out to reveal that the catalysts that lead to eventual homelessness vary enormously – the people Rankin met clearly proved this. And though it was little more than a clumsy study of people's honesty, at least it offered a platform for Toronto's homeless to have a say.

But when all's said and done, I still have major doubts as to the didactic nature of it all. What have we learned? Some people living on the streets are more trustworthy than others. But that's the story whatever section of society you underhandedly put to the test: some people tell fibs, others don't. Considering their current situation, I was surprised that more didn't just disappear in the ether. We aren't witnessing people's inherent moral compass when their survival instinct is bound to skew the results.

The article reads like a tasteless, hideously condescending episode of Candid Camera. Still, I did at least learn one thing: the Vietnamese noodle bar on Spandina doesn't take Visa. If you're planning on eating there, do make sure you have enough change on you.

• Canada
• Poverty
• Newspapers
• Newspapers & magazines
• Homelessness

Indonesia's smoking toddler kicks habit

A two-year-old Indonesian boy who smoked about 40 cigarettes a day has kicked the habit after receiving intensive specialist care, a child welfare official said on Thursday.
Read more [The Age: Australia National]

Laos and the legacy of Vietnam | Brett Dakin

The US gives $3m a year to clear cluster bombs in Laos. For nine years, it spent $2m a day to drop them. We must do more

As US combat troops return from Iraq, remnants of another American war – fought more than three decades ago – are still claiming casualties today. The tiny south-east Asian landlocked nation of Laos has the dubious distinction of being the most bombed country, per capita, in the world. During the Vietnam war, US-led secret bombing raids over Laos left behind millions of unexploded cluster bombs that continue to maim and kill civilians today.

Most Americans have no idea, but in 1964, the United States began a nine-year bombing campaign in Laos that ultimately dropped 260m cluster submunitions on the country. These small, toy-sized weapons were dropped from airplanes in large shells or bomb casings, which opened in mid-air and released the bombs for detonation on impact.

But many of these bombs did not blow up as designed. Instead, they remained hidden in the ground. Today, nearly half the arable land in Laos is still littered with unexploded bombs. And, more than 35 years after the bombing ended, an average of 300 Lao people are injured or killed by these weapons every year.

10 September 1996: the date is etched in blue ink in Bounmi's notebook. On that day, Bounmi, then 14, was digging a large hole for a fish pond for his family. All of a sudden, his shovel hit a bomb, buried in the earth decades before he was born, and it exploded. Bounmi was rushed to the nearest medical facility. His life was saved, but he lost his left arm.

Americans Bounmi's age learn about the Vietnam war, if at all, from history books or movies. We know that Vietnam veterans continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other wounds of battle, but generally the events of the war are, for us, a thing of the past. For Bounmi, and other victims of unexploded bombs in Laos, the war never really ended.

This situation is indeed tragic but it is by no means hopeless. In November, Laos will host the first meeting of states parties to a new international treaty to ban cluster bombs, which obliges governments to destroy stockpiles, clear affected land and assist victims. This past April, for the first time ever, the US house of representatives held hearings on the legacy of the US bombing of Laos. Representatives of the committee on foreign affairs learned of the extent of the problem, the progress that has been made so far to address it, and the US contribution to that effort.

The bomb removal programme in Laos began about 15 years ago, and today at least 1,000 workers are destroying ordnance. The removal process is slow and painstaking, but it works: the Laos programme is called the "gold standard" by the state department's own weapons removal and abatement office. But it needs more money.

So far, the US has contributed an average of about $3m a year to bomb removal efforts in Laos. In contrast, the US spent more than $2m a day (about $17m in today's dollars) for nine years dropping the bombs in the first place. The US can, and should, do more.

The state department must make a sustained commitment to solving this problem, starting with an allocation of at least $7m next year for the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos. According to the department's own weapons removal and abatement experts, this would dramatically reduce the impact of unexploded ordnance in Laos. A modest increase in funding would have an enormous impact for the people who live among the hidden remnants of the Vietnam war in Laos.

Today, not only is Bounmi studying hard, but he is also volunteering to help others whose lives have been forever altered by encounters with unexploded bombs. It's admirable work, but he really shouldn't have to be doing it. We have to get to the point where, for Bounmi, just as for our own students, the Vietnam war is where it belongs: in the history books.

• Laos
• United States
• Vietnam
• US military
• International aid and development
• US Congress

Laos and the legacy of Vietnam | Brett Dakin

The US gives $3m a year to clear cluster bombs in Laos. For nine years, it spent $2m a day to drop them. We must do more

As US combat troops return from Iraq, remnants of another American war – fought more than three decades ago – are still claiming casualties today. The tiny south-east Asian landlocked nation of Laos has the dubious distinction of being the most bombed country, per capita, in the world. During the Vietnam war, US-led secret bombing raids over Laos left behind millions of unexploded cluster bombs that continue to maim and kill civilians today.

Most Americans have no idea, but in 1964, the United States began a nine-year bombing campaign in Laos that ultimately dropped 260m cluster submunitions on the country. These small, toy-sized weapons were dropped from airplanes in large shells or bomb casings, which opened in mid-air and released the bombs for detonation on impact.

But many of these bombs did not blow up as designed. Instead, they remained hidden in the ground. Today, nearly half the arable land in Laos is still littered with unexploded bombs. And, more than 35 years after the bombing ended, an average of 300 Lao people are injured or killed by these weapons every year.

10 September 1996: the date is etched in blue ink in Bounmi's notebook. On that day, Bounmi, then 14, was digging a large hole for a fish pond for his family. All of a sudden, his shovel hit a bomb, buried in the earth decades before he was born, and it exploded. Bounmi was rushed to the nearest medical facility. His life was saved, but he lost his left arm.

Americans Bounmi's age learn about the Vietnam war, if at all, from history books or movies. We know that Vietnam veterans continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other wounds of battle, but generally the events of the war are, for us, a thing of the past. For Bounmi, and other victims of unexploded bombs in Laos, the war never really ended.

This situation is indeed tragic but it is by no means hopeless. In November, Laos will host the first meeting of states parties to a new international treaty to ban cluster bombs, which obliges governments to destroy stockpiles, clear affected land and assist victims. This past April, for the first time ever, the US house of representatives held hearings on the legacy of the US bombing of Laos. Representatives of the committee on foreign affairs learned of the extent of the problem, the progress that has been made so far to address it, and the US contribution to that effort.

The bomb removal programme in Laos began about 15 years ago, and today at least 1,000 workers are destroying ordnance. The removal process is slow and painstaking, but it works: the Laos programme is called the "gold standard" by the state department's own weapons removal and abatement office. But it needs more money.

So far, the US has contributed an average of about $3m a year to bomb removal efforts in Laos. In contrast, the US spent more than $2m a day (about $17m in today's dollars) for nine years dropping the bombs in the first place. The US can, and should, do more.

The state department must make a sustained commitment to solving this problem, starting with an allocation of at least $7m next year for the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos. According to the department's own weapons removal and abatement experts, this would dramatically reduce the impact of unexploded ordnance in Laos. A modest increase in funding would have an enormous impact for the people who live among the hidden remnants of the Vietnam war in Laos.

Today, not only is Bounmi studying hard, but he is also volunteering to help others whose lives have been forever altered by encounters with unexploded bombs. It's admirable work, but he really shouldn't have to be doing it. We have to get to the point where, for Bounmi, just as for our own students, the Vietnam war is where it belongs: in the history books.

• Laos
• United States
• Vietnam
• US military
• International aid and development
• US Congress

Read more [Guardian America]

UN 'ignored Congo rape warnings'

Assistant secretary general to investigate after community leaders say they begged for help before villagers were raped

Community leaders begged UN officials for protection days before rebels raped more than 240 villagers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they claimed yesterday.

The attacks took place over several days, with victims ranging from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother.

The number of reported rapes between 30 July and 4 August has grown from initial figures of 179 and now stands at 242. Survivors have blamed the FDLR rebel group – led by perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide who fled to Congo in 1994 – along with Congolese Mai-Mai militia.

The world's biggest UN peacekeeping mission, Monusco, said it was not informed of the incidents until more than a week after they began, despite having a base just 20 miles from the affected village of Luvungi.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has sent his assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, Atul Khare, to investigate the alleged lack of action from the UN mission in Congo.

Charles Masudi Kisa said his Walikale Civil Association first sounded the alarm on 25 July, telling Congolese army and local authorities that the withdrawal of soldiers from several outposts was putting people in danger of attacks from rebels. The military had abandoned every post from Luvungi to just outside Walikale for unclear reasons, he said.

Masudi said that on 29 July, acting on information from motorcycle taxis, he warned the UN civil affairs bureau in Walikale, the army and the local administration that rebels were moving in on Luvungi.

"Again we begged them to secure the population of Luvungi and told them that these people were in danger," he said.

When Luvungi was occupied on 30 July, Masudi heard from truck drivers forced to turn back. He passed on information to officials in the same offices. That same day, the UN sent text and email messages to aid workers warning them to be aware that armed rebels were in the area, much of it dense forest that provides convenient cover for fighters.

On 1 August, Masudi said, his group heard from some raped women who had escaped and reported that scores of rebels had overrun the area.

Roger Meece, the UN mission chief in Congo, said a Congolese army patrol moved through the area on 2 August, apparently removed a rebel roadblock, exchanged fire with some fighters, and got information suggesting "a dramatic decrease" in rebel and militia activity.

In fact, 200 to 400 rebels were occupying villages alongside the road and into the interior, according to reports from survivors. The UN says there are 80 peacekeepers at its Kibua camp near Luvungi.

Also on 2 August, Indian peacekeepers accompanied some commercial vehicles to protect them from the rebel roadblock and stopped in Luvungi. "How could they protect commercial goods but they could not protect the people?" Masudi asked.

The peacekeepers stayed long enough to arrest a Mai-Mai militiaman accused of trying to steal a motorcycle. But the villagers did not make any reports of what had happened in the preceding days, Meece said.

The patrol also stopped in another village, Bunya Mumpire, where many rapes were reported by aid workers. Meece said people there wanted to fight the arrested militiaman but again did not report that they were under attack. It's unclear what means of communication were available to the peacekeepers, who often travel without interpreters and generally do not speak the Kiswahili, French or Kinyarwanda spoken in the region.

On 4 August, the local chief came to Walikale and reported that the rebels had left and that large numbers of people had been raped. He spoke to Masudi's organisation, the International Medical Corps (IMC), the UN office in Walikale and to civilian authorities, Masudi said.

On 5 August, a convoy including medical corps workers and Masudi's organisation drove to Luvungi and the extent of the horrors began to unfold, as raped women began coming out of the forest.

Miel Hendrickson, regional director of the IMC, said her group briefed officials at the Walikale office of the UN Organisation for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs when they returned from their first trip to Luvungi on the night of 6 August. "We told them the area had been attacked, that there had been no fighting and no deaths, but raping and looting," she said.

Meece said UN peacekeepers in the area did not learn about the rape and looting spree until 12 August from the IMC. Two UN officials in Kinshasa told the Associated Press they got first word from media reports, even though the UN's small civil affairs office in Walikale is charged with protecting civilians.

UN officials say soldiers are hampered by mountainous and rugged terrain and are sparsely deployed across a country the size of western Europe. But aid workers say there is a well-graded dirt road from the UN camp at Kibua to Luvungi, and from Walikale to Luvungi.

Major Sylvain Ikenge, a spokesman for army operations in eastern Congo, would not say why soldiers had withdrawn from the area, allowing rebels to move in, only that they "are now concentrated around Walikale to concentrate our efforts to track down the rebels".

"The FARDC [Congolese armed forces] cannot occupy each and every area to secure everyone and also track the rebels," he said, adding that Walikale territory is greater than the combined size of neighbouring Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.

One senior western diplomat said there was a "robust discussion" under way at the UN about why it took Monusco so long to learn about the rapes, and for the security council to be informed.

Congo's army and Monusco have been unable to defeat the few thousand rebels responsible for the long conflict in eastern Congo, which is fuelled by the area's massive mineral reserves.

Monusco has been heavily criticised for failing to protect local populations and accused by aid agencies of supporting Congolese army units responsible for grave atrocities. The Congolese government has called for Monusco to withdraw.

• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• United Nations
• Rape

India's visa policy is affecting British businesses and universities | Robert Wintermute

The Foreign Office said it would oppose any proposal to single out Britons of Pakistani origin. Well, it's no longer just a proposal

I recently drew attention to India's new "David Headley visa rule", which discriminates against British citizens of Pakistani origin on the sole ground of their "race, ... descent, or national or ethnic origin", contrary to the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (ratified by India in 1968). Invited by India's TimesNow TV news channel to discuss my Guardian article, I found myself accused of making a "rabid attack" on India's reputation. My two opponents insisted that India has imposed a longer processing period of seven to eight weeks, but that there is no de facto ban on travel to India for British citizens of Pakistani origin.

Only the Indian government knows how many hundreds or thousands of applications by British, US, Canadian or other non-Pakistani citizens of Pakistani origin have been referred to Delhi, where they are gathering dust, with no decision taken in time to make travel possible. But I know of one. Sajid Suleman, a student in my human rights law class at King's College London, is a British citizen – born in Pakistan and a UK resident since the age of two. Twice this year, he has attempted to travel to India.

In February, Sajid could not represent King's at a moot court competition in Mumbai with his team-mate Aqeel Noorali, a British citizen of Indian origin. Despite applying four weeks before his flight (when the visa website said three to four weeks), and enlisting the support of his MP and a peer, Sajid could not obtain a visa in time and had to be replaced by a British citizen of Chinese origin, Christine Yu (whose ethnic origin allowed her to apply for her visa three days before her flight).

In April, Sajid was offered one of 200 places in the Study India programme administered by the British Council. On 15 August, 197 students (162 of them British citizens of non-Pakistani origin) started the three-week course in Delhi and Mumbai. But three British citizens of Pakistani origin were left behind in the UK, including Sajid and an Oxford University student (who wrote his dissertation on religious minorities and nation-building in Nehru's India). Despite having the support of the programme, they could not obtain visas in time.

What if they had applied earlier? A British citizen of Indian origin, wishing to take his children to visit their grandmother in India, has waited six months for a clearance from Delhi with no reply. Why? His British wife was born in Pakistan.

Besides students and tourists, many others could be affected among Britain's citizens of Pakistani origin, who number more than half a million. Take the case of a manager who wrote to me. Born and raised in the UK, she has been waiting since April for the visa she needs to visit her company's call centre operations in India, despite having visited the centre in the past.

"I am now in a situation where my chosen profession is at risk of being seriously hindered if I am unable to travel to India. Companies, including my own, will most likely choose not to employ British Pakistanis in this field of outsource management," she wrote.

India is effectively saying to British universities and employers: "You are welcome to come to India, but leave your British students and staff of Pakistani origin at home." British universities and employers have a strong commitment to providing equal opportunies to all their students and staff. How can they maintain that commitment, and their ties with India?

No international human rights tribunal would uphold India's visa rule. Judgments of the European court of human rights would be highly persuasive (but not binding). The court declared in Timishev v Russia (2005): "Racial discrimination is a particularly invidious kind of discrimination and … requires from the authorities special vigilance and a vigorous reaction …no difference in treatment which is based exclusively or to a decisive extent on a person's ethnic origin is capable of being objectively justified in a contemporary democratic society…" In Cox v Turkey (2010), the court stressed that "immigration controls must be exercised consistently with [human rights] obligations".

Not even the fight against terrorism can justify different treatment of individuals who hold the same passport, and are otherwise eligible for a visa, solely because of where they or their parents were born. Can terrorism be fought without writing racial discrimination into visa rules? Britain is a good example. From 1973 until 1998, the UK was a target for many terrorist attacks related to the conflict in Northern Ireland. Yet, throughout this entire 25-year period, citizens of the Republic of Ireland had a right, under EU law, to enter the UK without visas. For the UK, the equivalent of India's stricter visa rule for British citizens of Pakistani origin would have been a stricter visa rule for US citizens of Irish origin. This would have been unthinkable.

In 2007, when the US proposed requiring British citizens of Pakistani origin (but no other origin) to apply for visas, a Foreign Office spokesman said:

"The Muslim community in the UK, including those of Pakistani origin, are an important part of our society and we would oppose strongly any proposal to single them out in response to the actions of terrorists. Furthermore, we will oppose any measure based on broad categories of religious, ethnic or other criteria."

India has gone beyond a proposal, and is now applying ethnic criteria. When will the Foreign Office protest publicly?

Gandhi began his political career in South Africa, fighting racial discrimination against persons of Indian origin. The principle that governments must treat all citizens on the basis of their individual merit or conduct, not their "race, caste [or] place of birth", is enshrined in article 15 of India's constitution. Yet India is now discriminating against British citizens of Pakistani origin. People like Sajid, eager to visit and learn about India, can only hope that the Foreign Office will speak out on their behalf.

• India
• Pakistan

China digs for ways to stymie BHP's Potash Corp bid (Reuters)

Reuters - China is stepping up attempts to hamper BHP Billiton's $39 billion hostile offer for Potash Corp, amid worries about future supplies of fertilizer it needs to rapidly boost food production.
Read more [Yahoo World News]

Japan endures hottest summer on record (AP)

AP - Japan is sweltering through its hottest summer on record, weather officials said Thursday.

China calls for compromise on NKorea talks (AP)

AP - China called Thursday for a compromise among the parties to talks aimed at disarming North Korea's nuclear program in order to get the negotiations back on track.

Typhoon suspends SKorean flights, subway, kills 3 (AP)

AP - Typhoon Kompasu struck South Korea early Thursday, killing three people while it knocked over streetlights and scaffolding in what was called the strongest tropical storm to hit the Seoul area in 15 years.

Haddin to miss Indian Tests

Australian wicketkeeper Brad Haddin's lingering elbow injury will cost him a Test tour of India, but not the Ashes.
Read more [The Age: Australia National]

Delta upbeat on Japan business amid strong yen (AP)

AP - Delta is upbeat about its business in Japan as new routes and the surging yen boost travel and help along the recovery in the industry, a top executive said Thursday.

Hughes back, Haddin not for India tour

Phil Hughes has returned from injury while Peter George and Josh Hazlewood will add a green tinge to the pace attack for the Australian Test tour of India.
Read more [The Age: Australia National]

China coal trucks stuck in 120 km traffic jam (Reuters)

Reuters - More than 10,000 trucks mainly carrying coal are stuck in a 120 km (75 mile) traffic jam in the northeastern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia, in the latest dramatic snarl-up on the country's roads.
Read more [Yahoo World News]

European firms in China urge level playing field (AFP)

AFP - European companies in China on Thursday called for greater market access and a level playing field with Chinese rivals amid growing frustration among foreign firms over perceived unfair treatment.

Group: China failing to keep WTO access pledges (AP)

AP - China has failed to honor promises to the World Trade Organization to open its oil and phone markets, a European business group said Thursday, adding to complaints of worsening conditions for foreign companies.
Read more [Yahoo World News]

China slows down Aussie buying in July

A sharp drop off in exports to China led to a worse than expected trade report for July, economists say.
Read more [The Age: Australia National]

China requires ID to buy mobile phone numbers (AP)

AP - China wants people who buy new cell phone numbers to register their personal details, joining many European and Asian countries in curbing the anonymous use of mobile technology.

Tar balls coat Indian beaches after ship dumps oil (AP)

AP - Wave after wave of tar balls floated ashore Wednesday on the renowned Goa beaches after a ship dumped tons of waste oil off India's western coast, officials said.

Delhi Games venues 'not yet certified'

India's failure to prove that all Commonwealth Games' venues and the athletes village are safe to operate could jeopardise the event.
Read more [The Age: Australia National]

Tesco bids to increase dominance of Asian market with basket of Carrefour stores

Tesco, already the biggest supermarket retailer in Thailand and Malaysia, wants to add 61 Carrefour stores to its Asian portfolio

Tesco has put in a bid for more than 60 stores in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, currently owned by its French rival Carrefour, as part of its strategy to conquer Asia and cement its position as a global force in supermarket retailing.

The French hypermarket group put the stores on the market after a strategic decision to pull out of Asian countries where it stood no chance of becoming market leader. Tesco is already the market leader in Thailand and Malaysia, and more than a third of its shopfloor space is in Asia.

The Cheshunt-based retail group has operated in Asia for more than a decade. It has more than 1,230 shops in Asia and expects to open another 270 by February 2011. It views the region as "a significant long-term opportunity" even though its like-for-like sales in Thailand, Malaysia and Japan went into reverse last year as a result of the economic downturn and local political problems in Thailand.

Tesco has particularly ambitious plans for China, where it intends to open 80 vast shopping malls in the country by 2016. Earlier this year chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said: "We have continued to invest through the downturn to ensure that we will be in an even stronger position as the economies recover."

The deadline for first bids for the Carrefour stores closed Tesco is understood to be among about 10 groups to have tabled initial bids. Others include the Japanese Aeon group, Dairy Farm of Singapore and the French Casino group.

The stores are expected to fetch about $1bn (£647m) and Carrefour may decide to sell them piecemeal, if single-store or country sales will achieve a better price.

The portfolio consists of 40 supermarkets in Thailand, 19 in Malaysia and two in Singapore.

Tesco currently has 571 stores in Thailand, including 110 hypermarkets, and 29 shops in Malaysia, of which 28 are hypermarkets. It plans to open another 50 outlets in the two countries by March 2011. It currently has no presence in Singapore.

One supermarket executive said Tesco would undoubtedly be keen to snap up the Carrefour chain: "Only a few portfolios like this come along and only a few retailers have the wherewithal to consider it. They would be mad not to run a tape measure over it."

Two years ago Tesco paid $1.9bn for 36 Homever stores in South Korea, which it bought from E-Land, which had bought them from Carrefour for a similar price two years earlier. At the time, they were making a loss but the rebranded Homeplus shops are now trading profitably, with double-digit like-for-like sales. Korea is now Tesco's largest international business; in April, Tesco said sales there were £4.5bn and profits were almost £300m.

Five years ago Tesco did a store swap with Carrefour, handing the French group six Tesco stores in Taiwan in return for 11 Carrefour outlets in the Czech Republic.

• Tesco
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Supermarkets
• Retail industry
• France
• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Singapore

Afghanistan tries to prevent run on its biggest bank

Authorities remove two Kabul Bank executives amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement

Afghan authorities today attempted to prevent a potentially catastrophic run on the country's biggest bank after allegations of corruption and mismanagement led regulators to replace two of its top executives.

The revolution at the top of Kabul Bank, which is responsible for paying the salaries of nearly all the country's policemen and soldiers, has caused shock in the capital amid fears of a collapse in confidence in Afghanistan's ramshackle and corrupt financial system.

Sources in the financial industry in Kabul said that the central bank had demanded change at the top after discovering evidence that the bank's shareholders had wasted depositors' money, including on luxury villas in Dubai where they housed their families and other members of the Afghan elite.

But today Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the central bank governor, insisted that the replacement of Kabul Bank's poker-playing chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, and chief executive, Khalilullah Frozi, with a central bank official called Masood Ghazi had not been forced on the bank and that depositors should not be worried.

"Kabul Bank is one of the important banks of Afghanistan, and the central bank of the Republic of Afghanistan will never let Kabul Bank collapse," the governor told a news conference.

Fitrat said that the central bank was not taking over Kabul Bank, and that changes stemmed from a decision taken months ago to remove shareholders from positions in the bank's management. The chief executive and chairman each own 28% of the bank.

But one senior industry insider said Fitrat was simply trying to calm nerves amid fears of a run on the bank, which could easily turn violent. The dramatic change of leadership, he said, was the result of a period of infighting between the two men for control of the bank, which prompted the US embassy to demand action from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.

"This had nothing to do with President Karzai tackling corruption," he said. "It was because these people got caught and the US embassy had to intervene."

The banker, who has extensive knowledge of recent discussions about the future of Kabul Bank, said its only chance of survival would have to come from government bailouts.

At his press conference, Fitrat insisted the bank had enough liquid assets to cover all of its debts, but the banking source estimated that as much as $900m of Kabul Bank's total deposits of around $1.3bn had been loaned out, mostly to failing businesses linked to Kabul Bank's extraordinarily unorthodox leaders.

Farnood founded the bank after starting his financial career in the completely unregulated international hawala exchange markets, which move money through the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. He spends most of his time in his mansion in Dubai and is well known on the international poker tournament circuit.

Frozi is an eccentric character, who until recently sported dyed blond hair and is often seen wearing fur coats, and worked as a gem trader before becoming one of the country's leading tycoons.

"They regarded the bank's money as their own, but it wasn't theirs – it belonged to the depositors," the banking source said.

Much of the money is thought to have been invested in luxury Dubai property, which plunged in value after the global financial crisis.

Cash has also been spent on loss-making ventures, including Pamir Airways, the airline also run by Frozi, and in the country's major cement factories, which is run by Mahmoud Karzai, one of the president's controversial brothers who is also a minor shareholder in Kabul Bank.

The flagrant breaking of Afghanistan's banking rules was allowed to flourish under lax supervision from a weak central bank staffed by poorly trained regulators, and Kabul Bank's practice of using far more sophisticated Indian accountants to cook the books, the banking source said.

Kabul Bank's customers are generally quite small depositors attracted to the bank by its lottery prize draws for account holders and also because it provides free bank accounts to the country's army and police.

If depositors attempted to take their money out all it once it could destroy not just Kabul Bank but also the other Afghan banks that have sprung up since 2001. Initial damage to public confidence today appeared to be slight, with news of Kabul Bank's troubles spreading only slowly among the public.

• Afghanistan
• Banking

Summary Box: China requires ID to buy cell numbers (AP)

AP - CAN I SEE YOUR ID?: China is now requiring identification from anyone purchasing a new mobile phone number.
Read more [Yahoo World News]

Gallery director defends decision to swap Gainsborough for African works

First black director of collection at National Gallery in Cape Town accused of 'Wal-Marting South African art'

Riason Naidoo knows how to ruffle feathers. His decision to remove paintings by the likes of Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds that had hung in South Africa's National Gallery for 63 years provoked a fierce backlash, with one magazine fuming that the museum's reputation had been "trashed" .

Now, in his first major interview since the row erupted, Naidoo, the first non-white director of the collection in its 139-year history, has responded to critics he regards as being part of a "largely white" art establishment in Cape Town.

Naidoo, who grew up in a township and is of Indian descent, believes the hostile reaction to the five-month show, an overview of a century of South African art,, could in part be racially motivated. "The art world in South Africa has been largely white," he said. "Cape Town is known to be quite colonial. So apart from being a new director, I'm also the first black director in a museum where there have never been black curators.

"There is definitely resistance to change. There are a number of firsts in putting this exhibition on and there is bound to be reaction from certain conservative quarters to change."

Naidoo, who was appointed last year, endured a withering review in the influential Art Times. He added: "The Art Times has a specific agenda, whatever that is. But I did get feedback from many elderly white women from affluent areas who come to the gallery regularly and congratulated us on the show."

Controversy centred on the Sir Abe Bailey bequest, one of the biggest collections of British sporting art. Bailey, a British-educated South African mining magnate and politician, donated more than 400 works to the gallery, where they went on display in 1947, on condition that some were always on show. About 80 were hanging in two rooms, including many images of horses and hunting in 19th-century Britain, when Naidoo got permission from the Sir Abe Bailey Trust to take them down. "I think they saw the light," he said.

"For the first time I thought it wasn't really appropriate because it's a kind of colonial English collection and there are many of those around the world in the English colonies. It wasn't really showcasing any aspect of South African culture that was unique to the history of this period. It was a conscious decision to show contemporary work in those spaces."

Naidoo replaced them with contemporary works such as the photographer Mikhael Subotzky's images of the Ponte City building in Johannesburg and Mary Sibande's striking piece Conversation with Madam CJ Walker, a life-size model with synthetic hair.

But he insisted he was not trying to deny the influence of British painters on South Africa and would draw on the Bailey bequest for an exhibition opening next month. "We all acknowledge that there has been colonialism. The National Gallery is a product of this colonial past as many other museums around the country are. It's not to deny this history at all, but so has there been Dutch history, a bit of French history as well.

"The question is what percentage of space do we allocate this history and how are all the other histories represented at the same time.

"South Africa has 11 official languages; how do their stories compare with these stories that have been shown for this amount of time? Has there been equal attention given to indigenous cultures, for example, or new black artists working in western style?"

There is frustration at the slow pace of racial transformation in art 16 years after apartheid. Naidoo, 40, believes there are signs of change in Johannesburg and evidence of more black students studying art at major universities.

"But it is still very elite," he added. "I think it's got to do with the problem of art education at schools. It was horrible during apartheid. Art was not offered in township schools so you had hardly anyone being trained in art from a young age, and that hasn't changed much post-apartheid. So you have generations of broadly black people who've never entered an art museum. I think that's the root of the problem in that it has kept the art world an exclusively white domain."

Naidoo, who helped create a museum for the celebrated Timbuktu manuscripts in Mali, has been invited to discuss the current exhibition, 1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective, at a workshop for curators at Tate Modern in London next month.

But his critics are implacable. Gabriel Clark-Brown, the editor of Art Times, said: "The National Gallery has an obligation for excellence: one puts on a good job or not at all. He rushed this show and compromised the curatorial professionalism the National Gallery is known for. It doesn't hang together as a show. He's Wal-Marting South African art without context, which I'm angry about."

He condemned Naidoo's decision to remove the Bailey bequest. "The manner in which they came down was a bit distasteful and there were more subtle ways of doing it. He regards them as colonial but they are part of the nation's heritage and evolution. I find them valuable in terms of keying into the value of art to the nation. They paid homage to the great English masters."

He acknowledged that a recent survey found South Africa's art market was still 80-90% white but said he opposed the politicisation of art. "As soon as you introduce quotas, it's going to be a political tool and Stalinise the industry."

He added: " I believe Riason Naidoo was a political appointment rather than on merit. That inevitably leads to certain things. When he starts with his, 'I'm here to politicise art,' people do get a bit iffy."

• Painting
• South Africa
• Museums

China in danger of early basketball exit (AFP)

AFP - China's 80-89 loss to Russia on Wednesday has left them requiring a win over Turkey to ensure qualification to the second round of the 2010 world basketball championships.

BlackBerry wins the battle but not the war in India

Ban still looms despite temporary truce after BlackBerry maker RIM grants authorities access to 'secure' data passed between devices

After weeks of standoff between south Asia and North America, the Indian authorities yesterday won limited access to data from BlackBerry smartphones. The 800,000 users of the devices in the country had been threatened with a blackout because of the Delhi government's growing fear that militants could use the BlackBerry's secure network to plot terror attacks without fear of being monitored.

The authorities can now get access to some data. The arrangement will be evaluated for 60 days, but the prospect of a ban still looms large for Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian company behind the smartphones.

India has also opened up a front against Google and Skype. The home secretary, GK Pillai, said the internet companies were being asked to set up servers in India so that the authorities there could monitor data.

India's moves underline the anxieties of emerging governments about the reach of western communications groups, and particularly the BlackBerry.

The United Arab Emirates is threatening to block BlackBerry services by 11 October if it does not get access to encrypted messages. Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon are also reviewing the future of BlackBerry services in their countries; all cite security fears over the level of encryption afforded to communication sent between devices.

However, this strategy risks alienating the very global businesses such countries are trying to attract, because the employees of multinationals increasingly rely upon BlackBerrys to conduct their day-to-day work.

RIM's problems – its shares have fallen to a 17-month low – lie in the way BlackBerry devices get access to the internet and email through secure centres around the world using specialist encryption.

BlackBerry's Messenger instant-messaging service and its email service have different levels of security, and email security depends on the server being used. Since the BlackBerry was launched 11 years ago, it has been the mobile phone of choice for business users and governments across the world. But RIM's reputation for producing apparently impenetrable security for high-profile customers is at risk of being irreparably damaged by these new demands.

Last Thursday, RIM said it would lead an industry forum on how to allow law-enforcement agencies to get access to communication networks while not encroaching on the security needs of private enterprises. That was all well and good, Indian government sources told Reuters, but the country wanted a technical solution – and quickly. "The government's position does not change," the source said. "We are hopeful [RIM] will come up with some solution."

The problem for RIM is that if it gains governments' trust by giving them the means to see messages, it will probably lose the trust – and perhaps the business – of users who have previously relied on its security as a way of avoiding the government's gaze.

A university professor in UAE, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Guardian: "The issue has received a lot of coverage in the UAE, but nothing compared to the conversation 'on the ground'. Since virtually every Emirati aged 17 to 40 owns a BlackBerry and uses the messenger feature constantly, this has been of great concern to them.

"I'd guess that around 30% accept this is for security reasons, while the rest believe it to be, at the least, intrusive. The latter believe it to be a response to a number of fairly high-profile Emiratis being attacked, derided, vilified via the messenger broadcast service. Emiratis send many broadcasts daily, and gossip runs through the community like wildfire."

One of the biggest issues for the countries concerned is this messenger broadcast function. Allowing users to send one-to-many messages to everyone in their contacts book has proved an effective and galvanising way of spreading comment, and is often used as a vehicle for anti-establishment opinion – something UAE authorities are sensitive about. "The government walks a very thin line between appearing liberal and modern to the west, and traditional and Islamic at home," the professor said. "This issue cuts to the heart of the impossibility of doing both at once.

The professor, who has owned a BlackBerry for more than a year, said he would have no qualms in switching to another device if RIM's concessions infringed his right to communicate without fear of government interception. "I can only presume RIM is aware of this and is treading carefully," he said. "I have faith in the company, as it clearly does little for them to give up what makes the device so valuable – its security."

He added: "This has been called another public relations disaster for the UAE, and I fail to see how someone will not point this out to the rulers – and they are exceptionally concerned with remaining attractive in the eyes of western governments," he added. "This has done them no favours with the business community internationally nor with the majority of locals and expats domestically."

Being on the wrong side of officialdom is not new to the Canadian manufacturer. Ironically, given the more recent bout of security concerns, three years ago the French government banned its officials from using BlackBerry devices, citing fears that communication could be intercepted by countries hosting the enterprise servers – namely Canada, the US and the UK. When Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the BlackBerry he had used on the campaign trail was replaced with one with extra security, approved by the US National Security Agency, which was concerned about people trying to tap it.

Further east, security demands meant negotiations to take the BlackBerry to China and Russia took two years to resolve in both countries.

Unlike Indian officials, who have slipped anonymous tidbits and soundbites to the news agencies, RIM has remained tight-lipped about its negotiations. In a rare public statement addressed to customers earlier this month, the Canadian manufacturer said it co-operated with all governments to a consistent level: "Any claims that we provide, or have ever provided, something unique to the government of one country that we have not offered to the governments of all countries, are unfounded."

The complexity and range of security solutions offered by RIM may be the source of the company's friction with governments, said Leif-Olof Wallin, vice-president of the IT research company Gartner. "What seems to be the big challenge is that lots of BlackBerry service and infrastructure is not very well understood by the regulatory authorities or by its users," Wallin said. "Although physically it is the same device, it can be used in lots of different scenarios."

Financially, Wallin said, a ban in India would have negligible impact on RIM's global business, although the country was the second-largest mobile phone market in the world behind China. And RIM would emerge less tarnished than the countries involved.

Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts that there will be more than 600,000 BlackBerry sales in India this year and that India's smartphone market will have reached approximately 12m – a figure forecast to grow to 40m by the end of 2015.

"At the very last minute there will be an agreement in place," Wallin predicted. "Banning BlackBerry devices in the country has significant implications affecting foreign diplomats, foreign enterprise executives. It would be a major inconvenience to lots of important allies."

That is not to say that the Indian or UAE governments will be given free rein to tap emails or messenger messages. "Our interpretation of RIM's public statements is that the company is willing to facilitate mobile operators to lawfully intercept some messages," said Wallin.

"And BlackBerry will – on a case-by-case basis – be assisting network operators to decrypt BlackBerry Messenger, we think. With email between the BlackBerry and BlackBerry Enterprise Server, RIM simply does not have the capabilities to decrypt it, and the encryption key is unique to each user.

"Though some of our clients are worried about what to do in case a ban is put in place, it looks like BlackBerry [manufacturer RIM] is benefiting from this as they're not caving in – they're being perceived as an honest secure company."

Gail Thompson, owner of a landscaping company based in Dubai and a BlackBerry owner, said the ill thought-out warnings were not atypical of Emirates officials. "I'm expecting them to backpedal on it," Thompson said. "I'm anticipating that [the authorities will] issue a blanket mandate, then realise that it's unworkable – that's what I'm I'm hoping. I think they've had a kneejerk reaction to things.

"They need to take into account that business people are coming into the country and [the UAE doesn't] need another hurdle in the economy," Thompson said. "People are thinking that it's ludicrous – we all understand that our emails and calls are monitored, it's just part of our lives. I just think it's a cultural thing out there."

But that thinking is not shared by all of UAE's half a million BlackBerry users.

A teacher who has lived in the region for 10 years and wished to remain anonymous said she would blame RIM "for caving into demands that compromise people's privacy" if the manufacturer facilitated greater access to their emails.

"There is no alternative but switching to another device," she said. "If [RIM] allowed the government to intercept messages, I wouldn't be sending you this email."

• BlackBerry
• Data and computer security
• Mobile phones
• India